Finding Mentors As A Junior Software Engineer - Engineering Manager AMA

All right, just waiting for the streams to come through. We'll get started in just a sec here. And I come on Instagram. Double checking if Substack actually worked. Makes me nervous. Substack's working. Nice. Okay, we just got to wait for Instagram and I think we're Oh, an error occurred. Thank you, Instagram and Reream. One more sec. Let's try that again. Oh, we might be out of luck for uh Instagram, but that's okay. Um, thanks for joining, folks. I see people are joining in the chat. Welcome. Um, if you're new to the live streams, these are an AMA style format. So, anything that you want to ask about career development, software engineering, please just feel free to jump into the chat. Um, I would rather spend all of my time uh on this answering chat questions and talking through stuff that you guys want addressed. Otherwise, I do have a topic for the day and I'm going to link it in the chat and it's a similar topic to one we went over before. This one is finding mentors as a junior engineer. And one of the last ones because I think last week I had off cuz my in-laws were visiting which was great by the way. Thank you so much for asking. Uh know they're awesome people and uh so they were visiting from Canada. We toured around a little bit and uh I took you know the weekend off from writing a newsletter and the last Monday off from doing a live stream which I was the right move. It was good to spend more time with them. And so the time before that we were going over uh the opposite direction of this topic which was like you're in a position and you're you're sort of been instructed to help mentor uh you know people that are maybe mid-level and people that are like seemingly doing pretty well. So like what's your role in that? This time I wanted to flip it around and um this was a topic from code commute. And so if you're not familiar with code commute, code commute is one of my YouTube channels where it's more of a vlog. It is uh questions and answers. So people submit questions. I make a vlog trying to answer them. It's a lot of fun for me and um I had talked about this on code commute. So um I'm just seeing Antonio uh hi always wanted to let you know that I love your your technical content. Awesome. Thank you so much. Writing from Toronto, which is my old stomping grounds. I grew up uh just north of Toronto for I don't know good good chunk of my life. And then I lived in Waterlue, so sort of the other direction away from Toronto and um still about like an hour and a half away from that. So most of my adult life um has been around Toronto nearby. So awesome. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. So okay, infected FPS finding Mentos. Did I Okay, I was double-checking that I didn't have a typo and I don't. Okay, just making sure cuz I have done this before. I didn't call it out, but there was a Oh my god, there was a I think like a Blazer um Thank you for letting me know. There was a Blazer video series I was doing and I'm really bad with thumbnails. So, I was just like reusing the thumbnail and like changing the colors and stuff and I was like four videos in and I was like, "Oh my god, every single one of these has a typo on it." Right on the thumbnail. Total idiot, but it happens. So, um, awesome. A random programmer. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Uh, they say, "I recently started listening to your podcast on Spotify. Wish I started sooner." Um, thank you so much. By the way, I'm just going to ask which podcast. Um, if you're listening to the Dev Leader podcast, awesome. Thank you so much. Um, that's the one where I have guests and stuff coming on, but I have another podcast which is my code commute one. And just because I feel like this is a plant in the audience, but it's it's not. Um, so one sec. Spotify.codemute.com. [Music] I'm just checking that out before I send it. Does work. Cool. So, if you want to see the other podcast, which is really just code commute. Um, go ahead and check this out. And that is the other one. It's basically just the YouTube episodes from Code Commute. And let me just show you super quickly. So, oop. So, that's CodeCute. Um, if you go to uh spotify.codemute.com, codemute.com. That's the other one. And this is currently eight seasons uploaded each or I'm on the eighth season. Each season is 30 episodes. So there is a lot more content on code commute which is general software engineering topics. So if you enjoy the dev leader one, again, thank you so much. I appreciate that. If you're like, hey, it would be cool if there were more of these. Code commute is a little bit different uh just because I don't have guests. Uh, unless there's guests that want to come for a ride in the car someday. I'd be happy to do that. I think that'd be fun. Um, but the code commute is me vlogging basically, but it's on software engineering topics, so uh, you might find that valuable as well. And it's on Spotify, so it's easy to listen to in the background. So anyway, um, not Mentos. Thank you infected FPS for throwing me off, but it's uh, Mentors. And this is a code commute topic that came up and the the uh Deon says, "I watch code commute only on YouTube. I never or I never remember to comment." I think you can comment on Spotify. I don't know how Spotify actually works. I don't I don't use Spotify anymore. I'm a YouTube music kind of person. I've converted especially because I pay for premium on YouTube and I might as well just take advantage of the music too, I guess. But um this code commute episode was around the idea that someone had started working as a junior developer at a software company. And the the framing for this was like hey look like I'm the only developer and you know what you hear a lot of is like hey you know if you want to be successful you need to find a mentor. And um so they're kind of going like what the heck am I supposed to do in this situation? And it's not even like, hey, the dev team is really small. It's like, I am the dev team. And I wanted to talk about this because I think it's interesting because I do like I have not had a software development mentor in my career. And I'm not saying that to say like, oh, and I'm perfect proof that you don't ever need to find one. Not not what I'm saying at all. But I've never had one. And I have heard from many people that having a mentor to help guide and stuff is truly like how to kind of try and get to the next level more effectively. And I I do believe that. And I had a great HR leader. So as a software engineering manager like maybe she's one of the the reasons why like I personally try to pay more attention to people as a manager versus just like you know how many how many story points can we get done? um she was very influential for me and so I feel like I had mentorship through her. Um but I've also been in the situation that this person's talking about when I was an intern. I was an intern at a company that had one developer. It was me. And I went back there a second time. And it's not it's not because there was good mentorship there. And I don't mean that to sound insulting or anything. Um um you are a loser kid. I don't know who that is. That's not the kind of thing you come onto a a live stream and say at at me or anyone else. So I didn't have at that internship I didn't have a mentor and it was still like a good experience. But the reason I wanted to talk about this is because this can look so different for everyone. So individually and even as an individual based on the place you're working, there can be a lot of variables to consider. So I wanted to chat through that. That's why I wrote my newsletter article on it. So that was the first link I put in the chat. I'll just share it again. So um for folks that aren't familiar, all of these live streams I basically have a a planned topic to go through almost all the time. It's at weekly.devleer.ca. A you do not have to subscribe for the email newsletter. So don't feel pressured into that unless you'd like to read a newsletter. If you don't, you can at least go there and check out the topic if you're like, "Hey, what's the live stream going to be on?" Comes out on Saturdays. So you can check Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. And then if you're interested, come back for the stream. So I I wanted to write about it because I talked about it and get these ideas together. But um I think it's important because we hear this kind of stuff as software developers that it's you know you need to go find a mentor like this is how you're going to be successful and I think there's already a lot of pressure on developers and this adds to it. So I don't think it's bad advice by any means like so I was trying to be careful. I was trying to say like I never had like a software development mentor but it's not to say it's bad advice. I think that if you can find one, great. But I wanted to start off by saying that I think like mentorship needs to be we have might have to rethink this a little bit. And I think and people can jump in in the chat if you disagree or have different thoughts on this, but I kind of feel like the traditional, you know, sense of a mentor when we say this, it's like I'm going to be talk, especially for a software developer, it's going to be someone that's way further along in their career. It's going to be a single individual and they have many years of experience and you know we'll have something more formal in terms of like setting up a recurring one-on-one that kind of thing. Hey Liam, thanks for joining. Liam's awesome. Liam makes a lot of awesome LinkedIn content. So thank you so much for joining. Um it's about software engineering. I don't know if you're going to find it super exciting, but I do appreciate you being here. Thank you. And um when we we think about mentors though, I I think that we maybe most of us have this kind of framing in mind where it's like it's this individual, this coach that's going to guide us. And I don't I don't think that that's wrong. Um I think that probably is mostly a traditional mentor, but I don't think that it has to look like that. So I kind of wanted to break that barrier down a little bit. Uh, infected FPS says, "By my personal experiences, you don't really need a mentor, but you need an environment and teammates who you can ask questions to, not feel stupid for asking, which is what I kind of try to do for my less experienced co-workers." Exactly. So, that's 100% a topic we'll get into. Um, because when I talk about some of my early career experience, that's ex like I was very fortunate to have had that exact environment that infected FPS said. So, it's um, we'll see. We'll kind of see how this unravels, but fully agreed. In fact, at FPS, thank you for sharing that. So, the idea with, you know, needing a mentor or or, you know, you must have a mentor. I think we have to think about what the goal is, right? The goal is that we want to be able to have someone to learn from. We want to be able to grow. We want to have some accountability. We want to, you know, we don't want to repeat the same mistakes as someone we were kind of looking for, I don't mean this in like a facicious way. who are looking for shortcuts kind of thing. Like, let me optimize my path forward. And I think having a mentor is someone that can help facilitate some of those things. But if those are your goals, I don't necessarily think that it must look like a traditional mentor. So, I wanted to start things off on that and see what people thought about that. So, uh Devin says, "I never had an individual mentor, but I ended up getting involved in some Slack Discord communities." There we go. Right. So um in something like that again it's not a single person but it's like a community or others that you can learn from. So in both of these examples that Devon shared and infected FPS shared these are not like hey yeah I found one person and they were my coach they were my guide and we met on you know the first Tuesday of every month and we had a coffee chat and it didn't it doesn't look like that necessarily. Now, if you find someone like that and you have mentorship like that and you enjoy that, great. Not not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just trying to get us to think outside of the box from what a traditional mentor might look like. And I wanted to start by kind of talking about what those goals are. Okay. So the the thing that I wanted to bring up after that is that I I think for some people the next step is well how do I go find that person at my company? And that's kind of like some of the motivation when this person asked this question was like I'm the only developer here. Like I'm never going to have a mentor now. But like the person doesn't have to come from your company, right? Especially in this person's case, if there's no other developer, they're probably not going to come from your company. And that's okay. And in fact, I think it might actually be beneficial in many cases to not have if you're going to find like an official mentor. Um, that person's not necessarily like, you know, the senior engineer on your team, right? It's not necessarily the person that is really close to all the stuff you're doing. In fact, I think having some removal of that can be very beneficial. Now, it might sound kind of weird if you haven't thought through this yet, but you might think, okay, if there's a senior person on the team, they're going to know what I'm doing, you know, more uh more accurately. They're going to know sort of the situations that I'm going through, the team's going through. Like, wouldn't that be a beneficial thing? And I think one of the problems is that, and I'm saying problem, one of the challenges is that that can introduce a ton of bias that you may not want. You might think that that's a beneficial thing, like they have more context, but I think that there's a lot of value in having as much bias removed as possible so that when you're talking to this person about some of the challenges you're going through, they're not like, "Oh, yeah, man." Like, I I get it. Like, the manager total can I I don't I don't really swear on my live streams. I swear on Code Commute, but you know, you know, manager total buttthead. Like, I totally get it. like, yeah, he's really, you know, over overfilling the sprint commitments and like, yeah, I get it, man. Like, you don't you don't want that to be like a session where you're just venting together. I'm just using a simple example here, but when you start to remove the mentor from exactly where you're at, then you can start getting more unbiased perspectives. Right? So you might think in your head like, "Man, my manager," you're talking to your mentor like, "Yeah, my manager I'm having a lot of problems and like, you know, he's stressing me out a lot and like he seems like he's kind of unfair." They could start asking you questions. Oh, like what seems unfair about how they're acting, right? Oh, well, the sprint commitments and you know, he's always trying to make us do more things that we can possibly do. And the mentor might be like, "Oh, okay." Like, so, you know, what does that look like? You know, uh, when you when you've talked to your manager about that, like what have they said when you bring that up? and then, oh, I I I haven't done that yet. Right? So, they might just give you different ways to think about things instead of just piling on and having like a similar lived experience. So, the point here is that when you're looking for mentors, no, you don't have to go looking in your team. You don't have to go looking within the company. And in fact, you may find a lot of value in looking outside of that. Some questions in the chat. Um, yellow orange 1235. Hey man, do you think it's still possible to gain a junior or entry- level role without qualifications? Uh, I think we got to we got to uh qualify andor quantify what this means. Uh, because it's a it's a loaded question. Do you think it's still possible to gain a junior? And sorry, I my intention is not to pick on your question. And I would just ask for some clarification on this and I want to illustrate why I'm uh going to have some challenges answering it in the first place. So please uh don't take offense to this. I would just like you to rephrase it so I can answer more effectively. Do you think it's still possible to gain a junior or entry level role without qualifications? I don't think it was ever possible. I don't think it ever should have been possible. Um, and I am wondering if it means like uh postsecary education. So, if you uh yellow orange 1235, I'm going to go to the next questions, but if you if you can do me a favor and please uh clarify a little bit, I would be happy to try my best to answer that. So, thank you. Antonio, do you think having a mentor helps with job hunting? I think yes, if you have a mentor that knows about that. Um, I've never had one, but seems like it could really boost learning and help me level up at work. So, um, there is a person I will just recommend and I can see if I can get his, uh, LinkedIn. I believe, um, this individual is, uh, like he has paid for services. So, I'm just going to throw that out there. You I'm not, you know, he's I'm not getting kicked back from this. I just I I think he's an awesome guy, but I'm going to use him as an example for you. And that way, if you're like, "Sounds interesting. I don't want to pay for that. Like this might give you some ideas for what to look for. So his name is Taha Hussein. And so just putting his link in the chat. His that's his LinkedIn. And where is this link? Sorry. Give me one more sec here. I just want to get his website. So, I know Taha posts a lot about helping um engineers um with landing roles, especially when it comes to like it's not just big tech, but I think when you're like doing salary negotiations and really trying to find a good fit for yourself, uh Tah's got a lot of really great advice. So, um I would recommend someone like him. Again, I'm not saying you have to go pay for it. Um, but if you're looking for someone who can help you in that space, he's an example of a person that I think embodies a lot of that. And so you might say, "Okay, cool. I know a couple of people that that do this kind of thing or, you know, they help in this area." Like maybe that's something you want to pursue, but I'm kind of throwing Taha out there as an example for you. So hopefully that helps in some way. Um, I'm going to go back to yellow orange 1235. Thank you for uh clarifying. So what I meant is without a degree essentially. So yes, I think 100% um you can land jobs uh entry- level roles and stuff without um without a degree. You don't need college, university. Do I think that it helps? Sure. Um and that's because I think statistically a lot of roles list that I think there are a lot of roles that list that and they have it there, but like do they actually care? Like probably not. Some really do and some really don't. Um so it's a bit of a mix but the general advice that I have is like um when I when I think about software engineers applying there's a and this is this is a similar thing for other roles but we're talking about software engineering the fact that it's very competitive. If you have a lot of people that are applying for something and it's a role opens up, a thousand people apply from the perspective of the company that's doing the hiring. And I'm not saying this because I I think that it's a perfect system. So please don't misinterpret that. I'm saying this because I think it logically makes sense that they would pursue it this way. If a thousand people apply, if it's not realistic for the people that are looking for candidates to review every single position, sorry, every single applicant, wrong word, because there's so many, what they will likely do is find a way to try and filter. Now, if you're in a position where you have tons of applicants applying, you're in a position where you have more opportunity to kind of like just sift through things. So, if you can set the bar higher and higher, you would do that. This is a crappy comparison, but think about homes that are for sale, right? If you list a home and you list it at $100,000 and you have, you know, a hundred people that want to buy it, the price that it's going to sell for is going to be more than $100,000. If you have the opposite problem, you list it for 100,000 and no one shows up to buy it and it's been on the market for a year, you probably got to drop the price. So, when these companies have so many people applying, they can say like we're going to raise the bar. That's why I'm saying I'm not telling you that like, you know, because you have a degree means that you're automatically better or something. No, but it's one more thing to add in because you could one could make an assumption that if you have people that have gone for postsecary education, they've invested more time and effort. I'm not saying this is true, but you could make an assumption where they've invested more time and effort to, you know, bettering themselves in terms of their career development. Again, I'm not saying that that is statistically true. I'm saying you could make an assumption or a hypothesis that that may be true and then and then you start filtering people out by that. Same thing with years of experience, right? We're only going to look Yeah, it's entry level, but like we had a thousand people apply. Why don't we take the person who's got one or two years of experience, right? Even better for us. I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm just saying that it's easy for people to keep raising the bar. So, um I do think it's absolutely possible. Um, I would encourage people that if you don't have post-secary education and you have a job that you want to apply for that says, hey, you got to have a degree. I don't think it hurts to apply. I'm not saying that it's a, oh, you're definitely going to get it. But I don't think it hurts. I had on one of my live streams a few months back, I had my skip level manager for Microsoft join the live stream and he said the exact same thing in the chat. He said, "Go apply. Right. So, I I I think that you don't need it, but if you have it and it's going to make you stand out, then include it for sure. Um, Julian says, "I love this. I didn't have a mentor and was the only engineer at my first job. My next job ended up uh being very humbling but necessary in my career growth." There you go. Would love to hear more about that. That sounds interesting in terms of like what was humbling. Um, infected IPS says, "With how saturated the junior entry level is, you have to remember you're competing with people with the degree." Yes. And that's kind of what I was hinting at with my rambling, right? Is like when you have so many people, you know, you take I'm just going to make this, you know, simple case here. You have a 100 people that apply. If 50 if everyone was the exact same in every way possible because no one's really differentiating themselves and 50 people have a degree and 50 people don't, but otherwise they look the exact same. You might say, "Well, we're going to go look at the 50 people with the degree just because it's one thing that's differentiating them." So, um, not saying it's better. I'm just saying that I think that's kind of what's happening in terms of differentiation. Um, Devin says, "It gets said almost every stream, but I want to throw it out there that in my opinion, you should look at local companies and or smaller shops for entry-level junior positions, better chances." Yes, 100%. I think that's totally true. Um, it's like it is not impossible, and I know this because I work at Microsoft and we've absolutely hired people fresh out of college and stuff. It is not impossible to have your first job at big tech. I certainly didn't, right? I had uh six internships and all of none of them were at big tech. Every all of them except one were at a startup. One of them was like at a smaller company, maybe around 100 people. None of them were at big tech though. And then when I graduated university, I worked at a startup, a local startup. So, you don't have to go, well, it's I'm about to graduate. I need like I need to get into Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta. It doesn't have to be that way. And if you read or watch on people's, you know, um, career journeys and stuff like that, there are some people that are like, you know, big tech was not for me. Um, there are a lot of, like, personally, there's a lot of things about big tech I don't like. I really do like the fast-paced environment of a startup. I feel extremely productive when everything is moving very fast, and I feel the exact opposite when things are moving slow. So, it's not a good fit for everyone. And then people go, "Oh, well, the the money though." And it's like, "Yeah, but if you look go to levels.fyi." There's there's lots of companies that aren't big tech that have really good compensation. So, uh, and like I mentioned, Taha earlier, Taha was posting, I don't know where the candidate was going. It wasn't big tech, but you know, he was posting about a candidate that was uh cuz he'll share some screenshots of their exchanges and the total comp package was like 400k a year and it wasn't big tech. Like there's there are things out there like that. Uh Pun, I work at Microsoft. I work in Office 365 uh in sort of the the platform teams called Substrate. Uh Julian B says, "What advice would you give to a mentor?" I do a lot of junior mentoring at uh tech meetups right now with the AI craze. I've been advising them to hone architecture number one skill to be able to build understand apps uh development from scratch. Uh so basic cloud architecture knowing frameworks for front and back end to be split efficiently understanding microser architectures. Yeah. Um so good question. Um I think it like mentorship is always going to be situational, right? Um, and I know that you're not you're not asking me like what's the one thing that will solve mentorship for juniors, but um I think something that gets missed a lot and I talk about this a lot because I think it gets missed a lot is all of the stuff that's not technical. Spend time on that. Um Devin is in the chat. Devon watches a lot of code commute and Devon can tell you that statistically probably 95% of videos on code commute. I say what, Devon? What do I say in every single video about your manager? Um, I'll let Devon answer that one in the chat if he's listening. But, um, I think that there's a lot of stuff that's non-technical that people need a lot of help with and they don't realize when they're getting started in their career. And it's because there's a hyperfocus on technical skills. So, um I like I would recommend uh when you're working with individuals, get a feel for that. Get a feel of like um yeah, Deon says there you go. Level set expectations, right? You want to work with your manager. You want to get on the same page for what they're expecting of you. But this is applicable in like in a lot of situations and I I I just think that there's so much focus on and Jonathan Baron knows too, right? all the code people know I and I need a shirt still that says level set expectations but um the um I think the reality is that there's there is a lot of focus on technical things and not a lot of focus on you know how do you how do you you know solve conflict right how do you deal with issues where you're trying to communicate um with individuals and like like you're not on the same page or it seems like there's a lot of friction like I think there's a lot that you can invest into there with mentoring others that would help tremendously. I can't like my most of my job that's not like I don't know like project planning and like working through architecture and like the non-technical stuff. Most of what I do is just like helping people navigate weird situations like that where they're like, "I got this problem." And they might not even know it's a problem, but they're like, "This project's going very slow." And I'm like, "Tell me about how you work with Jimmy." and they're like, "Yeah, Jimmy hasn't been reviewing my code." And I'm like, "Hm, maybe we should have a conversation with Jimmy, right?" I don't know. Jimmy seems busy. And I'm like, "Jimmy's not too busy to review your code because that was supposed to be delivered last week. So, let's go have a chat with Jimmy." Um there's all these things about just navigating the workplace working with other people and we just completely forget that we spend all of this time on technical stuff and then we and then we just assume that people are going to be able to work together. It's the same problem that happens with engineering managers. Slightly different but the same sort of weird situation where it's like we have this awesome engineer. they've been building software for 10 years and they're the most technical and let's make them a manager and then they're like cool how do I do that and they're like we don't know good luck and then we just expect that they're going to be good at it we can't so I think that's a one of the biggest areas that I would say I realize you're probably asking more about technical stuff but I had to throw that out there um I think with respect to AI um I want to touch on this a little bit uh use the tools. I I think that completely neglecting them is a is a mistake, but I think that people are already misusing them because the goal is not how do I use AI to go spit out as much code as possible and then I can use that on my resume. The goal is how do I build things, get stuck and learn what I'm doing? And then on top of that, how do I use AI tools effectively? And that might be asking good questions, right? That might be, hey, I'm building this thing and I'm stuck. Hey AI, can you explain to me what's going on here? Can you explain why I should make this tradeoff here? Can you explain other options? Oh, I don't understand what that means. Can you deep dive into that? It's like a tailored tutor. So, you can use it that way instead of just, hey, chat GPT, I would like, you know, uh, 10,000 lines of a to-do app. Boop. And then you get it and you're like, I have a to-do app. And everyone's like, we don't care. and you didn't learn anything from it either, so you don't even care. Like, don't use the stuff the wrong way, but don't not use it. I think I've I've been hearing people say like they're going too far the other way, which is like, oh, like never use AI for juniors. And I'm like, you're going to be the the wave of people that are going to be using this the most coming through. like you don't want to not use it, but you need to understand like what your tradeoff is. If you're trying to learn things, don't get it to spit code out. Um, otherwise, I think you mentioned a lot of really good things like I think architecture is super important. Uh, system level thinking is super important, but honestly, uh, for really junior people, practice building stuff. Just spend time writing code. Rebuild things, right? like it's the time that you need to be hands-on doing stuff because just watching tutorials and reading reading articles and stuff, it's not going to cut it. Um, what else? Okay. Um, Jonathan, thank you so much. Um, hi. Building an AI lesson plan generator from scratch as a teacher for teachers coding a public. How to boost credibility for a personal project. Um, super cool. Congrats, by the way. That's uh super awesome. Um the follow-up question there is initial thoughts of E1 want to get feedback from teachers for UI seek a nonprofit to use it. Yeah, I think so a couple things here, right? Um I think coding in public first of all like start like talk about this as much as you can everywhere you can. There's a few creators I follow on LinkedIn. They build stuff that, and this is nothing personal, like I'm not I'm not interested in what they're building. Like, it's not a product that's for me, and that's totally fine. Um, but I see them post about it all the time and I see the momentum they get with it. And I see that by posting it all the time, they already have other people that are interested. I think building in public is a tremendous thing to do. I don't do this enough for the stuff that I'm building. And that's because like as as ironic as it is, like I still don't even have enough time. Even though I'm building a platform that helps me talk about things to build in public, but um anyway, talk about it. Talk about it all the time. Talk about it everywhere. Remember, and this isn't meant to be insulting. Um it's a frame of mind. Alex from Ozie says this a lot. You may not like him. That's fine. But I think it's good advice. But like no one knows you exist. No one, right? At least in this context, right? So, no one knows that you exist. There's there's no way you could talk about this enough. Talk about it all the time everywhere. Now, in terms of credibility, um UI feedback um I would personally I would kind of uh wait on that. I think um get people using it. Yes, they'll give you feedback on the UI and stuff, but like think about the functionality of what you're building first. Right. Um as a teacher for a teacher. So Jonathan, you are a teacher. I would say that you are this is a power position to be in when you are also your target um audience, right? So if you're using it and you're like like I I can't use this, it's not hitting the mark. If you're like hell yeah, I can use this. Cool. You got something now. Start like you said, start showing it to people, right? go like I'm assuming if you're and I don't know this I don't know the details but um if you if you're a teacher and you're working at a public school or something or a high school whatever it is um are there other teachers there you got friends that are teachers and say hey want to try this out like word of mouth right like hey like yeah building a lesson plan is a total pain in the butt right like I've been working on this thing and I've been trying it out and it helps me it saves me some time do you want to give it a shot right this kind of thing I think the word of mouth thing is powerful and you know the one one example that I have from early in my career that I I like referring back to is when I worked at the digital forensics company before Microsoft. the the founder of that company was a police officer and he built software that was helping to basically uh recover like deleted information or otherwise hard to come by information from computers. So like for example your browser history if it was deleted okay how do we go recover the browsing history and that kind of stuff. And he built that because he needed that for work. he was doing that kind of work and then a couple people heard about him like hey like that tool like I want to try that like I need that that would help and then more people and they're like hey can you add this thing to that tool and he's okay like do that so he's giving it away and then he gets to a point where he's like this is taking a bit of my time like I should I should probably charge people for this so he starts selling it and then he gets to the point where he's like I need to leave the police force so that I can go do this because the impact I'm having through this is already much greater than I could ever have as an individual police officer. But it all stems from you're identifying a problem that you have, you're solving it, and then kind of um getting more people on board. I think honestly the hardest part with this kind of stuff is is getting people to see it. So use your connections that are also teachers. If you have a a not for-p profofit uh oh you since you c you can't use it legally at work. What I did I missed that part. Seek a nonprofit to use it since I cannot legally use it at work. So that might be something to consider. Why can you not use it legally? Because is that going to be a problem for helping other people use it? I don't know enough about the logistics of that. But um ask the people who can use it to try it out and keep building some momentum that way. share um you know if they're allowing you to share feedback um right so like as a testimonial if they're like hey this is awesome hey can I use that as a testimonial then you can post about it as your build in public stuff put that on your website that kind of thing um but those are a bunch of ideas I have hope that helps um and thank you again I do appreciate the tip um faded uh or sorry let's go back up uh a random programmer says as a junior I think my Um I think my routine with AIS uh is majorly with explaining concepts that I don't really understand. The only thing I notice is like copy blindly is reject. Yeah. And like even rejax is maybe I might allow that because uh rejax sucks. But um AI is really good at uh Reax I find. Um, but yeah, honestly, it's the kind of thing where you're like, I mean, think about this as an example, right? If you're using Reax a lot, and I don't know if you're not, then disregard this. But if you're using Reax a lot and you're like, I have to keep going to the LLM to get a regular expression updated like over and over and over because I keep using regular expressions, you might want to pause on that and say, hey, you know what? like maybe I should understand this a little bit better because instead of it giving me a reax that I don't get and I just copy it blindly, you can spot check it and be like, oh, like I can clearly see that, you know, this is only matching like letters and not numbers or something. I'm just silly example, but like the more that you start to pick up on it, then the more you can catch this kind of stuff, but yeah. Um where I thought there was something else here. Oh uh fade editing says just curious are you familiar with OpenGL and Vulcan? I have an idea for uh digital content creation tool. I am not. I know of OpenGL. I know of Vulcan but I have not used them on on sort of the developer side. I've used them as someone who plays games. So, that's the only way that I know about them, but I don't have um hands-on experience with either of those. Um software and Devon says, "With software in a specific vertical, it's hard to sell if you don't know how to explain the terminology used or allow customization. People will push back because we don't call it that interesting yet." And infected FPS, uh Reax, you hate that more than taxes. I don't know, man. Um I I do be hating taxes, honestly. um really don't like them. I pay them. I do be paying them and I do be hating that I got to pay them. Yeah, I don't know. I think I would if someone I'll say this. If someone said you can not pay your taxes, but you have to write your regular expressions by hand for the next year. I'd be writing regular expressions like crazy. So I I I infected FPS. I think I disagree on this one, but yeah. Okay. Um, do I see myself in Microsoft for the rest of my career? I don't. And I don't say that as someone who's like against Microsoft or anything. Um, I don't. Um, that like another thing to add to that is if I don't see myself at Microsoft at some point, do I see myself at Microsoft again? Uhhuh. I do. Um, but I don't know. There's a lot of things in my career that I've not accomplished yet, and I I don't see I don't see a pathway to them at Microsoft currently. And that's not like an alarmist kind of thing. I'm not like, "Oh, I hate it here." No, I I love the team I I work with. I have a great manager. I have a great skip level manager. I feel very supported by them. And I mean that genuinely. Um, are they on the are they on the stream? Um, no, I genuinely mean that. Um, I work in a great org. Um, I am responsible for some things that are really cool. Um, I get to work with security and stuff like that. Like it's great, but the the thing that some people like on the surface it might not be obvious, right? But I've said this on code commute and like I'm I'm happy to talk about it because it's just it's just a reality. Like I've been a a middle manager for 13 years. My my entire career aside from my internships, I've been an engineering manager. So I for a little bit of context and storytelling because depending on who's on who's on the live stream versus who's seen on code commute, whatever else. Um, I worked at a startup that grew into a small company like 250 people from like seven people when I started. And so I was we're in a startup. We we don't even really have roles well defined. So like we didn't have anything above senior developer because we didn't know what we were doing and introducing more roles. It's really hard to take away a role. Very easy to add one. So we were being careful with that. Also for me, I was a technical manager and they hadn't introduced another position above technical manager didn't exist. So I had engineering manager peers that were not technical managers and they could get promoted into director positions. I could not I had capped out the career ladder. And so I had peers that I had hired that were now becoming directors. And I'm going h I'm not really like not really married to titles, but I also see like not really career progression. So they were introducing sort of like a like a technical director kind of like an architect position. And so that was in discussion, but I come to Microsoft. I'm a principal engineering manager, which I'm I'm proud of. I don't think that's anything that I'm like I'm not disappointed in myself, but I've been in the exact same position for five years at Microsoft. So, eight years at the previous company, five years here as a middle manager. Um, I have my direct reports where I used to work that have now surpassed me in level because they are directors now. And it's amazing for them because they are extremely good at what they do. But I look at my career advancement and like I said, I have people that used to report to me for years are now directors. And I'm still in a position where I am I want to be able to move into like what's called an M2 role, which is where I'm able to manage managers because the scope of the impact that I would like to have is at that level. So the only way that I could have that is if I am in a position where they need to grow the team that way. It's it it's not where I'm at right now. So it's on my mind that if I want to grow in my career at some point that needs to happen at some point. Now if that's because our team is growing so much and that makes sense, excellent. If that's not there's a point where I have to say you know what that's it's got to look different. It's not it's not personal to someone else like oh it's because my manager oh it's because whatever it's like no like I've been at this point it's been 13 years at some point if I'm not getting that opportunity I need to do what I feel like is right for my own career development and that's what that looks like. So, um, so that's the answer to that. But it's not because I don't like Microsoft. And if I were to leave, would I come back? Like I absolutely think so. I do really like Microsoft. And I know like personally long term I want to be running my own software company. I don't I think that if I were on my deathbed and I said I got to work at Microsoft and Google and Facebook and Amazon, I wouldn't be happy. I just wouldn't. And I don't know why, but I I think that that's sort of the the void I have to fill in my life at some point, which is like I need to be able to like to demonstrate to myself that I could build my own software company and that would feel fulfilling. So, that's my long-winded answer to your question, but thank you very much for asking that. Um, a random proverb says, "Nick says he has stuff he hasn't accomplished yet." And then there's me who's not even in the room relying on YouTube and MSR. Yeah, it's it's it's all good, right? Um, you know, it's I I make a lot of YouTube content. Um, a lot of it is tutorials and stuff like that. It feels kind of silly sometimes where I'm like, "Oh, like you don't get into tutorial hell." And then I'm like, when I'm making tutorials because I think that they're a tool, right? Um I think MSLearn has come a long way. There's a lot of really good content there now. Um there's nothing wrong with that. Like don't Yeah, don't put yourself down on that. Um I I use MSLearn for a bunch of stuff. Uh MCP servers, right? I wanted to learn more about that. I went on to MSLearn. They have a good um sort of net tutorial for it. Nothing wrong with it. Um, Jonathan Baron, everyone needs to be using C. Deon knows. [Laughter] Um, and yeah, we got a random programmer doing the dome train shout out. Thank you so much. But yeah, no, C#'s great. I uh I was telling someone today um I was telling someone today that at one point earlier in my career I was like I don't know like C like I'm I like it a lot but I'm getting nervous that I'm going to have a problem like no one like maybe no one else is using this and I'm going to be obsolete. And then C# started to have like an uptick and I'm like I did it because I'm, you know, I I don't take my own advice which is like, hey, yeah, you should be using other programming languages and getting more comfortable, especially I've been programming for a couple decades now, but I don't like using other programming languages. I can code in Python. I can code in Java. I could code in C++ if I needed to. I've had to use Objective C before. Did not enjoy that. I can do it. But I love C. I love using it. Everything about it. So, um, okay, back to the newsletter as we go through some of the topics here. Um, and I'll I'm going to go back to some of the questions. Just getting through the next topic. So, this came up earlier in the live stream when we were talking about mentorship, especially as a junior. Um, there were some comments around like, hey, uh, I think Devon andffected FPS had comments on this, but not the same comment, but this idea that there's like people around you. There's people around you can learn from. I think Devon was saying uh, Discord communities and stuff like that. And I think infected FPS was talking about this environment that you're in. And um I think that you have a lot of opportunity to learn from those around you. Even if it's not an official mentorship position. So again, we go back to what are the goals, right? You're trying to grow. You're trying to get better. You're trying to break through plateaus, different perspective on things. You have peers. Some peers may be awesome to learn from this way. And it does not have to be official. The next topic is really around networking. And this is what ties into what Devon was saying. Again, I feel like there were some seeds or like some plants in the audience, but that's not the case. Um, I promise as far as I know, unless you guys are reading this and you're like, we're going to plan to say these things. But, um, networking with purpose, right? So, if you're feeling like you're the pool of developers that you can work with is very limited, right? You're the only developer at a company. Oh, no. I'll never find a mentor. Okay. Um, and you're like, "Well, I don't even know other developers like outside of uh different companies. I don't have friends that are developers that I can learn from. Like I'm limited." Well, no. Like Devon was talking about Discord communities, right? What about going to meetups? What about going to hackathons? Like go network. And I realize what it sounds like because as a software developer, I realize that's probably super uncomfortable for an overwhelming majority of us. I'm extremely introverted. probably don't get that feeling because I'm talking to a camera on a live stream and I do this every Monday, but I'm introverted. It takes a lot of energy for me to go talk to people I don't know. I have to turn on being an extrovert. Like even when I'm managing my team, I have to and it takes a lot of energy. And so networking is something like the idea of that makes me uncomfortable. But think about it this way. Like we don't make changes unless we're uncomfortable. So what are you more uncomfortable about? Do you want to are you really hyperfocused on like I want to get better. I want to grow as a software developer and like this is really bothering me because I want this opportunity. If it's not bothering you more than the idea of networking, then you don't want that bad enough, right? Like that's all I have to say. If you want something bad enough, you want to make a change, it will make you uncomfortable. So, if going to a meetup or a hackathon and having to talk to someone is the worst problem, like it's probably not so bad. Um, and I again I say that as someone who's introverted. So, definitely try it out. You have to get a little bit uncomfortable. And I always use my public speaking example. I am someone who is afraid, used to be afraid of public speaking. Why was I afraid? Because I was bad at it. Right? I'm bad at public speaking. Why was I bad at public speaking? Because I was afraid of it and never did it. It's a vicious cycle. Right? We end up being afraid or disliking things that we suck at. I do CrossFit now instead of bodybuilding. Was bodybuilding for like, you know, going to the gym at least, but bodybuilding style kind of thing for like 20 years. I do CrossFit now. I suck at everything in CrossFit, but I don't show up and I'm like, "Oh, I hate this." And then don't do it because I'll never get better at it. You have to do the things you suck at and you'll get better. That's how it works. So, definitely network, right? If you don't have people around you, go create the network. Um, chat, uh, Jonathan Baron, do any of the languages have barriers at startups? Assuming C# is just for enterprise level. Nope. Uh the digital forensics company I worked at that was a startup. They were in C. One example. Um I think I think we see more examples of uh more enterprise kind of stuff using C just because there's probably a lot of um like history that way. bigger companies like they get into the Microsoft ecosystem or you'll hear like I think uh finance, healthcare, that kind of stuff. You'll see a lot of C development. I wonder if some of this comes from like legacy desktop applications and stuff too. I don't know but I see that a lot. But um there definitely are startups that will use net. I I don't know how many people on this stream are from Europe. Probably very few at this time I think. But um I know that there's a re like it feels like there's an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of like C developers in in in Europe like in the UK and stuff but I don't have um demographics in front of me for it but um but yeah uh if it weren't for C# PHP probably I'm so sorry uh I don't want to think about that. Let's not think about that. Um, is Objective C like is that still exist? I don't know. I used it before. I hated it. I thought it was the worst thing I've ever touched. It took I was programming in it for four months on an internship and I felt like I was by the end of four months I was like just starting to grasp it. But like I think what was cool about Objective C, if I can even say that, is that I like that they tried to get you to write methods that read like a sentence. Like that kind of that concept I thought was kind of neat, but everything else about that language I hated. Um, that's just me. Uh, Deon says, "I feel like it's more of a cultural bias in startups rather than technical limitations." Yeah, I think that's true. I think a lot of startups too, you'll get like like how many are making like some web application? Okay, well like boom, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, like next like what else? Like we'll just use Node. We're already programming in JavaScript. Like okay. Um or you know it's AI. Well, we need Python. It's like well do you um I think it's probably more cultural thing. Uh barely know JavaScript. Yeah, I think the thing with when with with web development, this is for faded ink. Like I'm talking about UIS and C++. Um yeah, like I I just think that there's so much support for um like JavaScript and Typescript for web development that it's like to give you an example. Okay, I'm building brand ghost. Um the three people including myself that are building it are like we use net a lot. The front end is still in Typescript and React. Why? Because, well, if it were me, it probably would have been done in Blazer just because I'm that bad in the front end. But I think for them, they're like, "Hey, there's just enough front-end support that we get and if we need things, pull it in. There's tons of examples." Um, seems like the aside from kind of writing sloppy code, like AI seems to do a pretty good job with helping in the front end, too. seems like it it makes things that work most of the time, which is cool. So, I feel like it was the right decision, but I don't I don't like using JavaScript at all. Um, okay. And infected FPS and Devon are proving that they are not uh paid shills apparently. Um, we'll see about that. I'm not paying you guys, so I don't know who is. Um, yeah. And Devon says, "I wish I could be writing desktop apps again. The web sucks. I spent so long in my career building desktop applications. Um I liked it a lot personally. Um but okay, last thing I guess two last things, maybe three on on the mentorship stuff. Um I'll go through them quick. The one of the things I wanted to call out and I've already mentioned Taha like three times now. um consider a paid mentor, but like it's not for everyone, okay? So, definitely if you don't need to and you have great resources around you, like don't feel pressured you have to go pay someone for that, right? Like I'm in a position where I could be saying, "Oh, go sign up for my mentorship and all that." Um, nope. Like I I don't I don't want to offer that right now. I I don't know. feel like it's a possibility, but it's not for me right now. So, I don't want to push that. I don't want to like try and trick the audience into like, oh, we'll just sign up for my stuff or something like it's not it's not the right time for me. And I think that there's probably plenty of other opportunities for you to tap into. But I do think for some people that having that accountability is really important. And the thing that I wrote about in my article was that there I've had two situations where like I'm doing something that I feel like relatively confident in and still sought out like a mentor or coach. So, uh, for bodybuilding, right? I mentioned already I was doing that for many years. And I still hired a coach. And it wasn't like, oh, I need the coach because I need to go learn how to work out or I need the coach because I don't know what to eat. Um, no. I paid the coach primarily for me because it was an accountability thing. Yes, he did tell me what to eat and yes, he did prescribe the workouts, but when I got them, I wasn't like, "Oh my god, like I never I never thought about this." It was just like, "Cool, that's my plan. I have to be accountable to this person and I'm paying for it." So, it would be really stupid of me to be paying someone and not be accountable. Like, that concept would be dumb. So, it was really motivating for me to be like, I pay this guy, you know, and I'm gonna be accountable. Uh, and I've done this for my YouTube, right? Um, more recently, I signed back up for Vid IQ to get some coaching and I've made like 600 plus YouTube videos, but I'm still going to go pay a coach. And that's accountability, right? It's some fresh perspective. It's accountability. And for some people, that can work really well. It's the same thing with courses, right? I've said to people like, "Look, I make courses and I sell them. I also make tons of free content." And for some people, courses make a lot of sense because they're like, "I'm going to go pay for this and now I have that accountability." Like, I spent money on it. I better go use it. But it's not for everyone. So, it's not like something where I want to get on camera and be like, "Oh, just go buy my stuff. Go buy my stuff. It's the only way." There's a million ways. And for some people it might be a better fit. So consider a paid mentor if it's a good fit for you. And there's some strategies you can use around that too. Try to see if you're pursuing that. Like can you get talking to this person and understand them a little bit more first before you sign up for anything. Make sure it's a good fit for you and for them. Like that might be something to consider. So um next couple points just to wrap up this topic. So, uh, your manager might even be a person that can facilitate some of the, um, the mentorship for you, right? Um, perhaps. And what that could look like, depending on what your relationship is like with your manager, is just really, if you're forming a good working relationship, is letting them know the areas that you're trying to grow in. Right? I think that if you have a really good manager, they can pick up on these things. things will kind of push you and it's, you know, it's a good kind of growth or stretch because they're identifying things and being like, I think this would be good for you to level up, but sometimes like it just doesn't work that way. You might have a good manager that's still not really able to pick apart like what you're interested in terms of your growth. So, being able to share that with your manager, I think, is super helpful. And you might find that by having some conversations like that, those growth opportunities that you are looking for in a mentor, you might be able to find some of that through your manager. So consider that. I think it's an option. And finally, this is going to go back to one of the things that infected FPS said. I was talking about learning from peers, but the other thing that he mentioned in his comment was around um having an environment where you have a safe place to fail. And the last part that I'll share here is when I think about my time working at that startup. And I said I didn't really have developer mentors. And I'm not saying that because I'm like, "Oh, I I was the best developer." I just didn't really have people that that were like the seniors on the team that I was like, "Wow, I wish I was like them. I want them to mentor me." Um, we just didn't really have that. And I think what worked really well for me was the fact that I had a tremendous amount of autonomy. I had a lot of trust from my leaders and I had really interesting challenges to work through. When I put those things together, that's a recipe for me to be successful. But I was also sur like my peers, back to this other point. I was also surrounded by peers especially early on again very fortunate for this but especially early on were motivated by similar things and that meant that I was surrounded by people that when we're facing problems it's like we're all looking for creative solutions for things like it's like what's a good way to put this? It's the exact opposite of when you have someone on your team that's making everyone else kind of brought down. You kind of you build off the momentum of each other. And that's what that felt like the entire time I was there, which was like I'm surrounded by people that really want to be pushing for the next level. And that doesn't mean next level in their career. It's like next level of whatever the heck we're doing. And when you're always sur or surrounded by enough people like that, even when you're having like days where you're not really feeling it or times you're not really feeling it, you keep getting this push. And I think that that really helped me in terms of growth. So did not need a formal mentor. But hopefully from talking through all of that, you see some examples for how you can approach mentorship and some other ways to grow where you don't really need that formal mentor or really a person. I don't think I said it and I think it's written in here. I want to say it again. Um, mentor does not have to be one person, right? That was probably one of the meta points I forgot to explicitly mention. You could have a mentor or you could have mentors and those mentors might specifically help you with different areas. Someone was talking about, you know, um, being able to land jobs, right? You got to have a mentor that's helping you do that. That's why I mentioned Taha for the fourth time now. Should really tell Taha I should get some kickback from this. Use code Nick50 and get 50%. No, you're not. There's no discount. Sorry. I should ask him about that though. Um, so you could have a mentor that's helping you with that. You could have a mentor that's helping you with uh managing projects. You could have a mentor that's helping you like because they're a guru in the programming language you're using. You could have multiple mentors and those working relationships could look very different. So something else to keep in mind. Um, Devin says, "A former co-orker ended up using a paid membership. They had regular IM chats. Uh, in a weekly video call it seemed to work for him, but your mileage may vary." Yep. Depends on your personality 100%. Um, Talal says, "How would you go about asking someone to be a mentor if they're if they aren't doing mentoring for money?" Good question. Um, I think that for a couple things. Some people will just reach out to people and ask, "Hey, are you open to this kind of thing?" Um, and you may have a lot of success with that. I don't recommend it only because I think that personally um some of the best sort of results come from building relationships up with people and that like takes time and more than just a message. So, just as an example, you may you may send a message to Bob and you're like, "Bob, I know this is the first time that we're actually talking, but I'm really interested in in being able to have you as a mentor." Um, and maybe giving them a little bit of a reason why. Bob might be totally flattered by that and say like, "That's super cool. Like, I think that I'd like to be able to help with that." Bob might not even respond. Bob might read that and go, "Man, I don't have time for that. Like, no way." But you don't really know unless you reach out. So I think that you can absolutely reach out to people. Try to be, you know, kind of short about what you're um what you're interested in. And then just saying like, "Hey, like I definitely respect and value your time. Just wanted to see if this was something that you were at least open to considering and we could chat further about it." But I personally think that instead of jumping right into that, um, if it's someone that you like, if you want to be mentored by them, it would I feel like it would be nice if you have like some conversation back and forth because you might not even know that they're a good fit for you as a mentor. You might see them or they're posting online or whatever and you're like, "Oh man, definitely that person." And then you talk with them a little bit and you're like, "Oh crap, like I don't know. I actually don't know about this person. And I think that you could both benefit from having a little bit of interaction back and forth before approaching or breaching that topic. But that's my thought. Um, a random programmer says, "I do consider you a mentor, Nick, or you recommend a more personal relationship?" Um, well, thank you. Um, I like and so I think to to your point, like the answer to your question when you said, "I get notified of all your social activity and learn greatly from it. Does that count? like yes I think so. Um, and this is my personal take on this, but um, I I've tried directing a lot of personal requests that come to me and they're like, you know, we did this with the resume reviews, right? For people that don't know, I do resume reviews on a YouTube channel. And I had a lot of people that were just sending me resumes, right? First message, hey, I want to be a software developer. Here's my resume. And I'm like, I pardon my language, but like I got so much to do that I cannot just go reading resumes from random people that I don't know. And I would love to, but I I physically cannot. And it's unfair to me because I have other things that I want to prioritize for myself. I simply cannot do that. And I said, you know what? I think that I can make this mutually beneficial. I can make content for the internet. I can teach other people about what I'm looking for in rums and how to structure them and all these kinds of things and I can help this individual. So I was like this I feel like this is a great thing and um I try to think about my content that way. So thank you very much for saying that. But I I like approaching my free content as something where it's like this is just this is just my lived experiences, right? I I never intend to come across to anyone like truly I mean this I never mean to come across like oh well just listen to what I have to say because I've been here and done that and I'm right and just follow this. I I want I'm just a dude. I've been doing this for a while. I've learned a couple things and I would very much like if I can share some stuff that will help you. And that's my goal with it, right? Like that's uh my code commute YouTube channel. This is the second YouTube channel I have. It's it's 100% or I can't say 100% cuz I go to Reddit for some topics, but the whole premise is that I like people sending in questions that I answer for them because I just want to help. So, um, yes, I think that if you're, you know, if you find the content I'm sharing is valuable and that feels like mentorship, I think that counts. I don't think that you I don't think that you need to have like that sort of traditional uh formal mentorship relationship, but if that's the kind of thing that you find is beneficial for accountability or just like the way that you operate, then that might be totally something you want to look at. Um ah Young Bird, do you have any advice for what to do as a junior developer when you have idle time when you aren't assigned any work? Yes, this will depend on where you're working, but uh I will share with you that I have never worked anywhere in my entire life where there wasn't more work to do. So, um what I would say, and I'm assuming you're talking about in the workplace, I would say if you ever feel like you are idle, absolutely start asking what the next priority is to work on. I don't know how your team is structured. I don't know how work is kind of fed into sprints or whatever else, but um my advice is you are never idle. There's always something important to do. If you find that you have a product owner or whatever the the situation is where they're like, I don't even know. Go look for problems to solve. Right? You heard the team complaining about the build times? Cool. Go investigate the build times. How do you make them shorter? Unit tests are flaky. Okay, which unit tests are flaky? Let go. Let's go spend some time debugging that. You don't even have unit tests? Great. Start writing them. There's always stuff to do. So, the reason I don't recommend the last part of that first is because if you go doing other random stuff and the product owner is like, man, we have such a big backlog. I wish you just would have asked me. That's a missed opportunity. Focus on the priorities for delivering in the product. And then beyond that, listen to team pain points or uh things that you think could make the whole team productive. If there's not even opportunities for that, go learn things. Um but I think if you're already dipping into that last category, um I I think that there's probably a missed mark in the first two. I I have never been anywhere where there's no um where there's a shortage of work. So that's what I would recommend. Um, cool. And thanks to all. I appreciate that um that feedback as well. So folks, this is the end of the stream. It's after 8. Um, thank you so much. And I'm going to do the thing where I kind of pitch people on different stuff I got going on. It's not mentorship, but it's paid for courses. So that'll be coming up in just a second. But like I said, I don't like pressuring anyone into anything because I don't think that that makes sense. It's not a good fit for everyone. But weekly devleer.ca. Um, sorry. And let me finish Young Bird's response. You're very small company, so not very structured. I don't really have free reign to work on something at my own will. Um, okay. So, if you're not allowed, couple things. They've been telling me they will assign something soon when I ask for work. Um, if if you're caught between this and they won't let you work on stuff, um, that falls in the third category of just go learn things. I would say though if I personally if I was in a spot where something's soon to go work on and you're not allowed to work on things that are like free will I would be proposing stuff personally so it fall into that second category more of like hey you're you're waiting to propose something I noticed the team was talking about slow build times the team was talking about you know this part of the code being crappy like can like can we can we prioritize I'll work on it now and I'll park it if it's not done by the time you're you're assigning me work. If if you can't operate that way, I don't know. I feel like I would have a really difficult time working in that environment. It wouldn't be for me personally. But um learning is the last thing on that list. If you're truly not allowed to go do anything unless they assign it to you, go learn go learn about rag. Go learn about um Azure AWS. go learn how, you know, different tech works. Like, I don't know. Go go go try things out. Um, but idle, in my opinion, idle is not an option. Um, I I I just think that there's too much other stuff to get done, especially at a small company. And if people are um not really enabling you to do that, I would I would personally be pushing for like how can I do something, right? right? If you if you don't have the next, you know, sprint items ready for me to go commit to the backlog, like go um Deon has a good point though. He says, "You have downtime, go write docs." Just kidding. No one does that. But like, but it's a good point. Like go do something that's going to help. Um, and I say this because um, I don't I don't know where you work, but if that's a place that's not going to allow people to kind of push forward when they have nothing to do, it seems like a it's it's not a place I would want to be personally. Not not for me to decide, but just saying I would want you to try and form the habits that I think are going to be beneficial at other places because I don't I just don't know a place that's like we're not ready to give you the next bit of work, but we also don't want you to go fix the flaky unit test. Like um been reading code during my idle time gets Yeah. And this is the thing, right? It's like you can go reading code and that might be helpful for a little bit but not on hours on end and not if it's not going to be relevant. So I would honestly uh go see if there's pain points that you can identify even with team members and pitch it to the people that are making decisions on priorities and just say like hey I know that we're still waiting to assign this work but like I think that I can help with this in the meantime and as soon as you're ready I'll switch off. But I think that's my advice. So, um, back to my screen share. Weekly.devleer.ca. That's the newsletter. And, uh, like I said at the beginning of the stream, no, don't feel pressured to go get an email newsletter, but the topics that I talk about on these live streams, that's basically what comes out every week on Saturdays. That's one. Dev leader is my main YouTube channel. I think uh, probably most people that come here know me from either YouTube or like LinkedIn probably. You're welcome, Young Bird. I hope that helps. Um, so I have a couple of things to announce about this channel and I'm going to go through some stuff first and come back to this though. Um, so let me keep talking through. But this is my main YouTube channel. All the videos are edited down. Currently there is a podcast, there's C tutorials, there are um resume reviews, there's a whole bunch of stuff and it's my pride and joy. This is where the magic happens. But Code Commutus is other YouTube channel I have. So let me put the links in the chat. Sorry. Dylan, welcome. It has been a long time. Thanks for joining. We're just at the end. So I'm sorry about that. So code commute is this other YouTube. Oh, why did that not copy? Am I going crazy? Did I paste in the I did. I pasted. Wow. cheap viewers on you are officially blocked. There you go. Um, so code is this other YouTube channel that I have and most of the videos are not me sitting right here. They're me driving in the car and I try my best to take uh questions that are submitted by viewers and answer them on software engineering and career related topics. There's also a website which we vibe coded. Um, one sec. I have some videos on my main channel of putting this site together, which no, it's not um Why did I do that? One sec. It's not um the most pretty website, but this is entirely made by AI. I didn't actually program this. Um I mean, I clicked the buttons and I copied the stuff, but this is made by AI. Um it's got my social links and stuff. And then it has this contact form. So if you want you can submit questions on codecommute.com and uh you have the option to be anonymous. See AI was able to take good instructions on that one. So you can check it out there. And I mentioned earlier that Code Commute is also on Spotify. So I think the math checks out to 30 times there's 210 episodes uploaded and active right now. And I'm currently uploading season eight. There's 30 episodes per season. So, I'm almost caught up. A few more weeks of doing 20 uploads per week and I'll be caught up to the YouTube channel. It's a long process, but u people were requesting this to be on Spotify because their vlog entries and I'm driving in the car. People were like, I don't want to pay for YouTube Premium and leave my phone open. And I don't blame you. I only like I only pay for it because uh I needed storage upgrade. My my wife was like, I want I want that, too. If you're getting premium, I want that. So, I have the family plan or whatever. But otherwise, it feels like a bit of a ripoff. But whatever, I got it. So, I use it. So, doesn't bother me. But for folks that don't want that and you don't want to leave your phone open while you're doing chores and cooking and stuff at home, then Spotify is a good option. Otherwise, I have courses. available on dome train. This is the thing that costs money. We did give uh there's a few months at the beginning of this year maybe two months where um we were giving away these two courses which are 11 and a half hours of getting started with C and then a deep dive. So if you start with no programming experience, the idea is that you should be able to to pick those up. Um there's other stuff if you're like I don't like C or I don't care about learning it. Um, I've done some work with Ryan Murphy on here for career development and uh more more stuff that's around your career and less about C. So, you can check that out. It was awesome to work with him on those. I will mention to people that I have a phone call tomorrow morning where I'm going to be talking with Nick Chapsis and the sales and marketing person. Yeah. Wait five minutes. Nick Chaps will run, oh, there it is. 30% off everything just like last week. Um, I'm not gonna lie. The first couple of these live streams where I was like, "Wait a second, there's a sale." Um, I was genuinely shocked because I thought I was told there was like a time limit and apparently we were past it. But, um, there's a sale right now, so go buy courses. But, um, I have a meeting tomorrow morning with Nick Chapsis and the sales and marketing guy. We're going to talk about the next courses. So, I'll be working on those. I have I have an idea what they're going to be, but um I think all of the above that I have in my mind is stuff that I'm excited to work on. Um so there's that. Um I think the sales and marketing guy said that I will be able to share more once we agree to them, but because historically when I've been working on courses, I'm like, I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk about the topic. But he was like, "Yeah, yeah, do it." So, I'll share more when I know. Um Dylan says, "Would you recommend learning C# as a mobile developer? I want to branch out and get some more languages under my belt." Specifically for mobile, the answer that I would have is no, just because I don't think that it has a lot of um like market penetration that way. But, um there is Maui and if you're not familiar with Maui, it's technology. So you can go build mobile applications in Maui and um it's C and you can do crossplatform stuff. So for me as someone who like spends a lot of time writing in C# if someone said I need a mobile application made I would say I'm going to build it in Maui because I can get crossplatform and be very effective using a language I know. Um, Dylan, I think that if your goal is to branch out to learn a new language and you are a mobile developer, then heck yeah, go use C. Great, great option. If you are tackling both of those things, like learning C to become a mobile developer, I don't I just don't think so. Um, not that it would be career ending or something terrible, but I think that in terms of employability, you'll probably have more success if you were to go learn either like Android development, iOS development, if you were to learn Cotlin or something like that. I think you might have better um better success that way. This is coming from someone who loves and uses C for everything. So, um, that's my take on it, but hope that helps. Um, okay. Next thing before I talk about YouTube channels is I have this product called Brand Ghost. It's a service um for helping post to social media platforms. Jonathan Baron, I'm calling you out because you were talking about building in public and Brand Ghost is for you and it's totally free. So, Jonathan, if you're building in public, get signed up to Brando, join the Slack, give me the feedback, let me know how to make it better. But you can share all of the stuff that you're building in public through brand goes to all of your social platforms. And even if that's just one to start with, you can at least schedule the stuff and it's it's free, right? The paid for stuff because there is a way that I need to make money from it. Um it's a lot more advanced for posting. And honestly, I would say that if you spent all of the time building in public, posting through Brand Ghost, and you were like, man, like now, if the thing that you're building for your um AI, I'm going to say this wrong. Uh the not the teaching plan. Why can't I? My brain's not working. But when you're when you're building your product out, I know it's something like that. Sorry, I just can't get the words. Um, if you're making money from that, you might say, "Great, I want to keep up posting on social media." Maybe that's when a paid for option makes sense. But until then, just use it to crossost, schedule stuff. Like I said, it's totally free. Your credit card doesn't go anywhere. And you know where to find me, right? Like, come to me about things that don't work or things that you want added. You know where to find me, and I'm happy to go make it a reality. So, um I use Brand Ghost, um for all of my social media posting. If you know me on if you're watching on Twitter, like I know Devon watches basically on every platform, but there's I think like usual, surprisingly, YouTube's catching up for for streamers, but Twitter always has the most. So, folks on Twitter, you probably noticed I post a dumb joke every night at 11 PM Pacific. That's their brand ghost. Um, I share links out every day to blog articles. That's through Brand Ghost. I post a short video every day. That's through Brand Ghost. It's all of the content I create added into the platform and it's perpetually scheduled. So, Brand Ghost is my solution to what I consider platforms that have not evolved in over a decade like Buffer. I don't know if people have used Buffer. When I tell the story about when I got started in content creation and I had a blog back in 2013, I used Buffer and Hootswuite to send out my content. These platforms have not changed in over a decade. And as a content creator, that's a big missed opportunity. They are dinosaurs. And so I'm going to change that. And that's why our free plan basically makes some of their paid plans not even make sense. Um because there's no limit to the accounts that you can link up. So thanks for joining Infected FPS. Appreciate you being here. So that's Brand Ghost. If folks are interested, if you're like, I'm not a content creator. I don't, you know, I don't care. Uh if you have a small business, this might be appealing to you as well because if you aren't marketing at all, being able to have a tool where you can queue up content, recycle it over time, uh could be very helpful. So something else to consider. Now the thing that I really wanted to mention is that I'm making changes to my YouTube channel. This is from feedback from the coach I have. So code commute will stay the exact same. So if you watch on code commute, thank you. Nothing changes here. Dev leader changes. And this is going to be maybe a little shocking, a little bit like what's happening. Uh I don't know how much people actually care, but um the content I create does not change. So, fundamentally, if you're like, I enjoy your content, Nick. Great. Thank you so much. Doesn't change. I promise. I will still make C# tutorials. I will still live stream. I will still do my podcast interviews. And I will still review resumes. I'm behind on rums, but I will still do all of these things. I need to put them onto different channels. And the reason that I need to do that is because of what you see here. See how this is one view per hour? You see that this is a two-month old video and I have 300 views on it. There's almost 13,000 people that subscribe to my channel. And the reason that they subscribe to my channel is because of these videos. If you notice a common pattern with all of those, they're all C development. And I love building in C. I enjoy making the videos on them on on C topics. I will not stop. But this channel, Dev Leader, will become only C development because that's what people that have subscribed know it for. I'll explain this in just a moment. I'm going to launch two other YouTube channels. I know that's a lot. That's four YouTube channels in total. I know, but I'm going to move the resume reviews over to dev leader path to tech. Naming stuff's hard. That's what I came up with. That's what I got going on. Uh Utar, I will respond to you in just a moment. I want to just kind of walk through these. Thank you for your question. Um short answer is no, but I will give you a better answer. Um, this will be my channel where I have resume reviews and I will probably touch on interviews as well. If you're a code commute um, viewer, you might have picked up on the fact that a few months ago I said I'm going to make some interview videos. I have them recorded. I haven't put them anywhere. I'll probably put them here. Okay. So, this will be about getting into tech, resume reviews, interviews, and stuff like that. That's this channel. That way, people that want to see this stuff and not C tutorials, come here. If you just want the C# tutorials, stay away from this channel. Totally cool. Um, the other one is the Dev Leader podcast. I'll put that in here. My podcast will go here. This is where the live streams will go to. This is the important part. If you are watching this on YouTube, I will be scheduling live streams to this channel, the Dev Leader podcast. I will keep sharing it throughout the entire week. That's where the live streams going. My podcast will go here and um that's how it's going to be. The Let me explain the rationale behind this, okay? because it seems a little weird, but um if you're not familiar with YouTube, and I'm not speaking about this like I'm an expert, but I've been doing it for a couple years, and the YouTube coach kind of confirmed my uh my fear. Um if I go over to Dev Leader, right, the the stuff that I put on this channel covers a lot of different ground, but um you know, I can I can very clearly show you here. look like these videos like 63 views. It's um it's a problem. And why this happens is because my primary subscriber base, sorry if this is boring for people. Live stream is technically done. I just want to be transparent about why I'm making changes. Um I really believe in transparency. So, um, the reason that this is problematic is if we take a any one of these podcast videos, right? I've had really awesome guests. I think they have really good stories. What happens is imagine that you're a C developer and you're like, I like Nick's videos like this, right? How innumerabs work because I'm a new C developer and I want to understand that. Now, imagine what happens is that you get a notification on your phone. since Nick's posted a new video and you're like, "Oh, I I'm gonna learn about something else in C and instead you get, you know, engineer to manager and back again interview with with Lee McKean." You go, I don't know who Lee is. Where where's the C tutorial? What happens with YouTube is that when I create a video and I post it, they will initially send it to my core audience, small subset. And if that core audience does not resonate with that video, it almost dies instantly. And if you don't believe me, the proof is in these videos. It's just it's in the numbers. Now, the other thing you might say, well, what happened with this one? Right? What happened with this one? What did happen with those? There's another thing that I've stopped doing. And the YouTube coach was letting me know that when I post a video to YouTube and then I immediately share it on social media, here's what happens. I have some people on social media platforms that click the link and they're like, "I don't care enough about this channel." They click away right away. Right? YouTube is very very very good at finding a core audience for you. It's the whole thing is designed to try and keep people on the platform. So, when I'm sharing my links out to my YouTube videos that have just launched and I've looked at some of the numbers, YouTube will do in the beginning like the first 24 hours, YouTube will do like 30 to 50% and my social media will do the other half or half half or more of that. Now, the problem is that like I said, more people that come from social media click the video click away. So, if you look at the metrics, it shows I lose like 60 to 70% of people that click the video within 30 seconds. It's crazy. It's like, it's a really big problem for my channel. And as a result, the channel is dying. I've been saying for a little while it's been growing like 400 to 500 subscribers a month. It's under 200 subscribers a month. and it's dying and it's it's because of this problem. Now, that might sound like it's overly dramatic, but I spend a lot of time creating content. It's all free. Uh I lose money on my YouTube channel. Uh but I do it because I want to get my content out and help people. So, I need to move this content onto these other YouTube channels. I haven't confirmed with the coach. What I will likely do is unlist like all the resume reviews, all of the podcasts, and uh I'm spending this week making the content ready to be uploaded to the other channels so that I can kind of launch them filled with content. But I wanted to give everyone that kind of disclaimer. So again, the um the Devleer, so just devle. That's the channel where the live stream will be. So, if you're confused by that, sorry. And I don't mean to like confuse people with more channels, but the problem is that like my my YouTube has basically died and I've I've unfortunately been the person that killed it. Um, I don't want to stop making other content. I don't want to only make C content. And that's because personally, I am a lot more than just a C developer. I've already said on this live stream I've been managing engineering teams for 13 years the value that I have like the most value I have is not in C programming it's in leading engineering teams. So I need to make that content because that's what I feel best doing. But if you know by now I love building stuff in C. So I will always keep making these C# tutorials. But I hope that helps. I'm at the point now where I'm repeating myself, but if you are confused, have questions, anything else, just let me know. You know where to find me. I'm on every platform. Just message me, leave me a comment. I will try to explain it. But that's the rationale. Um, and I'm not asked I'm not on this stream saying like, "Oh, go sub to the other channels." Please don't. If you don't want that content, if you're like, "I never want to see a resume review ever." Please don't subscribe to that channel because it it doesn't help me. It's actually the opposite. Um, and same thing if you're like, "Hey man, I was literally only here for resume reviews and I hate C." Like, please don't subscribe to this main channel. Um, because it ends up hurting the channel in the end. So, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it. Um, yeah, some someday, as Devon's saying, we'll break even on this someday. That's the dream is to make YouTube videos and not lose money from it. Um, but no, but seriously, thanks for being here. Um, sorry if that's a confusing kind of breakdown of where things are going. But the content does not change. It just lives in a different place. So again, thanks everyone. See you next week on what channel? What channel are we all going to the live stream on? This one. Uh if you check out the newsletter, the link will be updated and stuff and I will keep posting to social media this week trying to explain this. So thanks again. We'll see you next time. Take care.