SHUT UP And Take The Money! - Principal Software Engineering Manager AMA

all righty just getting things going here wait for all of the social accounts to start showing that they're doing the thing there's Instagram always the last one awesome stuff chat seems to be connected so that's good it's a bit of a gamble doing this uh right before the holidays here because I know a lot of people are already disappearing myol holays start right now uh which is pretty cool so I'm excited a couple days off um if you are joining and you are seeing the chat please send a message let me know what's working uh saves me the hassle of trying to scan across all of the social platforms to look for chat messages so come say hello let me know that the chat's working uh would appreciate it and uh I guess to introduce today's topic is you probably saw the the cool thumbnail maybe not depending where you're joining from but it's on the most recent newsletter article it's called Shut Up And Take the Money and this is actually hello infected FPS um this is actually a conversation that I had on uh code commute hello Daniel Savage I don't have the money I wish I did have the money but um sorry if that that felt like clickbait but this is a conversation I had on code commute earlier in this week and um I was talking through uh some of the the ideas here but I'm going to put the newsletter Link in the chat if folks are interested um totally free you don't have to actually subscribe to the newsletter this is just the topic so um like I said no uh no pressure but if you kind of want to read along get some ideas for the the focus that I'm I'm putting in front of us today that's what it's going to be and spoiler alert this is basically what I do every week so if you're interested in understanding what the live stream is very likely going to be about you can check out the newsletter link that I put there um if you're on a different platform and you're not seeing the link it's just weekly. deev leader.com yeah I didn't want to take a moment to say code commute has been going quite well um I'm using that channel which I'm going to start by linking in the chat at the beginning here um I've been using this channel to to basically stream of Consciousness talk about uh software engineering Concepts and I I've really enjoyed it like it's been fun to make um and also I've been getting people you know submitting questions and stuff so um the channel is uh about to reach a th subscribers which is pretty cool um but the reality is even with a smaller you know subscriber base on my main channel it's getting uh over it's I think it's actually double the watch time per month that my my main Channel Dev leader gets so pretty excited about that so if you're interested you can check out code commute I put the link in the chat if you can't see it it's just code commute on YouTube and um you know people submit topics I talk about them while I'm driving to and from work and stuff and if you like this kind of thing where I'm just talking about different topics I think code commutes a good fit for that because it's a same style the difference is that it's not live so here I can take questions in the chat like I have from infected FPS which I'm going to read in just a moment um but on code commute it's kind of like because it's not streaming I have to just talk and then I I'll take uh questions in the comments and stuff after messages that you want to send so check it out uh infected FPS says so I got a question for you company pushing for everyone to get AWS certified the past year why not Azure what's wrong with them um took the exam missed by like 21 points got any advice for getting out of a rut failing C exam um I haven't actually done uh CT exams myself so if I talk through this advice I need to sort of preface it that I I have not done it so I don't want to I don't want to be misleading and talk about something where I haven't done who knows AER would it be preferable of course it would um I don't want to give you advice it's like not something that I have put into practice or I have not um sort of exercised with someone else and had you know results I could say hey like I've done this with 15 people and it's worked really well um but if I think through this in in general right like the question I might have for you is kind of like this might sound like a weird question back but like what makes you feel like you're in a rut right is it uh is it this feeling that you have tried something and by the metric you were given like failed at the thing or is there something else that makes you feel like this is a a rut that you're in and I think rut is an interesting word because it implies at least when I hear people talk about being in a rut it implies that you're stuck there so I'd be curious to hear from you if you don't mind sharing right obviously I don't mean to put you on the spot but if you don't mind sharing like what makes you feel like you are stuck because you did uh the exam once and missed by 21 points by the way I have no um no concept of like when you say 21 points do you mean like you got a 79% out of a 100 uh or you got 21% less than 50 or was there 25 questions and you only got four of them I don't have a concept of like sort of how much that's a Miss bu so anyway these are some questions back to you uh if you are considering answering those I will just kind of jump in and give you some thoughts but um I think this kind of stuff in general um is something that like when I think about taking uh certifications or practicing for exams and stuff like I think a lot of it is kind of just like I don't want to say just blindly like try to memorize things but I think there's some some amount of like put in the practice to do it I don't know what you're studying currently looks like they use some weird scoring where you can get from 100 to 1,000 and requires 700 points to pass out of 65 questions where 15 don't get graded randomly whoa okay um oh I've heard about this thing where on certain types of tests where they'll give you X number of questions and what they're doing is they'll plant some questions where they're like they're trying to test them out to see if they're good questions so they don't actually grade you on them but they use it for data collection so essentially it's like 15 or sorry 50 questions some scoring where you get a 100 to it so like some of the questions have a different weight assign to them um but this is the kind of thing like I don't know if you got the results for what you didn't pass but uh I would kind of go through um if you have a copy of the test or whatever it happens to be I would go through things and continue to practice right um this is the kind of stuff that I I don't like this kind of stuff and the reason I don't like this kind of stuff is because I have seen different things come up where like this stuff it depends how they're asking questions or how they're pushing you through things and you might have like a pretty decent understanding like legitimately of of the knowledge you probably need to use it effectively but they're setting you up asking questions in particular ways where like you're going to be tricked or something uh or perhaps you didn't memorize this one specific part now you can't answer this question therefore you're going to you're going to score low on it um so I don't know the details about how these things are structured but when I think about certifications I think probably it's closer to like studying for an exam versus building projects to genuinely get good at something uh which feels kind of backwards I know I've talked to some people that have said that taking certifications they have felt is is a really good way for them to go learn things which is great like so I'm not here to say that doesn't happen I just think that it's more rare that people like genuinely learn things from uh from going through those processes so you know in terms of like practicing yes I think always practicing more is something but um let's read more of what you had to say B basically it's been stressful because I never test well the company wants everyone to get it so it ties to my test anxiety and such yeah hear rumors of it being tied to comp and such uh I would be baffled if they tied um I don't know your company but it would be shocking to me if they tied uh that kind of stuff um to to comp um I feel like that would be kind of garbage but um yeah I think the reality is like and I I suck I suck at testing myself um so for example like when I went through University I had to learn how to take exams because I'm terrible at them um I don't like the anxiety of tests uh it could be something I know really well and then I just get very anxious and then as a result don't perform well um I would like I don't know if I have good advice on how to make that feel better necessarily um but when I think about so interviews are a similar thing for me and I think like I don't know if this is going to be applicable in your situation I can remember interviews that I felt like I really did well are interviews I felt like I didn't need and that's just a bit of framing right because I think what's happening right now is that you're probably creating some of this for yourself um and you kind of said it right it's been stressful because you never test well um like I think you might be and I don't it's not meant to sound insulting of course but I think you might be making some of this up in your head and creating the anxiety for yourself um so and Celestial chippy I see your question on Instagram I'll answer that in just a second um so I think uh infected FPS like I don't know if there's ways that you can kind of like whether it's convincing yourself getting data to prove it but like the fact that like I would be uh incredibly baffled if your company was going to say okay well you only get one shot or you get two chances and then you're toast or you're never going to get promoted ever or like your compensation's going to get wrecked um so you might want to prove that to yourself and get the answer so that you can have evidence um but I think ultimately the way that I would look at this kind of stuff is like there are more opportunities uh understanding that like there's there's value in in knowing the different things on the platform but the actual certification like realistically probably doesn't offer that much value um so yeah I don't know if I have good advice for that but I think that some of that is actually just like an interpersonal reflection um because I've had similar struggles in the past with testing so sorry that I don't have like super awesome advice on that It's Tricky um on Instagram uh what's your take on decoupling a new feature in into its own repo um interesting question so I think that there's different ways to look at this but um I am much more of the mindset these days that uh I don't enjoy having multiple repost for things if I don't need to and I can say that once upon a time I worked at a company that wasn't Microsoft and we split like I actually I split lots of things into projects and aggressively like I love separating Cod into different projects and creating like these logical boundaries to a fault like I do it and probably shouldn't do it for everything but I just love to do it so I do it um it's different if I'm working on a team or something else like and I need to be more aware of that but I love separating things out but repositories are a different story and unless you are very comfortable with tooling that works multi- repo I wouldn't really recommend it um I'll give you an example more recently I find the only time if I'm building a product and there's like a front end and a back end and the build is different that might be something I go decouple and it's not because you can't go push up to the repository and have a build system only build like the front end and only build the back end and decouple those deployments and stuff like you absolutely can do it but like I've just found that when we split the front end and the back end let's say seems to just be a little bit easier um so I wouldn't go as far as to like for a single feature new repository that feels like a lot of Overkill because I would even say a new project in the same repository could be um potentially overkill for a single feature um there will be you know differences for everything but um I think a repository level separation comes down to things like um I don't know like probably more around like infra requirements and if you don't have a this is my opinion if you have like a strong reason from the infra perspective to go break things out in new repo I just probably wouldn't uh so I probably for repositories air on the side of like if it's the same product unless I have something kind of pushing me to give me a strong reason for another repository I just wouldn't it feels like it's creating more work so hope that helps um but that's my my take on it uh Caesar Cruz I've been in it for a long time working offshore near shore and in the USA experience been laid off uh after four to six months or spending years in the same company doing very repetitive job than finding a new role within a month most of my positions have been as a contractor for one or two years but now I feel a bit behind my skills how do you manage your time effectively to improve yourself and avoid procrastination um yes so I think for this kind of thing this is going to be very situational um I would recommend if you haven't done a little bit of research on um and I see more questions on Instagram I will come back to them thank you they don't show up in the the general chat so I just want you to know they're not being missed um if you haven't done some research or watched videos and stuff on like dopamine I think it's very helpful to get some perspective on that um I don't I don't know like I'm not an expert by any means but I don't know sort of like how much the general popular kind of looks into this stuff or cares about it but um Dr K I can't remember his full name but he the healthy gamer healthy gamer G on YouTube uh talks about this kind of stuff um I know some people are polarized by Andrew huberman but Andrew hubman talks about uh dopamine um but I think when it comes to procrastination I might recommend uh watching a few Andrew huberman videos Andor Dr K uh healthy gamer GG to get a little bit more of an understanding about how dopamine affects things like procrastination um because like there are basically like either biological or chemical reasons that uh can influence procrastination a lot so I think when you start to understand some of those things then like then you can kind of get a better sense for what's going on so that's one part around the procrastination um on the managing your time part I think that it's a bit of a I don't want to say loaded question but I mean I don't have enough understanding of kind of like what your your schedule and stuff looks like so um I think the um the reality is for this kind of thing that if you feel like you don't have time to do it aside from like you're procrastinating and that's why you don't have time uh I feel like if you don't have time to do it um you want to first of all revisit priorities right because I know everyone is different everyone has different things going on in life the things that I value and prioritize will be different than you right there was a time in my life where I was single and had no responsibilities at all and I could just make myself work every day and I enjoyed it and to make myself not do that I literally made sure that I could get my dog lla I've had her for for nine years now uh nine and a half years now so for me like that was purposefully getting something that was going to make me have a different responsib I'm married now so like my priorities and things I value change okay so if you're in a situation where you're like I don't have time for you know practicing skills and things like that I would look at the things that you do and I'm not here to say like oh those don't matter but I think that you need to do some reflection on this and say like where are you allocating time and is there an opportunity that or like can you do a reflection and see like do you genuinely value something more than Skilling up on something if you understand or you believe that Skilling up in a particular area will give you a better chance at success right and you you believe that's a requirement for you to be successful in the next step like okay is that is that actually a priority for you and if it is like what is something else that you're spending time on that's not pushing you in that direction and then ask yourself well how does that rank in terms of a priority I want to give you a brief example from my own life um so some people don't know uh but I I love bodybuilding right so I've been in the gym for as long as I've been programming so like over 21 years now and at the beginning of this year given the sort of time constraints that I put on myself for being able to create brand ghost for being able to create content for making courses from working my full-time job doing all these things I said it's not that I don't love bodybuilding anymore but in order for me to go to the gym like an hour to two hours every day like I don't know if I need to be doing that anymore I'm 5'4 I don't need to weigh you know like 200 lb that's actually just not healthy so like I'm trying to rep prioritize things in my life and that's something that I've been doing for forever but I'm trying to make sure that I'm making adjustments cuz things need to change so uh number one I would kind of look at dopamine and things like that I don't think you need to you know go get your PhD and understanding that stuff but I think it's helpful to have a baseline understanding or at least have an idea what's going on then I would look at uh different skills that you feel like you're lacking in terms of where you want to be heading so say you want to start doing more front end development and you're like I have no idea what the hell I'm doing for that put in a little bit of research to figure out what technologies and things you want to be working with I would highly recommend trying to build things but if you're feeling like you don't have time I think that's where you need to do that reevaluation so I do hope that helps um and I'm going to jump back over to Instagram here uh I have learned front end with react and and I am an undergraduate software engineering student now I'm stuck what I should do in what field I can special because AI is future now I want to learn uh machine learning um okay I think it depends right so I think uh when you say AI is the future like I'll I'll put it this way I'm leveraging a for a bunch of stuff and I have I have a very limited understanding of machine learning so do you want to be at the Forefront of creating like the foundation for AI because I think a lot of that's actually science and maybe less Computer Engineering perhaps right there's a lot more science going into that kind of stuff so um maybe that's a direction you want to go uh or if you mean leveraging AI for building software Solutions I think that you're probably in a great spot um but I think my my take on this kind of stuff is like okay AI is the future does that mean you have to go understand like at the science level all of the AI Concepts I don't think necessarily uh my personal take on that is find ways to integrate AI into things I think uh as you're building projects try and like integrate rag into something look at different um you know different imp not different implementations like guess or different strategies for using rag or or other things that are related to AI I would try to find ways to leverage those things right build small apps build simple things but build stuff and leverage it and I think that's my take on how to try and make sure that you're staying ahead of the curve because I think genuinely if you have an interest like here's what I would have to say I think a lot of people go into Fields like this and they're going I did the same thing so will explain they're saying this is the future right AI is the future so like how do I change the course of my trajectory to make sure that I can make the most money or be the most successful in my career by optimizing for this technology choice and I did this because when I went to University uh I knew how to program I liked programming I really enjoyed it and I remember my my father's a little bit biased but he said the money's in Hardware cuz when was a kid he used to have a hardware company like for for electronics for computers and um so he said the money isn't hardware and I said well I should go for computer engineering then so I'll get some software right get some software experience and then I'll get the hardware experience as well and I absolutely hated everything to do with Hardware stuff in school hated it can't stand it so if I would have just done that and hated everything I did I could tell tell you that if I just stuck with it and then went into working in a hardware field I would not be uh anywhere near as successful as I've been in my career so I think it's important that you enjoy what you're doing and I think based on the recommendation I gave if you're finding ways to try integrating these things and leveraging them and learning about them and understanding them I don't know personally what else I would recommend on top of that unless you truly want to try out a a career switch I don't know if you're so undergraduate student like is there miners or classes you can take in in machine learning that might be a really cool opportunity to to go try out some stuff but um I don't necessarily see that being like a hard requirement to leverage it successfully um okay and then so Celestial chippy I hope that helped on the uh on the repo thing uh Ryan in the chat was saying multiple repos can make creating a build and everything get messy I would only do a new repo absolutely if few required yeah even then struggle in doing so so I had where I used to work we had to int introduce a new tool I think it was called repo and I think it's an open- Source tool um but basically it was like get across repos and you would have yeah it was called repo because you had to say like repo and then you would give it an action and it would go go do it across all of these repositories and we had tons and we like we literally didn't need to but it was just how we started uh separating out the code and in hindsight like now when I'm building stuff outside of work like I don't code at work so when I'm building stuff outside of work it's like the fewer repost the better it's kind of like for brand ghost we had one repository we don't want more and then we more recently in the past few months we split the front end and the back end out so we could just totally separate out the concerns for building and deploying and all of that like I said could we do it in one absolutely but we chose to just split it there and it's it's actually worked really well but could the back end be split into multiple repositories sure I it's just extra complexity though uh bra is saying love your content thank you I appreciate that uh 101 calls um I okay so I'm struggling with this because I genuinely don't have time uh but I do have this thing and I donate the money for it so I'm I'm I'm gonna say this I do oneon-one calls and they cost money um but um I donate everything and when I go to do donate the money what is it called is it top meate I feel like that's what it's called I hope that's not a weird site when I go to it okay um so I I'm trying to get the link for you um and basically my plan is anything that I earn from that I am going to um donate through Microsoft and they do a matching kind of thing so uh it's my way to basically say like number one I don't have time for it but like genuinely if people are very interested in it uh and you are willing to pay it will all be donated so um I'm just trying to pull this up so give me one sec was not prepared I don't know my password for the site so I have to figure it out log in come on oh my goodness this is Dreadful my password manager changed their user interface right now today so I press the sign in button oh my goodness this site is slow okay so I'm in okay I use my name and not uh not my brand that's why so it is here that is the site um but there is a um there is a fee so I apologize I've told people this before I wish I had more time to do this kind of stuff but I simply do not because I can't make enough time for the things that I want to do for me and uh that's just the unfortunate reality I kind of spread myself too thin so it's not because I'm sitting here going oh no I think I'm more important but I guess part of me is actually saying that I maybe I do feel that way like I need to prioritize myself more so um like I said everything will be donated if you choose to use that so just a heads up so uh yeah I I'm I am busy but like at the same time it like I'm I'll be honest it feels like it feels gross like I feel gross saying oh yeah you can call me but it'll cost money like that feels bad to say that's exactly why I'm donating it though and it's a mechanism that I can say hey look if you're willing if you're actually interested and you're willing to pay money tells me you're serious because I have taken calls where I'm like why am I doing this so it tells me you're serious and then I get rid of that icky Feeling by saying hey look we're going to donate it and that's going to make things better so just a heads up um of course Caesar yeah hope that helps um and then Ryan I just wanted to read out Ryan's comment to avoid procrastination I recommend looking to time boxing yep uh start small don't go for huge goal start small break it down and build up to wherever you want to do yeah so on that note there's um like you could also look at like mic what do they call it like is it micro habits I can't remember there's a book and stuff on it too but the idea that like if you're trying to form habits instead of saying okay what are all the awesome things I want to make sure I'm doing regularly and then you like start diving into it you'll probably unfortunately fail but if you start with something like very small easy to do you can build momentum with it and then you can start stacking on these like smaller habits so I think something like that can play in really well um got to ban whoever spider bones is get out of my chat thank you very much okay I don't see any more questions so the newsl article uh no and thank you I appreciate all the questions the whole point of the live stream is for questions uh I'd much rather spend the time on that but I'm going to switch gears over to talking about looking at job opportunities and things to consider if you have other questions that aren't even related to this Atomic habits micro habits what was I thinking thank you um and there's another book called tiny habits okay so what you're telling me is I picked the wrong word and it was close to one side but that's not even the book I meant no I appreciate that thanks Lenny um and I'm I got fortunate because I have the LinkedIn chat pulled up separately because it says LinkedIn user for some reason suspicious but yeah thanks Lenny atomic habits is the book that I was thinking I think it's very helpful um I'm not a huge Avid book reader because I like doing things to learn and sometimes I find if I'm reading I'm like sounds cool but like I'm not making any change just Atomic habits um oh and Brax the saint says they're reading it right now so I found when I read through Atomic habits that actually resonated with me and I felt like I could actually start applying things and and see change which is important okay so the newsletter article shut up and take the money I'll put it back in the chat because I see there's a lot more people on the stream now so this is what we're going through um the idea behind this I wanted to talk I talked through this on code commute earlier last week and um this idea that you'll hear people say like the grass isn't always greener on the other side which is interesting right uh and I think it's I think that's unfair advice but I I do think that it can go both ways and when people are talking about this there's a few different things that people start looking at but I think one of the really common ones that comes up is money so I know and I want to talk through this because I realize the topic of money can be like awkward for people uh and I it is for me so I'm when I'm saying that I mean like I also feel awkward about it uh some people are very much like hey like I'm happy to share like how much I make or whatever or like money is just it's just a thing you can discuss it it doesn't mean anything and um like I I am awkward with it so I think that for other people this is a thing if you're like me and you were raised to like my this way like my mother would tell me like you know money money is not everything you know money doesn't buy happiness so doesn't matter if your job is like super high paying or whatever like as long as you're happy so I was kind of I don't know like maybe not directly but like kind of taught that like you know looking at money as like a as an end goal or like as the focus isn't really important as long as you're happy right um and then I can remember going through a phase with work like before Microsoft and I was like kind of in this mode where I'm like everything I'm doing is contributing to work um there's positive results that come from that but I started to realize like I'm I feel like I'm kind of just living to make money and I have it every time I try try to show my tattoo it's like impossible for me to turn my arm uh which way this way there it's hard to see but I have an hourglass on the inside of my arm and uh it basically shows like money in the top of the hourglass falling into just like an empty pit and I got this tattoo on my arm to remind myself like is not the end goal like if you just make your entire life purely about money then I think that you missing out but um but I do think that there's something to be said about this and Caesar saying talk about how much you earn in your job position is not an easy topic to discuss yes people asking for raises asking for promotions right uh if you if you've gone through uh you know you've applied for a job and trying to negotiate like it's really it's for some people like for me for example it's the most awkward thing in the world it's so weird it feels bad like everything all these feelings I'm getting I'm like I don't want to do not like um but but I think there's some important aspect that we have to look at here and so I'm going to talk through some of the concepts in the newsletter uh I'm jumping ahead to sort of like not quite the punch line but I think you know there's a bunch of people the stream right now and I kind of want to make sure I get through this in case we have a bunch of other questions and stuff come in but the part that I wanted to talk about is like when we talk about money and happiness right this is sort of the the main takeaway from the article is like it's a very popular thing people will say like money does not buy happiness right and it's interesting because I I think I agree with that statement like does not buy you happiness but I think in reality there's many of us where if we think about our lives and where we have stressors in our lives and this isn't everyone so I I let me just walk through it but for many of us the stressors in our lives money probably would solve many of those stressors so to give you an example you have um you have a job that you don't like but it's paying you and you're like I this job is the source of so much stress for me I wish I didn't have to do this if you just had a lot of money you probably wouldn't have to do that job so money didn't buy you happiness but it allowed you to not have to do something that's bringing you a ton of stress for many of us we have mortgage payments right if you're thinking about your mortgage payments or your bills that you have you might say from like month to month or what like paycheck to paycheck maybe you have a big stress in your life where you're like this doesn't feel good like I am Bas maybe it's not constant but you have a big stress in your life that's these payments so if you had more money could you make that big stress in your life go away and for many people the answer is yes now again I'm not saying that for everyone it's the exact same or that you know just having more is going to make some people all their problems go away there for some people they're they're lonely for some people they have health issues right and in those cases money is not necessarily going to solve the problem but what I am saying is that there are many people were having additional income or having more money could actually improve their quality of life and remove stressors so I think when I try to look at things like this conversation about there's a job position or you're thinking about your current job position and if you should be changing and you're factoring in money right I like to try my best and this just comes from like engineering mindset I like to think is that I try to do an analysis that looks at a bunch of different angles and sometimes that means like looking at things maybe in a way that I don't necessarily agree with but I think that I have to kind of put that lens on so when I talk about money for a job position and happiness I like to think about okay if you were to take a job so pretend your current job right for some people they might say I love my job it's great for some people they might say I wish I wasn't doing this but if you take your current job okay and let's assume that this is something that you um I don't know like you're getting some some amount of pay if someone told you and they could somehow they could guarantee it this is obviously a very contrived uh example but if someone told you you could go you could go over here and do the exact same work also with awesome people same domain right you could go start this off and we're going to pay you 5% more would you go do it 10% more would you go do it like there's some amount of money and I'm assuming assuming it's not 0% cuz for 0% now you have to go um now you're like okay I have to go ramp up in this other space it's going to be different for some people 0% is not enough for some people they might say I hate where I work I hate it maybe it's the people your manager whatever and they're like you know 0% and I could move away from this but still be doing like the technology and stuff like hell yeah like put me over there I don't care if it's the same some people would say I don't care if it's minus 10% I'll take a 10% cut happy right so for different people there's going to be a different number and even for the same person at different times in their life that number is going to change as well but I think that it's important that you do this reflection to think about where you're getting happiness in your life where are your stressors and we need to remind ourselves that like work is one part part of our life it's a part of your life that you're doing for a long time but there's also your life outside of work and if the the reason I have this tattoo on my arm is because if I just said I'm going to optimize for work and try to make as much money as I can that's cool but if I'm never doing anything outside of work and I'm never using that money to help me be happier what am I doing like I am just creating I don't know this Center for potential stress so I think it's important that you're looking at these things like your quality of life outside of work your quality of life at work and trying to figure out for yourself hey look if I make this much money is that going to make my life outside of work better or worse and is it worth my quality of life at work going up and down in contrast for some people they might say hey look that new that other job position might be a little bit crappier okay I have a good team got a good deal going on but that's 20 I'm just making up numbers that's 20% extra pay I feel pretty confident that if it was a little bit crappier to work there a little bit more stress at work that 20% extra pay would feel like lifechanging in terms of solving some stresses outside of work and if you're doing this analysis for yourself and trying to figure out if that's the right balance I think that's where your head needs to be at because just because you make a number go up on paper doesn't mean that everything's going to be better and like I was trying to give you an example sometimes that number could go down on paper and you're giving yourself a better opportunity I'm going to talk about some other aspects in just a moment I wanted to head over to the chat um braxis Saint said yes no question on mind for for taking another job um you got to you got to question some so you got to do the analysis and figure out what what aspects of the job that is being offered versus what you have are the things that you want to tweak so we'll talk a little bit more about that I know you're you're jumping on it but we'll talk more um Daniel uh rtimi I'm a student about to graduate from high school I'm passionate about computer science software development just trying to connect with people and also applying for a scholarship to college I really don't have any programming knowledge just basic HTML what would be good enough to start in college um the the short answer answer to what is good enough to start in college is whatever the college program that you're applying to requires that you have that's the easy answer um the reason that this type of thing is hard to answer is because and I app by the way I appreciate the question I appreciate the framing uh and so I will try to answer and give you advice on the question as well um and you might not know the answer which is fine but this is I think the direction in terms of what you want to figure out is is next and the the the question I have to ask back to you is like well what do you want what do you want to make like I said you might not know the answer to that but for me to give you more helpful advice I need to know what you want to make because software is very broad so if you said hey it's really like I really want to go make mobile applications okay now we're getting somewhere you want to make websites okay we're getting somewhere uh you wanted you really like Robotics and embedded you know the idea of making stu stuff like that's embedded okay now we're getting somewhere but in order to give you advice on like where to start focusing very hard to recommend a programming language by the way anyone that tries to recommend a programming language to you without trying to understand what you're trying to do full of it they might give you they might just tell you any language and probably starting with any language is better than not starting so it's probably not bad advice but to be able to say oh this is the best programming language without qualifying as to why hard to trust that um same thing with tech Stacks you know someone might say react is the best and you're like well I'm trying to make embedded systems in which case they're very wrong um so I think you have to qualify these things with what you're trying to do so I appreciate you know the framing in terms of where you're at where you're trying to go helpful but uh offering up more context as to what you want to build really helps kind of shape that question ultimately I think to get into college is look at what the requirements are for that it's the best answer that I can provide to you and then on top of that because I'm assuming you don't just want to stop there I would say once you understand what things you want to try and build try building things they can be super simple super small you don't have to have a business idea it's not about trying to get users and make millions of dollars because if you start thinking that way you may never get started so try to make simple things you can always build and add more stuff you can always rebuild the things in different languages and text Stacks like it's unlimited but I do think that by actually building stuff you'll learn so much so I hope that helps to start things off um hello love kiwi I think um Ryan what's hard is there a fine line between needing more money to live and being greedy I agree one thing I always recommend looking into is doing a budget and really look at what you're spending money on yeah um if you want to be shocked that's a good thing to do but I I do think it's good advice uh you need to Define What happiness is to you and really reflect on what happiness is to you don't just go with the first thought in your mind searching deep and know what happiness is to you yeah and I think so Ryan makes a really good point I think um like I I think that I have like when I reflect on my own kind of life right like things have changed so and like and I don't I don't mean that like a bad way I mean probably in every aspect for it the better but if I think back into things that I prioritized when I was younger and I don't like I don't blame myself I'm not like oh man I was such an idiot nothing like it's not a regret but I like I literally approached my my young younger adult life I like to think I'm still young despite whatever this is no hair and then I got white in my beard maybe I'm just slowly becoming Santa um but when I was younger in my younger you know professional life I I was like I'm prioritizing making money because my plan is that I never want to have to work again in my life I love working which is the funny part but I never want to have to work because for me what does happiness look like I want to build software I want to build things and not have to worry so money would solve a lot of my happiness issues because that would mean and don't take this the wrong way I love my job but if I didn't have to go to work and I could just go build anything I wanted to in code like to me that makes me feel happy now again if I think about where I am in life now like being with my wife makes me very happy we have dogs and cats we love our animals being able to travel and do things and not have to worry like that makes me happy all right being able to be in a position where I can spend more time with her and not worrying that I need to be making more money so that we can do that right like that makes me happy it wasn't always that way though so I think that it's one of those things I think Ryan makes a great point you need to think about what happiness actually means to you because it's very easy to say oh I need the the number in the bank account to go up that makes me happy it might in your current situation and then once that situation solved then what what is it like what genuinely what does it actually mean if you add a zero onto the end of that and maybe you're like that actually would solve other big you know issues in my life and that would make me happier okay I mean that might be totally valid right but things will change over time and I'm not here to tell you like oh you're not going to care about money I still care a lot about money I definitely do so it's not that it goes away but it will change right um to give you an example cuz I I know there's some questions that I want to get to them I see you on Instagram too um so I will get to that but if I were to think about at this point in my career if someone said look we could double your income so whether that's like salar stock whatever okay and they could guarantee that it was double but they're like look you're going to be working for a boss they're probably going to yell at you a lot but like the money's money is good it's double what you're making now boss is going to be kind of crap they get pretty angry they're probably going to yell at you I not happening I don't care if it's double the money I feel like I'm happy with how much money I make could it be more yeah I'd love if it was more double as much to be yelled at on a regular basis no thanks I'm an adult I don't need that just not worth it doubling my income to make my work life be terrible not worth it I work a lot I like to work if my work life is terrible terrible it doesn't matter how much I'm getting paid now if you said tack a zero onto the end of what you're getting paid I don't know like maybe at that point I'm like maybe I do that for a little bit and I suck it up and then I never have to worry again I don't know but certainly it would be some outrageous amount that's not realistic so the point is I'm probably never working for someone that's going to be yelling at me I will leave not happening for me um okay uh let me let me go to Instagram first because it doesn't show up in the chat on the Main feed so uh I can't pronounce your name I apologize uh sir sua Kieran I think maybe hopefully hi Nick I'm working IBM and Mainframe as a tester in India just want to start programming language which has future for this AI World um yeah I mean pick a language there every programming language is getting the benefit of like working with AI right there's lots of stuff in Python I think that's people's default because there's a lot of just a lot of stuff that's being put out in Python that's focused on AI and things like that but um pick a language I don't think it's going to matter to be honest I think that my take on this is that people focus maybe too much on the specific tools and uh basically by focusing too much on that you don't get started so so for example and I'm not saying that you're doing this by the way I'm just kind of saying a common theme I see is that people say like I want to make sure I'm making the right decision because if I'm going to go into this I got to make it perfect but then like if I tell you oh it's python someone else says oh learn JavaScript or uh what I'm actually trying to tell you is learn C because I love c um if you're like well I don't know what to do I guess I can't get started I don't know the right one like you're you're already missing out go learn something start building in it you will you will learn other programming languages it's totally fine so I just recommend you get started with something to the question that was asked earlier in the chat if you Haven an idea what you would like to build because saying I want to build with AI doesn't tell me what you want to build if you know what you want to build say I'm just going to tell you how like this is how I would approach doing the homework on this what do I want to build and you could literally go ask chat GPT this or any other llm that you like hey llm I want to get into software development here is the types of things that I would like to build list out a couple of things which as a as a new programmer like what languages would you recommend and what text Stacks would you recommend I start looking into so that I can build these types of applications and then ask it to explain why right this will give you a starting point is it going to be perfect nope but there's no such thing as a perfect starting point just get started start building stuff you willar learn other languages and I hope that you have a very long and exciting career because there's so much to learn okay so there's no no wrong answer here not getting started is the wrong answer so get started my goodness sorry I didn't mean to cough to the microphone that snuck up on me um do you have any advice for recent college graduate looking to get into cyber security field I switched my major late in college haven't been able to score an internship for experience been applying to entry level positions utilizing my experience from clubs work study but haven't had much luck uh getting an interview so um this one's tricky because I don't have um and then I see also studying for cloud practitioner exam because I want to work more in Cloud security awesome I think you're probably doing the right things what I would recommend is like don't get discouraged from it because I think a lot of people are going through similar things and um the challenging thing is that it's very easy to to have like to basically seeing things one way where you're like I'm applying I get rejected I apply I get rejected therefore like I must suck it's never going to work like please don't think that way I hope you don't feel that way uh because I realize it's challenging but the I think all that we can do is focus on what we can control right so you do say I'm starting for the cloud practitioner exam because this is the direction I want to be going in awesome do that I think that's exactly the type of thing where you're kind of thinking about here's where I want to to be so if I imagine a person that's in that position what types of things should they be doing what should they be learning what should they be practicing so what I would say though is like don't just stop at the exam right don't just get the sht get the piece of paper that says hey look I I did it I know the thing because do you know it or do you know enough just to get the paper right like go do these things go go do some uh reading and research and you know learn in public and try doing this kind of stuff uh do hackathons do uh I saw that you mentioned like uh clubs and work study like do these things find Opportunities like this so that you're literally building the experience and not just kind of feeling like you're waiting as you're applying and being like Oh no I'm not getting it and at the same time not getting experience like I would highly recommend try to create that experience for yourself and I talk about this even with software developers so it's not just a Cy security thing uh it's easier for me to think about this kind of stuff from a software developer perspective CU that's my background I worked in digital forensics for eight years but as a software developer and manager not uh not someone actually doing investigations but um when people say like oh I can't get a job in you know um backend web development because I just I don't have the experience doing it okay like go make some stuff go go make a web a AP pick a technology like and go build the stuff right it's not going to be perfect but go make that experience for yourself right go build something so this is I mean it's General generic advice but this is what I recommend you do right is don't give up keep applying if you're getting feedback at all then I would say try to lean into what that feedback is telling you but do I think you're doing a great job in thinking about here's where I want to be here's what I should be doing but please don't just stop at the the the ERT stage Practice Things genuinely like try as much as you can to like live that experience so you start building the experience do you think uh do you think that it's harmful to jump from job to job is there more to gain from staying in a rle longer period of time great question bra's a saint um I don't think so people have different opinions on this of course some people say oh if you're jumping too much people are going to question your loyalty um yeah maybe I would say you know if I saw on someone's resumee that every four months that they were switching jobs I might be curious seems Seems interesting if they listed that they had 20 jobs and every four months they were changing I would be like that's just that's a very interesting kind of career I'm sure lots of lots of different experiences but would seem very interesting um I think there's probably you know there's not like a one- siiz fits all answer to this um I would say this is how I would look at it from my understanding I have not sort of lived this but my understanding especially for larger tech companies is that if your goal is to hyper optimize how much you get paid literally jumping from job to job is the best way to do it do I recommend it absolutely not at least not hyperfocusing on it because I and I've talked about this many times before I think one of the challenges that happens when you make that your focus remember this is why we have tattoos like this um when you make it your focus just to be getting paid more what happens is you job hop and you try to use that that hop to like also get promoted right so you're a junior but you go prove to this company like hey yeah no I could do it at the next level and they're going great okay well you're the next level up and we're going to pay you more and you go awesome okay I'll spend a few months here or however long if it's a year I don't know and then you can kind of prove to the next company like oh like promotion and they're paying you more what ends up happening is you reach a point where if this is all you've actually focused on and not trying to be a better software developer that you're actually not able to perform at the level that you're hired at and now you have a weird predicament because if you stay there you're going to be underperforming because you actually were sort of like overleveled when you were hired you managed to convince people because you've been practicing iing this how to interview how to make sure you can sell yourself but that's all you're good at and by the way I'm not saying that people cannot do this successfully I'm just saying if it's a hyperfocus I think it's dangerous so then what happens is that you're going okay I either have to keep doing this thing where I'm jumping around or you might have to take a step back and say like maybe I need to do something at a lower level that I can actually do successfully and do well so I think there's a sweet spot I would say this is my personal take this goes back to what we talk about in the article here which is about happiness okay the other things that I talk about in the article are things like career growth whether or not you're focused on challenges that you're interested in because these things can contribute to your happiness level I would say if you're working in a role you feel like you're getting paid fairly you feel like you have a good manager that cares about your career growth you have good teammates you feel like you're working on interest challenges that you're learning things like I like to think about these things on a spectrum okay and the idea being like if you could across these categories and maybe come up with your own and I I genuinely recommend that you do this exercise and try to think about the things you care about but if you could rank those things if you had a job that was maxed out on all those I would say hell yeah stay there just stay because if it's already checking all your boxes and you love it then like why not stay but if you're being honest with yourself and you're like you know what if I look on this spectrum maybe um maybe I don't feel like I'm getting challenged at work the pay is good but I'm not getting challenged and like and now I'm losing motivation and now maybe my performance is going to drop like if this is sort of eating at you then I would say yeah like maybe it's time to start looking or if you're like and this is a a genuine thing right there's I'm pretty sure there's some good evidence to suggest that if you stay at a company and this isn't every company but if you stay at a company versus moving between companies you actually do not end up earning as much right it's easier to get your raise by switching companies so there may be like genuinely these opportunities or points in your life where you're saying things are okay I'm getting paid this much it feels kind of fair but I from what I've seen in job postings and stuff if I go over to this other company doing the same type of thing it's a 15% raise for me to get a 15% raise on my current job I would have to be here for three four years whatever it is right and you might say like maybe it's time like maybe it's time for a new challenge because that's another consideration right I talk about this in the newsletter article this is something I've talked about a lot and it's that like I have a fear of being complacent and that's not to say that I'm a risk taker it's like it's the opposite I'm very much not a risk taker and it scares me because it means that I know that I can get very comfortable and not want to make a change and I know that when I'm very comfortable I'm not learning as much and I'm not growing as much so those are some considerations uh I do think that you can absolutely jump um you know if it was just as an example I'm just making up arbitrary numbers if you switch jobs every two years I wouldn't look at someone's resume and be like oh like can't trust them they're going to leave in two years I don't know if the opportunity is better for you than I hope you do leave I would love to be able to keep people but if I can't give them an amazing opportunity I'm not going to be upset that they leave I mean it makes sense if we can't give you that opportunity and I can try my best to get you it but we can't I shouldn't be mad that you're leaving that's just life if we cared that much the company would do something about it right um Daniel you're welcome for the advice I hope it helps uh prti says I'm curious about what responsibility software engineers at different levels have like how do they differ from S1 to principal or distinguished Engineers yeah great great question um this will vary from place to place but I think there's some general guiding principles that I would say here um the the common theme themes that I call out are that you have your circle of influence grows as you become more senior and your your level of impact also grows so if we sort of look at this and this is this is very generalized there's lots of details to go into but if we think about a junior software developer a pretty common thing someone's Junior they join a team common thing is they get assigned some or small features to go work on right they're well understood someone else on the team could probably go do them they've been maybe they're a lower priority and they're a great thing for you to get started on because it's low risk should be straightforward someone can help you get it done cool it's not that it's no value but maybe it hasn't been a high priority okay so that means that your circle of uh your circle of influence is probably pretty small maybe you're getting help from someone on the team so you're kind of leaning on them not really influencing them and then also the level of impact that you're having is probably pretty small it's not that it's bad we all got to start somewhere we have to make sure that people are building momentum and learning things and getting ramped up so there's it's not like it's wrong but this is an expectation for more Junior Engineers as you become a little bit more senior you get you get a little bit more autonomy you're spending more time in particular areas you're building up some expertise right you might be uh working in an area of a product or a service and you're like okay like I've done a few features around this or a few bug fixes and kind of know my way around here what starts to happen is now you're building that expertise and you might not you know have like 15 years of experience working on this one thing but now you might start noticing people are like oh hey like I know you worked on this could you answer this for me like I mentioned also autonomy that's coming up as you get more experienced becoming more senior you start to be influencing others so no longer are you saying oh like hm like I I better go like I have an idea but I should go ask the tech lead what they want to do you might be going to the tech lead and saying like hey I have a couple of ideas here like here's a couple proposals I have sorry Tik Tok thinks that I'm not here I'm here Tik Tok um and like you're proposing things and now you're trying to to pitch your ideas to them right so now you're influencing you might be working on projects now that are cross team your circle of influence is growing and the level of impact you're having is greater and the way that you have greater impact is by working on bigger things that surprise probably require more people to contribute to you're also starting to Mentor people your subject matter expertise is growing and this starts to scale more and more as you become more and more senior until at the higher levels you are having organizational impact right so people like uh you know like you mentioned titles like principal there's staff there's like Microsoft has like distinguished Engineers people at that level are having impact like truly like at a distinguished level like arguably like across the company and Microsoft is pretty big so they're able to demonstrate like a remarkable level of impact and they don't do it on their own and this is a huge takeaway that and I say it all the time but your soft skills matter yes your technical skills are important it's an expectation that you're technical but if you do not think about your soft skills one day they will be the thing that holds you back because you won't be able to demonstrate how technical you are and the impact that you can have if your soft skills hold you back so I hope that helps um bra is saying seems like it's a delicate balance in finding salary that keeps you financially afloat yes well being in a position that you enjoy whether it's a good team remote work yes and so bra I would say um on that like it's important that you go through that thought process and reflect and try to understand for yourself don't just do it once periodically do it cuz you will the things that you value will change um Ryan says the happiness prior uh for me being a father is different than the happiness before I bought my first house which will be different than the happiness later on in life absolutely I think that's critical um avoid The Superficial happinesses yes um Luke avidon uh what do you think of Microsoft's reputation being the most relaxed chill Fan company to work for it's funny um I remember when I was so when I was applying to Big Tech roles I actually had I had three offers from Amazon and the offer from Microsoft and um at the time the the uh the Amazon offers were greater and I I I'll be honest the the thing that that convinced me was that any research I was doing there was more folk and I'm not saying that this is true or not I actually do not know because I've never worked at Amazon so I'm not trying to badmouth Amazon by any means I thought the out of anywhere I interviewed I enjoyed my Amazon interviews the most for the record I will say that between Google Microsoft and other companies I applied for even Microsoft I enjoyed the Amazon ones better as an engineering manager I took the Microsoft offer because number one it going back to like happiness and money from everything I was hearing to me it seemed like I should be able to have a better work life balance and enjoy my work experience more at Microsoft based on everything I'm seeing now that that could be completely different maybe I joined Amazon instead and I had an awesome Team Awesome technology and it's great I was getting paid more like that could have happened it like I didn't do it but it could have happened so it's impossible for me to know um but I in terms of being like relax and chill I don't know uh I feel like what's a good way to phrase this like I feel like my leadership team is like I feel like they're Stern but understanding if that makes sense so when I I'm using the word Stern because it's they're not like mean I think they're great but they're like they they know that stuff's important they know that like when we need to have urgency around things like they're clear about it but it's not like they're mean uh they're not like angry mean people and you're like man I don't want to like work for this person I'm scared of them but like it's almost like it's almost like you like there's a lot of respect I think so I feel like a lot of us look up to our leadership team and we're like look like they they treat us well and when when it's game time like we're we're there with them to be like yeah we we get it it's game time we get that you're being serious we get that there's urgency here hell yeah let's do it so it's just funny because when I see LAX and chill I'm like I don't know like like maybe maybe like compared to like some other places like in terms of like the the work culture perhaps but um the reason I I don't like saying that is because like I definitely think there's like urgency and stuff around what we do so I just don't want it to sound like we go into Microsoft or we're like ah like I'm gonna I'm gonna kick back and put my feet on my desk for today because like we work at Microsoft like we don't care like it's it's not like that right so um but I I I really value the leadership team I think that um something that I really appreciate is like through levels of leadership there's a uniform perspective I feel so when you and I I mean this genuinely like it might like no one's paying me to say this but I feel like when SAA talks about things publicly like that comes through leadership internally so it's not like hey like SAA says we value these things and like we fooled everyone on the outside like we got them it's like the leadership team embeds that in everything they're doing right it's it's very interesting so I really appreciate that because it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like there's a facade and I think that's really important for me so hope that helps for answering that question um infected FPS says one other thing with constant jaw poppers say switch for the comp but at some point it's just one year of experience 10 times instead of 10 years of experience yes that's kind of what I was saying is and I see Caesar right below that saying imposter syndrome um yeah so and at that point what's funny is like it's not imposter syndrome anymore you are an impostor right you were able to get a so impostor syndrome important detail here impostor syndrome is when you genuinely have the experience and the skill set but you believe that you don't okay you are an impostor if you legitimately do not have the skill set and you are not cut out for the job you are an imposter and I think that that genuinely can happen if all you do is focus on like how do I smooze my way through like interviews and stuff cuz interviewing and you know job application stuff like that's a skill you could be very good at interviewing I don't think that I am I would love to be able to say oh hell yeah I could go interview anywhere and totally nail it no I probably Panic right like I understand how they work I do because I interview people I've been interviewing for over 12 years doesn't mean that I don't get nervous right like that's just kind of my nature so I can do better on that but yeah it's kind of interesting I think people can get very good at it and take advantage of that for their career progression um Caesar says software developers are prone to imposter syndrome due to the high tough competition at work and the pressure to learn and adapt new technologies yep they work on project with high stakes which creates stress to perform at the highest level leaving very little room for error yep um another thing that contributes to imposter syndrome is that uh there is this idea of comparison by the way don't do so much comparison what's the saying comparison is the the thief of Joy or something like that um if you think about it software Engineers are generally surrounded by other very smart intellectual people that are software Engineers they are high performers um when you are getting into companies that set a high bar really difficult to get into you're working with other people that also pass that high bar that you really tried to get past right so when you start comparing yourself to others we do this thing that's really crappy um but we all do it and we start looking at other people and we go oh man Sally she is the best at I'm just making stuff up the best at system design I she I I can't imagine being that good I'm so crappy compared to Sally but she's just so good at it and John on the team oh my goodness he can explain any concept to anyone no matter how technical it is they just get it people love John and I I could just never do that and what happens is that you are the worst at everything else that you're comparing yourself to everyone else you're picking one thing that they're amazing at and therefore you're bad and the side effect of that I'm exaggerating a little bit when I do this right but the side effect of that is that you start doubting yourself but the reality is you pass the same thing people believed in you right this happens too when like a manager will say like I think someone's ready to take on this task and they're kind of they're giving you a new responsibility something you haven't really done yet but someone believes that you can do it they have enough evidence that they feel confident you can do it and then we start to second guess ourselves I don't think I'm capable am I even worthy of this like do I even know what I'm talking about but like you do and you're your own biggest enemy in the moment so um impostor syndrome is it's always around us you'll have periods of it where you get through it that's great it'll come back for something different and I think the sort of the unfortunate news I personally I don't think it ever really goes away for real but I do think that as we get more and more experience I think that what absolutely happens is you have more things to prove to yourself that you are worthy you have so many accomplishments you have so many experiences and that starts to creep up and you're like oh am I really good enough for this it's not quite as easy as this but being able to remind yourself like okay I've LED 15 teams before I've been responsible for 27 projects over 13 years and like I've had so many s like if you're able to start kind of building your confidence that way I think it goes a long way I I often talk about things like self-esteem when I talk about impostor syndrome not because I think they're the same thing but because I and I'm not a psychologist um but I think that there's a lot of overlap in some of the techniques in terms of like working through them so for example um low self-esteem right self-esteem is how we feel about oursel and something that people will do when they have low self-esteem is they look for external validation right I have low selfesteem therefore if I can have someone tell me that I'm so good at something right they tell me they tell me I'm goodlook they tell me I'm tall they tell me I have hair on my head and I feel better I don't have hair on my head um they tell me there's no white in my beard um sorry I just I wanted to wear this hat for this so got to spice it up um but we we look for external validation so we start feeling better about ourselves and the reality is like that doesn't really that doesn't really work long term because you're just relying on external validation it might help you kind of get through a bit of a rut but when we think about self-esteem we need to make sure that we are giving ourselves that value we value ourselves it's self-esteem not not what Johnny thinks about me right like it's not other people so with impostor Cinder I think it's similar yes you can maybe rely on or have some input from others where they're saying hey no like you have done really well on these projects you are worthy like you know we think you're capable but I think that when you actually prove it to yourself that's when it starts to to make some progress so that's why I like comparing the two I realize they're not the same though um Brax is saying I've jumped around a lot my four in my four years and I feel like I've learned a lot in different areas but I'm not super strong in a particular area and that can be okay too right uh what was your route getting to Dev engineering manager how why did you make that transition so glad you asked I have a video on that actually and that's s code commute so um I'm just going to paste this into the chat this is from the weekend I think this is a video on this and um my my experience is very unique uh not that it's impossible for others it's just that it's probably not common and so I became an engineering manager shortly after starting my professional career and I would love to sit here and tell you it's because I was so good I was just so good at potentially leading teams and I've never done it before and they looked at me and they said Nick you're going to be the best engineering manager that didn't happen um instead it was more like hi we're a startup and uh yep and you're working here and you're doing pretty good as a software developer thank you so much um we're hiring more people and uh seems like you can talk to the engineers pretty well do you uh you want to maybe do some of this and I was like sure if you need me to do something thing I get it's a startup I don't know what you need me to do but I'm happy to help right so uh early on the uh it's funny because it wasn't it wasn't an a manager title but like I had I had one ons with people I had comp few I did management for for years and uh was totally like had no idea what I was doing this is a pretty common thing by the way um when individual contributors get put into a management role and it's not something that they were personally working on doing uh they get it put into the position and they're like I don't know what's up man because it's really weird that as software developers uh we either go through boot camps or self-learning or we go to college or university or some combination of all the of the above and we acquire these skills over a period of time and we practice them but then when they go to make you a manager they're like hey we know you've never done this before thanks for being a good programmer here you go and then we start to think like wait what am I supposed to do in this role because uh big surprise it's probably not going to be programming uh and if it is some programming certainly not as much as you were doing so um yeah for me my my journey was a little bit unique that way I think it's that video I linked by the way that's on code commute so if uh if you like this kind of format that I'm doing right now where I'm kind of just blabbing about stuff and it's not polished code commute uh aside from a couple of videos almost all of them I film them when I'm driving to and from work or two and from um two and from Crossfit and I just stream of Consciousness talk about stuff kind of like I'm doing right now so check out code commute if you're interested in that it's all software engineering topics uh I don't I'm not coding because I'm literally in the car driving and it's not live because I'm literally in the car driving but I do blah about about software engineering so um yeah in that video I think that's the one I was basically saying it took me roughly like almost the entire time I was at that company magnet forensics before Microsoft to realize like I'm finally okay with stepping away from writing code so I was there for eight years and it took me almost that entire time it's almost a bit of a forcing function where I felt like I couldn't keep up with writing code so like still I still write code every single day outside of work I love to write code but I was getting to the point where at work like there were so many different things I had to jump into and getting pulled around and I realized like it it took me being forced into that position to realize I can have a greater impact by not spending time writing code and it just took being in that position to go oh because prior to that because like I said I didn't have the same set of responsibilities uh you know single guy I basically got my dog so that she could make sure that I could go walk her at lunch and stuff like she was my responsibility but if I needed to go work to get stuff done I'm going to go write code on top of what I'm doing why the hell not right so um it it just got to the point where I was like I I don't have time to write code at work and I'm doing all these other things that are having more impact oh now it like I'm now I have that feedback mechanism where I'm like okay it feels good to be doing this uh I've always really enjoyed being able to help people so if that's career growth or teaching people like that feels good to me so um so yeah I think it just took me a really long time um Caesar thank you you helped me a lot online I I no I appreciate that well thanks for giving me the opportunity like um I joke like especially on code commute and stuff or when I'm talking you know in in situations like this like I'm just a guy I'm not I'm not doing anything special I'm just kind of sharing um experiences from my own career my own my own life I don't mean to come across like I I have answers to everything or my way is the only way uh I if it ever comes across that way I apologize it's not my intention um so you know truthfully like thank you for the opportunity for for checking this stuff out and I'm I'm glad that it's you're finding it's helpful that that means a lot uh John R do you still hire boot campers in the day in this day and age or you sticking to the ivys and top schools for talent um the quote makes it makes it sound like I don't believe people from there are talented it's not that oh just that I believe in uh limits Talent if he just hired from those places yeah yeah so so John R good question uh the answer is how do what's the answer it's no uh yes we still hire yeah that's what I want to say yes we hire people that don't just go to college University um there there's literally like I when I talk about this kind of stuff too I want to talk about in the general sense not just like a Microsoft kind of thing because I'm not on the clock for Microsoft right now like no one's paying me to like go advocate for Microsoft I love working at Microsoft uh Microsoft literally has programs for people to transition careers or people that don't have like formal education uh at College University so they literally have programs for it so yes it does exist um I I have not at Microsoft I have not hired for my own teams uh as in I have not gone through the interview rounds for my own teams I have not selected candidates from a pool to be interviewed for my own teams I have only at Microsoft been on put onto the interview Loop so someone's already made the decision about the candidates that they want to look for right so I'm just giving you full transparency because uh I can't and this is the funny part I I have never I don't care I don't look at College University on uh on a resume and sorry when I say I don't I don't care I don't mean to say that like I think it's a waste I went to University I went to the University of water for a 5-year program that had an intern like had Co-op so it was internships every four months I went to University I thought it was extremely valuable I wouldn't change that part about my my career Journey for the world I thought that was I would repeat that today if I had to but I don't have to so I'm not going to but so I I thought there was a lot of value in it but that's not to say that other people can't learn or get you know get good by by taking other paths so um but the the point I'm trying to get is like at Microsoft I have not been part of that process so if if the goal and I don't think this is your intention but if the goal of the question is to say like tell us like how Microsoft does it like I the answer is I like I said they have they literally have programs to support alternate ways um to make sure that there is support doing that um what I would imagine probably at most companies is like if you have tons of applicants coming in if you do what probably happens is that the bar is set very high just based on the demand for a job position right so job position goes up 2,000 people apply prob and I'm not and I'm not saying this is exactly what Microsoft does and I'm not saying this is good or bad I'm just telling you probably what I suspect happens is that if you have two candidates just as an example if two candidates that you're comparing and everything that you're seeing basically looks identical and someone says they went to college and the other person didn't and everything else is identical probably what would happen is someone would say well they went to college I guess that's a that's one extra point they win by one point so let's pick them for the interview right I'm just saying when the competition gets really high I assume stuff like that is happening that's not to say that's Microsoft's doing that's not to say that that's good or bad but when you have such a volume of applicants I imagine that there's probably things like that that push individuals slightly over because someone needs to try and make a decision when there's that much volume so that's what I'm assuming happens in some situations but certainly I've worked with Engineers that have not gone to college or university and they're amazing so it's not it's not a limitation uh what do you watch out for when interviewing a a candidate for a senior role good question um one and this one sounds probably kind of funny um but I I can't believe I've had to focus on this so much is like actually that people can program uh I in my interviews I ask uh oh and sorry let me let me just respond to John before I finish on so seems that big Tech is only higher from the Big 10 or similar because of that extra point no so just to give you an example uh I can I can say that I have on my team I have five people that aren't even in the US like directly reporting to me and they did not go to to to those places so just as a heads up right so John uh and I know I don't think that you're trying to I'm not saying that you're suggesting anything or not uh but no I I think the the answer is that like that's not it's not a requirement so um hopefully that helps kind of I don't know dis dismiss that notion like I said I'm only one person just talking about this on the internet but uh certainly in my experience it's absolutely not been the case where it's like oh you better have gone to one of these schools um and I don't even look because to me it doesn't matter I think it's cool if you wanted to go to a school and you did great that's awesome good for you I and I don't mean that sarcastically like genuinely good for you that's great but like that's not what I'm trying to measure because that doesn't matter when you're working for me um which kind of leads into the other uh comment from from Twitter here what do you watch out for when interviewing a candidate for a senior or first thing like I said unfortunately I have to make sure people can program um because I have seen somehow far too many people that cannot demonstrate that they can program really simple things I'm not going to tell you my interview question but I use a uh basically almost the same interview question across different levels and uh it's because I can scale the complexity of the question and it starts out extremely simple and I have people code it this is just for the technical part by the way like on the coding part because there's different aspects for senior but just on the programming part start starts off very simple and then I have had people that can't get past the very simple part and when I say it's simple I mean like if you have written code before you could probably do this like that simple and then I can quickly ramp it up and I have still had people struggle and I go oh okay so and this is me in interviews if I notice that people are nervous or they're fumbling and stuff like I'm not like oh I got this person haha like I I have the power over them complete opposite I want to make sure people are comfortable because it doesn't help anyone if someone's nervous when they're interviewing like the goal is not for me to have a Power Trip in the interview and be like yes we are superior and we've you know got another person that's scared and like no like that it's my goal as an interviewer to try and make sure the candidate can you know represent them best their best self doesn't mean like letting them cheat but it means like making sure that they're comfortable right so I need to make sure they understand the question uh I will help guide people through but like the reality is when it starts off that simple and I've still seen people really struggle to write any code I start and and I know that their nerves are not like the thing that's like holding them back um I've seen many people that just can't seem to really uh demonstrate that they've written code before so that's one part um at senior though some things that I'm looking for so there's a level of uh technical depth that I'm looking for which I address in the coding question and again it's not a trick question uh but what I like to do is I change constraints so I get them to to code something up to some constraints explain it and then I say okay let's change the constraints now like how would you change how you wrote this code and just like I just want to see how they reason about things right that they're they're not regurgitating something that they saw online like they memorize the lead code problem because I don't ask like trick lead code questions I just want them to explain their thoughts process uh system design kind of similar um I like asking questions and changing constraints again I don't change the constraints to like to trick people it's not like oh like I'm going to pull a 180 on you now and I fooled you but I walk through with them and I'm like cool like thank you for walking me through this design given these constraints now what would happen if we wanted to change X and Y now we want to focus on these as constraints like what parts of your system system do you think would have to change and why what does that look like so I like kind of going through those exercises and then behavioral interviews uh by the way I have a course on behavioral interviews that I did with Ryan Murphy on dome train if you're interested in that we talk about different levels and how we interview and things we're focused on the idea with behavioral interviews though is not to have you just like regurgitate a like a the technical details of a project and I think this is a pretty common mistake that people make especially as software Engineers because we're focused on technical details all the time so we're telling people all the technical details but we ask behavioral interview questions to get you to talk about different behavioral characteristics that we're interested in so how do you navigate solving problems on teams between like when there's uh people that have different viewpoints how do you coordinate with different team members right like different scenarios like that that to see like how do you think through these things how have you demonstrated this behavior in the past so I'm looking at the senior level I'm looking for people that can help uh Mentor other people they can collaborate cross team um that they can help focus on uh like customer focus is a big one uh in any place I've ever worked so making sure that especially as more senior Engineers they can understand like we need to focus on delivering value to customers so like walk me through scenar I that demonstrate that CU if you're not taking the time to understand customer needs like I think that for most positions I've seen like I said at senior level these companies that's something that we really care about so I hope uh I hope that helps mostly answer the question um so Caesar saying so what you're saying is it doesn't matter where you come from your school degree your country no certainly not to me um PR sounds like giving people most ridiculous lead code questions I hate lead code man I can't stand it I think lead code questions in software engineering interviews are the dumbest thing that we could be doing and I'm I'm happy to say that I think that it doesn't make any sense at all because it's not anything like what you're going to be doing when you're working it's completely irrelevant and I have SE I have literally seen people that give these questions and we go to debrief on them and I'm not talking about Microsoft necessarily by the way so please don't read into what I'm saying doesn't necessarily mean I'm talking with the last place I worked at either so um but I have seen individuals we debrief on this stuff and well how did it go well they wrote the code they got the part of the solution well why okay well why did you say like a no then to them well they didn't get the trick they didn't see that if they would have done this thing there's this little mathematical optimization they could do and they could take a shortcut and I'm in my head I'm like so you're telling me that you're not going to hire someone because they couldn't find a trick in a madeup question and that's that's your criteria that's that's bull crap like that's just not it's just not a thing and I have seen this happen so I I really despise lead code questions um can't can't deal with it I literally and I'm I mean this when I had to apply for my engineering manager role at Big tech companies I knew that I was going to get coding questions at the time so what that's four and a half years ago so like 15 I I've been programming for like 15 years over 15 years I I had 10 years of professional experience eight of those years managing engineering teams but still was you know developing software the entire time I literally when I had to go apply for my engineering manager roles had to start grinding lead code questions because I knew I was going to get them and I'm terrible at them and I can confidently say that I can build most things in software I love to build stuff leak code is bull crap but I had to go practice these things and I had them in my interviews as an engineering manager stupid hate to say it it's stupid doesn't make any sense uh Emanuel is saying they now ask QA Engineers leite code these days just I don't why it's such a weird such a weird thing to do I feel like we've defaulted to this because there's a bank of questions I don't I don't even know if I have a good excuse for it I I just think it's dumb that's my that's my opinion most I like to think that most things I don't take an extreme stance on but lead code questions and software development interviews I think it's dumb so there's my there's my strong opinion Merry Christmas um yeah something needs to be done about the current state of interviews yeah making people self technical riddles isn't the best gauge of skill yeah because that's what it is it's a riddle this is why and I mean it when I ask programming questions it's not it's not to trick you the very basic part is like literally have you written written code before and I only do that because I have unfortunately had experiences where I'm like oh no somehow this person finessed them way their way into this and they if you've heard of fizzbuzz if you haven't heard of fizzbuzz or fiz pop you can search it go look on Wikipedia it's a it's a for Loop and an if statement and then like um generally it's done with like a a modulo operator to get like even and odd okay and you can if someone like I don't I literally don't even know what a modulo operator is like doesn't matter okay I don't care it's a for Loop in an if statement and then like a console right line or a print statement okay that question go I'm not going to tell you the stats please go to Wikipedia or somewhere fizzbuzz or fiz poop and look at the stats for how many people fail that it's nuts it's nuts and all that it's doing is like a for Loop in an if statement that's not a trick question so when I don't ask fizzbuzz but the question that I start with is basically very simple okay so and then I build on it depending on the level but um losing quality applicants because of difficult assessment yep and and then the you know like I said I I've been in conversations where I'm like I don't understand why people are focused on some things I think another s and this is just me putting my rant hat on now this is officially the rant hat I guess um I think something that I've observed is that when it comes to interviewing I I don't think that people necessarily get trained on interviews I think there's training for like etiquette right how to treat people fairly how to not be like an ass right like how to be respectful like and like this is good stuff I think this is like sort of Basics that people need to go through but I find in my experience what happens is that people get put into interview loops and it's almost like they and I don't know this is my bias coming through I guess right but it's like they're they don't actually know what would make a good software developer right they're not thinking about like what I want to be working with this person like can we collaborate together can we navigate problems together can see how they're problem solving and they're like making progress on stuff they're getting stuck they're asking questions like would they be good to work with can I gauge their technical ability and how good they would be to work with by asking a trick lead code question I just I just don't think so so anyway enough about that now I'm getting now I'm getting ranty this is how I talk on code commute this is this is Dev leader got got to be more professional um scenario based questions should be uh instead of Le Cod questions yep uh one uh and then I'll read bra uh there's only one small thing about fsbos that I guess someone could call a trick but even that trick is simple to figure out if you've been coding yeah and for me like that would be like the modulo operator right um if someone if I said print the even ones or print the odd ones and someone was like H and they like had to like hack something in to try and do it like I'm not I'm not sitting there to be like oh you scored crappy like I'm testing if you understand what a for Loop is in an if statement like it's the basics um and if you're watching this and you're like oh literally I don't think I could figure that out I mean I would just say like I I probably don't think that you've written code recently that's all it's it doesn't mean that like you're a bad person or something like that but if I'm looking to hire a programmer I want to at least know that they know a for Loop in an if state that's all um Linux or WSL for programming not Linux I don't know um I'm not a Linux user I don't I'm not a fan of Linux I run um run services in Linux but I don't uh I don't program in Linux personally um I'm window Windows Windows everything I've always been a Windows person um I just don't I don't like mac I don't like Linux that's me um I'm doing a Time Check le code is a way of life okay get off my Channel right now get out where's the where's the ban button I use windows with WSL and don't care who judges me there you go um I'm doing a time check here folks uh probably going to wrap up the stream so um I appreciate all the questions um lead code is a cult that's right it is a cult um I'm G to switch over to full screen mode here and just kind of show you guys what's up um John R saying you're cool bro projects and business specific scenarios for the win at interviews yeah after establishing the person knows how to code those are my favorite interviews yeah like I and I again I'm not like tricking people when I say this like I I like to approach interview is more like conversations I want to make sure someone's relaxed I need to know that they've programmed before then I will try to gauge their the way that they navigate Problems by increasing the complexity without making tricks and I tell them I'm not if you feel like this is a trick question please just ask for clarification because I don't I don't trick say it's in neither of our best interests for me to do that I if if someone who's watching this has been interviewed by me I hope that some someone can comment someday and say it's true he didn't trick me um but I will change the requirements and the constraints and I will let people know by the way like thank you for what you've said so far let's try changing this and see how you navigate and then behavioral stuff I think is really important because I want to understand how people are going to operate in teams that's all um oh Romeo trying to see if I should run a dual with Windows and Linux or just Windows WSL yeah um i' say do boot with Windows and just use the just use the windows always uh lead code opened me up to the Matrix well I'm happy for you truly um I just don't think that it translates well to developing real software now what I will say about lead code and I mean this is that for some individuals it's the pastword to get in it's I mean for for job applications it's important unfortunately but for lead code I do think that there's some people that if you enjoy the challenge and you find that it's it's helping you kind of like I don't know like problem solve and rationalize and think about writing code by all means I'm not trying to discourage you from it I know it sounds like I am I'm not I think that everyone can learn things in different ways and if you find that's helpful for you please do it because yes it is going to be helpful in interviews but if you're finding that it's helpful outside of that please do it I don't believe personally that it's a substitute for building actual software when it comes to translating to Effectiveness in a real software development role but that doesn't mean that there's zero value I just think that testing people for that skill going into a software development role is not a good representation of what's going to get done so with that said folks I'm going to wrap up the stream but I need to do the thing where tell people about what I got going on so if I switch over here this is the newsletter so if you want to read through some of the stuff we talked about it's here I realize the chat doesn't go to Every platform so I apologize but it's weekly. deev leader.com by the way I know someone was asking about one-on ones uh but if you want to chat uh I answer questions in the Discord and that way I can answer them for a group of people that's one way that I like to do it but that comes with the paid newsletter subscription if you're like Nick newsletters are dumb I never want to read a newsletter that's totally cool I'm not offended that's fine that's why I try to create content in every way that I can if you're interested in these live streams and you want to know what's coming up and what I'm going to be discussing it's generally going to be the newsletter so you can check it out on a Saturday Sunday or Monday of the live stream there you go right you can see the topic so that's one thing uh I will mention chuses so I I said earlier that I have chuses on dome train um some of them are C and some of them are career focused so uh I have C courses for refactoring for reflection in C if you're interested in that and then these getting started in Deep dive ones uh kind of take you from having programmed before to having some level of C experience I never promise people because I think it's a false promise that just take these courses and you'll be an expert because courses are not going to be replacement for building software and building expertise but I have been writing C for a really long time I put a lot of effort into these courses to make sure that you can have some fundamentals and then outside of that I've worked with Ryan Murphy on Career courses um so I think that uh you know he he has his perspective in here as well as an engineering manager and we're just trying to make sure that we can help you navigate different aspects of careers because it's not just writing code so there's that uh the soft skills one is our more most recent one uh if you see a lot of content I put out I talk about soft skills a lot so was fun to make that one and then of course depending on how you got here because I realize people come from different places Dev leader is my main YouTube channel uh I realize a bunch of you probably came from Dev leader thank you so much this is my main Channel where I have edited videos I have someone make thumbnails for me um but this is the stuff that's more polished tutorials or discussions that are that are edited right so they're more succinct uh but the live streams are also hosted here and code commute is the last Channel I will mention so code commute is my newer YouTube channel almost at a, Subs which is pretty cool um on a daylight today I made four videos I made four videos because I did it to CrossFit from Crossfit to work from work four videos four different discussions and I try to post them at a time that if you're going to be commuting to work or from work you should be able to turn one of these on and check it out but these are uh General software engineering discussions right maximizing College as a software engineer impostor syndrome I got the Hat on for this one right so this is about switching to another development team and your previous team is asking for help constantly so most of these are User submitted questions or scenarios and then otherwise I go over to Reddit and look for some hot topics to chat through so that is code commute I will put that in the chat as well you can check that out um and I think with that said folks I think that's all um I wanted to say thank you so much for being here it's uh it means a lot that you want to spend the time and kind of chat with me and and you know you're willing to ask questions cuz you want to hear what I have to say I think it's it's super cool um so it makes me feel good that if I'm able to help and you're getting value out of it like that's all I can ask for so I wanted to say I hope you all have happy holidays um when is the next Monday does that fall on a special day the 30th no I'm doing a live stream next Monday screw it we're doing that so um it's not the end of the year today next Monday I'll have to say Happy New Year um but today I'm saying Merry Christmas or happy holidays depending on what you're celebrating and next Monday will be the last one of the year and I hope to see you there same time 7 p.m. Pacific uh program we're just wrapping up so hello but I unfortunately goodbye so thanks for joining right at the end but next time if you join about two hours earlier you can catch the whole thing okay thanks folks take care I will see you next time enjoy