Which Projects To Build?! - Principal Software Engineering Manager AMA

are starting here let's see if restream decides to work today CU it didn't last time almost there come on I think it's going to do it nice cool okay there's Instagram there's Tik Tok awesome well here we are folks looks like the chat is joining as well which reminds me I should turn it on there's a chat um if you're joining in the chat please say hello let me know that it's working um if you haven't been on my live streams before then I well if you have you'll know if you haven't then um a reminder that like I would much rather this be focused on like chat messages so if you have questions and stuff you want to go through like just ask them in the chat and kind of direct my focus over to that um I joke about this but it's true like I could be recording a YouTube video instead so I'd much rather be actually spending the time answering questions for you Gilbert mat says hello it's working perfect thank you um appreciate you being here so we know Twitter's working if you're on some other channel let me know um I do have a topic for today and usually this is based on newsletter articles but I did this a little bit different this time because I wanted to write a newsletter article um sort of like to kick off the Year and be kind of like a goal setting kind of conversation I'm like I don't want to I don't want to make a live stream about that kind of feels weird um uh so what I had done instead was for my newsletter I actually recorded like a 40 minute video about different things that I'm planning for this year things that I'm hoping to accomplish and you know it's a bit of a one-off for the newsletter but usually these live streams are focused on a newsletter article as a topic as the basis and then of course if you have questions we'll go through them so it's a little different this time it is going to be on a topic from code commute which is another YouTube channel I have if you haven't checked it out yet uh I would encourage you to do so there's a link in the chat it's just called code commute it's a vlog style uh YouTube channel so my main Dev leader channel is very much edited polished videos code commute is like I sit in my car and I drive to and from work and it's a stream of Consciousness so um on COD commute I get a bunch of questions so either people will write them in in the comments or they'll they'll find me on social media so if you're here it's Dev leader right or Nick centino um and people will send me stuff and they'll say hey can you like answer this for me like chat through it um so it's it's actually I find like really good topics for live streams as well it's just that on code commute I'm not live streaming from the car as I'm driving I'm just kind of recording myself talk um so on code commute we were talking about projects and I think this topic actually came from Reddit in particular and the Reddit topic was about if I want to build projects I keep hearing people this is primarily for more beginner programmers right um I keep hearing people talking about building projects but like what the heck am I supposed to build and like how is that going to help me get a job like how do how do recruiters look for this kind of stuff and um I think something that's challenging is that even like I have my own perspective on this stuff and I see other people talking about it too and I'm like it's kind of confusing because people are hearing different things and sometimes what happens especially with social media or just like information in general is that you might hear two different things and it doesn't necessarily mean that one is right and one is wrong like both or all three or all four of those things could be right and there's different situations or different contexts where maybe one of them is more true for you it's kind of weird right so an example that I like to think about because this is very relevant for hobbies of mine um I don't know how many people are like interested in going to the gym right but something that I remember hearing early on when I was going to the gym is like how do you squat properly and like this is a key thing that people have to figure out and I heard like an unlimited number of variations of this in my time going to the gym and training and what I realize was like there's a lot of different um there's a lot of different perspectives on this and they're not necessarily wrong just because they're different but they're focused on different things so for example you'll hear some people say oh like you don't want your knees to go over your toes and it's like well what's actually wrong with that or you don't want to be bent over too far forward when you Squat and it's like yeah but based on your limb length that actually might be better for you like in my case that's how I squat so you'll hear people saying these different things and then the more you dig into it and the more you understand what's going on you're like oh there's actually different mechanics at play here so for example The Way You Might Squat as a bodybuilder is different than as you would squat as a powerlifter which is different than as he would squat as an Olympic lifter like they're just different goals it's still a squat so hey Bra the say good to see you as well thanks for being here um so the reason I bring this up is just something that's completely outside of software engineering to make you realize like this isn't like it's not unique to software engineering but it is something that comes up and I think that parallels like that can help when we kind of think about this stuff but the um the point being that that when you have information that seems like it's at odds with other things it does not automatically mean that you have to sit there and go okay only one of these things can possibly be right how do I find the impostor right it's not necessarily like that so when we talk about projects that people should focus on as beginners right they're trying to get uh you know they're going for job applications um they're trying to get recognized by recruiters they're trying to um you know be selected from their interview they're wondering like okay well what am I supposed to build and one thing that I hear a lot of it's actually not I've made videos on this on code commute in particular um one thing I hear people saying a lot is like you need to go build something like go build an app and go get users build something real and go get users because that demonstrates that you actually know how to create software and think about users and all these things and I actually don't agree with this and I say I don't agree with it not to say that I think it's bad it's just not something I agree with hello Amar on Tik Tok that's a lot of messages hello um hey doggy hi from Germany good to see you in Germany what time is it in Germany right now I don't is it like super early like ridiculously early or something I actually don't know uh um but thank you for being here because I feel like it's probably not a good time for you uh so sorry the on you got to stop that on Tik Tok that's too much the Tik Tok chat is not going through to the main chat but it's uh it's a lot so please stop um the um 4 in the morning oh my goodness well thank you so much for being here um I I feel like you have probably better things to do like sleep but I I appreciate that you're here um so thank you um but yeah I think that one piece of advice I hear a lot of people saying is like go build projects that will get you users and that way you're demonstrating that you've built like you've built something and I just I don't think that it's bad advice but I think it's the wrong old Dev always up early I think that it's the wrong Focus for a lot of beginners Okay so that's my take on it and I want to start this off by talking about I want to give you the opposite like I want to explain uh even though it's not my opinion why I I think that that could be good advice so I want to practice here sharing like sharing the argument for that even though it's not what I necessarily agree with so I think that there's some good stuff that does come from that so the topic right now is like as a Junior going to focus on building something like an app or a website and getting real users I think some of the good things that come from that is that you get to practice actually building things right and I think a lot of the time when we think about how juniors are focused on stuff the challenge is that you'll hear like getting stuck in tutorial hell uh bra saying I will come back to that question that's a good one um so when we think about Toral hell this is a situation where people are um they're they're they're building things but like they're not actually things that will keep going like so you you practice what's in the tutorial right you get some some exercise from doing that but then it's like okay it's done I'm done done the tutorial um I almost like look at it like I was going to use like building Lego sets as an example it's not even a good one though um it's like it's too contrived right it's like you have all the steps carved out for you you're just kind of repeating what's put in front of you it's not that that's wrong or it's bad but when people get stuck in this mode they often have challenges breaking out of this so I do hi uh malathy uh from India that's awesome what time is it in India right now it's 400 in the morning in Germany so that's pretty wild but I feel like India is probably not a convenient time either either so thank you for being here um the I think the good thing that can come from trying to focus on building some software and getting users is that you need to be trying to actually build something it's not going to be a tutorial that's a one-time video or article you read through and then you're done you actually have to put in more effort more thought around I'm building software I need to ship it need to and whatever that looks like maybe that's deploying maybe that's releasing it to an app store I have to go through the life cycle of doing this okay now you get people using it I need to make sure that I'm prioritizing the right thing for users like that's actually a a really important skill set to have as a software developer or at least to understand how that works if you're working at companies many times there are other roles that help fulfill that like product managers or product owners will sort of help figure out what customers are wanting and helping prioritize that but being able to understand that like we don't just as software developers we don't just build cool stuff cuz we think it's cool we work at a company it's a business we have to be building things that are valuable for the users so I think that can be a very good skill to practice um there's there's a lot of stuff like being able to work on live software so if you're running a service and it's not an app let's say you have users and the sites live like how do you make changes and work within those constraints like I think that these are really interesting real software development problems to go solve um working from home right now and listening to your live awesome stuff well thanks for being here architect um yeah good to see you I know you're from from the code commute family so thanks for being here um yeah so I think like I I said I don't really like this advice but I think that there's some Merit to it I don't think that it's I don't think that it's wrong or it's bad it's just not what I would recommend for folks so what do I recommend right so if it's not building an app if it's not building an app to get users I mean like first of all well why and I think what I've talked about before um I think so doggy saying I think the ability to get deep in details in demand and having some index in your mind uh is is a good Str yeah I think is a good strategy yeah so I think that's helpful the reason I don't like this advice for beginners is because I think that it's focused on too many things all at once and um the the thing that I would often recommend to beginners is like we have different goals when we're talking about building projects and I think that sometimes these things get conflated okay so um I don't think I don't think that it's like these are mutually exclusive but the two two goals I think about at least when I'm talking to people that are like hey what project should I build the two things I'm thinking through are are you trying to learn Andor are you trying to demonstrate like a portfolio type of thing because I think that you put a different Focus onto each of these and you might if if you're thinking through this you might say hey Nick I think of another one so there maybe there's multiples of this but um I think that for most beginners there there's like a hyper focus on like well what should be in my my portfolio that I'm demonstrating to people and then people go well if you're going to go build another calculator or to-do app like no one wants to see that garbage and don't waste your time on that and I'm like I mean maybe not like maybe that doesn't stand out that doesn't mean that it's not worth you doing and it's because the goal is different if you're interested in trying to learn things if you're trying to build software like there's nothing wrong with going to build a calculator app like I'll give you an example if I had like I really want to be able to spend more time and I I need to carve out my more time for it I don't have any um if I wanted to go learn Maui so working in C instead of zamarin now we have Maui if I wanted to go work and build something in Maui I've been programming for over 21 years and if I wanted to go practice that I would literally go build something like a calculator app in Maui you know what I'm not going to do I'm not going to go put that in my portfolio and say look I made a calculator app not that there's anything wrong with it it's just that I don't think that's really going to stand out different goal I don't need to put that in a portfolio what I would do is I would go build that so I could go learn I could go get that experience and get comfortable with the technology so a different goal I'm going to park that thought for a question and uh for a moment sorry and go over to the chat for questions um oh are there commercials on Youtube sorry I uh I try to so the videos get recorded and then once they're up on YouTube and you're watching the recorded I set the monetization status after but I wonder if the setting has persisted so I do apologize I don't I don't know if I can go change that in the middle of this right now so my apologies for that um but I do like that's the goal is like once it's recorded if you miss the live stream like you can watch the Youtube commercials and I'll make two pennies off of people watching the live stream because uh that's the the life of a YouTuber um so I apologize for that um okay so what is your favorite project you've built good question um different things for different reasons I guess um my favorite one to work on historically is one that I go back to I haven't in a few years now um I've been building like a a 2d role playing game for like 20 years and uh it's never going to be finished it's it's like a Sandbox to work in um but it's fun for me I get to try out building like literally anything so it's like a creative sandbox so that's one that uh I really enjoy um I think one of the coolest things um I'll share I've shared this kind of story before one of the cool projects that I built professionally was um uh when I was working at Magnet forensics before Microsoft I it's a digital forensics company as the name might suggest and and um we um we had this project or we had this thing that was going to be outsourced and um company that it was outsourced to like wasn't doing such a great job with it and basically myself and another individual good friend of mine um colleague at the company who took it upon ourselves to say we're going to try we're going to try building it and um so it was a mobile acquisition product and the the reason like it just had such a fun Journey like the first working prototype that we the first time it ever worked literally we were on an airplane taking off in the airplane and we were doing our first collection of bites off of an Android phone so like that was just it was like super cool it was like we're hacking away at this stuff and we finally get this thing working as the plan's taking off I was like this is it's just neat um but the entire Journey with that product was super cool um we got to to like we got to tackle some really interesting forensic challenges uh with mobile phones that um like there's at the time I would argue like one big company that sort of have had a monopoly on the space and uh we were very much like The Underdogs right so the team that I manage was only a few people and this other company had like you know tons of resources and we were like we're going to build something better and uh in my opinion and it was better like we we had way fewer resources but I I feel like um we were building software that was easier to use um had Advanced functionality they probably had more features in general just because when you're around for that long with so many resources you can do the busy work you can put in the little features here and there but in terms of like being able to add value I think that we were absolutely crushing it so that project felt really cool to work on but that was a a product called magnet acquire I think that since I've gone I don't even know if they offer it anymore um they've like it's it's a completely not I'm not saying this in a bad way like completely different company in terms of portfolio since I've left like they've done Acquisitions and stuff so um and sorry checking out uh Instagram so Louise or I think that's how you pronounce your name so good uh what's the project so yeah that was magnet acquire you're welcome for the content um you're asking about the resources which resources are you asking about and if you if you're more specific I can try to give you a a link to to what you're you're after there [Music] uh bra the saint you got more questions uh another question don't don't worry like that's the whole chat is like ask the whole point of the live stream is to ask questions right I will spend the entire time answering questions happy to do it um my whole career from being a junior and coming from a boot camp I've spent a lot of time writing strictly working strictly on Frameworks recently I've spent more time actually understanding a language do you think a lot of devs are too relying on Frameworks and are leaving behind the foundational stuff um yes and no um I have different thoughts on this I guess um I don't necessarily want to like change this into like an AI question but I think this is kind of relevant in terms of like when I talk about AI stuff um I think my answer to this on the surface is probably yes I think that people are perhaps too reliant on these things but I'm starting I want to start challenging my perspective on this a little bit more um the reason I say that is like if I think about how some people were trying to teach me about software development when I started um it's definitely not the advice I would give people today after going through things not because I think that it's wrong I just don't think that it's as relevant or as important to focus on and to give you like a super super brief example um a friend of mine um he is self-proclaimed like not a programmer he would never never tell you that he is but like he's been using AI a ton and literally putting software Solutions together he had he had a five-digit contract um building software like he's doing very well putting things together and like how he is learning to go through things is wildly different than what I did and still wildly different than what I would probably even encourage people today but the point is it's working very well for him what I don't know and this is where people will say well that sounds dangerous like you can't do that you can't just trust AI or whatever like you need back to the the question you need the fundamentals I'm like I get it but don't get me wrong I get it because that's also my stance but now I'm trying to sit here and challenge myself and be like do you like genuinely it sounds kind of scary but like do you I don't know we we seem to always have and I think that we're very comfortable saying well obviously yes you must but do you I don't know so the question right like are we are we missing out on some of the foundational stuff perhaps and like maybe maybe statistically the answer that I don't have the data but maybe statistically the answer is yes we are missing out on the foundational stuff but then this other question is like how much does that matter like I I actually don't know um so yeah I'm like I said I'm trying to challenge my perspective on that a little bit more because I'm very curious I have a I have the same type of question right I want to see how that's going toan out for people um I think very easy for me to sit here and say yeah the wave of developers we have coming through everyone's using AI everyone's just got all the Frameworks are built you don't have to think that hard to go build stuff and back in my day and then I start to go that sounds scary like why do I have that perspective right um I think it's just easy to fall into that so like I said I'm trying to challenge myself on how I think about that so bra a saint I don't know if that's a good answer but I think that's kind of where I stand uh hope hopefully that makes sense um let me know what you think um Gilbert I built an app with c and Wind forms hell yeah that's sweet combo I spent a lot of my career doing that uh which can be bought nice and is being used at at a company at that helps absolutely so uh this is it's a great point right it's not that this is wrong um and I kind of derailed myself because I wanted to go answer questions in the chat um quickly jumping back to this topic it's not it's certainly not wrong and I think that there is a certain set of individuals that it's a good fit for I think the average person that I talk to that's going through this is likely not going to be someone that is going to be um either a consultant or not going to be like a solo preneur they're not going to be operating like that statist statically most people I talk to will probably try to get hired on to companies and be employees and again it's not that those other skills are bad but the other skills in order to be selling things and running a prod like to be selling a product or running a service there's a lot of other skills that have very little to do with like writing software and again it's not bad if you have those skills it's great it's it's a nice bonus to have those things but I think that if someone is time constrained and they're like look I just want to be able to build software better like what should I focus on I would say if you were trying to spend more time selling things it's probably and that's compromising your time probably not a good use of your time right so I have on the side I have a business called brand ghost and brand ghost is a SAS platform that I'm building to allow people to share social media content it will cross post a different platforms that's all for free by the way so uh Shameless plug if you're interested in like starting to get going on social media you can check out brand ghost. um I will just literally plug that in the chat right now so you have it if you're interested but it's free to use okay so um we have more advanced paid for features for sure but like as someone who's been programming for a pretty long while um the amount of time and effort that it takes me to try and sell is ridiculous it's uncomfortable for me it's not a good like it's not a skill set I have I really have to work at it and I'm trying to do a better job of saying like I'm not trying to say I'm bad at it I'm not skilled at it I have to practice it it's uncomfortable it's a low skill thing I have but I have to do it now that means if I'm spending time trying to get good at selling that is less time that I am building software fortunately at this point in my career I have spent a long time building software if I miss out on some practice that's okay it's probably really helpful that I am working on selling things because I suck at that for now um so when I talk to more beginner programmers I I try to remind people that I don't think it's bad advice that you want to go build something and try to get users but I think it will genuinely be a distract action so that's my kind of take on that to go back to Gilbert's point so thanks for sharing that though I think it's cool that if you've been able to build something and uh people are paying for it that's awesome um bra say that that's awesome being able to create a project equivalent to what a giant is working on with a similar team or with a smaller team it felt cool um it was like and I I think I can say this confidently that like everyone on the team felt that way so when it felt like there were insurmountable challenges we were like screw that like you know we we feel like we can accomplish anything and like that kind of feeling on a team is like super cool because you're surrounded by people where you're like okay like what what's going to get tossed at us today and um there were some things that we worked on because it was digital forensics it was pretty groundbreaking stuff a lot of the time for for getting data off of phones and we'd be like oh there's this phone that has whatever whatever situation going on for it like this model of phone whatever and we're like there's nothing that supports access to this and we're like Well for now like we got to find a way right so um it was it was such a cool mentality to instead of and I actually wrote an article about this um instead of looking at things like the phrase was like technically infeasible instead of looking at things that are challenging going oh that's technically infeasible can't do it it can't be done it's an insurmountable challenge we always just flip things around and we're like yeah it's going to be hard but like we're going to get it and we would work at things and we would so it was again it was just it was a really cool experience to be able to go through that so that project was not only uh like one of my favorites because of the technology and like how it came to be but but honestly like the team that was surrounding it um I it kind of sucks to say but like I don't know if I will ever feel that way about like you know operating on a team again um I can say that like I'm not I don't want people to misinterpret that like I don't like the teams I have at Microsoft or anything like that but um different different Dynamics going on um so yeah it's really really hard to beat that feeling um doggy saying I used to work on uh freelance base now going uh for your own SAS awesome you learn a lot by doing so got a home lab up and running nice uh terraform open stack hnet next JS Blazer learn a lot absolutely right um a lot of the stuff like if I wasn't building brand ghost I would still build stuff on the side just to be learning um good example I don't know if it's a good example interesting example um I haven't shared this publicly because I always forget about it but at the beginning of the pandemic when everything was going into lockdown I have a good friend of mine uh um we said we're going to build an app and we said we're going to build Tinder hear me out we're going to build Tinder but for going out to eat so the idea it was called hangry a genius name right called hangry and um the way that it would work is that if you can imagine you've probably been in this situation either with your partner or even with people like at work if you're like oh time to go for lunch where are we going to eat today or let's go out for dinner what do you want to eat for dinner the way that it would work is that you would open up hangry and then you and your partner or you and and your teammates whatever you would swipe on food like places you want to eat just like Tinder and what would happened is as soon as there was either uh a match that everyone agreed on so no one wanted to say it but everyone wanted to go eat Chinese food cool like boom you got the match great you know exactly where you're going no one had to be confrontational or make the executive decision and at the end of uh swiping if there wasn't like a unanimous agreement it would pick uh pick the highest voted on thing or just pick something random but the point is that it took away this uh feeling of like oh someone's got to make the decision I don't want to be the one when you have too many indecisive people you're just going to starve right so um when we went to go build that I just said I'm going to pick CP because I know car but basically every other piece of technology that we used I was like I don't know this but I'm going to learn it so I think I was using like fire base um I think I was using mongod DB I hadn't used much mongod DB at all um that was built in zamarin so um I think I had a little bit of zamaron experience from way before or was there something before zamaron I can't remember but anyway it the whole thing felt like new it was in AWS I think there were some things in AWS that I was like I don't know what I'm doing here um so a lot of cool stuff um don't regret it but like that was just a hobby project it flopped for sure like we didn't no paying users or anything like that but like it was fun to go build by by building stuff you'll learn a lot um dogy saying curiosity is always required it makes you spend more time with uh Dev topics which makes you get better fast intrinsic motivation I spent in front of the computer uh never seen a top Dev without it yeah so it's interesting like I I agree with what's being said here um I also have not seen that I would also say I don't I don't think that it is a rule it's just not something I've observed so I I do agree with doggy uh Jonathan Baron hi I just know HTML CSS right now self-taught can work experience on a resume include a project I will do for a local business yeah absolutely um yeah why not so this is the thing too so uh Jonathan I think I've heard people give this advice uh on LinkedIn especially and this is it's kind of interesting right I think there's I'm not I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing this advice because I think that you're doing the right stuff um the advice that I have heard given is like people will say hey look I don't have work experience to put on a resume right so can't list it because you haven't work somewhere yet that's doing software okay so the advice is hey if you file an LLC now you have a business name and now you go build a project under it you can now say Hey look it's work experience under this what Jonathan's doing here is a little bit different because he actually has someone it's a local business that is going to pay for it so legitimately this is a business that's great awesome work um the reason I don't love um the reason I don't love that advice is because I feel like it's it's like a a box checking exercise and kind of motivated by the wrong things so I'm not here to say it's bad advice um if people have done it and it's worked well for them I think that's great the reason I don't love it is because if you were to just create the LLC so you have a business name and you're like technically it's a business and then you try building some stuff but you're not actually you don't have users you're not like you just kind of building side projects for fun the reason I wouldn't want to count that as like as work experience is because yeah Gilbert said it exactly that advice sounds a bit loop holy I don't know a better way to say it I don't love it um I think the it ends up making the motivation not the thing that I would recommend and it's because it sounds lopolly it's because you're going and I don't get me wrong I understand I understand why you want to be able to list work experience but then I this is kind of what I would say so imagine that that helps because there's different phases of job applications and interviews and and all that imagine that helps get past the recruiter and they're like hey like this person's got work experience cool like next step could you like just hear me out for a sec could you imagine being in the interview and someone's like awesome so tell me about this work experience you had at um Nick's cool Co LLC and you're like oh yeah for sure um so I uh I built a weather app in asp.net core and they're going oh okay um and like you know what what you know what were you helping your users with and you're kind of like well and then you're kind of in this weird spot where you're like part of my language like holy like uh what do I say because I actually haven't worked somewhere so I I think that it's it's a little bit misleading so in Jonathan's case I don't I don't think that that's wrong I actually think that that's great because he is getting paid to do this but I think what people might be misunderstanding is that they're saying I don't have work experience therefore I will not be considered yes it might be helpful to have work experience compared to someone that does not but I think what a lot of people are missing it's kind of funny I'm going to say it if you think about the number of people applying to jobs okay um right now there's a number of people that are watching this stream that I can see okay so you're unless this is just pure entertainment you're like look at this bald guy with a white in his beard and like he talks funny because he's Canadian if you're here for reasons other than you know entertainment I guess I would wager you're probably doing more than the average person that is a developer trying to break into the industry because I bet you the average developer trying to break into the industry does not even watch or read material that's extracurricular I bet you they're not building projects on the side they're like I did my boot camp or I did my college or university and I'm going to start applying I I check the boxes I'm going to start applying so I think that it's actually very misleading because there's a lot of people that are online trying to say like how do I better myself how do I get ahead and the reality is you probably actually are already ahead which is great I'm not saying give up on that I'm just saying that I think it's a little bit skewed and people don't realize that so when people are like I don't have the prior work experience I don't think that that's the end of the world and I think personally I think that when you're trying to to use the LLC thing as like a hey look I got the work experience I'm like uh you know what I would actually much just I would rather happen and this is just my personal opinion is like whatever you were like going to work on in your LLC and you know dish out some money to go register it like why don't you just go build that and why don't you go make that your goal to go learn something because this comes back to my earlier point was I see generally two goals for this stuff one is showcasing and when we talk about showcasing I think people misunderstand this too it's showcasing impact okay so Impact versus learning and if you are a junior I know people don't believe this because they're like oh there's no Junior jobs like no one's like the bar is set too high I've literally hired Juniors this year not not to my own team because I don't have uh actually no I I did I didn't do the interviews but I I brought on people to my team that were Junior after going through the results the interviews and then I interviewed people not for my team that were Junior and you don't you don't necessarily need to have the work experience it's a it's a bit of a misconception I know that everyone's hyperfocus on how competitive things are and I'm not trying to minimize that but my point is that if you are building stuff you can absolutely go build projects and add that onto your resume as projects you worked on and talk about the stuff you were learning right when you're building things and you're actually working through like code and and building stuff there's going to be things that you're going to learn about and I think that that could be an awesome opportunity to put on a resume when I talk about this stuff I mentioned earlier I see personally I see different phases to getting through and getting a job that first part is that visibility part I will say that it can be challenging to stand out in those cases um I don't have to back this up so like you know do your own homework on this kind of stuff if we together think about this and we say okay let's pick a company doesn't have to be Microsoft let's pick a a company that's they put up uh a job posting for a role and it's remote so that means people from different parts of the world can apply now the pool of potential developers that can apply for this role is not restricted to a GE geography like a city or people that are willing to relocate to that City it's Global so you open that roll up 1,000 2,000 however many thousand developers apply for that position I mean this seriously do we think that a human is going to sit there and go through every single job application and try to and this it's a real thought exercise I want you to do do we think that one human is going to sit there through every job application and then try to order them in a way where they're like this is the best application down to this is the worst one it's not happening it's just it's it's not going to work that way it's not scalable I'm not saying that's good or bad practice I'm just saying that that's just not realistic I I legitimately I don't even know how Microsoft does it I don't know how any big tech company actually does it in practice because it's not scalable so I suspect again I don't know this for a fact I suspect and I must assume this that there needs to be some amount of automation that will try filtering some of these things out I don't see another way that humans could do this in a scalable way maybe it's smaller companies because the volume of application is smaller but you could also say maybe it's smaller companies they don't even have as many re resources to be going through reses so maybe they do have to go look for something that's going to help filter these things out my point is that when we're thinking about having our job applications and resumés stand out you may employ different tactics for that so maybe adding in some keywords for the Technologies you're using can be helpful right if you imagine a resume that where you completely omitted them if there any company that's going to use any type of filtering will just automatically exclude you so I'm not here to say good or bad practice all that I'm saying is like if you don't want that to be a factor that's going to completely remove you I would probably find a way to include some keywords that would be advice in general that I give to people but for that part alone does it matter if it's work experience or a project that you worked on I don't know like probably not unless they have such good filtering that it's like only look for this keyword when it says work experience like at a company for this many years like I don't think that's happening so maybe at the human level maybe they're going oh this person only has two years of my SQL so no um perhaps but um I would even say that I've like I've told people stats like this before for um software Engineers that have joined my teams at Microsoft either right before me or after um I think so I'm trying to say like people that aren't tenured employees at Microsoft where I join the teams so newer people I think I've had one or two people that have known C like fluently and the rest no C guess what language we use C so um even these individuals were hired on with not without having that technology that language background so the reason I'm telling you this is because I think a lot of the time there's so much focus on like how to hyper optimize this stuff that like you get like analysis paralysis the example I gave right at the beginning of the stream probably before most people were on here I was talking about like going to the gym and squatting when you start trying to research how to do this more effectively what ends up happening is you go there are 10 different ways that I've heard people say how to do this every one of them is different how the hell am I supposed to practice any of this if I do thing a that's completely it odds with person C what they're saying so do I just disregard both of those now and then I go to person B and see what they're saying the reality is there's little truths to all these things and the context will make a difference so you might have someone say hey don't include all those keywords that's just noise it's going to make your your resume hard to to read and I might say yeah like I could agree with that but at the same time like I think if you don't put keywords in it's going to miss out on some of the filtering opportunities that are automatic so my goal when I'm talking to people about this stuff or things in in general is like I don't want to tell you one way is completely right or one way is completely wrong I want to give you different perspective on these things and then you can make an informed decision for yourself that I think that's the best I can do at the end of the day so let's go back to the chat um uh Brax is saying definitely a fair answer bu of mine who has been in the industry uh four times as long as we described the issue issues of people who lack Comm uh lack fundamentals are uh or misunderstanding what goes on under the hood therefore a really obscure bug happens which is it's admittedly rare um we lack the understanding how to solve the issue as well as younger developers being able to improve on these Works going forward so yeah so um when was talking about this a little bit earlier um you know I so I don't disagree with that I think that's actually a very valid point um and then okay so I like doing this thing where it's like okay let's take a different perspective on it and see like where do we end up right so if I agree if you have some obscure bug that comes up and you're like okay no one actually understands how this works like good luck um maybe maybe people uh even if they don't understand how those things work they're still very curious and they're good good problem solvers they might actually be very good at debugging somehow so it's not impossible probably unlikely but they might be very good at debugging even though they don't understand the fundamentals and what they're able to do is start piecing together things very well and effectively and then they create this sort of web of information and then they can navigate and get to the root cause I think it's still possible another thing might be and this is I think where it gets kind of scary is like what if they don't need to be what if they're very good at explaining the symptoms that they're observing so there's data and they're like okay I have all this data that I can use to explain a particular scenario holistically and I can do that very effectively and now I will ask the AI is it and I'm not saying that this is going to work I know there's people that are going to watch us and be like oh my God this guy I'm just trying to I'm just trying to give you different perspectives on this is it in the realm of possibility that someone could be so capable of doing that that it actually becomes a nonissue for them and I think personally I think the answer is perhaps which makes me nervous because it's kind of weird but I like talking about these things from different perspectives because I like I said I'm trying to challenge my own outlook on them doggy saying the best interview question which raspberry buy projects have you done yeah so I think it's cool right like um and I can say I've built some stuff in raspberry or on a Raspberry Pi I think um when I I talked about when I launched Dev leader back in 2013 and it was just a Blog but I actually I hosted Dev leader on a Raspberry Pi in my condo back in kitchen or waterl so um I would not do that today um just cuz it's more more problems that I'm interested in but it was a lot of fun I learned a lot um bra is saying I have an interview coming up and the compan is using their own proprietary frontend Library um is the fundamental question a bad question for me to ask the team their opinion on during the interview um no I think it's an interesting one right um I think with interviews I think what's a good way to put this I think you probably want to have a goal with your question is how I would put that so and I don't mean this like in a fous way and you don't have to answer in the chat but like genuinely like what what is the goal of your question like is it just a curiosity that's fine um but I think like have a goal with your question and as long as you're when you answer that for yourself you're like oh I didn't actually have a goal if you're thinking like I don't have a goal and I don't know what the goal is don't ask it but if you're like hey no like I would like to know about this I'd like to understand I like to see how they think maybe maybe I am just curious I think if you're intentional about it nothing wrong with that um I I based on what I you know kind of hear you saying here doesn't sound like you're trying to challenge them on it so if it's a curiosity thing or for your own understanding I don't think there's anything wrong with that um but genuinely like I think ask yourself what's the goal of your question and um you know is there an answer or response where you may have you know a different opinion based on the response from that cuz go through the thought exercise I think it's interesting uh work experience also shows your ability to work in a company environment might show Tech skills and dedication but says nothing about you as a person or a team ever yeah so or sorry hobby projects uh doggy which one um oh hobby projects also show your ability to mro text skills I'm not sure which one you meant for where because I think you corrected yourself but I'm not sure which part you're correcting so uh my take on this though is like um we have like in interviews we have behavioral questions where we can go navigate those things for in terms of like how you work as a team member which by the way um a lot of people don't realize this as software developers because we're so focused on technical things that even in interviews we kind of mess it up um but when people in interviews are asking you beh behavioral interview questions um it might sound surprising to you but their goal with those questions a lot of the time is not to have you explain every nitty-gritty detail about the technicals uh because they don't care and it doesn't actually matter so a lot of the time with these behavioral interview questions they are trying to see how you work and function in a team what are you going to be like to work with and by walking through scenarios from your real experience that is hopefully one of the best indicators they have like if they can use the past to predict the future if they walk you through a scenario and you're explaining like this is what I am like to work with then they have a good indicator but going into like the weeds and saying like oh and then I like added this like this test case and whatever like it's just it's too much detail and it doesn't matter so um to what doggy was saying I just wanted to say like for behavioral interview questions we have something like that for in the interview but when we're talking about on a resume right work experience or projects neither of those alone are sufficient in my opinion are sufficient data points when you're just looking at a resume or a job application to call out what someone is like to work what someone is like to work with on a team that was very wordy um um yeah and then so there we go doggy is kind of saying I know a genius Linux Dev and this is the most stereotypical thing I've ever heard but thank you for saying it I know a genius Linux have unable to communicate and we'll just end the sentence there um unable to communicate always upset team and management Linux deicide um but this is like like thank you for saying this because I think that like I I just need other people to say it more but um we talk a s for Vel opers so much about technical details and technical stuff is important we are building Technical Systems you need technical skills to do so but the other thing that you're doing uh for almost all software developers is building building software in teams and even if you're not building software in teams if you were building software for a customer you have to communicate you need to be able to do it effectively it is absolutely a skill I feel like a lot of people don't like to admit it but like I think what makes it really obvious is when you work with people that really suck at communicating you go oh man like communication is pretty important because when it's impossible to work with someone because they're uh and this is like more like soft skills in general but like when you're unable to collaborate communicate with people it's uh it's just non-stop friction so we can avoid that by working on our communication skills so um yeah and bra saying pure curiosity forther interview question I guess they get understanding why they decided to build their own Library yeah and I think that you can transform that into like the genuine curiosity can be interesting right because you might say like hey I know that there's a ton of like frontend framework so like I am curious why did you decide to build your own like what things have you learned from doing that like um do you you know I don't know I don't know how you would phrase this I'm kind of making it up on the spot but like I would be curious to see if they like I wouldn't want to use the word regret but like now that you've done it like what are things that you have learned from this because I'm assuming they don't regret it if they keep building it maybe but like cool you did it so was it was it a good move finding ways to kind of navigate that would be kind of interesting I think um sus boy I last time you were on the stream and I remember because I said your username out loud and then I felt really weird about it um but sus boy says uh just started my first internship Congratulations by the way already feeling overwhelmed and and not knowing stuff how long do you think it would take for an intern to get up to speed with understanding a larger code base a long time um so don't beat yourself up over it um you may leave your internship and not know the whole code base you might not know a majority of the code base um do not beat yourself up over it this is um I I don't know for a fact this is probably something like impostor syndrome which literally everyone will go through um I want to assume and I have to make an assumption here because I I genuinely don't know you but I want to imagine that you are a very capable person the people that hired you for that internship believe so right and I'm I'm sure that if you were to think about things that you've accomplished in your software development so far whether it's you know it's your first internship but you've probably coded some things before right so you're probably very capable okay so um right it is a it's a good name and I'm I say the names out loud so someone's going to join a stream one day and I'm going to say something and be like oh my God okay um sus boy is not so bad but still kind of makes me feel awkward to say out loud anyway point is um First Step deep breath um it's okay uh a lot of the time this stuff can feel overwhelming especially because what you start doing is you're comparing yourself to other people and you're like well all these people around me seem to be able to navigate this stuff yeah because they've been doing it a lot longer and that's totally cool so again don't worry that's fine in terms of how long um it's a very difficult question to answer there's so many factors including like your your own capabilities how comp Lex the code Bas is to begin with what language it's in uh how big the code base is how well it's maintained like there's there's a million things um even you know the scope of work that you're being given um I can I'll I'll give you a quick example I worked at a startup once and it's not that the co I don't I definitely didn't know the whole code Base by any means and it was a small company it there was like 10 people or so um I had to learn so this is about a language not even the code base I had to learn Objective C at that internship by the way I think arguably one of the worst languages ever but that's just my opinion and I honestly felt like I was going through that internship and I was like I am I'm going to finish this internship and not still not understand this language I was able to make progress on things but I was like this nothing about this language feels right and I remember the entire time being like oh no oh no oh no so you know I I'm I'm sharing this with you because I don't think um and you know doggy thank you doggy's chiming in here and saying like you don't like the the expectations that you're probably setting on yourself are are probably different um so I think that a good frame of reference here is like if you're being assigned tasks and this is again as an intern this is the same for for juniors that are hired onto teams for like you know you're you're brand new working somewhere um there is an expectation that it's going to take you some time to ramp up that's okay I'm hoping that on the internship they're giving you some work that is scoped down to be more digestible for you so that they can start building that momentum for you because it's going to take some of that getting some smaller things to work on whether that's small bug fixes small features things that people other people on the team might go I actually I know how to go do that but like we haven't had time or I have other I have other priorities for myself right now and then working on those things as an intern might be a great fit because they're still valuable but they're a lot smaller in scope and you're able to do them so hopefully they start building up some momentum like that for you and um yeah I would say a good two things maybe three one is that as the internships going along you want to get a gut feel for if you feel like this is getting better does not mean like oh do I know all of the code base but like do I feel like I'm getting through my work more effectively I think that's a good kind of gut check um if they have set you up with like an intern buddy so maybe another developer on the team that's not just the manager let's say are you having conversations with them and getting some feedback around your progression and then between them and then your manager this is the third part um like what are their expectations and are you meeting them because I'm assuming and I'm not your manager but I'm assuming your manager is probably not like by the end of this internship I expect you to know the whole code base it's probably not I have code that I've written and I don't know the whole code base anymore so I I know that's maybe not the go the entire focus of what you were trying to say but um it's going to take you time to ramp up this is internships are challenging for this reason okay so I love internships I had six internships during my University and I wouldn't change it for the world I would absolutely go back and do that when people talk about oh we don't need college or university like boot camps fine or be selftaught I'm not against that but for me I would certainly go back and do a internship program I wouldn't change that for myself for the world but it does mean that you're changing every few months and that means ramp up it means being uncomfortable so um I think my my advice for you sus boy is like this is a good opport to practice being comfortable getting how do you say that practice getting comfortable while being I don't know I think you know what I'm trying to say comfortable being uncomfortable yeah um good opportunity for that it's hard to live stream uh words don't work and um and then the next part is like you are going to be expected to be ramping up I think if you're working somewhere and they have different expectations of you like you must be an expert by the end of this or something probably not a great place but I'm assuming that's not the case for you so um don't beat yourself up it'll take some time and um I bet you if you have more internships in the future so maybe you're returning to this place or you have another internship somewhere or even when if this is your only internship when you start full-time somewhere I bet you or the next team change you do I bet you'll find that like you have some ramp up time still but you'll probably notice that it's going faster right because over time there's going to be sets of skills and things that you learn that they just happen to be applicable across the board right different ways you approach solving problems going to understand things these are skills that regardless of what text stack language whatever you're like hey this is how I would go approach this maybe you get better at networking with people on the team to ask them questions better at using Source control to go look things up you you have more experience asking more directed questions whatever it is all these things build up experience over time and then you can just go use that more effectively in your next scenario so um like I said it's you know it's hard so don't beat yourself up things will get better and if you're curious about like like hey like am I taking too long to ramp up on this stuff like I'm not saying it's impossible to be like to be taking too long or something but have have a conversation um some I feel like some of the best advice that I offer to people even though it sounds very generic and people are probably like well that's dumb I already knew that um people don't do it talk to your manager I am an engineering manager and I can tell you the number of times where I'm helping people that don't report to me and they they have scenarios or things they want to talk about and the first thing that I'm thinking is like man like should really talk to your manager about that like if you were reporting to me I would love if you came and talk to me about that I would very much appreciate it um this is one of those things where I think try to practice that early but I think you're going to do great you're watching you're watching the dev leader live stream so obviously you're set up for Success right right okay um no I hope that helps though thanks for the question I think it's a good one um cool I think think we're added questions in the chat we're bid after eight um I think my final thoughts for the project stuff that just to kind of close out this this topic is that like I don't think that the advice that people is giving on that people are giving online even though it might look different like go build an app and get users or just work on stuff to learn or just build stuff to show off as like a Showcase in your portfolio I don't think that this advice is mutually exclusive or only one of these things is right or wrong but I do think that that you want to think about what your goals are if you've gone through a lot of learning and you're like hey I need something to Showcase yeah may just as an example maybe the calculator app or a weather app because the weather app in ASP onet core comes out of the box you don't have to do anything you literally just click through the the visual studio Wizard and you get a weather app um if you're like hey that's not gonna you know I can't show that off because everyone else has that I would say you're probably right doesn't mean that it's a waste of time for you to do it it's just probably not a good use case for showing off okay so then now you need to ask a more pointed question like what things should I have um you know on my resume to stand out more it's a very different question that what project should I go build okay so what should you do to stand out I still think depending on who's looking through your stuff you know you could you could still build something that's boring and done but I think and something that would seem cool to me this is just my perspective is even if you built something boring like what if you took a calculator app and then you talked about how you built this thing and it was like a a desktop application and then you refactored the code and you made it a crossplatform mobile app and then you also relever part of that and made it into a web service and then you kept the history in like a database and now all of a sudden all these random things that I just blurred it out obviously this is a super weird example but bear with me um you're able to kind of put together this this story about like yeah it's a boring app let's say but all those things that you had to go learn to do that like that's a pretty cool like group of things that you could showcase and if you don't have the work experience you're literally creating this kind of stuff to be able to talk about here is stuff that I'm learning about I'm interested in that I have some experience at least using because that is going to be better than no things if we haven't talked about this at all so this is the final thought if you're not someone who's brand new so you have worked at places you might still have this question where you're like hey people are talking about I need side projects and stuff you might not right the goal um Jonathan thank you so much I appreciate that I sorry they caught me off guard um and yeah I don't I don't want to say thank you so much um my wife watches a lot of Court like streaming and so people will send in tips and stuff and it's funny because I'm like I tell her like I stream and stuff like and she kind I I don't think she like makes fun of me for it but she's like okay well this person's streaming and they have like a 100,000 people watching the stream and I'm like yeah I got like a hundred people watching um so I think it's like it's a bit of a different Dynam damic so I think she thinks it's kind of maybe seems a little silly but she knows I really care about it um but then I I joke about those streamers and I'm like man it's like nonstop when they have that many people watching there's like people that are like constantly tipping and I'm like these people are making a killing from it so um I just wanted to say thank you so much um the the amount or whatever does not like that's not just the fact that you kind of went out of your way to do that thank you that means a lot um I forgot what I was saying cuz I got so caught off guard with that I think I was saying for people that have work experience when it's time for projects um I think that how I would look at this is like if you feel that you've been working somewhere and unable to demonstrate impact thank you Jonathan thank you so much um if you feel like you've been working somewhere and you've been unable to demonstrate impact I would say that might be an opport where you're like okay well maybe I want to think about other ways to Showcase myself on a resume or a job application um but I do think that if you have work experience I would try to dig into those projects that you have worked on at work and reflect on like what was the impact I had again you might want to look at a bit of keyword stuff okay so you worked on this project what are some easy call outs like what language what text stack call out some of those things at a bare minimum it's going to help in situations where there's some automatic filtering for keywords cool but then let's Describe the impact let's describe what you did I think another misconception when people are talking about projects on resumés is that and I I understand because I'm very much like this the person that's trying to recruit you is not interested in hiring your team and you might say my team did this but what the and you might know in your head what part you did but you are leaving it very ambiguous for the recruiter to understand what part you did so don't do that talk about what you did because it's your resume I think that when you're having conversations about this kind of stuff you still want to indicate what things you did but I don't think you have to like mislead people and be like Oh my team they didn't do anything like it was all me like that's a that's extreme the wrong way so just try to make sure that you're calling out you know your contributions cuz that makes it uh much more obvious and uh less guessing for someone reviewing your resume so look for the impact uh RIT Vick um we're about to wrap up here so thank you for coming I am going to answer your question though so or it's not really a question it's a statement I'm going to respond to it uh looking for software engineering internships and and it literally feels impossible okay um I don't know where you're applying to the types of companies or things like that um not necessarily that you have to go into detail and list them all I'm not saying I don't believe you um they do exist so to give you an example like I have an intern for Microsoft starting um in less than 30 days uh so you know we're doing it um my previous team I saw that they had inter I think they have like four interns coming so that's uh that's an option like I mean that exists right made full stack projects but can't uh describe impact I don't what to do so so okay so Ric I'm assuming that based on the fact you're talking about internships and describing impact um I I'm assuming you just kind of joined the stream um that example for impact was primarily for people that have been in the industry already and it's a this is actually a really good thing to kind of round out this conversation as someone like if I were hiring um accept defense and all since I'm not a US citizen okay I have a it's difficult for me to answer internships on other countries because I don't have experience with it the only country that I have experience uh outside of the US aside from Canada because I'm from Canada um is Mexico so like I it's really difficult for me to comment just because I I don't know the Dynamics um I don't know if some some companies are saying like we only hire from from these countries for internships or something I just don't know the details of that so I do apologize on that but on the impact part um if I were hiring Junior people or I were hiring interns I'm not looking for impact on R resumés and the reason is because you probably have not yet demonstrated that in your career because your career hasn't started so it's just not something I would look for personally if I were looking cuz this is something I think that some people don't get to um software teams need like I shouldn't say need effective software teams would do better in my opinion to be composed of a range of skill levels so you might say okay well if we wanted to make a rockstar team why wouldn't we just go take the most top level engineers in the world and go Jam them on a team they're obvious viously going to crush it yeah they might build some cool don't get me wrong but um I think as an engineering manager when I'm building teams I want to make sure that I have a mix of levels and that's because there's different scopes of work that need to get done there are different opportunities that higher levels can help more Junior people with it works out really well so the result of that is that at least on every team where there's managers that think roughly like me there's going to be a need for junior people there always will be there always will be so um so the trick there is that if I'm looking for someone that's Junior I'm not looking for impact what personally what I'm looking for is that you're interested in learning and that you're like proactive in doing so like that's what I would be looking for on a resume so if you can show me that you've been doing that kind of stuff to me that will stand out it's not about impact in those situations for for that level just because I don't think that you would have it that's all um people expect you to do open source and have 100 people use your application just to get an internship so I I think you missed the beginning of the beginning of this let me link the code commute um I think you're on you're on YouTube so um I'm not sure if you if you came from Dev leader or like if this just kind of show if this just showed up and people are like I think someone was saying last time like oh the algorithm just put you in front of me um let me see where is this oh I might need to refresh my my page here but I want to send you the link in the chat and you might be able to just like search for it if you want um come on oh here it is it's titled what projects for my developer job application I don't know if this is going to necessarily work in the chat so I apologize no that didn't work at all uh give me one sec here I'm sorry um but just popped up in your feed nice okay thanks YouTube algorithm there is another YouTube channel I have because you're watching my primary Dev leader Channel um I don't know if you can click that link if it works on YouTube chat but that is to a video on my other YouTube channel called code commute and that's kind of that video is what inspired um this whole live stream so I think based on when you said what's up I think you joined the conversation quite late which is fine next time next time you'll join early uh but in all seriousness uh I think that if you have the time you can watch it on 2x speed or fast forward whatever you want check out that video that's from my other YouTube channel I talk about all of the same topics it's just uh maybe I'm yelling at traffic or something because it's a vlog entry so um that's what I would recommend but um I I would say don't give up it's a I think it's pretty common where people get frustrated that things aren't going their way and then we start kind of uh we start creating more barriers for ourself right so just as an example um uh sorry I don't have time for resume feedback unfortunately I wish I did I don't uh I get sent it all the time on LinkedIn and uh most times people don't even ask so thank you very much for being polite and asking sometimes people just send the resume and say review this and like we haven't even exchanged words yet it's kind of awkward don't do that uh but I do not have time for that I'm very sorry um i' when I've talked about this before there are certain things that in my own personal time I end up giving them up and then I realize I'm not being fair to myself so um I end up having to draw the lines somewhere and resume reviews are generally one of those things because they they they take up time and then I'm not doing things that I I really want to invest time in um so I do apologize for that but um the one thing that I wanted to say about kind of creating barriers for a solvent I'm not I'm not picking on what you said I just wanted to use it as an example to highlight it but the problem is people expect you to do open source and have 100 people use your application just to get an internship so this might be something that you're feeling so I don't want to I don't want you to feel in like I don't want to make you or like invalidate that feeling for you because I get that it's frustrating so please let I'm just trying to acknowledge that but um the rest of your statement is actually not true so I'm trying to acknowledge that I know it feels that way but like like it's not true because I hire people and I don't expect people to do open source and I spent the beginning of this this entire live stream saying I actually don't want you to go build applications to get 100 users so it's just different perspective right and I think that when people get frustrated um you will create this narrative and it's not just you I mean like people like this is a thing that we do I'm not a psychologist but I this is a pattern I see um because I do it myself too but we create a narrative where it's like well if this isn't working it's got to be because of all these things and like it's just because it's frustrating right so um I'm trying to tell you this not to say hey RIT Vic I think you're wrong I'm telling you this because I want you to start looking at it a different way and I don't want you to give up on it so um yeah I think um I had an interview with Dell a few months ago and I know I failed because of my bad behavioral skills okay so so rfic what are you what are you going to do about that right I think when we have challenges like this cuz not like man like I I don't interview often I I know how interviews work I literally have a course on interviews on behavioral interviews in particular I'm a manager I've conducted many interviews but I don't personally interview that often and it makes me nervous and even though I understand how they work I'm like oh no I'm nervous so um so I'm not it's not a skill I have interviewing is very much a skill okay and and behavioral skills I mean by definition are skills too so it could be and I don't know this but it could be you interviewed poorly even if you had good behavioral skills or or maybe your your behavioral skills do need some work but um I don't think that um and sorry the the the Reddit post and some companies us started selecting people purely based on the fact that open source there's a lot of stuff that goes on the internet like with uh like the GitHub commit graphs it's a it's a meme at this point um I would I'm stand by this if you're if a company's hiring you based on your GitHub commit graph like tell them to tell them to eat it man like that's a that's a bull crap metric absolutely bull crap um just it's so so ridiculous um and sorry if if you are someone in a situation where this is a belief that you have because you've been told this like I'm not I'm not blaming you for thinking that way I'm just saying it's a bull crap metric because it you can literally write scripts that just simulate the commit graph it tells you nothing so um if you're if you're saying oh man like these places won't hire me because of that you don't want to work there I'll tell you you don't want to work there because they don't actually know what they're talking about so don't don't stress about that um please don't um but on your behavioral skills maybe it's something that you want to pay more attention to so don't look at the job rejection as like a as a barrier like oh it's never going to work now or that you're um I don't know that you're defeated by it but like it's feedback right it might not be feedback you wanted but it's feedback so what can you do with that and how can you improve for next time obviously you don't have to answer that in the chat I'm just trying to get you to think about it for next time so um okay I am going to wrap this up though so I'm going to jump over and do the thing that I got to do uh which is advertise things so um most of my live streams um oh and they gave one last question let me let me let me go back I'll answer one last question um if you can just tell what I can work on as a full stack app I have a job fair in my university in February and I want to have another project okay here's I have videos and articles on how to approach this I don't know your situation and I can't tell you the right thing but here's what I would tell you cuz I like talking about Frameworks and thought processes for things and that way that you can make decisions for yourself because in my opinion there's no better way than teaching you the Frameworks and you can apply them and make them your own versus me just telling you things because I'm just some dude on the internet that popped up in your YouTube feed don't forget that right um You Don't Know Who I Am I could be just making up stuff I don't think I am but so what full stack app to go build what I would say and this is I've there's uh if you now that now that I'm in your YouTube feed go look through my live streams and you will find topics on this uh the approach that I recommend people take and this is my personal opinion on this stuff is I recommend you think about the Hobbies you have it could be anything could be you love movies you love certain tops uh types of music you love different sports you love cars you love it certain brand whatever comic books anything video games pick some hobby you have or pick a couple hobbies to get like a couple of ideas going so pick a few hobbies and then what I would do is I would say your goal and your goal can change here but if your goal you want to be able to demonstrate this uh at a job fair uh to be able to show off off I think I would pick something that you're comfortable with and that way you can make progress on it and if you had to pick a couple things so I know you said you do M and.net awesome okay so I would recommend like leverage. net for this and pick a couple hobbies that you have and then maybe you have to pick a technology that's a little bit new to you and I'm just making this up you don't have to this is just my framework for this when you pick everything that's new you're going to go very slow because every single step you're like I don't know how this works and you get stuck and that's cool you learn if you pick a bunch of stuff you if it's everything you know then you're not learning a ton it's good practice but you're not learning a ton because you already know it but if you pick a bunch of stuff you already know and like one thing that's kind of new then you can get some good momentum and then kind of like pick up on this new thing get stuck a little bit on that and make progress so perhaps just going to make this up perhaps you haven't used postgress before and you're like it's time I'm going to try learning postgress I would say cool picknet pick postgress if you don't want to do that pick pick a database you're comfortable with or pick all the technology you're comfortable with if you're on a time crunch and then pick a hobby that you have and then make an app that's related to that and it doesn't have to be something where you're going to have users paying you money for it the one that I always go back too cuz I think it's a cool one maybe not for everyone but I always say go make a pokedex I think that would be sweet you can use a database you can use backend technology you can use front-end technology you could change the database you there's so much you can do by building a pokedex I think that's a great app to go build doesn't have to be a pokeddex though why don't you go make something that's about a database for uh fictional characters from you know favorite movie series right their bi like the their characters biography like there's there's so many things that you could do the reason I recommend that you pick a hobby of yours and I stand behind this and I'll explain it but um I think pick a hobby because when you get stuck or when you're like I don't really have a lot of motivation the idea of picking something that's related to a hobby is that unless you have hobbies where you're just like kind of like I'm not going to do that for 10 years it's not really a hobby I guess when you have a hobby it's interesting to you so even when you're stuck on stuff it can kind of give you that little bit of boost where you're like yeah but this is pretty cool so for me and the reason I stand by this is earlier in the Stream um let me scroll back up in the chat bra the saint bra the saint said in the chat what is your favorite project I gave two one was a professional one and the other one was a video game that I will never release because it will never be done but it has always kept me going back because I love role playing games and I think it's a super cool fun thing to go build and that means I will always have something that's going to keep me interested no matter how big the challenge is or if I have to go spend a month refactoring code because it's absolute garbage at this point um but that's what I would recommend right it gets me going back to to it speed cubing cool um is there I don't know anything about speed cubing could you come up with an application that explains to people the patterns for how they can do it could you simulate that somehow that might be way too complicated I don't know fighting games um okay so fighting games um the only one that comes to mind or two like Tekken Mortal Kombat could you have the even a database or something with the characters um and you could talk about the move sets maybe you could do the characters over time the different video games series and their if their move sets have changed there's like fatalities animalities you got all this stuff going on you could do a ton of stuff but like is anyone going to pay for that probably not but like that doesn't matter that's why I am saying it does not matter go build it it's cool so I hope that helps R Vic okay last thing I'm going to do um this time I did not go to my newsletter for the topic the topic came from code commute but if you're interested most weeks on this live stream that is at 700 p.m. Pacific every Monday uh generally the topic comes from my newsletter this time you can see that there's a dumb picture of my face there I was just going through my 2025 goals um and in that newsletter there's actually like a 40-minute video where I'm just talking about like a reflection and what's coming up for this year so this time was a little different but if you're like hey this is kind of cool I'd be interested in tuning in next week I wonder what the topic is next next Saturday the newsletter goes out you do not have to subscribe to the newsletter um I say this on almost every episode of Code commute now but if you're like sounds dumb I don't like newsletters that's cool um don't subscribe to it but if you just want to see the topic you can check out um what's going to be released you can read it Saturday Sunday and all of Monday and then check it out on the live stream so that's one um I've mentioned code commute a few times here this is my second YouTube channel um just past the 1,00 subscriber Mark I think tomorrow perhaps maybe at least by the end of the week this channel code commute will be monetized which is super cool um because it's been way faster than my my main Channel um it's actually doing way better than my main channel so code commute is um very much like a stream of Consciousness almost always in the car while I'm driving there's been a couple of episodes especially over the break for holidays where I wasn't driving much and I wanted to get some code commute episodes in so you can check out this channel uh I will put a link to it in the chat uh it's really cool there's been people from code commute um that are coming over to the live stream uh and trying to think uh I want to scroll back up in the chat I know uh architect who's up in the chat a little bit earlier comes from code commute I'm pretty sure because I'm pretty sure architect was commenting on code commute videos but cool to see people coming from this channel so thank you so much for that uh Dev leader is my main YouTube Channel um so this one I'm just celebrating going over uh 9,000 subscribers uh I'm assuming most people that are on this stream probably know my main Channel or and or came from there so if not um Dev leader is my main Channel where I have edited videos um so there's a podcast on here all of my programming content is on C sharp.net but I also have topics oh it says my chat is broken bring back the chat um but I do have topics on dev leader that are very much like software engineering in general so for example um this video here is like uh about becoming an engineering manager and if that's a good fit for people so not c.net still relevant for software developers so um that's that and then the final thing that I will mention is that I do have courses on dome train um they're in two flavors one of which is going to be around uh Career Development so we were talking about behavioral interview questions right so um you can see nailing the behavioral interview it's a course I have with Ryan Murphy on dome train um I have the rest are C based so reflection andet uh getting started in Deep dive these are two courses there's actually a bundle for sale on dome train where these two are discounted if you get them together and then there's a refact ring course as well this year I talked about this in my newsletter but um this year my plan is that I'm going to do a couple more courses that are career focused throughout the year and then the technical courses that I'm going to make are going to be um just I'm just realizing someone said on on Instagram is all software developer are bald come on man come on man and I almost got hair um the answer is yes we're all bald um but uh the other courses that are technical that I'm going to be making are going to be uh sort of in the let's build it series so that will be taking you from creating an application from Gathering requirements all the way through building it refining it uh testing it and deploying it which is going to be cool those courses so let me back up the career ones the short ones are like three hours long the long ones are five to six hours long the C ones I have are five to six hours long the let's build it ones are going to be like 15 hours long so those are going to be super meaty courses um it's going to be a ton of work but I'm excited for it so um I think that's all and maybe one final plug because we talked about this a little bit earlier let me go back to Brand go ghost so brand ghost is the SAS that I am building on the side um this is the reason I stopped writing blog articles because I'm spending more time coding stuff um but it's totally free for people to use to cross post across their social media platforms so if you I know there's a lot of people that are on Twitter that are watching this right now compared to other platforms if you're on Twitter and you see my tweet every tweet that you see that's not a reply actually even the replies now because that's a new feature every tweet you see from me comes from Brand ghost so brand ghost allows me to schedule content it allows me to crosspost it and the paid for features that are more advanced it's not for every content creator but it allows me to sort of have recurring content that way I never have to think about scheduling a post ever again in my life I can just create content and it will go out at the right Cadence um if that ever runs out so for example I have six months worth of memes if I took another six months off and I never added another meme it would recycle all six months worth of memes automatically so for me it allows a lot more flexibility I can focus on content creation and then I can focus on building things like brand ghost itself so if if you're interested you're just getting started in content creation like I said it's totally free it's not even a trial to use the crossposting stuff you can literally just have a free account and we'll cross post to your social media platforms for you no strings attached the reason we do that is because we want to make sure that we have such a good platform that as you're building up your experience as a creator that you say hell yeah I want to keep using brand ghost for this stuff I want the more advanced features because they're going to help me and I am that convinced that we can do a good job that we're giving away all the crossposting stuff for free so that's the last thing I have to offer in terms of sales pitches and all that so thank you so much for watching Remember next week 7 p.m. Pacific be here don't be late