10 Years Of Experience vs 10 Years Of The SAME Experience - Engineering Manager AMA

um trying to kick this thing off this is probably like the worst start to any stream I've ever had literally everything that could have possibly gone wrong has gone wrong um for example uh stuck in traffic because it's raining so can't have rain um none none of the restream platforms are working so like the link live stream is going to the wrong event so I don't I don't even know how to tell my audience to go watch it there I'm so angry uh I have to start the live stream on substack so please give me a moment I apologize um I just need a second here folks because nothing's working 10 years of if you're joining please let me know in the chat that the chat's working because I would appreciate if at least something worked today thanks for being patient okay one thing out of the way um yeah I don't know what to do for the folks on LinkedIn it's just not not working I feel like I need need to tell people to go to this other event which is super dumb and for those of you watching other on other platforms you're probably like why does this matter just get into it um but I just want to send this to the other folks one sec forcefully streaming here okay I don't know what else to tell folks on LinkedIn uh even like in stagram Instagram's not working I want like a I want a refund from restream I wonder if they'll do that anyway um I see a couple people have joined uh again sorry for being super delayed here very flustered but it looks like I got some people on Twitter thanks for being here and just Twitter because no other platform is working oh YouTube I see some folks from YouTube cool okay well today's conversation is going to be based on a recent newsletter article and that newsletter article is also based on a conversation from one of my YouTube channels called code commute and this stemmed from the idea I guess I forgot to go live on substack um this stem from the idea where years of exper experience was brought up and someone was expressing frustration with the idea of years of experience and how that's like uh I think in one context the original person was saying it's like um years of experience is sort of like a toxic thing in software engineering and um I think you know part of my perspective here is that I think there's definitely a situation where there's uh especially for you know people that are early in their career they're trying to apply to jobs and it's like basically entry level job needs 10 years of experience like I get that that's a that's a pretty thing um I don't think that's really fair and then I try to take some time to explain sort of why I think that's happening in some cases let me turn on the chat sorry um not there's anything coming in is there the chat that's showing that's so funny when I said that nothing's working literally the chat that I see locally has nothing in it so I don't know how I'm going to respond to chat if I can't see any chat um my goodness okay let me let me move some things around okay so I have to literally watch a microscopic version of chat because restream chat isn't working um okay so Justin Bentley thank you so much for sharing the link um Tam man 1992 still failing at life it's still showing up you better be showing up um oh and thanks Justin you share their YouTube link thank you um left you hang I'm I literally can't read the chat I'm just catching up now we're cooking with gas yes I feel like literally everything is on fire in the worst way possible um new to this field but I could relate since aism is common across board yeah so agism is going to be a part of this um for sure I'm not going to focus too much on that specifically but that's uh I think part of what people are starting to when people are getting frustrated by years of EXP experience I think that's an aspect of it so when this originally came up I wanted to make well I address I made a video on code commute sort of addressing why I think years of experience becomes a proxy for for good experience and I need to be careful when I say that because I'm not saying that that means it's true I'm not saying it's a good proxy either I'm saying it is a proxy and if you're wondering what I mean by that my my statement is that I think that people are using years of experience to sort of try and correlate good experience when they're hiring folks now I think for some of us that have been around for a while you could absolutely make the argument like that is you know it's not a causation type of relationship or a guarantee and in fact some people will go with as far as to say it's a very bad proxy for experience but I I was trying to share in my code commute video on this and a little bit in the newsletter article I wrote that I think we've seen this for forever and it's not unique to like software engineering and stuff where you'll have like X number of years of experience required but I think where we're start sorry there's like dog hair or something in my eye and I keep trying to wipe it away and I finally got it I see you get out of here um just like can't see the um I think this happens in other Industries as well but I think especially with so many people uh trying to get their first jobs and stuff they're really really noticing this so um I think one of the reasons that we see more of this happening especially in software development is that especially over the past FSH years um we have a lot more remote work we have a lot more competition when it comes to applying for jobs jobs and if we take a situation where there's like say a thousand applicants to a job and there's one opening the reality is that like a human is likely not going to sit there and go through all of the applications right and if they do they're probably finding a way to do it as optimally as they can and you might be saying well Nick that's unfair and I agree uh but I I'm kind of thinking like hey if you had to go through a thousand applications the reality is you're probably going to try and optimize and you're probably going to try to set some type of bar at some level to say that like if people aren't at least meeting this bar then I'm going to move on now that could mean that you're using systems that will be looking for keywords it might mean you as a human are looking for keywords it might mean that you as a human or whatever automation that you're using if any you're going to say well look okay well you know even though this is entry-level role or a junior role like if we just set the bar higher then we're probably key word probably going to get a better candidate right if someone has zero years years of experience and we say You must have at least one or at least two I bet you there's still going to be some people people that are applying and now maybe that takes us from a thousand applicants to to 200 great like okay now we have 200 and we've we've already sifted through some of them technically right like we got 200 there's 800 people that probably weren't as good so let's keep going so again I'm not saying that this is necessarily good or guaranteeing you to get the best person for the position but I think this is why we see this happen so this is all just a preface to the here so then I followed that up because there was a sort of more dialogue around this where it's like well hey you know not all experience is equal and I think that's the the whole point of saying why you can't just necessarily rely on years of experience and I agree like I think I actually don't think years of experience is a terrible proxy I just don't think that it's something that I would necessarily gate on and necessarily rely on I do think years of experience means you have the opportunity for more experiences and if you have the opportunity for more experiences you have the opportunity for perhaps better experiences but I don't think that they like I don't think you can just make a formula and say you know X years of experience means this level of Excellence I just don't think that makes sense I don't think it translates so the whole article and I would put it into the chat but literally if I pull up chat right now it still says chat is completely empty oh wait Maybe not maybe it's back I see um is it Michelle sherokee I think I have that's the the first message because I'm I'm sharing the chat and you guys can see it on the stream right the first message I have on my chat is from Michelle sherokee on YouTube that says new to this field but I could relate since agism is common across the board literally the first message that came in so maybe that means I can share stuff now in which case let me put the link to the newsletter if you guys want to read it again I've shared this kind of stuff before if you're not new to my streams you know um but the newsletter is completely free you to like for the first month of content there's a pay wall after a month but if you just wanted to go every Saturday and just read whatever the new newsletter is to see what I'm going to be streaming about that's the wrong newsletter one sec this one um then you can just read it for free capital gains it's uh it's going pretty rough to be honest this is probably the worst start to a stream I've maybe ever had in my life but I appreciate folks being here so yeah if you want there's a link to the newsletter um and that's just going to be framing for what's coming up in in the conversations on Monday evenings which is the stream you're on right now so let me go move my windows around again that I can see the chat it's a lifesaver to be able to actually read the chat um cool okay what was I saying 10 years of experience versus 10 years of the same experience so when I put this Artic article together I wanted to talk about um I mean the difference between those two things primarily but I wanted to break down that when we talk about 10 years of the same experience it's been a long day man um 10 years of the same experience my might sound pretty bad on the surface but I think that this is not necessarily a career Ender it's just not something I'd recommend so we're going to go into that then we're going to talk about 10 years of different experiences and kind of see how we can steer ourselves in this direction um Michelle says what can we Define as good experience in software engineering and Tech more importantly how can we display that to a hiring manager when transferring over from uh other career paths um awesome yeah so this is a great question and by the way it is Michelle right Michelle sherokee um so this question I'm only questioning that because I see the name Michelle um and I see Wario and I don't know just wanted to make sure um I think especially when you're coming from other Industries and maybe it's not related to Tech at all you have an enormous leg up on some people that are brand new and that is that if you've worked in other Industries and you've worked in teams of any kind or you've done like worked on delivering projects of any sort or dealing with customers there are so many different types of skills and experiences that you can showcase while other people that are brand new to the industry are trying to like like everyone who's new to it like let's demonstrate our technical skills like that's obviously an important thing for software developers people that have been in the industry doing other things literally can lean on like so many things aside from just the code so you might be in a great spot to absolutely like crush your behavioral interviews right and if you're even before that you're talking about on resumés right because when I talk about this stuff I talk about it in three phases you're going to have the phase where you're trying to stand out in terms of your job applications your resume you're going to have a second phase which is actually interviewing making sure that you can perform well in the interview and then you're going to have your experience on the job and getting started and all the these three things in my mind I would love if they were the same Focus they're not and there's lots of sort of uh audio quality on YouTube is so much better than substack awesome well sorry for if you're watching on substack apparently it's really bad that's because it's coming through my cell phone and that's because substack doesn't support streaming as a first class thing yet um substack doesn't do a lot of things very great but um here here we are so I apologize if you want to watch if you're on substack and you want to watch this apparently with better quality because you get a real microphone um then I would highly recommend just go to Dev leader on YouTube it's the same exact stream might just be way better um and Allan yes you made it I was late because I was stuck in traffic so I was late leaving work I was stuck in traffic because it was like raining like crazy and then there was a tree that was down on one of the streets to get home so was awful just like everything that could and then got here and then uh restream wouldn't connect to any platform it connected to LinkedIn but it's streaming to the wrong event and I can't change it chat wasn't working just just a mess but yeah um Michelle I hope that answers your question I think you can lean into like so many different things that you would have worked on in teams delivering projects navigating difficult situations things like that and even on a resume you can try to highlight some oh sorry Nick need to change over to my icon and maybe the title name Mike is a name oh Mike is the name Michelle was what they call me when I worked in Italy okay sorry Mike I've been calling you Michelle here and okay so Mike maybe I'll just call you Wario um but yeah I think the thing I would call out is if you're focused on the resume part then I think you can call it experiences where you've succeeded working in teams or succeeded delivering challenging projects and uh having some work experiences like that will shine and stand out compared to to other people that are brand new to to like software development because they've never potentially had any job experience right so I I say this because it's I think people overlook this a lot but yes the technical skills are very important but sometimes like it's a it's a bit of a not culture shocks not not the right word but like um an eyeopener I guess when you're trying to build software in teams and you're like I'm working for a business now I'm not just like building projects for school or like coding stuff up for fun like literally I need to deliver things I need to work with other people I have to communicate to other stakeholders lean into those types of things even if you haven't coded before uh professionally so that's what I would recommend so 10 years of experience versus 10 years of the same experience now let's start with kind of the maybe obvious maybe not so obvious sort of situation which is 10 years of the same experience is probably not optimal and when I say same experience in this context I'm saying like literally the same same thing over and over and I think that what can happen is that people get very very comfortable right so you're doing something maybe in the beginning it's not so obvious and then like you kind of find your groove on something and you're just very com right and I should be careful when I say this too I maybe I shouldn't say that it's bad because maybe your work life balance is good maybe your pay is good and you're happy and like that's I should I want to acknowledge and like I maybe I should have been more careful about saying that but like that that I shouldn't call that bad I think that's probably not what I would advise for advancing in your career is maybe how I would say that but truly if you're doing that and you're happy like I am it's not for me to say that that's like that's bad or you shouldn't but 10 years of the same experience when we say that and we're talking back like reflecting on the the work years of experience being a proxy for for good experience you're not getting exposed to other things right so um and I have like some parts of my career are a little bit like this fortunately things get shaken up um but like prog like from a programming language perspective right like I'm a c developer love using C and like good luck get getting me to use anything else right so I have a lot of experience in C and I focused on it but that's going to kind of like pivot us to this next point which is if you're 10 years of the same area of experience but you're going deeper and deeper on it that might not actually be such a you know air quot it's like bad thing in fact that might be a really good thing so for me when I've been focusing on car it's not just that I stayed doing the same thing with C I tried to do more so get more exposure to different net Technologies trying to understand the language better get myself to a point where I can teach other people about C so truly trying to go deeper and deeper with it and we can make the same argument you know pick different Technologies and I'm sure a bunch of people watching this stream may have this kind of situation for a certain technology or something but if we're getting 10 years of experience in the same area but we're not just like satisfied with where we're at but we're like there's more to learn here there's more to go deeper on I'm going to become a true expert on this I think that's something where you're taking even though it's the same you know air quote same experience you're you're truly driving progress and learning so I think that is one way to try and take something that maybe isn't such a positive um setup and and turn it into something more positive now when I think about the first scenario I I use the word complacency and I say complacency because again like I shouldn't say complacency is like is a bad thing for everyone but for me like it's not something that I like and specifically around career growth right I think it's important to get uncomfortable and I think that because if you're in maybe not every uncomfortable situation but I think when you're in uncomfortable situations there's learning opportunities I realized that when I was going to say that I was like I can think of some uncomfortable situations that probably aren't good for learning but I hope you get what I mean right if you're exposed to something that's like a new technology or you're working in an area that's unfamiliar to you odds are you're probably going to learn a lot right an example that I I like to share is like going uh for on Call Engineers right like we do on call rotations for the teams I'm on and that might be very uncomfortable because you're like oh I have to like help support this live service for my team and like I've never had to do that that's uncomfortable but guess what you're going to learn so much doing it and sometimes getting into these uncomfortable situations is a great growth opportunity so I I recommend if you're like finding yourself being complacent even if you don't have these opportunities to move around to different things which is going to be the part we're going to talk about next you might be able to say look like I really like the area that I'm in I like the domain I'm in I like the technology I'm using but like perhaps it's worth trying to challenge yourself like how do you go deeper on some of these things how do you build expertise right not just doing the same thing over and over um there may be situations I'm trying to think outside of the box a little bit here this is like when I'm on when I'm doing Vlog entries for code commute a lot of what I'm doing is uh just like a I don't know I think some people might be here from code commute but I basically do like a stream of Consciousness right so I'm just talking about things and I try to call out like let me think about this from a a different angle like this maybe isn't my my opinion but like let's try to put this other lens on and talk about things from a different perspective and um yeah I wonder if you're finding yourself being complacent and you're like I I I don't know like you want to challenge yourself or approach things in a different way like is there a way where you can you can just try to go deeper on things right so that way at least you're you're exercising like okay you don't have to get so uncomfortable or you're like I have to go switch teams or I have to go to a different company or something like that might be too dramatic and too uncomfortable but you could take the teex stack you're working on and say like I actually don't know how this works under the hood right you might the I did a bit of a brain fart there the thing I wanted to bring up was like I often don't talk about people that are um like solo developers or you know you're running your own I don't know Consulting kind of company it's just you sort of thing you might find yourself in a spot where you're like I'm going to make websites for people I'm going to make apps for people and you find that like you have a bit of a pattern that you're using like I can spin up the same website for someone theme it a little bit differently or build something very slightly different and I could just keep cranking this out and people pay me for it so like there's not like a lot of incentive to to get uncomfortable there right you might just kind of be like this works I'm going to keep doing it so the reason I wanted to bring up an example like that is well you're right that might keep working and that might be a great source of income for you because you found something that kind of is convenient you can do it you can repeat it but like is that going to be forever right is something else going to come along and disrupt that and then are you going to find yourself in this weird spot where you're like hey I don't have that thing anymore people don't need to come buy that from me or or some other thing disrupts it where it's not really feasible for you to do that so if you were at least going deeper on it at least then you might have some different experiences where you can say okay maybe we can try something else instead but if it's just the same experience over and over and over again you're not getting a bre of EXP and you're not really getting depth but now we can start to talk about the bread part as well so I was talking about going deeper a whole lot but let's talk about letters of the alphabet now uh okay before I go into letters of the alphabet Mike has a question how would you go about selecting certain technologies that you could specialize in select an opportunity create select an opportunity or create an opportunity for growth uh cbas developers looking into Russ Integrations yeah I think like this is going to be it's going to be highly dependent right I think what a lot of people try to do is they go let's try to look at the trends so for example like I'm and I'm saying Trends because I see the example in the chat is like cbed developers looking into rust Integrations um rust is pretty trendy you'll have people that are um saying like hey like I know AI is Big so like I'm just I have to go into AI doesn't matter like have to go into AI have to go into machine learning have to go into AI um I I think it it's going to be highly individual right so a lot of the time I don't recommend like ignoring Trends but at the same time I don't think that that needs to drive everything and I think when it comes to specializing in things like and a lot of when I talk about career advancement and like um what's a good way to put this like career longevity is like I think you have to sorry I know it's like corny and cliche but like I think you have to be happy doing what you're doing so to give you I'm just going to give uh you an example uh based on on Mike's kind of Point here right so cbas developers looking to rust Integrations if for example you're like man rust is the trendy thing like I guess I got to learn it and like that's going to be the thing I go deep on or try to specialize in if you were like learning rust and playing with it and sticking around with it for a bit and you're like rust just like sucks the life out of me like I hate using it but you're like I know I have to because like everyone else is doing it like is it worth it and I'm not trying to pick on Rust here I'm just using it as as an example right like is it worth trying to specializing something just because it happens to be trendy or it happens to be something where someone posted on LinkedIn and said did you know that there's only like 10 developers in the world that use this and there's an extreme demand and you're like oh like I guess if I learn that I could get a million bucks a year working in systems that are 50 years old I should do that um that might be a strategy but I think I might recommend like trying to find things that are in alignment with something that maybe is uh slightly trendy maybe but at least like something that you enjoy right finding something that you're good at that you enjoy and you want to like double down on I would recommend that over just like Trend and the reason is like if it's Trend like I'm thinking longevity in your career it doesn't matter if it's a trend if you're like burnt out from doing it after like two years and you're like I hate developing software because I pick something that like really sucks and I just got to keep sticking with it so my recommendation would be like trying to lean into more about understanding what things you enjoy and if you don't know yet I say keep trying don't do python though I don't like python personally it's not my not my preference I'm sure just lost a couple subscribers but just I don't I don't enjoy working with python not I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with it it just like not a doesn't doesn't make me happy when I program and it there's not a lot of languages that do c does the trick but yeah uh Mike I hope that kind of helps answer um and if it does maybe we can jump over to the alphabet I'm just going to put some caffeine into my face because I noticed I I had to yawn and I don't want to be holding in yawns like this the whole time and I made myself yawn okay thanks folks for putting up with me today but I didn't I remember I'll be very be very transparent with all of you so I was driving home from work and it was later than I wanted to leave I got on the highway and was like it's going to be like 50 minutes to get home like I'm going to be late for this stream I already know it this is before I saw the tree that was down and um I'm filming a code commute Vlog and I probably got like 20 minutes into it I was just like I'm turning this off like I was yeah not not in a good mood as you might have guessed and then was thinking like I don't I don't like want to give up on doing this stream not that it's like I know it's not like Earth shattering it's like it's just Nick doing a stream on a Monday like every other Monday but uh it's important to me and then when when things weren't working at the beginning of this I was like even after all of that effort trying to get here and like it won't stream to LinkedIn properly and like like Instagram was broken the I have to check Instagram no one's talking on Instagram uh chat was broken and stuff I'm like why like why am I bothering like this is feels like crap so I appre appreciate all of you being here because that means a lot to me and uh thanks for for tolerating this but let's talk about letters of the alphabet some of you probably know where I'm going with this especially if you did open up the newsletter article you know exactly what I'm about to say but there's this thing you probably heard about maybe it's called the t-shaped developer the t-shaped developer so I spent some time talking about going deep on certain things um but we talk about t-shaped developers it's this idea where you have bread across certain areas or at least different areas and then we think about the letter T right that's the breadth and then you have the depth so something that you're kind of specializing in and you can you can pick slightly different shapes right it doesn't mean you have to specialize in only one thing ever but it's more like you have at least a breadth of experiences and then being able to go deep because if you only go super broad right you only scratch the surface on a bunch of stuff you'll probably find that you have a challenge where it's like you can't really be effective at many things like you could at least you know do a little bit of everything but you're like I can't really can't really do things very well because I only know a little bit of every like a bunch of stuff right um but with a you know t-shaped approach the idea is that you're getting exposed to a bunch of these other You're Building breadth of experience right just to make up an example right like or I guess it's actually like this isn't totally made up just to use an example like I program in C right so that's something that I have decided to go deep on so the net text stack I use c i program an asp.net um I build console applications desktop applications websites mobile apps whatever um but that's kind of like something that I have spent a lot of my career going deep on but I can program in Python I can program in Java I can program in C++ as much as I don't like to uh rust I couldn't even get hello world to work once I pulled the string out of the the console writing like or the print whatever it is but I was like I don't think rust is for me man like I don't think I'm going to survive so like I can I can go across a bunch of things I hate using JavaScript but you know the well and I would prefer typescript over that for sure but so the front end for the uh the application I'm building outside of work brand ghost like that's all in typescript like I can I can navigate it it's not something like everything I just listed there is not stuff like stuff I've gone deep on so I have a breadth of coverage but I I have gone really deep on a bunch of stuff uh that that's sear related um I don't know if I have like any other super deep skill sets like um even stuff like SQL right like SQL I definitely know a lot more SQL than I know like or a comfort level than like JavaScript like I can write SQL queries I can design schemas and stuff but it's not like super deep by any means but the idea here is that you're able to kind of go deep and have a breath of experience so um one way like I already started talking a little bit earlier about how you can start to try and do this and the idea that I was talking about was going deep but I said you have to get uncomfortable with stuff right we can do the same approach with trying to be t-shaped which is instead of just saying how do I go deep on this particular thing CU maybe for some people I think that almost like I don't know maybe maybe not but I feel like that can almost happen naturally so instead of just being totally complacent on something and and not actually advancing your understanding I feel like it's actually more common that people are like hey I like this thing and like I just want to keep learning more about it I'm going to keep practicing with it I'm going to keep going deeper on it so I feel like that's the more natural tendency out of what I was saying earlier so when it comes to getting uncomfortable you have a bunch of opportunities I do use Blazer um I just have not uh spent a lot of time building with Blazer and the team that I'm currently working with on our side project outside of work is uh no one had used Blazer and we have we just have more experience working with a typescript front end but uh reality is like if I were building completely alone like I would build with blazer for that reason which is that I can if you guys don't know what Blazer is it's a it's like a text stack to get C in the front end for development in the web so like that's what I would gravitate towards um when it comes to trying to be t-shaped and get that though we can do this the same concept of getting uncomfortable we got to keep it C that's right and that is like trying to get yourself exposed to these different opportunities so how does that happen well let's chat through a few different things if you're already working somewhere then one thing you can do is like say you're working on a team and so like at Microsoft uh just to give you an example like the two teams that I've managed at Microsoft uh yeah yes uh Maddie this is a weekly call it's at 700 p.m. Pacific every Monday and this is the first time I've been late I think ever so I apologize but maybe Maddie maybe you joined late so maybe you didn't know I'm not sure but it's every every week 7 p.m. Pacific um what was I saying I got too excited from the chat you guys got to you got to help me um oh teams yes thank you thanks brain um say you're working on a team I was talking about teams at Microsoft the teams I've been on at Microsoft have been all like platform based teams it's all backend technology distributed system kind of stuff and um I've had people on my teams where they're like hey like this is cool and all but like I would love if there was an opportunity where I could practice some front-end work and I'm like oh crap like okay um and for context for those I I I need to sometimes clarify I don't know who people even know what I do or who I am or anything so I I work at Microsoft right now I'm a principal engineering manager there been managing engineering teams for almost 13 years uh but one of my like sort of when I think about leading teams and trying to help people grow in their careers like I want people to be challenged I want people to be engaged I want to make sure that they're they're learning and ultimately my goal is to help people grow in their career right if they're doing what what I had just kind of outlined and I can help them do their best work I want to make them do their best work or help them do their best work not make them do anything and help them grow in their career and if someone on my team is trying to tell me like hey I would like an opportunity where I could be doing X I think for some people they might go well we don't do X like figure it out like that's not my problem right you got to you got to work on why instead when I hear someone saying I would like the opportunity to work on X I know that this idea is now in their head it's something they want to do so I have an option which is I can try my best to find a way to support them with that keep them engaged make sure they're challenged make sure they're learning or I can basically turn away from it and say literally not my problem right you want to go learn about that you want to practice that like go do that after hours I just don't think that second strategy or the second approach can I exaggerate a little bit I don't think that's necessarily what I want to lean into so I would much rather go out of my way to say how can I see if there's a a way forward with this so I have had situations at Microsoft at least on my my former team where people were doing this and my my one team is sort of under an umbrella of a couple um larger teams and said hey like on the other teams I said there is frontend work I said is there a possibility where I could have one of my Engineers do some of the work that you guys have planned right maybe something that's not um you know Mission critical in terms of blocking other work but you know still a priority for your team we not just making up work and could they volunteer some of their time to go do that right so it's like it's still going to be helpful for the business it's not made up work and then these individuals can get a little bit more exposure to doing things that they're interested inent so step one or opportunity number one is like could you and if you watch my code commute videos you know that this is my recommendation like 99% of the time have a conversation with your manager and try to express that you are interested in some different types of opportunities if you feel uncomfortable being able to approach your manager about such a thing then I would say you might want to spend time uh improving the working relationship with your manager right easier said than done I realize but uh if you find that it's hard to have any conversation with your manager it's going to be very difficult to get movement at all so focus on that if you've been trying and you're not getting traction maybe it's not a great spot to be so we can try seeing if we stay on the team are there other opportunities that could expose us to different types of things um the example I gave you is like literally when we don't have that option in the immediate team but your you're immediate team you might be looking at what some of the other people are doing and you're like hey like billy gets to go work on the front end and I've been stuck doing the sequel stuff in the back end like we literally have frontend stuff here or reverse it right I've been stuck in the front end doing been moving buttons around and changing you know font Colors by uh a couple numbers and I would love to go learn about that sequel thing like I really would like to have some exposure to that having a conversation and expressing your interest in that I mean could be just a very easy First Step shouldn't say easy very simple I realize that for some people it's not necessarily easy step two is very similar but perhaps it's not looking for an opportunity within your team okay so that might mean you tried option one and it you know not really any any opportunities there that might mean that you skipped option one altogether because you were like I don't know or I don't feel comfortable that I'm going to even find such a opportunity going that that route so if your company is big enough where there's other teams could you see about a team switch now this is already more dramatic right you're like okay now now I understand the discomfort part because switching teams oh man like this this team is pretty good like I'm pretty comfortable here I understand right but like one of the things we talked about was complacency Comfort levels perhaps a team change is a a good opportunity to get out of the comfort zone right that's one such thing now it's a very much what like what I was just talking about it could be you know if you if you have a good working relationship with your manager and you're like hey I'm thinking about doing this they might literally they might support you and say I can try to help get alignment with a different team they can get ahead of it and try to get back fill or something like that so it's not impossible uh sometimes when I talked about this stuff I'm like if I were to be you know to be going through this situation I had someone on my team say hey like I think I want to do something else like I said earlier I would try to make sure that I'm supporting them the reality is if they want to go do something else and I don't support them I fully expect that they will over time get disengaged and eventually they will try to move in that direction anyway so I might as well in my opinion try to support them so team switch is another opportunity and then of course the more dramatic one is changing jobs altogether right that's uh obviously a pretty big uncomfortable step for a lot of people especially with the job market that could be like hey I don't want to have to go through interviewing and stuff again like that's a lot um very stressful difficult to get to land the interviews in the first place but um the whole point of me saying this is like if you're in your comfort zone right now and you're like how do I get exposed to these other things there don't seem to be opportunities everything that I was just walking through was like how do you go create these opportunities now you might have listened to all that and you said that sounds ridiculous like I happen to just be sitting in one spot and I keep getting a whole bunch of different variety great that might be exactly what you want right I don't and I don't know if you're trying to get more bread and get exposure to different things and it's just showing up for you like that's excellent great stuff but some people aren't in that position and they keep getting stuck with the same type of work and they're going I don't know right and this is why I give you the example of people that were on my previous team where they're going hey like I like the team but essentially I know I keep getting work that looks like X and I would really like some front-end work right they're trying to say I'm putting my hand up I would like to create such an opportunity right if they don't talk to me about it and they just keep waiting odds are they're not going to see any frontend work we don't have it on the team So Meta Point here is that for a lot of the stuff um in your career you need to be in the driver's seat okay so when you're passively waiting for different opportunities uh I would say that you're you're you're more likely to be disappointed or stay stagnant now that doesn't I'm not saying that it guarantees that you will be disappointed or guarantees that you will be stagnant but I think statistically it's more likely and I say this as someone who is uh more conservative with changing jobs like the I it's very ironic like becoming complacent is a fear of mine but also um diving into new things and being a complete beginner is also a fear of mine so maybe I'm just afraid of everything all the time but um yeah it's uncomfortable right I I know when I went from where I used to work which was magnet forensics we built digital forensic software I had basically worked in a startup that had grown into a you know midsize company building digital forensics tools in the desk like desktop based primarily and when I was applying to Big Tech it was like this is deploying stuff to hundreds of thousands of machines and data centers across the planet guess who has zero experience doing that this guy right like it's all all wildly uncomfortable so the one thing that I always remind myself though is and it's again easier said than done but I always remind myself every single time you've been put into a situation where you were uncomfortable right you you felt like you were starting from scratch like you're a complete newbie every single time that's happened it has always ended positively it's always ended in a situation where you learned a lot uh I can't say that I become an expert every time that's happened and I don't think that that's necessarily an expectation of mine but I've certainly learned a lot every time it's happened and for the most part gotten to a spot where I was mostly comfortable not comfortable enough to be totally complacent but comfortable enough where I'm like you know what I remember a time where I started doing this and I was panicking I was having impostor syndrome right like I didn't know like am I actually going to figure this out things were really hard to a point where I'm like hey wait I can actually talk about this stuff right like I I actually know what's up I'm not an impostor and uh yeah every every single time in in the history of my career it's always worked that way it's just that it's sometimes hard to remember because it is uncomfortable so this one for the record was intended to be a shorter stream topic I was not planning on missing the first 20 minutes of the stream but uh I'm gonna wrap it up there for like content that was planned and wanted to take this opportunity if there's more questions in uh the chat like please by all means I see there's more people that have joined the stream um oh hello great great streamer um I didn't read the rest of that it just blocked you um yeah if you have any questions like please let me know in the chat uh I otherwise we kind of talk about some of my other channels and stuff I'm doing uh but I would much rather kind of use the last few minutes here to to go through any questions for folks and I will link it again in case people didn't see sorry if you're on sub if you're on substack you know exactly where my newsletter is because you're on substack uh but for other folks I will put it into the chat sorry if you are on LinkedIn this isn't even going to the right place so apologize oh s has a question okay if we have to answer it if we have to as long as it's not math I'll answer it time's ticking though the best part is there's like a people might not notice there's a there's a pretty big delay um Maddie if we share a resume would you mind giving any feedback yes um so Maddie if you want um I'm assuming if you you're watching this on YouTube you're at my main Channel Dev leader if you open up the playlist I have or one of the recent videos that's on resume reviews you don't have to watch the whole thing but um in the intro to those videos I explain how you can submit a resume for for the chance for it to be reviewed which is a great reminder thank you um because right now I'm doing that as a chat too powerful I'm doing that as a sort of a a free thing and I want to be transparent about this because uh I want to provide that opportunity where I can review people's resumés I will basically I'm turning it into a video it will be completely Anonymous so I redact all your personal information uh come companies and universities or college unless the the company is like a you know Microsoft or Facebook or something big but if you're like you know I worked at a company down the street and it's like I will try to keep you as Anonymous as possible uh I do not do resume roast I don't make fun of people uh if anyone submits a resume it is 100% my intention to offer you constructive criticism I want to help so that means that if you submit it I'm not just going to say great job like you're the best uh I will try to call out what I think that you are doing well from my perspective and things that I would try to improve uh so if you want to see what that's like go watch one of the resume one of the resum review videos like I said instructions are there the reason I'm uh elaborating on this a little bit more is because right now that's completely free and I don't know if people realize this but like I don't I don't be making lots of money from YouTube uh I make a couple of dollars a day um I can I get a roast I'm not roasting resumes man I'm not doing it I don't I don't like uh I don't like making fun of people unless um or or ways that people have done things I don't like doing that um because I do it sometimes as a defense mechanism when people try to pick on me I get very mean and I don't like doing that because it feels uh quite frankly feels disgusting after so when PE like as a content creator um I will often have people that are trying to make fun of things and uh Hey thank you so much I appreciate that see here um you know I don't to keep it short I just uh T man submit your resume go watch one of the videos on on YouTube and uh see the instructions I won't roast it but I will give you constructive criticism but yeah I don't I don't like like ripping into people because it it feels bad after my goal is to help okay so you can submit that uh sad okay I'm not wasn't ignoring your question I promise how can I best leverage support engineering Solutions engineering roles is a move forward in your career how to context in your opinion would it be better to gain experience in a variety of roles before moving into leadership or go deep so this is a good question um when you talk about leadership um couple things come to mind right I think okay let's let's clear some things up I guess so when we talk about leadership um leadership is all about people so what I would say is to to your question specifically like to gain experience in a variety of roles before moving into leadership I don't think that is a bad idea I don't think it's a a requisite I don't think you need to do that um but I like if I if I gave you the framing that leadership is going to be all about working effectively with people if that's the direction you want to go like into management and and working with people being a people leader it's all about people so what I would say is if you're like hey should I get a variety of experiences so that I have more technical knowledge like that could be nice in terms of being able to relate to other people and other roles and things like that so it doesn't hurt I don't think it's a requisite though I think what you would want to make sure is like do you enjoy mentoring people like uh are you skilled at that have you spent time doing that um you know can you navigate difficult conversations can you like the mentoring part like there's a whole lot about just working with people that I think is very important to you know get exposure to and I say that because when I I wanted to say get experience doing and I understand that sometimes finding those experiences or trying to create them is challenging like uh one example is like I try to make sure that I give Engineers on the team uh that are you know aspiring to be senior at least like if we're getting interns or onboarding new uh new Engineers like try to make sure that they can buddy up and like and really be mentors for them but um the other reason I bring it up is like if you haven't had exposure to that and then you find yourself in situations where you're like literally trying to Mentor other people and like help help them be successful you might be like man this is tiring like I would rather just code and uh yeah I don't I just wanted to say that it's a lot of peopling so if you're interested in peopling uh getting experience doing other roles could be helpful I don't think it's a requisite and if you are going to do that my takeaway for you would be like those experiences might help you be more relatable to those roles and understand them better so that could be nice so hopefully that helps I think it's a great question um 25 year educator every quarter is an uncomfortable experience yeah keep reminding myself during the learning process yeah awesome well thanks Mike um sah here was saying do you prefer I think this is meant to say Entity framework core do you prefer end core or writing raw sequel Entity framework uh or raw sequel uh raw sequel for sure um so funny story about this actually from earlier today I have made um oh says I love people and good I think if you enjoy Ling then working towards leadership is a is a thing some people see that as the only path forward right like I am a junior engineer I want to be senior and like I have to become a manager at some point you will absolutely hate your life if you are like I want to I enjoy the IC path I love coding I love building things and being hands on and then you become a manager and someone's like hey by the way you have to go help have this conversation between two Engineers that aren getting along and you're like why am I doing this it's a lot of lot of fun um I I'm saying that factiously but like uh it is one of the most rewarding things for me in my my life so because I do enjoy even though some of the things are challenging uh the funny story about Entity framework cor and sequel um okay so I haven't written blog articles in a long time when I started taking content creation more seriously uh I was writing almost one blog article a day for a period so I had I think I published like 300 plus articles in like a year and a half or something like that and um so I have a a big list of blog articles and stuff on my website and I use my social media scheduling platform called brand ghost to share out my blog articles and so um so I got an email at work today this morning is it this morning last night it was before bed last night so I get this email and it says hey I read your blog article and I was like what blog article why am I and what like I don't write blog articles at work why am I getting emailed at work I read your blog article about and it was essentially around like how I was using Dapper which is a an o M where you actually write your SQL queries out and I was basically saying like I like using Dapper over Entity framework core and then I realized the email was from someone who at Microsoft who works on the Entity framework core team and I was like oh like uh that's that's awkward um but they're actually interested in talking to me about my experiences uh kind of like to be if you think about it I'm someone who says like I don't enjoy using Entity framework core I don't think it's bad by any means I don't enjoy using it so they're kind of taking the perspective hey look this person's a friendly they work at Microsoft they don't enjoy using Entity framework cor we should try to understand why like we can make stuff better right so I wanted to share that because I thought it was funny number two I think it's really cool that they were like hey like we want to learn from people that don't enjoy doing it right like if you prefer something over what we're building isn't that a really good opportunity to learn about that also they were actually super funny and friendly um and then they're actually inviting me to go speak at one of their um what I can't remember what they called it but it's like a monthly I think it's a monthly meeting they do uh and I think it's streamed so that will be pretty cool it was B it was like this really awkward moment where I was like oops like and I was like I I promise I don't hate anyy framework core in my my response um but overall I think just a super cool opportunity um but yes I do prefer writing sequel over Entity framework core for now apparently um cool I think that's all the questions uh so here again I wanted to say thanks very much uh for the tip there um oh I didn't finish didn't finish my resume thing I got sidetracked sorry my brain's all over the place sunna hello from kick so with the resume thing and let me kind of I'll maybe I'll wrap up the stream with a couple thoughts here um yes you did notice that I'm streaming on Kick and I will block you too many bots in this chat so with the resume reviews um soona I I don't know the answer to that that's a weird it's a question that's very difficult to answer I can't agree to that if I don't know what you're actually asking me to do with the resume reviews on my main Channel um the reality is that they take time for me to do which I don't mind I'm already making videos but um they also cost me money so like uh what the point I was making earlier is like I don't like yes I have YouTube ad Revenue but for those of you that aren't a YouTube Creator I make a couple of dollars a day from YouTube it costs me on my main channel for editing cost this is not like my time I just mean purely on editing it's almost like depending on the month like 500 to ,000 a month is what it costs me and I make a couple of dollars a day so for me to go review a resume I'm literally paying between $50 to $100 to go review someone's resume so I'm not complaining I'm just saying that for now it's going to be kept open couldn't find um here let me I'll link the stuff in the chat when I go to share my screen so sorry about that Maddie um for now the resume stuff will remain open but I may eventually put that behind a members only type of thing and I just want to be transparent about that because like it's literally like people pay money to have their resumés reviewed and I I'm literally paying to review resumés and it feels kind of backwards so um helps support the channel lets me do what I continue to do um but for now it will remain open so let me go ahead and shift gears over here I just want to refresh a couple things before I share my screen okay let's go over okay so let's start back over here so if you haven't gone to where the newsletter is um so soon sorry I don't have time for uh websites to review them so I apologize not not for me um if you have not seen the newsletter article that the topic was based on I'll put it in the chat again uh a friendly reminder if you don't want to subscribe to the newsletter because you're like getting emails annoying and dumb I don't like that don't do it totally cool um I would just say that if you enjoy these live streams which I do every Monday at 7.m Pacific if you want to know what the Topic's going to be about it's like 99% likely that it will be on whatever the newsletter topic is so in this case it's what's on my screen 10 years of experience versus the 10 years of the same experience I will write up my newsletter article will sometimes link to relevant videos but that's that um next this is the sales part I have courses available on dome train um if you're interested in that so it's not just C programming courses and unfortunately yeah unfortunately these ones were free there's a bundle they were free until uh actually no they still are free one sec it's not the end of the month yet one sec they're free so if you want to learn C for free I was ready to deliver bad news but these courses are literally free it's 11 and2 hours of learning C from basically nothing uh sorry if you're on substack you can't see my screen that I'm sharing so I apologize uh but it's at doet tr.com if you want to learn how to program in C those ones are free otherwise if you're interested in some of the other courses I have I've paired up with Ryan Murphy on a few of them that are career related so if you're like Nick I don't want to learn C even though it's free don't that's cool but we do have career ones uh we have soft skills getting promoted behavioral interviews uh we have another one that's coming so another one that's about to launch soon and another one we're filming so check those out if you're interested I have my main YouTube channel which is Dev leader I will put that in the chat as well some of you are already there because that's where you're watching the stream from but you'll see here's where the resume reviews are so I'm just going to to link one of the videos okay so this is a resume review video if you watch the beginning of that then you'll see how to submit your resume if uh if you watch the whole thing that'll give you an idea of how I approach resumé reviews um and hopefully you see that I'm not like picking on people or roasting them or anything like that just trying to be helpful but you'll see an example of how I'm trying to give constructive criticism as well and then finally my other YouTube channel is called code commute I will put a link to that in the chat as well and code commute is my Vlog Channel where I basically for the most part am driving to and from work and I make software engineering videos this one I'm going to show it because it's fun but you can see it's a 360 video so you can like look around I have to fix this still I don't know why there's a seam but Isn't that cool right that's that's my floating head and then you can kind of look around what I'm driving I didn't even know YouTube supported this but people were saying hey it'd be really cool if you got a 360 camera so anyway um when it's not raining I try to use this and it makes it kind of fun but you'll hear me rambling about software engineering stuff and finally I'll just link out brand ghost so if you're interested in creating content or just posting to social media brand ghost is the SAS that I am building on the side this is what I used to post all of my social media content if you're on substack by the way brand ghost. because I figure if you're on substack you might be more interested as a content creator um it's actually completely free to do crossposting and scheduling literally um we have paid for plans that are more advanced for content creators that need more but um literally if you like I just want to post to all my social media platforms for free sign up it's totally free no strings attached the idea is that we want to make sure that we can become a tool that new content creators want to use because I was a new content creator uh roughly 26 months ago I created content starting in 2013 for a bit gave up and then at the start of 2023 I said I'm going to start taking it seriously I'm going to make three YouTube videos a week I'm going to write blog articles I'm going to post a social media every day and I built brand ghost so that I could do that so brand ghost is literally what I built alongside all of my social media content Creation in terms of scheduling all of that to be able to support what I do now I'm able to write a Weekly Newsletter I do over 150 social media posts a week that I don't schedule I've written them all myself but I don't schedule them manually ever um I don't post to social media platforms directly I post through brand ghost unless I'm replying to comments sometimes it's still outside I'm able to do uh between 10 to 15 YouTube videos a week now the only thing that I've given up is blogging with a with a b and I gave up blogging because I'm spending my time writing more code in brand ghost instead of blogging now so uh I think that's my Spiel though so if you're interested in posting the social media for free check that out and uh if you are a more serious content creator or you're aspiring content creator shoot me a message on LinkedIn I'm happy to chat through it um it can teach you how to use brand ghost like I said for free and that way you can build some momentum I promise you that I understand how challenging it is to build momentum in the beginning because you're like everyone says you have to be consistent and post every day but I can't think of something to post and it's such a pain in the ass to post and which platform should I post to and I'm here to say you can post to literally all of them at the same time and I have strategies that will help you post and then basically build momentum so that the next month when you go to post you already have a bunch of posts ready to go so like I said if that sounds interesting reach out to me on LinkedIn um I ignore a lot of random connection requests because I get a lot of random ones but feel free you can send like an inmail it should be totally open and you can say hey I wanted to know about brand ghost I was watching the stream and I'm happy to chat so thanks so much folks again my apologies for the rough start I sincerely do appreciate you being here it means a lot to me and I'll see you next week at the same time time