Software Engineers Need...BRANDING! Interview With Anna Miller

Exactly. I want to code. I want to spend time with my family. I want to play video games. Great. Good for you. >> That's what I want to do to be honest. >> Yeah, >> it sounds like the dream. Add some dogs in there. Yeah. Like I'm set. >> Yes. Exactly. >> As software engineers, I know that we gravitate to all of the technical aspects of our roles, right? We're focused on software architecture, how we program and design things, how we're going to test things, the performance, all of those things are so critical to what we do as software engineers. However, I think that there's a big missed opportunity as software engineers that a lot of us are not focusing on. And in general, the big umbrella of all of this stuff is all of the people and human skills that we have access to. Hi, my name is Nick Cantino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft. If you've read my other content or watch my other videos, you'll know that aside from talking about C, which I love, I also like to talk about general software engineering concepts. And one of the most important things I talk about is communication. Now, in this video, I had an awesome guest, Anna Miller. I think you're going to love this conversation. It's probably not what you expect, though. We're going to be talking about branding as software engineers. And you did hear that, right? Branding. I know it's not code. I know it's not writing tests and shipping software, but branding and how that's going to be beneficial for you as a software engineer. Whether or not you're just starting off in your career, whether or not you're trying to switch roles, or whether or not you're just trying to establish better communication and collaboration at work, I think you're going to love this chat. So, stick around and let me know what you think in the comments. I'll see you next time. >> Branding is a spectrum. So >> yeah, >> um where you are on that spectrum of what you talk about, how often, with who really depends on some of your goals, short, medium, and long term. And if you're zero years in the industry from a boot camp versus five years in the industry, um yeah, that's very very different. So, and then there's branding internally, how you show up with your team. Um, how you network internally, how you how you uh establish relationships with stakeholders, with marketing, with sales, with product, do they like you? Can they depend on you? >> Right. Yeah. Well, it's super interesting. People I don't think they realize it seems like it's a different purpose. And maybe sorry maybe the purpose is different but like what you're doing is branding right so whether or not that's external for getting a job or internal for building relationships I think that's that's really uh that's important so um maybe a a I guess a question for you is it seems like more recently having some type of branding for yourself as a software engineer is becoming more important and um I guess it's not like it was never important important before but it seems like it's just a lot more relevant now like what kind of patterns are you starting to observe with that and why it seems more necessary now than ever. >> Yeah. So the first thing we want to talk about is the the basic understanding that the hiring systems in tech are broken and this is no one's fault. No one did anything. This is simply a system that has been created back when things were in person and there were geographical boundaries. Also, people could potentially go into an office. They could call a company. You could probably find very few companies that you could do this with. Now, >> sure. >> What startup are you going to call? What who are you going to call? The founder. >> Who? Why? their cell phone number. Yeah. >> What are you going to hunt them down after work? Like no, things are really distributed which creates a very different system of work. So we have this like future of work, right? Where we're working remote, there's no central point for communication. And this basically like you know the concept something broke the internet. Um, this broke the hiring system. >> Sure. >> But not like as a funny joke, as like a really difficult uh true effect for >> right >> as much as long as we can imagine. And why that is is because sending in applications without the geographical constraints like 10 times the amount of application. So if someone's looking for a senior engineer in New York City to work in Midtown, there's only certain amount of people that could possibly fulfill that role and that location. But now you have the same company opening it up to remote or even hybrid. How many people are going to apply? It could be 10x, 50x, 100x the number. That's what we're seeing hundreds to thousand applications within a couple of days. And don't even talk start get started on junior jobs. Those are like honey for bees. So >> sure. >> Um basically my um recommendation is to basically forget the job boards in the short to medium term. >> Okay. When starting your job search, when starting a career move, you really want to evaluate the ecosystem where you want to move into, which means the industry, the products, the people there, any media there. So, there's probably podcasts related to healthtech if you want to do that. There's companies in healthc startups and founders and um people online talking about it, creators, right? So the ecosystem and then you want to plug into that ecosystem if you're not already for example unic are in big tech right if you want to stay in that space of big tech you just continue networking with people in that space and you will get referrals and interviews no problem why because you're plugged in people are recommending you of course you have the work experience that's kind of goes without saying >> but whether you have zero work experience or like 10 years of work experience. If you're not seen, which is the branding part and the networking part, you're simply not going to get in front of people to interview. >> Interesting. Yeah. I And I like the part >> that's the framing of what's happening right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. I like this part that you mentioned too about um like I hadn't It's funny. I even though we've been exposed to it for a few years now, I hadn't really considered the fact that these job positions that are opening up like the fact that the geographic boundaries don't exist for a lot of them like like purely means that you have so many more applicants that can come in. Um I feel like that should have been obvious to me, but I was almost looking at it the opposite way, which is like, hey, as an applicant, you have so many more opportunities, but that's kind of it, right? like it's the same the same thing happening, but I I I guess I wasn't really paying attention to the fact that it just means so many more people can kind of like swamp applying to different positions that are open. So >> definitely a big factor there. >> It's really important to remember that it's not like more opportunities suddenly emerged. You're not going to apply as a machine learning engineer if you have no machine learning experience, right? It's not like these crazy opportunities are just going to pop up for you, right? you're only going to be matched with the opportunities that you're qualified for at a baseline and then do the technical assessments and the interviews and then behavioral etc. Right? So on top of that, companies aren't hiring differently. They just don't know who to look for or look at. Um but companies always wanted to hire and continue to hire people they like and know from referrals. That's always been the case, but now it's increased. That's where branding comes in to show up as that person that gets referred. Um and then the second thing is um companies always want people with direct one-to-one experience. So if you worked on a you know signup app for a medical office and another company that's somewhat relevant or directly doing this competitor. Yes, they will want to interview you because you're so relevant and they will have like 1% you know like ramp up you know need uh they will have very they will require much less time to to get you ramped up because you know the industry you know any compliance issues whatever >> so companies always wanted that it's not like it's changed but now it's harder to find those people for the companies and those people to be seen >> for sure I think something I feel like in the past like I've definitely hired people that did not have the the relevant experience but I was like hey they'll be coachable teachable because they meet a lot of other characteristics but one thing that happens when you have the like we always want that kind of thing as a priority that's great if you have the experience so when you have so much more volume of applicants it's really hard to ignore that you might have applicants that are just like I've literally done this exact same thing before and I have all these other qualities that you're probably looking for on top of that. Like the bar just like moved up a lot. >> Yeah. And that's also what we're seeing. We're seeing unnecessary assessments, stupid personality tests, like ridiculous asks, and in my opinion for um for interviews before the interview, before you even talk to anyone. Like I don't personally agree with that, but companies are doing that because they are themselves struggling to figure out who to interview and they're honestly not doing a great job with just putting on more assessments. But anyways, um to show up as that person with who's coachable, who really shines through their in their uh behavioral in how they show up so their personality really comes out like that's where the branding comes out, right? And that's what really helps you get the referrals and like connect with people. And all I'm talking about, so I just want to level set. Like all I'm talking about is just having conversations about topics that you're passionate about. Like that's it. This is not like a mis a big mystery process. It's just, hey Nick, I know that you have a course in C and I'm really interested in this um technology. I'm building a project on it. Can I share it with you? That would be the start of a conversation. >> Yeah, that's really powerful. Actually, the idea of being able to have almost like casual conversations about the things you're passionate about is super huge. Like I can remember uh even before Microsoft, right, working at a startup when we were interviewing people, it it sounds totally cliche to be like we just want passionate people, but truly like we were >> Yeah. >> Like this this other f like we always we fell into the trap of like oh we're like a big family. I know people are like, "You can't say that. That's so awful to say now." But >> but like it it for us it felt like that. I remember being like at the beginning of this startup and it felt like that. Like we were all working all the time. It was definitely a lot of work. But having people that were interviewing if we're like if we don't feel like they're passionate about something, it's automatically like this is kind of weird like we want like you need to kind of match our energy almost and >> Yes. Yes. It's it's tricky because like how do you when you're hiring people, how do you like have you know the check box? Do you match our energy? It's kind of weird, but >> that's what interviews are for, right? And also it's really hard to like talk about because I call it vibes. A lot of people talk about like energy attraction attracting things and stuff, but like at the end of the day, every company has a culture and if you're not a good culture fit, it just isn't a good match. there are other companies that have similar cultures. So what I've seen companies do is start to put words to some of their like cultural dynamics. So maybe they talk about we like to move fast, which is another word for we can build something and then throw it away and you should be okay with that. Um or what's another interesting one? I don't know. transparency or something which is >> sure >> a strange one you know sometimes it's good sometimes bad. Um but you know it's like in dating you can't just like know who the person is from their profile or even a few dates. Um, of course that's more complicated and um has a lot more elements, but the interview process is where you just understand the basics of can I communicate with this person and can they hear me and just respond like at a minimum, right? >> Yeah, it's uh it's pretty fascinating like the take I don't think a lot of people think about that when they go into interviews, right? Especially like as software engineers, it's like I'm going for an interview. Have I done every leak code problem possible? Have I done all of my system design stuff? Like >> yeah, >> you're going to you're going to get questions like that. Sure. But the other factor that's so important in an interview, and I hope interviewers are thinking about this, too. Like you're trying to gauge if you can work with this person. If you're not asking questions about like, do I feel like this will be a good working relationship? and trying to to measure that, I feel like you're probably not setting yourself up for success or the person for success that you're interviewing. So, it's a big factor for sure. >> So, I was wondering at what point for you did you see that difference in yourself about how you approached um your own uh digital presence and branding and interviewing and in a way it's all tied together. >> Yeah, for sure. So, I I took a break So if I start in the beginning I guess uh there was a break and I'll explain that a little bit but I think in the beginning for me I wanted to do like the the personal branding part for me was about learning in public first of all and the second part that was a bit adjacent to that was like I'm at a startup uh we're growing we're we were in a tech hub so in Kitchener Waterlue in Ontario there's it's all like it's startup community for people that aren't aware of where that is or what it's known for. Blackberry, like the the phone before the iPhone, uh, everyone maybe forgot that or something, but that was like that's where Blackberry was. Um, so there were lots of startups. There's, you know, it's a university town and stuff, so a lot of tech going on. And I just remember being like, hey, I'm going to try learning in public because I was kind of jammed into this management role. I have no idea what I'm doing. So learning in public should be fun. And hey, if I'm online and I start to have a social presence, like that's kind of cool maybe from a recruiting perspective because I'm going to be again having some type of presence. Now >> what g what gave you that idea? I think that in itself is uh pretty unique given the fact that you do focus so much on software engineering and it is a highly technical kind of work. Like how did that come to you? Yeah, the I I think what I would what what the reality is for me and what I would want to like recommend to people might be a little bit different, I guess. But for me, it was purely like I'm uh the learning in public part was so much like I'm going through a weird transition where I need to balance coding stuff and managing and I don't know where to go look for information on that. Uh I'm guaranteed not the only person that's been kind of exposed to this type of thing and I felt fortunate that I had a really good uh HR manager and became VP of uh HR. Um she was super supportive throughout my journey but I just remember being like you know she would recommend me like books and stuff on management but there wasn't really like a hey you code things and now you have to manage people what do you do? So for me it was purely like I think if I start talking about this I can help other people. So it did and selfishly like I think it will help me too because it will force me to be accountable and maybe that's the a good takeaway for other people right is um yes like your learning in public can help others. I think you have to be careful about not trying to say look I'm an expert but like this is me learning. I think that's important, but it's also a bit of an accountability thing depending on your personality type, right? So for me, I was trying to say I want to put out I was doing like weekly article roundups. So it made me go read articles on management and then at the end of the week I'd go post a list of them and stuff. So I think that to your to your question, I think it was really about selfishly I want to learn and um you know uh not selfishly help other people going through a similar experience. >> Yeah. And that makes so much sense because anything that you post online you naturally as a human want feedback and engagement. >> Right. >> Right. Um, and another area that all humans share, another motivation is the interest to help each other. And we don't always know how to do that. We don't always know what can be helpful. So what's interesting to me is understanding this dynamic that if you share about who you are as the person, maybe what you're learning, what you're reading, your opinions on things, um your humor, whatever it is, your hobbies, if you share your real story, your real being, like that is how people learn. So we've learned like that for thousands of thousands of year like hundreds of thousands of years as long as humanity existed stories right and um doesn't have to be like a huge set of paragraphs or like a huge story or anything but little tidbits of who you are and showcasing that like that's how people learn from your experience and about who you are and that's how you help each other in a little bit um online, right? And that kind of goes back and forth between someone sharing about themselves, then you share about themselves, and then you kind of connect and stuff. Um, so I kind of look like to look at it like that. >> I think that's a that's a great great framing for it, right? So the I took a break like a huge break uh like 10 10ish maybe 11 years between when I did I gave up, right? I shouldn't have, but I gave up in the middle. And um when I kind of started back at it, um a lot of that was motivated from seeing other people that had stuck around with it for an even shorter period of time and seeing like, wow, these people are so successful at sharing information, educating, like obviously they have like financial success and that's that's great for them, right? But they literally just started being consistent and sharing. And I thought like for me, and when I say this, I don't want it to sound like I'm uh minimizing, you know, their their capabilities or anything, but it just seemed like they just kept showing up and they kept, you know, doing what they're doing. >> They built their audience. They built all of that trust with the people that follow them and like now they are you know they're authorities in the space and I think that was so powerful for me to see and when I was reflecting on it I was like why did I give up >> if I just make a decision to start now and be consistent I could also be in a position where I am able to like do what I wanted to do in the beginning educate share and help other people and now I have all of those years of experience to back it instead of just being like, "Hi, I have no idea what I'm doing. Here I am learning in public." >> Well, there's 15 year olds, you know, sharing their experiences and there's 40 and 80 year olds and everyone has something to share, right? Um, and again, it's a spectrum of like what you do with your branding and how you show up, um, based on wherever you are in your life. Like, if you're not looking for a new role, if you have a great company and great pay and good team and you actually want to move up within that company or navigate there, you can think of your branding as supporting your career growth within the company. If you want to make a move, then your branding might be slightly more about some things that would showcase your expertise, right? That maybe would show up for recruiters or other engineers that maybe competitor companies, something like that. Um, you could also do really long-term goals of like, okay, in five years I want to completely quit working at a company and do freelance consulting fractional work. >> So, you could be building up a network that you can tap into later. >> So, there are so many ways to look at branding. Um, but just to like simplify things, one, it's okay to connect branding to financial goals. It's 100% fine. And it's important to know that it's not like one and done or like, oh, if I make one post, it's going to make this much money. It's a much more gray area. Um, and it's more about the consistency like you were saying, but it's totally fine to have that connection. And let's say you want to run your own business or side hustle at some point, branding yourself today will enable you to do that as soon as you want. um essentially. And then the second thing, just to simplify branding, it's really about like showcasing what you really care about >> and finding ways to to share that. >> Yeah. The I think you kind of called it out again, right? The the long-term there's a huge like long-term play when it comes to branding. Um the consistency part's huge. Uh there's a couple things I wanted to touch on that you were saying that I think are really good. Right. So, one like on monetizing or you know like tying it to financials. Yeah, nothing wrong with that, right? It doesn't have to be that. But it also can be that too. There's it's not like wrong to say I want to build up a brand trying to see if I can monetize things. Like nothing wrong with that. Um I think sometimes you have to explore too because you might not even know what's possible. Like full transparency uh what's so it's April now. So, I've been doing the content creation part of my journey consistently, not the stuff in 2013, but it's been 16 months now, and I've had one opportunity that's come up in 16 months where someone offered like, would you be interested in doing like a paid for piece of content? One opportunity in 16 months. If I would have been relying on that from the beginning and saying, this is the only thing I can do. um you know why hasn't it shown up after one week of posting stuff I would have given up and been like this is impossible but I have seen enough other people stick with it and see success long term so I wanted to mention that cuz I think that's a huge factor for anyone that watches this and they go you know what I'm going to start and then they get a week two weeks a month in and they're like >> they lied like this isn't easy like why aren't I you know rolling in money or something like it's not it's Well, it doesn't take one day to create a relationship online. You know, >> relationships online take longer to develop and they take multiple touch points because of the low contacts of online. Like if we were in a room together, we would have so much more context to go by um including better tone of voice, um body language. We would understand just concepts better because we'd have more um elements at play that are more physical. So >> people don't realize how much the body language part is huge. Like I literally talked to my manager at work today on a video 101 and we brought this up. Like you can see this part of my body. You can't see like from whatever here down. You can't tell if I'm super anxious. Maybe this whole time I've been bouncing my legs because I'm very nervous to talk to you. You can't tell if maybe my hands are down and I'm fidgeting. Like I know these are like a maybe they sound a little bit contrived but I don't think people really realize until they experience in person versus being remote >> and focusing on body language cuz as a manager and I'm talking to people and having difficult conversations >> that's a huge part that I have to rely on to gauge like how is this conversation going body language >> sorry to interrupt I just wanted to mention the body language part is huge >> it is and one thing that does work on video which you could actually use as a signal is if someone touches their neck or face because you could actually see above and that determines kind of how they're feeling or if they're unsure or something like that. >> Interesting. So, if you've never noticed that if someone pauses in discussion of something that you probably know is a challenging topic or they don't feel sure about or maybe you're just talking about like launching code and something's going wrong or something, >> they might touch something for self soothing above the shoulders. >> And I noticed like I do this a lot when I go to think or so so you just pose something that was interesting. I go I start to do this. I'm holding I'll talk like this. I'll hold my face. I'm I do like a lot of hand gestures to my face and stuff. >> I'm going to try to cross my arms and see how I can react >> because when we're thinking we could have different gestures to support our thinking, but on video it just comes without other contacts. it just comes off like um a little more negative or like you don't have like that contact. So there's a lot of so many things that we as a society have to relearn and um you know creating relationships online always always takes time. Um, >> and you want to establish touch points with different people over time instead of just one conversation. >> A good example that I can think of recently that's come up because this is probably relevant for maybe hopefully not for a lot of people that are watching this, but something that I've seen come up a lot. Like I I put that I work at Microsoft in basically everything, right? Like part of that is a bit of a I can establish some type of authority in the space to say, "Hey, look, like I work in the industry, like I have some experience here." But the other thing that that does is is it is is it attracts people that are like, "I would like to work in big tech." And that's great. Like, you know, I know there's a lot of people that are interested in that, but to your point about the time it takes to build relationships, like a piece of advice for people is that what doesn't work very well is no communication with me. and then messaging me saying, "Hey, can you refer me to Microsoft >> because no, I cannot. I don't I don't know you." And then I feel bad because I'm like, "I know you want to work here, but like >> yeah, >> I can't do that. I don't I just don't know you." So, like, if the relationship was built, like I won't even refer people unless I've worked with them, you know, for years or something. But, >> you know, even to to build up a network, if they're like, "Can you help me with something?" Yeah, I want to help. But like if you start demanding things or something like you got to work on the communication skills and build up the relationship a little bit. >> It's a really um complex world that we live in with all the digital communication. And when I personally started networking, it was in person. I would go to events. I would meet people. I would get their email. I would email them and say, "Hey, we had a great conversation. I'd love to get on a coffee chat with you in real life at a cafe um at the city that we both live in and to talk more to learn more about you and your profession and stuff." So, I took the exact same strategies and applied them to LinkedIn >> and a lot of other people did. And for those that this concept comes naturally, that's how they've always done it. Um, but the networking strategies, whether in person or in LinkedIn, it's not like the strategies are different. It's the ability to like understand the dynamics online >> throws people off. um like the branding and the networking play hand in hands. So for example, I like to think of branding as like having smaller conversations with big groups of people and you're like sharing different stories based on whatever topic, right? So maybe you can have a >> short a small conversation about uh you know this one time you did this one thing at Microsoft and that could be a post. You could use that same post or story in a conversation in a group of people, right? So that's kind of one area. And then how you take that into direct messages or connection calls is you bring that story up or you mention it when relevant or you start a conversation based on a topic that someone commented. So essentially LinkedIn is like a huge networking party that never ends and people are like where do I start? Who do I approach? Right. >> Yeah. Very cool. I think so you had mentioned something earlier too that I thought was really really interesting because I hadn't thought about it this way until you said it the way that you did and it was essentially talking about like I think a lot of people including myself before this conversation when we think about branding it's very much like I think this feels very relevant for people that are watching they're like okay I'm new in career and I want to get some more visibility I'm trying to switch jobs like externally like I want some more visibility But you mentioned that the brand the approach to branding the reason why you might want to brand also works very much internally in your role like how you're working with stakeholders. Um I personally like to talk about communication and stuff and soft skills people skills in software engineering. This feels like it's very relevant. So from your perspective when it comes to you know say you're a software engineer you're you're working in your role when it comes to branding like what what types of interactions do you see the branding showing up as being very valuable as a software engineer internally? >> So internally first you want to establish good communication with your most immediate team. So that's your other software engineers. Please talk to your QA. Don't ignore them. Your QA >> is one of your best friends if you have a QA. If not, then you're probably all doing QA and it's important to do that anyways. >> Secondly, designers, talk with designers. Have an open mind. You don't have to be a designer, but if you actually want to, you know, um, establish a better relationship, ask them a few questions now and then to actually have a conversation. You know, again, you don't have to be like an expert in design, but you can ask a question like, "Hey, um, how is this button supposed to work? I'm not clear on how it relates with XYZ." You know, or you could say, if you're a front end engineer to a designer, hey, I actually think that this would look much better if it moved a little more to the center because of these other constraints. So literally share your opinion in the most relevant way possible. Um, and then when you're extending out, um, to other stakeholders, um, you know, your product manager probably can be really helpful for you if you just ask a couple questions occasionally and if they, you know, give you requirements or give you like the vision or strategy, uh, try to be involved. You know, maybe uh, read the documents beforehand. Um, if if you do this, you're already ahead of the game because I know it may not seem like 100% relevant to shipping code, which you know depends on the team, but if you are more engaged, you can learn from them. So the strategy that I like to think about in networking internally is how you're going to establish relationships by learning from all of them which is literally the same thing when you network externally. So always be learning right. Um and then when you even go further out um with other stakeholders like marketing, business, um operations, finance, whatever people are using your products, maybe make it a point to introduce yourself and have like a short conversation. Ask them what they care about. Ask them what their hobbies are. I don't know. Try to make some small talk. See what they talk about. Um what's really cool is we have Slack. And on Slack, there's all these channels for like cultural things like >> um we got a cat, right? So now my boyfriend's in a Slack channel for cat people in his work. >> Sure. Yeah. >> So now he has access to even more people and he might not work with on a daily basis, but they have cats, so he can talk with them. So basically, use the same strategies that you would when you're searching for people on LinkedIn to get those referrals. Um, don't think of it as, you know, some kind of specific end goal. Just think of it as I'm gonna learn something. And the more you're learning, the more the better your relationships will be. >> That's such a such a good point. I think, and I I don't know. I don't think this was obvious to me uh even recently that and and maybe this is kind of just built into how I think about when I have to reach out to communicate with something. I always feel like in my head I have a goal of why I'm communicating with them and I almost like hyperfocus on it, right? So if I were to reach out to someone on LinkedIn, I'm like, "Okay, well I know I'm reaching out to them probably because like for me it might be I want to collaborate with them or something." So in my head I'm like, >> "You're doing this because you want to collaborate." But instead of just jumping to like this communication must have an end goal, >> like you can be far more effective if you're like my end goal is I'm just trying to establish communication with people. >> Start with that. >> Start with establishing and learn. >> Exactly. >> Exactly. It doesn't have to be jumping to, >> oh, I messaged you and you didn't respond right away with like, yeah, I want to collaborate and do all these things together. Like >> Yeah. >> Doesn't need to be that. >> No. And it usually will not be like that unless you're already in a trustbased environment or a very specific ecosystem. So if you're both in a very specific Slack channel where people are looking to collaborate, you know, you have to establish the the the relationship or the conversation first. So it depends on the situation. on LinkedIn, you don't have like that smaller community feel. So, you kind of have to create that first. That's where like the small talk comes in, the compliments, the gratitude. Um, just like you would in person, right? Like when I, for example, if we didn't meet on Slack and I wanted to chat with you, I would investigate stalk your LinkedIn and be like, what did he do? What did what are his links? What is he writing about? you know, I would make sure I have some knowledge of your background and then maybe I could say, you know, we're both in the same space or I loved your article on this or, you know, I would say something informed by what you have to offer already and go from there. >> Interesting. Yeah. Like a lot of that I find interesting when you compare how you communicate online to in person, right? Like yes, there are differences, but they don't have to be fundamentally like >> I mean take some of the online interactions that people don't do very well and if you think how would you mirror that in person? Like it would probably feel terribly awkward if um I'll use the example of people DMing me and saying and I sorry to like hound on this but like can you refer me at Microsoft. If you walked up to me on the street and did that it would probably feel awkward for both of us. We would be looking at each other going like >> no one would ever be having this. It's just awkward right? But I think the ease of uh connectivity online sometimes makes it so people feel like >> the communication has to be very different or the intent has to be different or >> I'm not exactly sure but people just approach it very different. >> LinkedIn does not give out etiquette books to people and uh that's the problem. So what I found is because direct message is link is directly in the LinkedIn ecosystem of the features and everything and direct message is a little closer to SMS. You would talk with your friends, you would coordinate events, whatever like chat about humorous things like we also have Instagram DM right which is also like with your friends or maybe a group chat or whatever. So, LinkedIn is this in between um in terms of a professional network, in terms of what we're going to talk about. We're not going to send memes to each other all day unless we really want to, but probably not. Um but send me memes if you find them. Um but the direct message feature enables us to be more casual. And if you just practice being uh more casual on LinkedIn, you'll be like, "Oh, this is not a mystery. This is just like I would talk with anyone else, but I don't know them yet, so I'm just going to maybe add some more thank yous than usual." Um, or maybe be more thoughtful in my questions than usual. But afterwards, as you build trust and establish this communication, it's essentially the same way as if like your first couple weeks in a company, you probably feel a little awkward asking for help. You're not sure like how people will respond. 100% the same. But afterwards, think of your like first week and three years in in a company. Think of how different your Slack messages are and how like super casual you are in three years in. >> So, same thing essentially. >> That's really that's a good point. Um, I wanted to to bring up branding a little bit again because the I'm trying to find a good way to like put this into words, I guess, but we're talking about networking a lot, which I think is critical, right? I think people need to be doing this. You and I were saying, you know, before this conversation, like not only for people trying to land their first job, right? It's for like it's for that. It's for trying to switch roles. like it's all of the time you want to be networking and growing your network. But when we talk about branding, I want to see if I can put into words like branding versus networking. And the words I've been trying to put together in my mind are like, is branding really about the sort of the consistent messaging and approach that you use in your communication as you're building your network? Is that how you might frame what branding is? Um, I would look at fra brand branding as like how people see you when you're not in the room versus direct messaging and networking as like the direct onetoone or one to many interactions that you have more control over. >> So, you know, I post a lot. I experiment with different topics, not topics, not so much. I post a lot on like different frame framings of the topics. Um so um >> right >> other people may post more humorous jokes. Um others could be a lot um about their in like their newsletters like informational articles, right? Or you could just post a lot of tips or your entire persona could be like I am a C developer and here's my weekly tip on learning C. Right? It could be anything. Um, but basically at the end of the day, if someone came, if someone's like, you know, asking you about this person, how would you think about them? So, it's like, how do people remember you? How do people think about you when you're not in the room? And little snippets of how you made them feel or how what how you help them through the information you shared remain. And that that's what like branding is. So you know I have a certain persona. I come on and share certain kinds of information. So my branding is more like very positive, very inspirational. Uh strategies, strategies around networking, strategies around branding and you know figuring out how to make it work in tech as a software engineer. Um sure. >> So that's my branding. So there's the topics and then there's like a persona or some emotions connected to it. So that's different for every person, but essentially that's what I would hope people remember when they're not like when I'm not interacting with them one-on-one. >> Right. I I had never thought about it that way. It's almost like you you can do a bunch of things in your communication to try steering that, right? Like you have control over what you're doing. So you can try to make the adjustments, communicate things in a certain way, but at the end of the it's almost like culture in a company, right? You can't just say the culture is X, therefore everyone must go do the culture. the way that you're describing branding, the way I'm hearing it is like, yeah, we can take the steps to be consistent in our messaging in certain ways, talk about certain topics, the, you know, the tone and things that we're using, but at the end of the day, like what's being remembered, how people would talk about you and talk about what you're communicating, like that ends up being your brand. So, I never thought about it that way. It's almost the the observation of all of, you know, the results that you're putting out there. It's kind of cool. Mhm. Yeah. And branding in a you know consumer product sense is how a brand makes you feel. What do you remember them? What do you think of them? What what do they represent? So for example when Google became very popular. We're not going to no we don't say we're going to internet search it. We're going to Google it. >> So Google brand is like somewhere you go for information. It's fast. It's smart. You know, that's us brands with video calls. Now, we're going to hop on a Zoom. We're not going to hop on a well, sometimes a video call, but usually it's a Zoom if it's, you know, like not in a other environment. So, it's interesting how brands sometimes become these like action words, but generally speaking, branding is always about what people remember when you're not there, when the company's not actively in front of you, when the product's not there. And essentially, you are this persona and a product in a way. Um, but we're more >> we as human beings are more mutable and and we change all the time. Um, so we can change our brand as we go and we do like think of Joe Rogan. >> How many times have he changed over the last whatever 15 plus years, right? >> Well, and that's a I think that's a really interesting example to bring up because I want to I want to try wrapping up with like a good takeaway from this conversation that I've got. And the it's okay. We talked about consistency and communication, right? as you're networking, you you've been talking about how branding is almost like the the impact that that communication and consistency has and how people uh you know have that takeaway and how they would describe you. Um when you talk about someone like Joe Rogan, right, like we know about Joe Rogan because he does a lot of talking, right? If he didn't, we wouldn't hear about his communication. We wouldn't hear about the messaging that he's putting out. And you can say that about probably anyone, you know, where you you easily recognize them for who they are and what they do. And it's because they have to keep communicating. They have some type of consistent messaging, even if that evolves over time. So I think maybe a takeaway for me here and and hopefully you know this takeaway for listeners is like when it comes to your own personal brand as a software engineer, right? you have control over how you want to shape that. So if you are going out there, you're asking your stakeholders questions, you're being genuinely curious, you want to be interacting, like that will create a brand. I mean, if you are consistent with it, that will create a brand where you're easy to collaborate with. People will say, "Oh, like Nick is genuinely curious. He wants to learn. He wants to be involved. He wants to help." You could also do a completely different approach where you are constantly communicating, but maybe you're not picking things that are highly collaborative, right? You're on every pull request and code review, but you are the one person who's always being mean on the code reviews and stuff, right? Like your brand will start to probably take a direction you don't want. So, you have a lot of control over the direction you want that to go, but you need to be consistent. you need to practice and I would say you probably want to be like aware of what you are putting out there whether that's in a company you know internally with your stakeholders or online if you're trying to network and build a presence. >> Yes, absolutely. Um one thing I do want to add is there's nothing that you actually need to do. You could still get a job. You could still get promoted, but it will probably be harder and you might encounter difficulties over and over again um if you prefer not to be as curious or as helpful as other people because as humans we prefer to interact with those that want to collaborate, that want to help. So if you just take um the h human nature and build on those strengths and just build on top of what others prefer as well naturally then everyone wins. >> Yep. It's uh it's not unique like software engineering is not like this like special place like we're humans. So, you know, wanting to be around collaborative humans and work together on things like that is not unique to software engineering. >> Exactly. And one thing I do want to add which can be a little more unique to software engineering is the people that go into software engineering tend to really enjoy the technical aspects of software engineering >> and tend to um prefer certain kinds of work of perhaps working with the codebase or working with other technical people. And if you don't expose yourself outside of that environment, you're creating limitations to how you can move around in your career. So just take note of what your preferences are. And if you do decide that you want to move around in your career faster, um, branding internally and externally, um, and, uh, expanding your bubble of who you interact with outside of just your engineering team will help you move around faster and that means more money, more impact. So I understand that your strength and your preference might be for the technical work and you might think why the hell do I have to like talk to product managers and designers like I don't care >> only slowing me down right I like I doesn't give me time to code right >> exactly I want to code I want to spend time with my family I want to play video games great good for you >> that's what I want to do to be honest Yeah, >> it sounds like the dream. Add some dogs in there. Yeah, like I'm set. >> Yes, exactly. And what I'm saying is you can totally do that. Um, but if but if you choose not to expand your bubble of just the technical work, um, >> right? >> It might become very repetitive for one, and two, it might limit how you move around and your earning potential down the road. Absolutely. I think I think that is absolutely fair advice. Um for people that I try to communicate this as much as possible whether it's in you know written posts, articles, videos like the communication side in software engineering is so important and people especially kind of coming into industry that haven't experienced it yet gravitate so much towards the technical. Um, don't get me wrong, technical is important. It's foundation, but so is being a human and being collaborative in software engineering and it is in other industries too. >> It's just the reality of it. So, um, and I wanted to say this was really cool to be able to to be able to look at things that maybe other software engineers don't think are important, right? We talked about networking, communication, and branding, right? Like branding and software engineering. That's ridiculous. Why would I ever care about that? But I think that that was super useful. I hope that people got to understand like I again that takeaway for me of the branding happening internally like that's that's really key. I think um I I wanted to I I said I'd get links and stuff from you after, but if people want to connect with you, can you share with us like where they can go and what you're all about? >> Yes. So, um, last year I founded a company to help people get into the job search, get into tech. Um, this year I co-founded a company. So, I'm the co-founder of Code Career Mastery. And this is a mentorship program that I'm running with a software engineer that went from freelance to Amazon. So, he figured out a few things um that he is very excited to share with other engineers. So basically him and I have founded a company called co-career mastery which is a mentorship program for helping software engineers accelerate their career which means within the six months you're in the mentorship program you get support on the both the technical training side and the branding and networking. So you get a very comprehensive well-rounded um skills training that you can use to accelerate your career for now and of course the future. Awesome. That's super cool. Are people able to find you on LinkedIn if they want to connect with you as well? >> Yes, I'm on there all the time. >> Awesome. I'll make sure then when I put the description and stuff together, when I post this, we'll get all the links in there so people can reach out to you. Uh Anna, thanks again. This was super cool. Um, you know, I love talking about all the technical stuff, but uh equally, if not more, I like talking about the other pieces of software engineering that I think are critical. So thanks again for sharing your information. >> Absolutely.