Learn In Public - Principal Software Engineering Manager AMA

alrighty we're getting things going the stream is streaming I just got to wait for some restream stuff to show that a stream is coming through there we go come on there is Instagram okay I think we're we're live in all the places if you are joining thanks for being here if you want to do me a favor send a message in the chat let me know what's working um happy to hear from you I don't know why linkedin's not linkedin's not going did I miss LinkedIn no says it's gone there we are awesome um I see people joining the chat so love to hear from you um if you are new to my live streams uh definitely please take advantage of the chat because I will be otherwise just blabbing and I think if you're here that you might find it more beneficial to be asking questions and stuff so I'm happy to go through that thanks for testing out the chat there looks like X is working fine infected FPS good to see you on Twitch thanks for reporting in um topic for today is going to be learning in public I think I've seen this come up a bunch I've seen people talk about it I've talked about it I figured I would try to uh write a newsletter article about it and then um kind of do a live stream and then that way if people have more specific questions about how to take advantage of this um then we can do that um Express package on YouTube I'm here for the company great well you're in good company I like to think so thanks for being here um if you are interested in kind of following along U I'm just going to put it in the chat here depending on what platform you are on it will either go to you or not in your chat it looks like it goes to YouTube twitch and Facebook I forgot I streamed to Facebook um thanks for being on Facebook um but if you don't get that link coming through it's just at weekly. deev leader. that's the newsletter I publish no you don't have to go subscribe to a newsletter if you're like Nick I think those are dumb I don't want more email that's totally cool um don't subscribe to it your loss but seriously no uh don't bother if you don't want to that's cool uh but if you're ever interested in knowing what the topics are going to be for the live stream it's most likely the newsletter article that goes out on Saturdays um so you can check that out if you just want to follow along or have I don't know some some idea of what I'm going to be talking about but like I said go to the chat and ask your questions if you want me to do that instead I will try to prioritize that as much as possible so but that said I think we can dive into it it's Monday it's been it's been a good start to the year but I think it's always it's always kind of hard going from holidays and then in particular we had like the two-day break and then we had New Year's right in the middle of the week and then like sorry two days at work then New Year's then two days so you had like two manyi weeks it's going to make the next week feel like it takes an infinite amount of time so um now that we're past that and things are back to normal I'm kind of uh I think I'm ready to go and uh traffic wasn't too bad today so uh I know there's going to be some folks joining from my other YouTube channel that's called code commute so I basically do Vlog entries where I talk about software engineering just like we're doing right now but it's not a live stream because that would be uh Pretty Reckless if I was trying to live stream and answer chat messages while driving so I don't do that but I just record myself talking about software engineering topics so traffic today not so bad thankfully but learning in public what's it all about why should we do it why should do not how do you do it right how do you do it wrong and what can you expect from it so as I go through this it would be cool to hear in the chat obviously no pressure If you're not interested in that but if you uh don't mind would love to hear from you in the chat if you have tried learning in public maybe you gave it a shot you know didn't work so well maybe you're doing it right now when it's awesome and you love it or maybe you've like you're in the same boat as a lot of people you're like I hear about it and I just don't know but if you don't mind sharing would be awesome to hear um Natalie wheeler um I will put a link to code commute it's uh I'm going to shout it out later but um actually this doesn't go to LinkedIn so um one sec I will just put it in the LinkedIn comments so code commute is the other YouTube channel but um yeah I think it's kind of fun it kind of started as a let me just take a moment for code commute but I I started it because um not that I'm forced to go to the office but I go to the office twice a week now and it's actually great cuz uh my previous team not that there's anything wrong with this but they were essentially fully remote and the team that I have now at Microsoft people go into the office a lot which is great and um I like as an engineering manager I love having FaceTime with people I love getting to actually have conversations um so it's pretty cool um but the problem is I hate traffic and based on where I live I either have like a 20-minute drive when everything's clear that's not so bad get on the highway Cruise um but that basically never happens and usually it's like 40 minutes to an hour depending on if people decide they can't drive in rain that day and uh by the way in Seattle it rains every single day so um it's usually pretty crappy and I said if I'm going to be driving to and from work I want to make something out of it so I decided I would just start recording software engineering Vlog entries and um I'm I've kind of joked about this but like I'm frustrated and also thankful that this new channel has basically uh doubled the performance of my main channel uh with you know one nth of the subscribers so really cool um it's a fun experience and people seem to be resonating with it so um let's go to the chat quick I see this is my first time learning in public it's also helping me improve my English skills nice I think it's a good idea yes um I have a bunch of employees either on my team now or my previous team and um kind of a new thing for me was like at Microsoft so the past five years I never had people that reported to me that um I guess I would if they weren't native English speakers I wouldn't really have ever known um and so it's really interesting having people report to me from from different countries and um part of my focus as an engineering manager is like I want to make sure people like trust that they can talk to me about stuff so that I can help them on what they need help with and it's been interesting to learned that uh a bunch of people actually and I never would have guessed it right but a bunch of people are like self-conscious about their English they're always uh I shouldn't say always that's bit maybe a bit of an exaggeration but um they're they're asking for feedback and stuff like hey like you know if there's any anytime I'm messing up or something can you let me know cuz I want to improve like I I would not have ever guessed that it's such a focus and um sort of occupies so much time that they're like sort of in their brain that they're like I just want to be better at this because for me as the Observer I'm like hey this person's doing awesome and if I think about myself I'm like I am a native English speaker and sometimes I feel like I barely can speak English properly so I can't imagine you know what that's like to have to you're your day job is speaking a language it's not your native tongue I had to learn I had to learn French as a as a Canadian when I was in elementary school and like the first year of high school and there is absolutely no chance I could ever speak French right now in any meaningful way or or hear it and understand it aside from saying like bonjour but like that's it um I can't speak French at all so uh I think it's amazing that people can do this and so uh Andrea I think awesome job for for kind of taking advantage of learning in public as a way to practice English I think that's amazing um infected at yes I don't have the consistency to do the whole learning and public thing yep so we'll talk about that because one of the one of the points is that sometimes for people that actually works the other way where to to infected FPS is point here infected FPS is that's a really how do you even say that um I'm just going to call you infected now I think it's maybe easier to infected Point um see way easier I think that for some people it can almost be like a a motivator and I'll I'll talk about that and that way you can kind of use it for consistency um so that's cool um Natalie says thanks I tried coding through tutorials live but it felt weird talking to myself yeah um totally get it that's cool um T man 1992 says I only code naked so I can't do it in public well you could but maybe only once and then that'll be the last time you ever get to do it so um I'm not recommending you do it but um technically it's possible um Natalie says Austin I can Cur uh and tapen hi Nick hello to you as well thanks for being here on LinkedIn so we're going to talk about learning in public I'm going to go through the newsletter content like I said if you want to follow along please do um but um the first thing kind of to infect its Point um we're going to kind of talk about motivation and accountability so um the the the disclaimer that I put in yeah sorry Natalie know that was maybe a little weird but uh the please please don't code naked in public but um I'm not going to it's not for me to say I just I don't recommend it but motivation and accountability the disclaimer I put in the newsletter is that like I I acknowledge that this is not going to apply to everyone um I think that for some individuals like especially beginning of the year right A lot of people have New Year's resolutions but I think if you're someone who's like an aspiring software developer or even someone that's like trying to so weird I know okay we're moving on from it we're moving on from it um I think for someone that is trying to pick up on like a new technology new language we I think a lot of us have probably found ourselves in this situation before where it's like okay like I'm going to go learn this thing and I'm going to start Monday and then Monday comes and you're like H like okay like by by Wednesday like you know it's going to happen and basically we keep procrastinating putting it off and then it just never happens right and then some time goes by and we're kind of like man like wish wish I would have or why aren't I and we feel kind of guilty and stuff and it's not just applicable for like programming it could be any skill right um it's it's just easy to put things off we get busy and we move on so one of the things I like about this is that I think for some people that try it out and they start trying to share what they're learning in public what they find is that they actually might have uh either a little bit of motivation or accountability that's associated with it and sometimes it just takes and again it's going to be different for everyone but it might take a little bit of like I don't know like an external influence to be able to say like hey look like someone read this or someone someone liked my post like oh neat like someone did see that okay and then like you may want to go do it again and I'm not saying that that's necessarily like the perfect reason to go do it my point here is that for some people people this might be a way to kind of help push them along so I wanted to give a couple of other just examples in general around this kind of concept and um one that comes to mind from personal experience is like um totally unrelated to software engineering um I I basically quit my my hobby bodybuilding career uh last year um when I was prepping for two competitions I ended up kind I was like six weeks out and I was like I'm just not doing it anymore but I've been kind of doing like bodybuilding stuff for almost like 20 years and um during that time um not the whole time but like especially in the last like five six years of doing bodybuilding even in the offseason of bodybuilding I would hire a coach and it's not because I have no idea what I'm doing or it's not because the coach was so amazing that it was a guru knowledge that I could never get anywhere else but one of and I'm not insulting my coaches either I think they were great but I think one of the most important parts for me was that it actually meant that I had to be accountable so there are going to be times uh you know especially for something like bodybuilding where it's like you don't just do it like periodically it's kind of like a lifestyle kind of thing it's it's easy to kind of get into a rut and to be like man like I just don't want to do it anymore it's getting hard um for for someone like me I'm very short and to try and put on more muscle mass like I end up having to get pretty heavy and that can be uncomfortable especially because you're like I know I want to get onto a stage and be shredded someday but like part of that process over say a couple of years is like you get a little bit fatter than you want to get because you're trying to put on weight anyway this this kind of stuff can be pretty taxing um not only on your body but kind of like on your on the mental side so it can be easy to be like well why am I doing this let's just not it's it's hard right um but to have someone that you can be accountable to I think can be a huge benefit I found that for myself and I think that uh I see a parallel with being able to kind of share things in public um again maybe not for everyone but I I see some overlap there another one I wanted to share um not from my own experience but from something I observed it's actually another it's kind of like a uh a fitness or uh like lifestyle kind of approach as well coding Mountain you don't want to see me on stage ha yeah well the the one part I didn't like about bodybuilding is like you and for people that don't know about this kind of stuff just a mini tangent lesson um bodybuilders go onto a stage with really bright lights you need to get a really dark spray tan it doesn't necessarily have to be spray but basically it's a spray tan and so that's super awkward because it's outrageously dark it's like two or three coats of spray tan and so like I don't spray tan at all but you do that on a stage and you do that by the way just so when the light is on you that it doesn't make it look like you're completely washed out you want to have level skin and that way people can see the detail but the other thing that's super awkward about bodybuilding is you're basically in a man thong and for me that's not really something I enjoy I also don't like being on a stage uh a lot of people don't know this about me but I'm actually very introverted and you might be like that's kind of weird because I see you doing live streams and you do a vlog and you have your YouTube channel yeah I'm super introverted so um it's actually taken me a lot of practice just talking to a camera to be more comfortable but um yeah those are some weird things about bodybuilding that I don't like but I do love the um the schedule the the structure like I like having a lot of structure because it takes certain elements out of my life that I don't have to worry about like I don't want to have to think about what I eat every day I'm totally happy to make the same thing and eat it all the time like take that out I don't have to worry about it um I just like the routine and I like the style of working out but I don't do that anymore um bronze and Contour that's right um I should have I wish I would have taken advantage of like learning some different makeup techniques and maybe I could have just uh maybe relaxed a little bit more on my training and just like maybe use some contouring to to make everything look better but um uh OG J Cutler Ronnie Coleman back in the day yeah like so I love that kind of stuff I think it's really cool but um I don't do that anymore um I actually I joined CrossFit my wife does CrossFit so I go there in the mornings with her which is actually great um it's hard it pardon my language but it kicks my ass every single time like I said I've been in a gym for over 20 years people don't know this but I've been in a gym just as long as I've been programming um I don't know maybe maybe I don't look like it I don't know um should have trained harder but uh yeah uh CrossFit definitely kicks my butt every day I go um and you'll probably you'll know if you watch code commute because sometimes I'll do it on the way back from Crossfit and I get into the car and I'm like like I can't breathe I'm dying um but it's good it's good so the other thing I bit of a tangent there but the other thing I wanted to talk about from like a motivation and accountability thing um I've actually watched uh a friend of mine who was I'm not sure people have heard of this thing called 75 hard um I don't know all the details about it but basically for 75 days you implement a lot of like pretty like regimented structure and restriction into into some of your lifestyle like I think you have to do like one workout a day outside for like at least 30 minutes or something you have to drink so much water you have to read uh a book like so much of a book every day I don't know all the no alcohol there's a lot of like just a lot of stuff in there and to me it's kind of interesting because there's some I don't know I think there's data out there that shows like building up micro habits is actually like an effective strategy but this is very much the opposite it's like screw the micro habits um everything all at once Go full and do it for 75 days and what I thought was interesting was that um I have a friend who was doing it and decided that I don't know if he did it from the very beginning but he decided he was going to sort of document his journey on social media and started making like uh like funny like reals or Tik toks about it but I actually think what happened is that he started to realized that um like like he had this motivation or accountability that was fueled by doing that and again it's not for everyone I'm not saying you have to go be a full-on content creator or something but I just wanted to give you an example of someone that tried like posting and then felt that for them it was like that actually felt good to do I want to be able to do that again um so anyway just just an example so I think some extern accountability can help um and if that does not work for you I think that in general kind of like infected uh infected FPS was saying at the beginning here um he does not or he has a challenge learning in public because of consistency right and um I think if it's not driven by this like I think finding some other way to be um motivated or held accountable whatever works for you is like probably um something you'll want to find and it doesn't have to be necessarily driven by this but I think it's a great example of of how that can work for some people um okay next point is actually going to go back to what Andrea was saying um where Andre was saying that um for her it's the ability to practice her English and so not only like I didn't write this in the newsletter because I actually wasn't thinking about this but I think that's an amazing opportunity and sort of use case for this but I wrote down practice communication in the newsletter because I was thinking just in general about you know even as a native English speaker just like this ability to literally practice communication so and a lot of the content I put out for for software Engineers um I try to focus on the fact that like soft skills I feel like are very underrated and a lot of that perspective is driven by the fact that when I talk to software Engineers like aspiring sorry especially aspiring software Engineers there's so much focus on like tell me what language to learn tell me what text stack like it's only focus on technical things and the thing that I find kind of interesting is like your entire career is going to be focused on learning different technical things I get it right I get the the desire to want to be set on the right track to not waste your time so you can learn the best language C by the way uh just kidding but it's pretty good um and learn the best tech stack asp.net core by the way um but you know people don't want to waste their time doing stuff so they're looking for answers looking for shortcuts but it always seems to be technical which is fine but I I think that what happens is that for some individuals they don't realize that like you if you're going into software engineering hoping that you're not going to be interacting with people like like I said for myself I'm very introverted but if you're going into a software engineering field you're going to be working with people um someone might say well that's what you think I'm going to be a solo Dev and I don't have to work with the team and I don't have to work with people and then I would say well guess what um you're either say you're working for yourself you're going to have customers do you not have to find ways to communicate effectively with customers uh or you're a contract worker so someone's hired you to do work on uh on their behalf and you're building software for them they're your stakeholder how do you communicate with them right so communication and soft skills are going to come up all the time in software engineering and I would say that you know if you're kind of doing like a traditional approach working in a team of software Engineers you will be like required to communicate and have soft skills like more effectively as you grow in level um Natalie says if you want to secure the bag you will there you go right uh T man C is the best you're not wrong especially with Visual Studio some people hate Visual Studio there's like tons of people that are like I can't stand it I will never use it um I've been using visual studio for forever might be like a minor exaggeration but like a pretty long time and like I don't know like if I on my computer right now on where I'm streaming from I have two instances of Visual Studio opened up right now uh my other my other computer's locked right now I bet you if if I switch to that I have three instances of Visual Studio open right now in fact it says cuz they're stuck in 2005 and haven't tried it since then yeah but I think you know there's a kind of a someone asked this and I did a video on code commute this morning for it but they were saying hey like I'm interested in you know your opinion on like.net versus like why do people like basically why is CP and.net not as popular as Java and they use node as an example but maybe they meant like Java and JavaScript and it's like man there's a lot of reasons for that but um there's a lot of people that just love to hate on Microsoft and like I know like I work at Microsoft now but even before I worked at Microsoft I'm like I just don't understand why people like have this like this like hatred like they want nothing to do with Microsoft and like it's great people like post on Linked In about how much they hate Microsoft and I'm like it's so weird like Microsoft literally literally owns the platform your using right now um or like Microsoft owns GitHub so like maybe don't ever push anything to GitHub because you hate Microsoft so much I don't know it's weird don't don't play Halo where' my computer go is my stream back I think I lost power at my house are you guys still in the [Laughter] chat please say you're in the chat I'm waiting for one person to say they're in the nice I'm back yes okay that was super weird um everything went black in my room and I was like oh um yeah that fourth instance of Visual Studio that's right it it sucked all the power off the grid cool um yeah so and in fact it say there's a stigma from the early days that people still haven't really like go of sadly yet thanks everyone for jumping in the chat CU I got real scared there thank you um and I'm just going to go scroll back up and read Andrea's comment in my case I'm unemployed and for this reason sometimes I've not motivation for programming without having a good goal or reward yeah I mean in job uh you have motivation to keep your job do a good job yep uh how I can find motivation to improve my skills at home yeah so let's um I want to see like that's going to I think that's kind of coming up actually you know what like I didn't even I I feel like an idiot right now so thank you so much Andrea for that question because I literally didn't even even write about that I think I talked about every other aspect about learning in public aside from the fact that like you can just actually build up skills um so let me let me kind of tangent to talk about that right how can I find the motivation to improve my skills at home um I think this is different for a lot of people right so I for myself right I I actually do I don't know why I think it's because I'm just a nerd I guess but like I I actually like I really like building software um so I enjoy doing it so um there's times like I will like I like playing video games like to kick back and relax but sometimes if I'm playing video games I feel kind of weird like I'm not I'm not building stuff and and I just like really like to build things and they don't have to like I'm not saying it has to be a business or it has to be you know the next like Facebook or something but there's something about like putting things together is my stream going again what is going on I think I'm back sorry folks I don't know what's happening with the stream I'm just going to keep talking um it's not even like no one else is using the internet here so anyway um so I actually just enjoy building things so for me like I'm a little bit fortunate that like that motivation just comes kind of from within but um I think for for others right so if you're saying like um how can you find the motivation to improve your skills at home I think this is difficult for a lot of people because um laggy yeah so weird I have like gigabit internet too so like I don't I don't know what's up with that um so hopefully the video stabilizes and comes back um I'm going to blame Ram it's their fault but um yeah you might find like I think probably the average person is like carving out time to go learn like extra stuff outside of work is like chaos right it's like so for example I'm married we don't have kids um but if we had kids I could imagine that was just like one enormous level of like commitment to something else the kids right but like just so much time spent on that and that's not that that's a bad thing at all but if you're someone that has kids you can't just be like oh I guess I'm not guess I'm not paying attention to the kids like that is literally something in your life that you need to dedicate time to and when I when I think about these things the way that I kind of like the way that my brain tries to navigate this is like okay obviously we all have 24 hours in the day this isn't news to anyone um and the sort of thought exercise that I think is important for people to do is is genuinely look at your time allotment right so for example like probably sleep eight hours a day personally I like to sleep six to 7even if I sleep less than six I'm a Zombie if I sleep like eight hours I feel like I'm also a zombie so like six to Seven's pretty good um and then the other parts on top of that like I work my my 9 to5 job right and so I accom a little bit of extra time on either side of that and then I have so much other time left in the day now that means like that's my free time like I said I don't have kids so I don't have a time commitment for that uh my wife even on like an evening like today right so I came home from work I saw my wife briefly she came in at the same time but she knows I'm streaming tonight so I have that time carved it but it's not like every day I'm streaming and then never seeing my wife so I have time C out for that but my point here is that if we're looking at the things that we're doing in our lives there's going to be a prioritization problem at some point and I think for some people and I'm not necessarily saying this for Andrew by the way so please don't uh I'm not like singling you out for this I just wanted to chat through this is like I think for some people they they go I don't have time for that that ends up being an excuse but really if they were to look at the things that they were prioritizing in their life maybe they're doing things that like they're not sort of contributing to The Next Step they want to get to and these types of things can change over time too right so for example I'm just going to I'm just going to make up something right um I don't I don't play like inter mural sports or anything like that so this is going to be a really bad example but let's say someone was like I don't have time to dedicate um I gotta man what are these people doing in my chat get out of here bye um trying to advertise on my stream how dare you uh I can barely advertise on my stream because I don't know how to do it but you know so if we're taking an example for someone who like hey I play intral sports so like uh on you know Mondays and Wednesdays what is going on with this video it's turning off my monitor so I don't even know my monitor is coming back you know what it probably is my video card so now I got to see I got to move the chat over to this other window we're going to figure it out because my I have to look over here now sorry guys um my entire monitor disappeared so I have to move everything over to one window um we're going to keep doing it live though so my point with my stupid story was like uh I think sometimes we have to look at the priorities that we have and sort of where we want to go next and for some people that might be like hey I want to skill up for my job or I want to switch roles or I want to work towards my promotion or whatever it happens to be and that might mean a little bit of a shift in in how you're dedicating your time that doesn't mean that like for the rest of your life you have to carve out two hours a night to go program stuff after hours that's not what that means right but but there might be a period of time where you're saying hey look like maybe I'm giving up uh this other part of my life um because I only have so much time I'm not going to you know I'm not going to watch Netflix on on Thursday nights I'm going to dedicate that to coding and I'm not going to go to Ultimate Frisbee on Tuesday for the next couple months because I'm going to go try to to skill up and learn some extra things outside of work so um I think time commitments are one thing and so I wanted to address that uh based on Andrea's comment but um the other thing that I wanted to say is like in terms of motivation I don't I don't know if I have a good answer for this but often what I've seen is that sometimes people they end up taking action almost like when they're frustrated I got to I should check if my stream's actually still going one sec because I don't see anyone talking in the chat let me pull this up I think it's still going I'm G to keep talking like it's going so the um I I see people end up taking thanks guys I appreciate it um I see people take action when they start to get frustrated right and it's it's unfortunate because sometimes it's like things haven't been going well and it's almost like they reached a Tipping Point and they're like there's no other option now I like now I'm going to go spend time to go learn things uh or you know I've seen this kind of thing happen where like it's one of the most common things is like with people with their weight um and I've seen this happen a whole bunch in my life especially cuz I was saying like being around the gym and stuff I'd have people you know friends and stuff asking like hey like can you help me with this and it's like sure like no problem I'll I'll put together um something to for free like I'm not charging anyone for this kind of stuff like put together a simple workout plan for you and like you know help you structure how to eat all excited awesome and then they don't do it and at some point for some of these people they reach a point where they're they're so unhappy about things that they're like there's no other option I have to do this and I think sometimes it again unfortunately for some people it takes reaching a point where they're like this is the only way so I will take action so I hope for most people you don't have to wait that long so I would try to um maybe approach it like um I did I spoke recently about doing like um more frequent reflection I think I posted this on LinkedIn like taking the opportunity to periodically reflect on your accomplishments where you're headed and that kind of thing because I think it's so easy for us to kind of just put our heads down and like almost go on to autopilot like I got to go to my job I got to take care of my responsibilities wake up repeat keep doing it and then reach a point where you're like man like a bunch of time's gone by but like I don't know like I don't know how I feel about like where I'm at and so instead of getting to like an autopilot mode or instead of getting to a point where you're so frustrated with things if you're able to do a periodic reflection you might be able to sort of um acknowledge that like there's some things that you do want to focus on so I I realize I'm probably doing a pretty poor job at explaining the sandria or to give you some ideas around it but um I I think that you have to kind of find you have to find like why you want to be dedicating time to you know uh like building stuff like that or like learning more about programming and software development outside of work so for example um if you're if you want to you have feedback in your job um you need to skill up on something or you feel like hey uh I'm not advancing in my career and I feel like my technical skills are holding me back or I'd like to switch into this type of role maybe maybe you do mobile development right now and you're like I really would like to get into web development but like if you're not getting those opportunities at work one I mean maybe there's an opportunity where you can ask pardon me you could talk to your manager about that um quick tangent uh I work in the substrate part of Microsoft which is the the infrastructure for Office 365 and I've had team members um say to me like hey I would love to learn like some front-end development and I'm like we're a backend platform team like there is no front end but then I kind of look around and I find partner teams that have some capacity for that and then I you know try to help them and make sure that they can if it aligns that they get some time to be able to do that um and and okay Andrew awesome thanks I see your comment here so if I may I want to tell you what I did maybe it's not the best idea but it's actually working so this is great um I asked a friend to be my tutor so he is sending me challenges every month so I have to solve them and it's working at working so I uh I think sometimes I need some pressure to find motivation MH it could be more organic or more an internal feeling but it's working by pressure but I ask you because maybe I can find more organic way so yeah thank you no I think that's really cool um your example uh about this external pressure right pressure is uh I think sometimes people hear the word pressure and they're like well pressure sounds negative um but I I I don't think pressure is necessarily negative but sometimes there's a negative connotation with it um I don't have the other word that's escaping me right now but anyway I think your example of this is similar to what I was saying of like um this external accountability for the posting online thing right sometimes people are like that makes me there's an external thing that's making me kind of like want to do this because I feel like it's kind of pushing or driving me so I think a similar example but um yeah I think the the direction I was kind of heading with my explanation was essentially like maybe the internal or organic Drive is more around like you identifying the areas you want to grow in and being honest with yourself right so um maybe uh I don't know like I think sometimes like I said people get into autopilot they don't think about it but if you were like I want to um I would like to be working in this type of field maybe it's an industry maybe it's a type of software development but if you're not getting those opportunities like do you and I don't mean to sound factious when I say this but like do you just sit there and not ever pursue that or do you try and apply to those types of jobs and maybe feel frustrated when you're not getting the opportunities or do you try creating those opportunities for yourself right um maybe it doesn't mean you get hired immediately doing it but if you were like I wanted to learn web development so I could do it because I think I'll enjoy it what's like again not to sound fous but like what's stopping you from from starting we already said c and asp.net core is the best right just just kidding um but yeah so thanks Andrew I think it's a I think it's a great question and I hope that I hope that kind of helps um just some different perspective um I'm scrolling back up in the chat because with my monitor turning off you know what it is I bet you this computer needs to be restarted cuz it's probably been on for way too long and I bet you that was actually my my video card going super wonky so um I'm not going to restart right now but I'll sort that out after um so infected FPS way back was saying even if you watch Prime's thing he did on linkedin's stream about learning C and it basically just moved it the entire time sorry I'm not sure if I get that even if you watched Prime's thing he did on that LinkedIn stream about learning C and it basically just moved it the entire time sorry infected I might have lost the context I apologize but I actually missed Prime stream on c um I remember he posted about it and people were tagging me and then I I missed it so sucks um Mr Pickles do you think that c can compete with or even surpass python in terms of artificial intelligence um so my take on that is it's a my answer is I don't think that the the question is applicable um because I don't think python has anything to do with artificial intelligence except for the fact that people happen to build um Tooling in it so you the I don't like using python so I'm just exposing my bias here uh I actually don't have anything actually against it I'm not like hey python is terrible but um I don't like using python I in my own experience I know people will disagree with this I'm not here to tell you my way is the right way but in my experience python has not felt well suited for developing entire applications but it's felt like if you wanted to like put some pieces of stuff together or glue things together it can be very helpful to me like it feels very much like a I don't know a more robust I'm not even going to try to say it this way because it's just going to make it sound bad um anyway it just feels like it's not something that I would want to build a whole platform out of um so I know there's a lot of tooling and stuff uh for AI and machine learning that uses python but there's there's nothing like there's nothing special about python that enables it to do that it's just that the sort of the user base of developers has uh has has done that um so I don't know um the question like do I think it can compete or surpass like it probably won't ever in terms of like the the user base because it's kind of like just to give you a parallel example it's like do I so net we have blazer for frontend development like do I ever think that Blazer will surpass like react in in similar JavaScript Frameworks like no I don't um why like I think there's just too much momentum with the other ones that people would ever do it so if you were to ask me do I think C could if we would have gone ahead and at the same time built things in C to do a lot of the AI stuff um I think that a lot of the times C can be quite performant I think that it would have been I would have preferred it that way but there's my bias um I just I don't know I think it's I understand the question you're trying to ask but I don't think that it's necessarily um something that I can really answer because I don't I just don't think it really works that way but short answer is no um Tam man says my kids are a ridiculous source of motivation I would have give given up a long time ago if it wasn't for thinking about being able to help them go to college and all that awesome right like finding what motivates you is going to be super important it's going to be unique for everyone um oh infected thatp said oh so what prime did that c stream and just mocked it come on c is awesome um it's good for scripting and data but not the best for application in my opinion python is my main language just for reference awesome yeah so and like for more context too right my first internship I went back there twice so I spent uh eight months in total at uh the first place that I ever worked um contract software development company the uh the CEO there was an absolute python Guru like literally when I say python Guru um there was one person in the world at the time that had had more active posts on the python forum Like official python forum he literally was like a python Guru so we built in Python uh and the embedded stuff was in C but like even reflecting like it just to me it never like and everyone's got an opinion this is mine it doesn't feel like it's a good thing for building entire applications but that's just my my thoughts okay I think I made it through the comments I want to go back to the newsletter but the tricky part is that I'm using a vertical monitor over here and not looking at the camera where my newsletter was is over here there's a 48 in monitor behind the camera but it's black I can't see anything so I need to somehow try and pull it over uh and it's going to be like having my eyes closed so just give me one sec because I'd like to kind of keep the flow of the what I did in the newsletter going so awful awful okay um so okay uh I was talking about uh practiceing communication let me just kind of wrap that up um because I think that when it comes to communication one thing that's really cool about learning in public is that we and I'm not a like a I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be an expert on like how our brain works when we're learning things but I think from what I understand is that when we interpret things different ways so like for example uh you probably heard people saying like writing notes so you're hearing something and then writing it down like actually can can help reinforce learning I think that there's an interesting thing that happens when we're learn like doing learning in public which is you're trying to absorb information about the thing that you're learning whether that's reading articles watching videos uh actually building some sample applications and now when it comes to learning in public there's a couple things that happen and depending on how you want to go do this so for some people it might be writing blog articles by the way I I recommend if you want to do this write blog articles I think it's a cool way to do it um there's so many like micro blogging websites you don't you don't have to be a total nerd and write your own blogging engine you don't have to use WordPress if you're if you don't want to deal with all the WordPress drama that's going on there's like there's hash dev.to there's medium like there's a lot you could write LinkedIn articles I think X has articles maybe that's a premium only thing because Elon um I don't know but there's there's a bunch of options and my my point here is like find something that works for you maybe you want to make videos but um when you're basically putting your thoughts together say let's assume you're writing blog articles like okay I'm going to write this blog article and talk about the things that I'm learning the other thing that happens is not only do you have to like organize your thoughts to go put them down but you're going to be writing to an audience right and that audience might not actually be real people yet because perhaps no one's read your content to this point which is fine no no no problem with that but you're writing to someone right and when I say you're writing to someone I mean as the words are coming out on paper or if you're talking to a video camera you're trying to find ways to explain Concepts to people and that means interpreting your understanding and putting that into a way that they can understand like I'm if you watch what I'm like I'm literally trying to do this right now take some thoughts I have and explain them in a way that I'm hoping will make sense to you and the there's a huge carry over here into software engineering again I think going back to soft skills and communication that I think people miss and that is that when you're working as a software engineer there's going to be so many instances in your career where you're taking very technical things like you're literally like I was just at my desk in Visual Studio looking at these classes I was going down this call stack and I know that we have this covered in unit test and this other part over here that's really got to get refactored and when you want to go talk about this stuff what's not going to happen likely what's not going to happen is that you turn to someone and you start regurgitating specific line numbers of code and what they're doing um unless that person is also a developer that's very well versed in that area of code so that's possible but odds are a lot of the conversations you have are with people that the information you need to give them they're not going to understand it at the same level of technical detail that you do it doesn't mean that they're they're dumb or they're not intelligent or whatever it just means that they have a different set of Knowledge and Skills and experiences so for example um I will use myself as an example here so yes I've been coding for over 20 years and yes before Microsoft I was what we called a technical manager so I was also so an individual contributor and a manager at the same time for8 years I write a lot of code I love to write code but the teams that I have at Microsoft I don't program in their code base I don't write code at Microsoft so there's going to be certain things that when they're talking to me about the work they're doing they're not saying hey Nick we have this class and partway down on line 37 we have this method that does whatever like if they wanted to walk me through that and show me it in the code base I could you know I could go along for the ride and try to learn and understand my point is that when they want to communicate stuff to me it's not I don't want to say like they're dumbing it down but they're finding ways to explain the things that they're working on so that I don't have to know that stuff because that's not really the point so in our careers we're always finding ways to translate information I'll give you another quick example in uh in software engineering it's pretty common that there's some type of you're working through stuff we need to give a status update because someone cares about the deadline so this can look very different even though it's the same sort of Topic in a standup meeting right maybe your standup meeting you you bring up a detail right that's related to the code base and you're like hey I got stuck working in this class anyone on the team can help get me unblocked right but you're bringing up a technical detail that some other engineer on the team can get now you might got you might you might go talk to the the product owner the project manager product manager whoever maybe it's your own engineering manager um and you're talking to them about the status of this and you're not like they're probably not going to care what class you're stuck on you might say hey there is this uh part of the application that has to process the reporting I'm stuck on this part and I'm I'm just trying to find a you know a subject matter expert for it okay so we've taken the same concept and we've explained it a different way and now this update has to get sent out to a leadership team because it's holding back the product delivery which sucks so no but like what like what are we telling them it's probably a different level of that same information in a way that they could understand and maybe that they care about because maybe they don't care about the specific component right they might not the reporting part they might not care about they might want to hear like okay well if you're stuck when's the next date that we're expecting and what's your strategy for for getting unblocked just to make sure that there's a path forward right so we need to find different ways to communicate things and I honestly think that by doing learning in public it forces us to practice this um when people talk to me about soft skills um you know if we're contrasting like hey I want to learn how to program it's like okay well that might seem a lot more straightforward it's like you could go watching tutorials you could read articles you could uh try building software in that language right there's there's so much you can do to try and build and work on that skill and then people will say for soft skills Nick though like when do I get to practice this and it's hard right like it's hard because it's not like sometimes it feels like it's not directly in your control like just going and watching a tutorial or or building something but this is a perfect example of like of practicing communication so that's one example um and then Andrea I'm sorry if I'm asking so much no worries there's no such thing that's the entire point of these live streams uh I read many times senior developers talks about what the tech stack uh what the tech stack is not uh more important the more important part is to understand the logical problem but all the job opportunities I see are asking for three years of experience with X or Y tools how can we understand that dichotomy yeah having in mind that job opportunities are based on what the developer team recommend the companies the senior developers say one thing but um about the job opportunity yeah so um and sorry just on that Express package said below ah yeah talking to customers or stakeholders yeah communication it's a huge part of software engineering so to Andrea's question this is such a good question um I've tried to and I feel like I don't have like um the answer that people want to hear when I talk about this so uh I'm sorry because I'm probably about to disappoint you when I when I talk to people about um applying to jobs interviewing actually working on the job I look at these things like um what's that raid what's what is what's happening what's raid what's raid what's it do thank you I think I don't know what it means but I'm appreciative of it um so Andrea's question is around um we are raid thank thank you this this a twitch thing I'm new here um so um the idea about going from people are raiding my my twitch and like my monitor is not working this is like the worst day but thank you for being here uh yes twitch we come a peace okay well let me pause for one second folks that are raiding me on Twitch um thank you so much for doing that that's super cool I wanted to apologize because my I think it's my video card ended up nuking itself while streaming here so uh I am literally like trying to stream off of my vertical monitor here it's just a it's a bit of a it's a cluster if you will so thank you for joining I appreciate it we're going through the chat there's a question from Andrea and I'm just going to repeat it in case people didn't see um but Andrea was saying that it feels kind of confusing that when we see job applications that are saying like you need x amount of experience with this programming language and this text stack and then we hear other people saying like as senior developers like hey it's not really so much the language or the text stack that's important it's kind of like the fundamentals or if you know one thing you can transfer it um these are both like like true things that happen so yes I agree with what the senior developers are saying um I think like all of this stuff is transferable just a quick example uh in my time at Microsoft the end and so it's been just under five years now I have had I think two people that I have either had hired on right before I joined the team or right after two people as far as I'm aware that were like sort of fluent in using C and C is the language that we use so the point is that like they were able to demonstrate in their interviews that they know how to develop software they're fluent other languages that's fine they'll learn C we don't care it's not it's just not a requirement now where this gets really confusing to Andrea's question um is that it's very confusing when we see job applications and stuff like the job description say you need x amount of years of experience with some tech stack so I think that what happens is that some of this stuff gets very disjoint and like it is kind of unfair that's why I talk about these things in three phases one is that we need to stand out in our job applications number two is that we need to stand out and nail the interview and number three um is that um number three is that we literally have to like do the work once we get the job Jonathan Baron thank you so much uh let me um let me finish this question then I'll go right to yours I I really appreciate that thank you I think the big challenge is that when we're looking at the job application part there's a job description that's been posted there is a huge discrepancy a lot of the time in what you actually need to do the job successfully and like what people are asking for and this is why I said I I feel like when I go to give this answer it's like not the answer people want to hear but like the reality is that employers whether that's HR the hiring manager they're just copying and pasting a job description whatever it happens to be is like they're probably indicating what they want because that would be ideal like if we work in C and asp.net core if you know it already that would be great so they're going to put that down and then they're saying some minimum years of experience the reality is like like I said that people will learn this stuff if they need to like there's an opportunity for people to be taught and to learn things especially because the stuff is transferable but here's the sort of like the unfortunate um part that I just want to mention is like they get to make the job description and I think it's pardon my language again I think it's crappy that like that's the situation we're in but like they get to make the job description and then they have thousands of applicants apply so they're kind of sitting there going we can set the bar to wherever we want and I'm not saying please don't misinterpret this as me saying like and haha like sucks to be you it's like no I'm acknowledging like this is crappy but it's sort of the reality of the situation they're in like literally like let's I know I try to do this a lot so we can all look at different perspectives put yourself in their shoes right you make a job description and you get a thousand applicants what's the easiest way that you can try to filter and statistically hope that you get higher quality applicants you raise the bar right um so I'm not saying that this is like this feels good or this is like fair or that it's guaranteeing to find the best people but they get to raise the bar to whatever they want this is why people will say like it's not fair that they're not hiring boot camp grads at some places because it says you need like a degree but like I don't have a degree and I think that I could do that job and it's like you're you're probably right I'm like I'm not going to disagree with you that might very well be the case but guess what they're probably thinking statistically people that went to call and I'm not sure if there's actually data that suggests this or not but maybe they're saying statistically people that went to college or university have more skill and more education in the area so maybe statistically if we raise the bar to that level we know we're going to get like hammered with applications we just help filter out some of what they're considering noise and I will say it again I'm not saying that's right or guarante they get better results but I think that's what's happening so I think I hopefully that might explain some of the dichotomy it's because people are setting the bar higher than it needs to be and they're being specific with the requirements the reality is that job description could read like here is the technology you will be working with if you have experience in these things that are related they would be very transferable and then of course they're going to layer like this this is where you you build that as a base and then you start to say okay but it's a it's a mid-level engineering role so probably need some years of experience and then they just keep upping the bar but um I hope that helps explain it I realize like I said that's probably not what you were hoping to hear but um hope that helps um if Andre if you have any more follow-up questions on that like I know you were saying sorry for all the questions just ask them that's the whole point of this if the stream ends you have more questions I know you're watching from Twitter feel free send me a message on Twitter I'll keep responding uh I may make a code commute video on it by the way uh good Shameless opportunity to plug code commute cuz people uh raid I guess that's uh what's happening now right so uh if people are still here from The Raid or you didn't hear me shout this out earlier um my primary YouTube channel is called Dev leader um Dev leader is where I put uh edited videos uh like tutorials and videos that are a little bit more streamlined than this because I do have them edited to go over software engineering topics but code commute is one that I go over um basically stream of Consciousness stuff when I'm driving to and from work and two and from Crossfit um I just kind of today there was a rant there was two things from Reddit or three things from Reddit um and then otherwise I'm answering questions so for example Andrea if you wanted me to follow up um I could make a whole video entry on code commute uh and for people that are kind of hearing about it for the first time if you would would like a dedicated video kind of like what I'm doing right now but talking about software engineering topics send them in you can comment on a code commute video or message me on social media I'll add it to the list I'm happy to try and go over it and explain it okay let's go back up Jonathan Baron thank you again I really do appreciate it do you have any dos and don'ts for building in public via LinkedIn posts as we try to build an MVP um and then saying will try uh will'll learn back in Cloud Etc from zero awesome so I don't have um I don't have like a published like list on this but I can talk through uh some of this actually I do have um I'm lying I have a little bit of that so if I go back there's a Code commute video on this right so code commute one sec I can't remember what day I posted it anyway if I don't see it like as soon as I open my channel um and I don't know if I see it very obviously yeah there it is so increase your it's called increase your luck surface area learn and public in networking so I'm just going to copy and paste that into the chat uh Jonathan you are on YouTube so you should get this link um and the fact that you're on YouTube you can look at the code commute Channel and like I said it's called increase your luck surface area learn in public and networking that is a video that I actually filmed at this desk even though it's a code commute video sometimes I don't get driving in for the day and still make an entry and um that when I talk about it a little bit but just high level one of the the really big don'ts that I see a lot of people mess up is um let's talk about let's back up and talk about some of the goals of learning in public right goals are they you get to learn that's the goal and I think what happens is that people go hey there's this social media aspect right and like they and and I have a lot of tangents on this so I apologize but there's this social media aspect let me like try to learn in public but then I'm getting like likes and I'm getting comments and then you're going but I want more likes and I want more comments so let me like do these social media things and now I'm getting more likes and more comments and all of a sudden you're focused on likes and comments and not like I'm actually learning and one of the things that I see happening with this it's a big mistake in my opinion is that people go down this path and they get distracted by it so I mentioned earlier for some people it can be a really big motivator for accountability but I also think that some people can be distracted and what ends up happening is that one way to come across on social media to um I mean you can you can post really polarizing things you're going to get a lot of Engagement that way but the other way is that as you're trying to post more things you come across as an authority on the topic so just to give you an example I assume that most people that aside from raiding into hear thank you again by the way and just being like we don't know this dude but like whatever we showed up I think that most people come to my content because they or like my live streams because they see the content I'm posting and I am an engineering manager I've been doing this for 12 and a half years I've worked at startups I work at Microsoft now I have a bunch of things that I share online and what I'm doing is trying to illustrate to you that I am I don't like I don't like the word Authority it sounds too weird I guess but like I'm someone with experience in the space like I have I have some Authority in the space because I've been doing it I'm not just a random person that wants to make some stuff up and talk about it just like it's literally what I've been doing for like a big chunk of my life so I am able to talk about things from a position of experience and I've done and I think one really big mistake that I see people learning in public do is they go well that's what all the other big people do so I'm going to talk like that but what happens is like you're actually not an authority on the topic and then you start presenting yourself that way and something happens very quickly and that's that the people that could have been giving you feedback about what you were learning either trying to course correct you or encouraging you what starts to happen is they go I can see right through your like not only is that wrong but like now you're trying to educate people and tell people about this you'll see people ripping on people for LinkedIn all the time um there's people that will post diagrams about and there were some like system design stuff I saw posted a few months back kind of like it didn't quite go viral but there was enough like activity on it that was like you're literally posting this to a big audience and it's wrong like the whole thing was just like not not right um and the reality is like that person probably knows what they're talking about but maybe not on that subject and I see this happen a lot with um people that start off in this space and my my recommendation so kind of that's what to not do my recommendation is actually be transparent about it right so to be able to say hey whether you're writing to your blog and you're like here's what I learned um you know I spent time building this thing or learning about this topic and here are the takeaways that I got from reading these resources watching these videos having these uh side chats um building these things and like just presenting it in a way that's like here's what I believe I understand from this because then what happens you're always going to have people on the internet that are it happens like it unfortunately it's just how things work but you're also going to have people that see that and go hey like that is right like good job like you did learn that that's that's spot on you'll have other people that will say hey by the way that's not quite it like I I think what happened is you misunderstood this part and then you start getting the feedback and that's sort of the other part on the article that I didn't get to which is like this is a really good opportunity for you to practice getting feedback but the whole thing in my opinion falls apart when you start to position yourself as an authority and you're not and think people do it because they're chasing the wrong sort of like vanity metrics um and I I did promise I was going to come back and say this but like when I started Dev leader I actually started Dev leader in 2013 I took a 10-year break because I gave up and I was trying to learn in public because I said hey if I want to be a better engineering manager because I had a hybrid like IC manager role so I'm not doing in my opinion I'm not doing a good job as a manager so I'm going to start learning and public I started my my blog Dev leader and then I was writing articles trying to be like here's some of my experience and things I'm learning about and then I felt like no one was like reading I felt like no one's paying attention and I'm like well why am I doing this but like that wasn't it was the wrong motivation right I was doing it because I was trying to learn and get better and then I lost sight so um now when I create content most of it is not learning in public most of it is to try help others but there's still some things where I'm learning in public and um I was doing a little bit more of this I had a a live stream I was trying to do Tuesday mornings but doesn't really line up now um and I was coding live and I would purposefully pick things where I'm like I don't know this made it really awkward and embarrassing to go code stuff live but it was my opportunity to go learn in public like hi I'm Nick I am a principal level engineering manager at Microsoft I've been programming for a while let's go watch Nick mess a bunch of stuff up and fumble around right um and it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot I just uh right now I don't have the capacity to keep doing it so had to cut that out but anyway Jonathan I hope that helps um my that's my number one recommendation is do not um try to come across like an authority figure um seek feedback be open to feedback right um I think it's easy to get into positions where we want to defend things into Oblivion try to be open to it if uh people are trolling you you can all the power in the world to just ignore it it's fine uh literally you can block people and never have to worry about them again if uh if over time you find that you're enjoying it and you're learning a bunch and uh maybe you become you know someone who can talk about a topic with more Authority you could you could go transition into like content creation and stuff I just I think for many people like cont content creation is not the actual end goal for them um but you may find that it's something that you want to keep like a almost like a journal of learning so that could be really cool so any anyway Jonathan I hope that helps um but that's uh my thoughts on that so thanks again I I appreciate the the tip um productive time Dang if he's in Redmond he might have worked with my uncle at one point not me knowing how big the office there is the office in Redmond is outrageous it's like 10 minutes to drive across at the campus it's ridiculous it's so crazy so context I am from Canada originally when I was hired onto Microsoft I worked remotely from Canada in Ontario and so I worked there for a few months this was at the beginning of the uh lockdown and what happened yeah the off the campus is so beautiful um they they shipped me across cuz my to be hired on it was for a US position but because of the lockdown and stuff like we're going to wait because like we get that it's kind of weird um so they me down and they put me into uh what do you call it like corporate housing and it's literally like if I took one step across the street I would be on campus so I lived at one end of campus and the office building that technically my team was in even though everyone worked remote um was like a 10-minute drive and it's all campus in between it's crazy uh it's really really cool it's super green super beautiful uh like I said I am from Canada but what I realized when I came out here was a lot of the like I'm used to seeing like you know lots of trees and stuff cuz it's Canada yay uh it's similar but the trees are like twice as tall here it's it's nuts we just get a lot more snow where I'm from so uh there's still a little bit of snow here not that often um rains way too much rains every single day it's crazy um but there's way less snow and I hate snow so so unfortunately I probably don't know your uncle uh cuz there's a lot of people that work here but um it's cool thanks for thanks for that I appreciate it um yeah and sorry I'm reading source code yes your comment sorry I kind of missed that um the uh I heard now that we have to also get the application past AI that filters everything some places are using AI for that for sure uh even before AI right um something that I can't I don't actually know all the places that use this like if someone said hey does Microsoft do this I would assume yes to some degree but I don't know literally um but I would just assume yes based on the volume people would say what do they call them there's like automated systems for rums not the AI stuff specifically but just like looking for keywords and stuff automated like is ATS automated tracking systems or something um and like people will say like hey like you don't don't got to put a lot of keywords on rums it's distracting and part of me is like I don't know man if you're applying anywhere and there's a chance that there could be automation looking for keywords literally put them in because just by not having them automatically like you could be the best candidate and like the whatever screening system they're using just misses it then some people will say well it doesn't matter you shouldn't be working in a place like that and I'm like I like I get it but like this is part where it sucks but like sometimes we got to play the game as much as I hate to say it it's like uh I talk about this a lot I don't like Elite code for software engineering interviews I think it's I think it's ridiculous I think asking leite code style questions to gauge how well a software engineer will perform is like one of the worst things we could do the people do it all the time um but if people said hey Nick how do I prepare for interviews I would tell them like Sor you probably should be practicing lead code not because I think it's a good way to gauge software Engineers because it's probably how you're going to get tested at some point in your interview process so um there's a bunch of stuff like that that um like I said it's like you got to play the game a little bit and honestly though once you're I said when I was answering Andrea's question earlier I said there's three phases I look at the application process so getting noticed the actual interview process so so you're demonstrating these qualities so coding system design and behavioral interviews and then once you're in at the job it has like a lot of the stuff from the previous steps don't really apply like you're not going to be doing Elite code at work so that was probably not really relevant um you're not trying to write emails and stuffing in keywords uh like there's just a lot of stuff that doesn't really translate well from those first two steps into the actual job stuff but I like walking through people through those three stages so that they can think about where to focus for themselves um productive time I was only kidding but yeah he's worked there for over 20 years pretty cool to see all his work that's awesome I'm is he at Microsoft I'm assuming because uh you were mentioning Redmond there's I guess other companies in Redmond but um Microsoft is the big one so just guessing um I'm doing a quick time check here folks it's after 8 I was only planning to go for about an hour um this is usually the time where I try to do like Shameless Shameless plugs yeah he does work at Microsoft cool oh that's great um Let me let me kind of I'm going to sign off here uh but let me kind of show you what I got going on on the other platforms and all of that fun stuff so this is going to be such a mess to try and I don't even know if I can do this I can't um let's see can I is there a way I don't think I can um I want to share my screen but usually how I do this is that I I dock my window to part of this 48 inch monitor and it's completely dark can I turn it back on give me give me one sec by the way look how ridiculous this is like this is the remote for the monitor like why why is this remote so insane like what is this why it's like the same size as this microphone crazy um will it turn on let's see because maybe I can go back and wrap up the stream no there's no signal going to it so it's probably my video card um so that sucks okay but I will just kind of like put some stuff in the chat I am on OBS I can like the area but it's awkward because I don't know if I I don't have enough like screen real estate to do this maybe okay you know what let's let's try it let's just let's give it a whirl um can I do this if I go over here ah okay so oh man this is nuts is this going to work no that's everything will this work kind of okay we did it okay um so if you were curious this is where I was reading from so this is my newsletter Dev leader weekly like I said if you're like Nick newsletter suck I don't want more email that's totally cool don't subscribe but if you're curious and you like this live stream kind of format uh weekly. deev leader.com you go I put out the content on Saturday again you're like I don't want it my email cool if you want to join the live stream and you want to see the topic you got from Saturday to Monday night and you can check out what I'm going to be talking about and decide if you want to join would love to see here again I have a couple YouTube channels um code commute is the one where I am talking in the car if I hover over some of these you can see me driving around these are in the morning from Crossfit there's me sitting in the same spot I'm literally wearing that shirt right now that's awkward I swear I have other shirts um Andre says if that remote falls down the floor will break this remote could probably compete with a noia phone to be honest um but yeah so this is code commute um it's all Vlog style and so the format obviously I was engaging with the chat here on this live stream but the format of code commute very much the same idea just without the chat because because it's not live that would be completely Reckless but um Dev leader is my main YouTube channel um so this is where you can see I'm streaming there right now um but the content you'll see on here is a lot more either like C sharp.net tutorials uh I got my stupid face on all the thumbnails and stuff but there's also a podcast where I interview other software engineers and kind of talk about their career Journeys there's um more polished videos on topics like this so for example um I've done some career focused ones I've been I've done ones on like transitioning to an engineering manager role maybe that's an interest for you but those ones are edited they're not me like messing up and talking over here at this screen because my monitor broke um so something you can check out and then finally the thing I will shout out here as well actually two more things uh one is that if you're interested in courses yes surprise it's a creator online who's going to push courses to you but in all seriousness um I have courses on dome train if you're interested uh if you want to learn C and net development I have the getting started in Deep dive ones which is a pretty for people that aren't CP and.net developers this was such a cool um I don't know like honor to have because Nick chaps is is the one that runs Dome train if you are a casper. net developer you probably know Nick chaps is from YouTube uh he's one of the biggest uh C like content creators in the world um um and when I started off my YouTube channnel he actually reached out to me and asked me to put chuses together and uh when these ones came up he basically allowed me to to create the courses on dome train that teach people from scratch how to use C so um that feels cool makes me happy on the inside if uh you're not a c developer um because you made the wrong choice um but if you aren't interested in CP and.net I have some other courses that I've done with a friend of mine r Murphy also an engineering manager he's at Yelp so we have soft skills for software Engineers kind of like I was talking a little bit about today um we have promotion one behavioral interviews and we have oh it's because we're working on it right now we have another course that we're doing right now um so lots of options there and finally I will mention the sort of the product that I am working on is something called brand ghost so um if you notice if you follow me on social media so for example Andrea joined from Twitter um you won't see it on uh on Twitch because I don't make like post on Twitch but people on you uh YouTube a little bit uh people from LinkedIn or uh Twitter in particular will know like I post a ton of content on social media uh I tell the story that I took a week vacation to Hawaii in October and I had my product brand ghost made 150 social social media post for me while I was uh in Hawaii with my wife and so I built brand ghost to help create for to help support my content creation and the reason I I wanted to kind of shout it out here is because if you're interested in doing some type of build-in public stuff um if you don't want to think about like how to post and like what platforms and stuff like that um it's totally free if you just want to post things on social media okay so if you're like hey I want to post stuff on LinkedIn and Twitter or I want to post on Twitter and blue sky um whatever um you can schedule post it'll cross post that's all free the paid for features are for more advanced content creators so if you're like hey I'm not there don't worry um you can try it out for free you can use it to cross post um I mean free like free Forever Air quotes on forever because maybe we have to change our business model at some point but we want to make sure that we can get new creators on board to be able to have a low barrier to being able to post online and then from there if you want to pursue content creation we have more things that you might be willing to pay for because you enjoy using the product so that's the strategy it's built in CP and asp.net core in the back end and then because some bad decisions were made I'm just kidding no but the front end is in nextjs typescript so yes we did pick some other things that weren't C but I mean you can't win them all right but anyway uh that's what I got going on so I wanted to say thanks so much for joining me um I do this live stream every Monday at 7 p.m. and if you don't want to wait until next Monday at 7 p.m join me on code commute brand ghost is mine yes brand ghost is a product that I built um I actively use it for all of my social media so just for for context if you're like how can I trust that brand ghost is going to do the job that I want like I literally use it if brand ghost wasn't working I would not be able I would probably stop creating content because I would just feel overwhelmed at this point um maybe try to keep up with YouTube but um but I use it for everything so uh if you try it and you're like hey there's a bug or hey I want this to be better literally this is the thing that I build outside of work because I need it for Content creation so would be happy to take feedback uh and like I said it's literally free if you just want to use it for cross posting so um check it out but thank you so much for being here um hope to see you folks on code commute through the week uh keeps me going and uh