Strategic Networking For Software Engineers - Engineering Manager AMA

Okay, we're just about to get started here. Just waiting for the streams to start streaming. I think Instagram is always the last last one to go. There we go. Cool. We'll check out the chat. I got to join on LinkedIn, too. Awesome stuff. Okay, I think we're ready to rock and roll. I think this is one of these. Yeah. Yeah, we're good. We're good. Cool. So, welcome to the live stream. Uh, for folks that are new to these live streams, the whole idea is that I have a newsletter article that I'll use as the basic for the live the basis can't speak already. The basis for the live stream and then it will be like an AMA format. So, please use the chat, ask questions. Uh for folks that are joining on Substack, uh your experience will be a little bit unique because I have to stream it from my phone and I'm streaming everything off of my computer for everyone else. Substack's a little special. So if you want the full experience, I would go to the Devleer YouTube channel. Just search for Dev Leader on YouTube. You can join the live stream on YouTube. I think it will be a much better experience, but up to you. No pressure. Uh but yeah, folks, if you're if you're new to the live streams, definitely use the chat for for engaging, asking questions. I do run these as like an AMA, so regardless of what the topic is, you know, if you want to chat through software engineering stuff, if you want to talk about career development, that kind of stuff, then please do so. Infected FPS is back in the chat. Monday stream day. Let's go. Yeah, thanks for being here. Um it's great to have familiar faces back. So, um, what else? What else is going on? Um, topics usually come from Code Commute. So, Code Commute is my second YouTube channel. I use Code Commute to basically answer questions that come in, kind of like the chat that we have on the live stream, but then I go make video responses for folks. That way, um, I can kill some time when I'm commuting. I can make sure that I'm still trying to help people. And personally, I think it's a better way to answer questions because people will DM me, ask me stuff and there's like common patterns that come up. So turning it into something where I can try to help other people with it, I think is a better approach. So code commute is generally where the ideas come from. Then I write a newsletter article about them. And so I'm just going to share that in the chat. It's at it's on Substack. So there it is. Um says the kick chat is not working. What's up with that? I don't know. Connection in error state. Thank you. Reream. Um I am sure to fix that without any other details. Um if you're on Substack, you already know where the newsletter is because you're watching this on Substack. But uh for folks that aren't interested in email newsletters, don't worry. Uh, you can follow along by clicking there. If you don't want to subscribe, please don't. I don't have that expectation of anyone. But if you like the live streams and you want to see the content that's going to be on them, definitely head to weekly.devleer.ca. I put the newsletter out every Saturday. That way you can check it out Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and then decide if you want to tune into the live stream because it'll probably be centered around that topic. Uh, Pedro, hello from the Dominican Republic. Awesome. Great. Thanks for joining. Appreciate you being here. Um, your name's not familiar, so I assume this might be your first one, so welcome. I appreciate it. Um, but yeah, this topic today is going to be around networking. And I'm going to share some different thoughts on this, some different perspectives. Um, you know, my my intention when I do live streams or create content is not to try and come across like I have the answers to everything or my way is the only way or the best way. These are strictly speaking just things from my experience, things I think work well. And um Devin says, "Spoiler alert, the answer to every code commute question is communicate and level set." He's not wrong. Um that is a good spoiler. That basically summarizes all of the content I put out. But yeah, the the other part that Devin could definitely attest to is that um I try my best to make sure that when I'm talking about a perspective, you know, I will try to acknowledge this is my perspective and if folks want to engage and share different perspectives, as long as they're the right perspectives, we'll listen to it. Just kidding. Um if you have a different perspective, if you want to share, like I, you know, happy to to see where that's coming from, talk through it. Um you know, I just ask that people are respectful of others. So, it's I think it's a skill, right? We have to be able to talk about these things. If you're a software engineer, you're not going to agree with what everyone else has to say. Um, but being able to kind of tap into like understanding what other people are trying to convey. You don't have to necessarily agree with all of it, but at least getting an understanding, I think, is very helpful. So, oh, by the way, the chat overlay is not showing on the stream. Ah, you're right. Thank you. I appreciate that. Boom. Hopefully that starts coming in. there's a bit of a delay between the chat messages that you send in when I see them. So hopefully that's not too awkward, but thanks for the reminder. Uh if you're again, if you're on Substack, you can't see the same chat. So if you I see more people are joining on Substack, I recommend heading over to YouTube. It's just dev leader on YouTube. Probably a better experience, especially when I go to screen share and stuff. You don't get any of that. So topic is on networking. The basis for this was a code video and what I was responding to originally was a Reddit post and the poster on Reddit I think was experiencing for the first time some frustration where they were they I don't know if they figured it out but they had some peers that essentially were you know I don't know if it was like self-proclaimed but this person was probably more technical than their peers, right? They're working on their side projects. They're they're coding stuff and they're arguably more skilled. And then it turns out they're they have two peers and those peers ended up landing jobs. And this person was frustrated because they're going, "Hey, like what gives, man? Like these other guys, they're not even good. Like why is it like I'm struggling to get a job, but these these two guys that don't even know how to code? like all they did was schmoo or they like they did you know they were talking with people and then they end up getting jobs like it's not fair like they're not even good and it's like I think what they probably didn't realize is like yeah this is some type of networking effect. So I wanted to you know I made the video on code commute to talk about that share some perspective on networking and I figured we'd go through that. So, I'll just remind folks too, if you're if you want to participate in the chat, if you have tips that you want to share that's worked well for networking, please go ahead and share that as we're kind of going through this content. If you have, you know, opposite experiences, maybe you've tried some of this stuff and you're like, "Hey, that didn't work." Maybe there's, you know, we can get some group think going on here. Um, try to answer some questions for folks if you're like, you know, I tried going on LinkedIn and it's not working for me. Like, okay, well, what did you try? How did you approach it? Let's figure it out. Okay. Um, no pressure if you don't like using the chat, but you better use the chat or else. Um, okay. Let's kick it off. So, I think that when we talk about networking, I I want to start by saying like it's not a silver bullet, right? I don't think that you start networking. And I think maybe some people have this feeling of like, okay, networking, it's the thing I'm not doing. I'm going to start. and all of a sudden like I should start getting the um the job offers coming in, right? Like it's not going to work like that. It's probably not going to happen quickly either. So, it's kind of like it seems a little demotivating. Like, you're telling me I got to spend more time doing this stuff and it's not even going to guarantee me a job. Like, shouldn't I just continue to grind lead code and blast my resume out? And you might have success with that. I'm not saying that you cannot. But I do think that networking is a really good alternate vector to kind of layer in to your your strategy for getting a job. And like I said, not a replacement for the other things, not a guarantee, but I think a supplement. And I might go as far as to say like depending on how much, I don't know, technical experience you've actually built up. If you're someone who's been developing software, like you're quite skilled and you're still maybe a beginner, maybe you're someone who is, you know, maybe you are more senior as a software engineer, you might have a solid basis for for building stuff. Whereas a lot more junior people, they might not because they haven't had the professional work experience. They're relatively new to it. You still want to layer in networking probably no matter what. But if you are more senior, I might say even more into networking versus some other things. So it's a different thing to layer in. Okay? So you might be able to have a solid resume and you're blasting that out to enough job applications and the result of that is that you are getting call backs, you are, you know, starting to progress things, you are getting interviews, like very good. Um, however, you might be in a position where you are trying to send this stuff out and you're not getting responses. There is no call back. There is no there is nothing else, right? So, what else could you be doing? Is it just like, okay, well, clearly I need more projects or clearly I need to go deeper on these projects. Maybe it's just my resume is not right or is there some other part, right? And that's I think where the networking can can really help. So when I think about people currently trying to apply to jobs like you know want to fully acknowledge that I'm not actively applying and from folks that I've talked with or reading online like very challenging. I don't have stats in front of me that talk about number of applicants for roles, but I've been hearing some, you know, some pretty high numbers. And when I think about that, I'm not a recruiter, but from the perspective of like trying to think about how you go filter those resumes, oh man, I don't know how anyone's doing that. If you have a, you know, 500 applicants for a job, you have a thousand applicants, let's, you know, I talked, I actually recorded a code commute video today, so it's not live yet, but one of the things I was saying in the video today was like if you have take like a more entry level kind of web developer role, if you were to think about a ven diagram of the different technologies and skills, I suspect fact that that ven diagram would be heavily concentrated in the middle, right? You'd have a ton of overlap of these different things and then probably some some things on the outskirts of that ven diagram. So just as an example, just to overly simplify, you might have things like Typescript and JavaScript like heavily centered in the middle of this thing. You would have uh React, you might have Angular like heavily centered, you'd have Node heavily centered. Uh maybe not. Maybe you have some more people that focus on front end versus back end. Um, you might have like some CSS, HTML, like heavily centered, but there's going to be so much in the core of this thing. And if you think about that and then you layer on, okay, now we have a thousand resumes that have come in. I'm just picking some arbitrary numbers, right? How is it that with a thousand applicants where you have such an overlap in experience that you are going to stand out because when it comes to actually getting the interview, right? So, you've submitted your resume, you haven't you haven't even interviewed yet. So, how do you pass the interview? You have to get the interview. You need to be able to stand out among the pool of people that have applied. So, in my opinion, one of the biggest barriers that people applying to jobs have to work through is like, how do you get through the noise of the other applicants, right? I've been doing resume review videos on my Dev Leader YouTube channel recently, over the past couple months, which has been great. People send in their resumes. If you're interested in that, you can check out my main YouTube channel, Devleer. If you're on YouTube watching the stream, you're in the right spot already. But there's a playlist off for ré reviews if you watch a video in the first minute I I explain how to submit your resume if you're interested. But one of the things I've been trying to to call out to people is like how is your resume going to stand out, right? Like you you need that or else it's just it's going to feel like it's lost in a sea of rums, right? You might in your head know the awesome work that you did. And to be completely honest, I've had some resumes that have come in like the two that I recorded this weekend. They'll go out this week. Um I think on on both, at least one for sure, I was like high level from reading what this person wrote down. I'm like, I bet you this person has like some really cool stuff they've worked on. And the way that they had written their resume, I was like, none of it's coming through. And I'm not saying that to like pick on them for how their resume is written, anything like that, but one of the things that I observed is that they're talking about um you know, they were a founder for a company that was around for a couple of years, right? So they called out some things that were maybe um non-technical, right? Like you're not coding related, which I think is awesome. If you have some of that experience, call it out. That stands out. So they talked about being able to to work with customers to negotiate. They talked about mentoring and and coaching people. Like these are awesome things. And I think they had like one line on, you know, like built iOS and Android apps from scratch. And I'm like, awesome. But like like what did you do? Like there was so much opportunity to just be and I bet you I bet you if I were to sit down with that person in an interview and be like, "Tell me tell me about this job." Right? You you founded a company, right? You had some outsourcing going on and you were building mobile applications. Like, tell me your favorite project from from that company. I bet you they could recite something super cool that they built, why it was cool, challenges they had. Like, tell me that. Tell me that on the resume. John Vanir, cheers to you too, buddy. John is a content creator as well. He runs Latterly IO. Uh for folks that are This is not planned, by the way, but let me put a link in the chat. Um I just want to make sure that I type it right and that way when I put it in the chat, it comes through. But this is John's website. Like I said, he runs Latterly IO. Um he does a really good job backing up stuff with data is like one of the things that I like to highlight from John. um when I talk about stuff like not that John doesn't have his own perspectives and stuff but like when I talk about stuff I'm like this is my lived experience like where's the evidence I don't know like let me just tell you about my lived experience right that's the evidence um I think what John does a really good job of just to give you an example I'm going to make this up but if I were like hey I don't think that uh you know react and TypeScript is like the best thing to focus on if you're a junior because I think that there are too many people that have that skill set. Something that John does a really good job of doing is he could actually make an argument. I don't I think he might have just like commented on LinkedIn. I don't know if he's actually on the the stream, but something that he could do very well is say actually like I think that it is a good thing to focus on even though there is a lot of competition, there's the most demand for it. It's the most in- demand skill set and here's data that shows you that. So, um, definitely check out Latterly.io. Like I said, that's John Vanir. Does a lot of streaming, does a lot of building in public, so I can't say enough good stuff about John. Hey yo, Aga Kaizen, welcome from from Twitch. Yeah, Mauricio is given the wave to infected FPS. That's right. Got the familiar faces back in. Cool. So, you know, with résumés, we want to make sure that we're finding a way to stand out, right? But when it comes to networking, this can be a bit of like a a hack. Okay? And I say this because if one of the biggest barriers for getting interviews, getting called back is the fact that like you're not standing out, if you are in a position where you've done some networking, you can sometimes do a little bit of bypassing that, right? you are standing out because the person that you've been building up a connection with, networking with, building that relationship with outside of just your resume, they know your name. They know what you're up to. They have more information about you. You're already kind of standing out. So, just want to check LinkedIn on reream is sometimes kind of silly. So, it says LinkedIn user, but that's from Dan R. Awesome. Well, thanks for being here, Dan. Dan. Damn, the letters are closed on the keyboard. It was a typo. Um, yeah. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. Okay, so that's one of the reason. Oh, let's Omega Kaisone. We talking about networking, connecting in the space. I thought we were talking about actual networking. No, this is going to be networking like connecting with humans um in terms of trying to land jobs and stuff like that. not not Ethernet cables and Wi-Fi and that kind of stuff. Um, sorry. I actually thought when I was putting this together that I might do like a funny I'm really bad with thumbnails like for dev leader on my main YouTube channel. I have my video editor make the thumbnails now, but he doesn't do it for the live streams. I just kind of use Canva and do something usually pretty dumb and quick. And I was thinking like, you know what would be really cool? We're talking about networking. I should put some like Ethernet cables or something on. And then I was like, oh man, that's going to be so confusing because it's not actually that kind of networking. But I was like, it'd be so clever. And now I'm realizing that even just the title alone is kind of confusing or that. So no, it's not about CCU efficiency and TCP. Nope. Um, yeah. It's kind of like I used UDP and the message was a little bit lost when I sent it out, right? Nah, good networking joke. No. Okay, I tried. Um, yeah. Apologies. Sorry for the confusion. This is connecting with people. Um, the Are you booing my joke? That was a That was a good joke. Okay, I I'll guess I don't have a career in standup comedy, but I won't cry about it too much. The um thing I called out in the newsletter article, and I'll put a link to it in the chat. Um I did a an interview, like a podcast with Scott Hansselman. If you are a net developer, you probably know who Scott Hansselman is. he's a he's like a he's a bit of like a developer advocate celebrity like at Microsoft and um it was a really cool podcast we did and one of the things that Scott was sharing was he he was talking about like different lived experiences where he talks about increasing like your surface area for luck. Okay. And it seems kind of funny, but when he talks about luck, it's not just like there was a, you know, something something that happened and it was like a just a chance. It's almost like you need the the opportunity, so like the event to happen, but you also need to be prepared. Okay. So, I can't think I'm trying to think of a good example with like a lottery ticket. You have like a winning lottery ticket. Awesome. Okay. So, winning lottery ticket, but so that was like the the thing like the coincidence, right? The this thing that happened. So, winning lottery ticket, but you are trapped in the desert and you have no way to get back to go submit the winning lottery ticket on time. So, you had the opportunity, but you weren't prepared to take advantage of it. So, um Code Matter, if you have a winning lottery ticket, you better be sharing. Um, no pressure, but uh I want my cut. And the idea with increasing the service area for luck is this concept of yes, we need these opportunities to show up, but we have to be prepared as well. And I liked this analogy when I was thinking about networking. I thought that this would be a cool way to kind of frame it because when you're doing networking, you are increasing that surface area for luck. Doing more networking isn't a guarantee. that things happen, but you are becoming more prepared and you're increasing the likelihood for those things to come up. So, for example, through networking, you might get connected with people. Often, I think about this kind of stuff from the perspective of LinkedIn. So, I have a bit of a bias just from from that. Uh doesn't have to be LinkedIn. It's just the first thing that kind of comes to mind. But, could you imagine that you start meeting with people, right? you're building up a relationship, however that looks, whether that's from attending the same meetups or you're talking on LinkedIn or different social media platforms, whatever, right? Doesn't matter the scenario, but over time, right, it could be weeks, months, a year. Over time, you're chatting with that person and they're like, "Hey, yeah, like kind of weird. We just did something with our team and we actually have more headcount that opened up or I we had a reorg and there's more headcount or something, right? I switched to a new company and they're hiring more people. All of a sudden, it's not, again, not a guarantee, but there's a potential opportunity. Okay? And now you've invested the time with this person. And you could say, "Hey, that sounds like an interesting role. Like, could you tell me more about that? Is that something that I'd be qualified for? How do I apply?" This person's like, "Hey, I've actually known you for a little while. Yeah, good point. Like, maybe I could give you a referral to this." Does that sound like it's impossible? like no, it's not going to happen with every single person you're networking with, but you are increasing the surface area for luck. Okay, so the challenge with this kind of stuff is that when we describe these scenarios, it's like, yeah, but like what are the odds of that happening? I don't know, man. The odds of that happening are greater than if you're not networking at all because in that scenario, your odds are zero. Um, I think that like I kind of was hinting at at the beginning here, this is something you should be doing to supplement building experience, right? And if you're already someone who has a lot of that experience, putting more time and effort into this, I think is even more beneficial. Okay, so just reading the chat. Okay, so code matter, these lottery tickets attract vultures. Okay, look. I only want part of it. I don't need the whole thing. I figured I figured that was fair. We're on a a firstname basis, right? You're code Matt Exor. I'm Nick. First name basis. I think we're good. I think that taking half is fair. I'll take a third. I'll, you know, that's even more fair, right? Architect. I just saw that you joined. Welcome. Thanks for being here. A Mega Kaisen says, "Like for my example, I have tech that could change concurrency but no contacts to take advantage of to get it." So to build it myself, have uh have tech also me no one to sell it to or partner with. This is now pretty much impossible unless I build the service myself. Yeah. But in this case, right, like if if you take that example, it's it's less about it's less necessarily about, you know, applying for a job, but I think it's still a good example, right? If you have if you're trying to partner with someone on something, you want to build things with other people, whatever that happens to be, it's a similar story, right? If you're not taking the steps to go connect, I realize that is very much a LinkedIn term, but I'm trying to use it in the general sense if you're not networking with other people somehow like what what are the what are the odds right so if we take Omega Kaizen's example where they're talking about uh no contacts to take advantage of it to get so I have to build it myself or sell it whatever if they're not doing any work to go network to go build up contacts what are the odds that something further happens if they just sit there and do probably zero. And it doesn't mean the odds of doing Yeah, exactly. very low. It doesn't mean the odds are astronomical if they start networking, but they're greater than zero. And the more effective you get at networking, building up those relationships, the odds just keep increasing. Devon says, "It does work. My first full-time dev job came out uh came because a friend of mine knew I was looking and told a friend of his that I was hiring that he was hiring of his that was hiring. Sorry, reading is apparently not my thing. Um I've since referred others back to him. There you go. Right. There's one example. Um the example that I share is that I'll give you two. uh my current team that I'm on right now. I strongly believe the reason that I'm on this team is because I was doing some networking maybe in a slightly different way than other folks might. And for me like I was creating more surface area and as a result had sort of established a established a connection or established a position to be in where people could see me. And as a result, it was like, hey, let's start talking and see if this is a good fit. That's for my current role. I'll give you another example. And this is a little this is becoming more and more detached because I'm starting to talk about content creation. But even taking content creation as an example has a networking effect. Like I am talking with all of you right now, right? There's however many people on this stream right now. And every week that I do this, like there's hundreds of people that come on per month. So this is some type of networking, right? It might look different than how others might approach it. I'm technically technically networking with all of you to some capacity. From doing content creation, I was able to start making courses, right? So for me, it was like putting out YouTube videos with C tutorials. um had because I increased my surface area for luck, my visibility was there. I ended up having one of the largest C YouTubers reach out to me. That's Nick Chapses, right? And he approached me and said, "Hey, you want to make courses?" I thought it was a scam. I thought it was literally like a fishing scam. And then I ended up having a Discord call with him and I was like, "Holy crap, it's actually it's actually Nick Chaps is cool." And I started making courses for his platform. But if I wouldn't have done anything I would not have been increasing my surface area for such opportunities since then right staying in touch working with him I've been able to create more opportunities that way so these things happen by working with other people um I don't know how to pronounce your name uh her dev um sorry on Twitch I do work at a company I work at Microsoft currently been at Microsoft for just under five years. Before that was eight years at a company called Magnet Forensics. And so I've been an engineering manager for just under 13 years, almost my whole professional career. Aside from internships, I had two full years of internships where I was writing code. I was writing code at Magnet Forensics as well for eight years, but was also an EM. Um, Fgur again I can't some of the names can't do. I'm so sorry. Hello, I'm on my junior year uh for software engineering major and for the summer I could not find any interesting internship so far. Uh, what would you recommend to use the summer as efficient as possible? Uh, as efficient as possible without internships. I'm not sure if I necessarily understand the question. I'm so sorry. You want to know how to find internships, but I also see as possible without internships. So, I I don't quite know how to answer the question. Um, if you are talking about I think the question says if you can't get an internship, how should you use your summer? I would say practice building projects like come up with a few ideas over the few months that you'll have and build things. You could you could vibe code some of them, right? I think you could go building things. Pick the technology areas that you want to get more experience in and set a goal to go build a handful of things, right? Maybe you do an app or some service or something uh one of them a month and you rotate through some technology. So you pick some things that are consistent and some things that change so that you can build up familiarity across them but also get yourself exposed to some new projects. Just to give you an example because I know you know React, TypeScript, JavaScript, those are popular. Maybe you're going to go make a uh a front-end app or like a full stack app with React and Node or something. So there's two text stacks. you pick TypeScript and you're going to interface with some database and you go spend a month and you go build that and then then in the next month you're saying okay cool I'm going to swap out React I'm going to put in Angular you just kind of pick different text stacks to work with and keep some things the same that might be how I would approach it um okay I I think I might sorry for the confusion yesterday was asking how I should use this summer well so I would recommend doing something like that to build your technical skills I realize that doesn't really help with the internship part especially if you were looking for like like finances to help with school and that kind of stuff. So sorry that might not help but I think that's good on the technical side and then what I would recommend and like this is for everyone like I would say if you're not spending any time networking one of the things I wrote in the newsletter article which by the way if you join realize there's more people on the stream now it's just at weekly.devleer.ca A but one of the things I wrote in the newsletter article is if you're not networking at all right now, try to set a goal. Try to carve out however much time you're using for like career development or you know building up skills outside of work for your next role. Spend like 20% of that time and dedicate it towards networking start. So, we'll get to more of that a little bit later, but I would um for this question from YouTube, I would try to carve out some of your time and actively go network. So, that could be meetups, that might be you're going to go participate in a hackathon or something like you might have to get creative or start using social media if you're not already doing it. Some people don't like LinkedIn because they don't like the idea of LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been like lifechanging for me and like I'm not I don't think I'm special. I'm not doing it some special way. Just like I'm actively using it a lot. Okay. And I think that for folks that are willing to put in some time to it, you can network very well and build awesome relationships that way. So hopefully uh hopefully that helps. Um but let me know Okay, we'll lead. Hello, welcome. Um, would you enjoy in starting your career from beginning in this time? You and yeah, so I think the the networking part again, I just see the question coming up again. Networking is in connecting with people. Yes. Um would I enjoy starting my career from beginning in this time? Um I feel hard to answer. I feel like the answer is probably not. But um I'll tell you sort of the cheat code that worked for me. I realize it was different times, but I'll just kind of explain why I think this could still work. I went to a school that had an internship program. So, the idea So, I went to the University of Wateroo. At the University of Wateroo, they have what's what are called co-op degree programs. So, I had a 5-year program and it was mandatory that every other semester aside from like at the very end you do two backtoback school ones, but every other semester you go from school to work. And then you might go, "Okay, well, good luck getting a job." And I'm like, "Yeah, I don't how how am I supposed to even get a job even, you know, how I don't even want to say how many years back it was. It's been a little while. I used to have hair and a little bit less white here. But how is it possible to even get a job as a like I've only completed one semester of school and I've never worked before in a tech company? How am I supposed to get a job? Yes, less competition, sure, but I also have nothing to put on a resume. So, the the thing that helped was that the co-op program sort of guided you through. They had all of these companies that would register with the school to hire candidates. So, you had a much higher success rate because you have companies that are coming to the school to look for candidates. Now, that might not mean that you see Jack. Hold on. How many? I don't know that many Jack Wangs. Is that the Jack Wang? Hold on. I think it is the Jack Wang. If that's I'm scrolling through. Is that Jack Wang from my my computer engineering class at Waterlue? Yes, it is. Ladies and gentlemen, the Jack Wang. Good to see you, Jack. Um the So, and so Jack was in my class. He's saying can confirm. I think he's replying to what I'm saying right now. The fact that they guided you through this didn't guarantee jobs, but it was like it helped a tremendous amount. That's so cool. It's Jack Wang in the chat. Um, networking, right? I went to school with Jack. It's now Oh, what's the math on this? It's It's 13 years later. Oh, but Right. How cool is that? So, no. Like, I wouldn't want to go through it again right now, but I think if I had to go repeat what I if I had to go repeat things, I would do it the same way. I would like I don't I think going to the University of Waterl was like the smartest thing I could have done at that point. Worked really well. I did not like going to school. I loved internships. The thing that I I don't have many regrets from school, but the thing I regret the most is like is a situation like this, right? So just to give you an example, I didn't do a lot of networking with classmates and I've tried to reflect on this before and I think probably why I didn't do this was I probably thought I don't want to say like better than but it like I don't it didn't feel like cool to network with my classmates. Okay. And I feel stupid. I feel so dumb for having a perspective like that. I feel dumb for not like participating more in some of the events that were at university. Um, not that I like regret my career decisions and stuff, but like I went to school with Jack. I haven't talked to Jack probably in almost 13 years. I don't know if we've spoken much at all since since school. And like to give you an example, right? I'm just I'm pulling up Jack's LinkedIn. Qualcomm. Qualcomm, Open Door. He's worked at a lot of He's worked at big companies. Could you imagine like from a networking effect if I like had kept more classmates close? If I I spent time like actually building relationships with my classmates over the past 13 years, like that network effect would be tremendous. And you know, I don't say I don't mean to say that like in a selfish way. I just mean like there's so many opportunities that either I could have offered to classmates. I actually had a classmate that I had hired on to magnet. So, you know, it it goes different ways and I just I really regret not leaning into that networking more. Okay, just scrolling back up through the chat. Sorry, there's a bunch coming in. So, I appreciate it. Um, back to the the how to spend the Sorry, Harry Zoo, I forgot to say hi. Thank you. Um, so back to the YouTube question for how to spend your summer if you couldn't get the internship. I would absolutely build projects over grinding lead code any day except for when you're actually applying for jobs. So, if you're getting ready to apply for jobs, start grinding your lead code. Some people like doing lead code. They enjoy it. They like the problem solving. I think that's lovely. I would never tell you to not do it if you enjoy it. I can't stand it. I don't think it's representative of anything remotely close to realistic in software development. Sorry, that's my opinion. Sometimes you'll get my unfiltered, biased opinions. I don't like it. I don't think it's useful except for interviewing. And that's because I don't control all the interviews in the world because I would tell people to stop using lead code in interviews. But I can't do that as much as I say it. So I think if you're going to be applying to jobs, get practicing your lead code. As an engineering manager, when I applied to Microsoft, I had lead code style questions. When I applied to Google, I had lead code style questions. As an engineering manager, when I applied to Amazon, I don't think I had any lead code questions. Very interesting. I don't code at work. Why do I need to answer lead code questions? Not helpful. I'm an engineering manager. I still had to do it. Um, I interned for a Fortune 500 company, uses co-pilot, and I co-pilot the crap out of my internship. Received a co-op offer which turned into full-time, but I feel like a fraud. I start next month. Um, so zero, why why do you feel like a fraud? So I think I understand why. I think if I'm reading between the lines, it's like I just used AI and it built the stuff for me. But the way that I might frame that is like you used the tools that got the job done? Like did people review the code? Were they happy with the outcome? Did things work or were they broken all the time? Did people hate what you were doing? Like I think if you answer some of those questions, maybe not so bad. But I think the other thing that's probably underlying here is that you're going uh oh, like maybe I don't actually know what I'm doing. When we talk about things like imposttor syndrome, one of the it sounds kind of funny. One of the criteria for imposttor syndrome is that you're not actually an imposttor. And usually this happens because people are qualified, but they it's like a self-esteem thing or they're not sure. So they feel like an impostor even though they're not. This is an interesting line because you might be close to an impostor if you don't actually know how to build software and you were just doing it starts to get a little bit blurry. But I do think that if you're going into this being like, "Hey, these tools work for the stuff I have to build and I'm not feeling so confident about where I'm at." This is a great opportunity to use those familiar tools. So, if you're using Copilot or you wanted to use chat GPT, when you're using those tools, go ask those tools what the hell they're doing and why. Start asking it to explain things. Get it to explain variations of those things. Start challenging it. Start using the tools in different ways. Because I think my biggest concern with this kind of stuff is not that people are using the tools to go build stuff. it's that they're building stuff and have no idea what they're building. You can change that. You have the tools at your disposal to go learn because you can ask it to explain things to you in ways that you'll understand. So, that's what I would recommend on that. Um, infected FPS. Yes, you should spend your summer hacking. Don't do that. Um, I think my problem is, this is from Omega Kaizen. I think my problem is I don't know a single person that even knows what stacks are. I started alone. Um, so go network. Go build in public. Go post it on Twitter. Go post it on LinkedIn. Start engaging with people. Right? If I don't know if you want to go to meetups, if you're willing to go do that, when you start talking with people, you could be talking about the things you're building. But the problem is that if you're saying I don't know a single person, then I I think like literally by definition to start knowing people that are interested in that stuff, you have to do the networking. Unless you know something I don't, which allows people to just start showing up and engaging with you, which you might, and then please let me know because I think that'd be very interesting. But I think you do have to go reach out a little bit more. Oh, cheap viewers, add to block list. Cool. Um, as a beginner, how best to prove yourself when you come to a company for internships? Sorry, I'm just going to I'm catching up on on the chat. So, um, how to best prove you, uh, yourself when you come to a company or internship? How do you should you prepare before arrival? Okay, good question. Um, the prep, this can, and this can look different depending on on the company, how much they're willing to kind of share with you ahead of time. A couple things that I would recommend. So, if you say have an internship coming up and it's going to start in May, oh man, we're almost May. Um, oh no, no pressure. If it's going to start in May, maybe it's towards the beginning of May. Let's say you have a week or so, right? Maybe you have a little bit more time. The sooner that you can do it, the better because obviously you have more time. But what I would recommend is, you know, you can start by a question like that to the hiring manager or if they're they've already connected you with sort of like your intern buddy or something. Sometimes they'll do that and say, "Hey, meet so- and so. They're going to be guiding you on your internship." What I would highly recommend is asking a question back to them like this, which is how can I best prepare for this? Like is there any like what language are we using? Can I study up on that? Is there uh text stack or frameworks I should get familiar with? For example, I'm just making this up right like hey like uh yeah the database backend is going to be in Postgress and you're like oh man or it's in and you're like I've only used relational databases. What's a like great now you can go learn about it and I would say that having any familiarity is just helpful right most of the time I would say for internships at least for I've done internships myself I've had six of them um I've had interns almost so when I was at magnet forensics I had interns literally almost nonstop throughout the year like not even just summer interns I mean like throughout the employer because we had people coming from Waterlue and Konis Stoga College and Wilfford Laurier. So, lots of schools nearby. So, always had interns at Microsoft. Not year round, but I think I've had interns almost every year. And two things that I say to every intern. It's not you better get your stuff done. It's number one, I want to make sure that you're learning stuff. Number two, I want to make sure they're having fun because I feel like if I can get an intern to learn and I can get them to enjoy it, in my opinion, that should lead to good work because we should be able to handle the rest and making sure that their work is structured and they can stay on track. So, if we can make sure they're enjoying it and they're learning, that means they will be engaged. If they're engaged and they're a good quick learner and they end up delivering good work, that should mean hopefully that I can be in a position to offer them. If they're not enjoying it, they're not going to do good work. If they're not learning, I'm wasting their time. So, I like making sure that internships are structured for learning. So, my opinion on the prep for an internship is I don't expect that interns come in and know everything. Quite the opposite. I expect that we're going to be teaching them. With that said, if you can get a head start on learning some of the stack, some of the domain, I think you can go a long way with that. Oh, and then code matter. Codemat exor I keep calling code matter. Um, good internship would teach you what you need to know. Boom. See, get on this. I don't need to be here. Um, this is why the chat's so awesome and I'm sorry that I'm behind on it. Uh, even if you come with low knowledge. Yes. Um yes a university academic side was a big weight but in life after that actually diminishes. 100% on this um the I've shared this kind of recently because it's it is a little bit different. I have said for a long time that there are so many things in university where I was like this was such a waste of time. The topics that I felt like I was learning in university were not relevant. But university taught me how I learn and it taught me how to do analysis. Those are very general skills that I think are like incredibly valuable. But like what did I learn in I don't know ECE 327. I think that was a course. I don't know. I haven't I haven't done a lelass transform probably uh ever. Um I haven't done a four-year transform uh ever. I haven't used any chemistry or physics I've learned. Um like the microprocessor class, the real-time operating system class probably not used that almost ever. So it feels like the academic side was like very wasteful. But I think that I had to go through that to learn a bunch of the concepts in terms of how I learn and how to approach analysis. So as Juan was saying here at university academic side was a big weight but in life after that actually diminishes. Yes. The difference and this is sometimes when I talk about data structures and algorithms I'm like I think it's good but like the amount of time and effort that some people put into this stuff I'm like your interviews are going to be great but holy crap like wait till you find out you don't have to write a dictionary from scratch right? Um there there's a lot of this stuff where I'm like you end up putting so much effort into it where I'm like you're there's diminishing returns. But I would say that in the team I'm on right now. I think I recorded this either this morning or another video for Code Commute. I was saying the scale we operate at Microsoft, I work on the routing plane for Office 365. There's situations we can't just take something off the shelf. Hey, there's a thing that does this. We're like great. let me just, you know, download this Nougat package and boom, we get it for free. It's like it works probably for like 99% of use cases. We're that 1%. We serve trillions of requests per day. So, we might have to start exploring other things that aren't just the standard off-the-shelf thing. Why? Because we have different optimizations and use cases that we really need to optimize for. So all of a sudden your data structures and algorithms come back and they're really valuable. Now if you're just building like I don't know like rel smaller relatively normalish scale things and I don't think that I'm not saying there's no value but sometimes I think the diminishing returns for how much time people spend I'm like oh no thanks. Um Devin says if they didn't want you to use co-pilot they would have disabled it. Exactly. Or they should have, right? Um let's say you failed to get accepted to college and you saw it as your only option for success in IT. What's the next step? First of all, it's not the only option. If you want proof of that, I will recommend um this playlist that I'm going to go put in the chat. I have a podcast. Yes, I am promoting my own stuff. No, you don't have to watch it. Um here's a playlist. I interview other software engineers and one of the things we talk about is the different paths that people take to becoming software engineers. So I just want to call out that like you know my my path was the traditional path. I went to university for computer engineering and the background for that is one I wanted the internships. I thought that would be great. Turns out that was the best part. Number two, in Canada, this is the same for other places in the world, by the way. If you want to be called a professional software engineer, you cannot just have that title because your employer says that it's a software engineering role. I realize that's a big shocker to probably everyone. But the reality is in Canada and like I said, other places to become a professional software engineer, there are certain requirements. One of them is that you need to go and graduate from an accredited program at a university. By definition, you must have that. It's a requirement. So, I said, I want to be able to call myself a professional engineer. I must go to university. You'll notice that I'm talking about this as a professional engineer, not that you need to do this to be someone who can do software engineering work. And how do I like how is that the case? Because literally every job doesn't care if you're a professional engineer. It's pretty rare. But you need to have a accredited university program. You need to have I think and I don't recall the number. I think it's two full years of work experience under another professional engineer that they can sign off on. I think it's two years. I could be wrong on that. Don't quote me. And the third part is you have to pass an ethics test. I've only done one of those three things. I've gone to an accredited university program. I am not by Canadian standards or any standards a professional engineer. just the reality. But that's why I went to university. That was the biggest motivator. Didn't end up needing it in the end anyway. So, no, you don't have to go to school to get into software development. Should you do some portfolio projects? Yes, 100%. Yes. Because if you're thinking about it, how do you want to start applying to jobs? You need some type of evidence that shows that you have been building stuff. You need the experience. And one of the problems is I think that a lot of people end up saying,"Well, how can I apply to jobs? I don't have the work experience." Start making that experience for yourself. It might not be professional, right? It might not be that you were employed by someone doing it, but you can go build anything you want to start building. Go do that, right? Go put some thought, some research, and you can ask chat GPT if you don't know where to start, right? You want to get into mobile development. Cool. Hey chat GPT, I want to become a mobile mobile developer. You know, based on information you have, what would be uh in ranked in order top three languages to use, top three text stacks to use, uh top three most um common databases to use, and give me like a a plan of action for going to learn these things. Like just use the tools at your disposal, but absolutely be building things because that's going to be the experience. Yes, I make lots of YouTube content. I post tons on social media, whether it's videos, articles, whatever. It's not a replacement for doing. And I I have courses that I sell. They're not a replacement for doing. I would never sell a course to someone and say, "Do this course and now you don't have to build projects." 100% no. If anything, don't buy my course. Go build projects. Do that. If you're looking for something to supplement, yes, then there's tutorials, there's articles, there's courses. That's the supplement. You must build things. Uh, so that's portfolio projects. By the way, just a small detail. Sometimes people write projects they can put on their port portfolio to show off like I built this really cool thing. I also want to mention that you can absolutely leverage projects on your portfolio or on your resume that are like I was just trying to learn about this technology and then put that on your resume. If I were reading someone's resume and I knew that they were, you know, entry level and they were spending time going to learn about this stuff and they were calling it out, that's helpful. That's better than zero things. I would be happy to see that. How do you convince companies? Sorry. And tried to find a company that would take you in and teach you. This is the thing, right? Um companies companies they're businesses. If any company is taking you in to teach you is it's because that they trust that it's worth investing into you. So, yes, companies could teach you and hopefully do teach you, but like like I just wouldn't rely on that being the thing. If you're entry level, they kind of have to and they're making that assumption. You're entry level. We know you're entry level. We must teach you. So, it's just that there's a lot of people in that position. So, like make sure that you are trying to do your own learning as well. Um, how do you convince companies to hire you instead of someone who just graduated from college? How do you stand out? Right? It's a It sounds like a facicious question and it's not meant to be because someone who's hired from sorry, someone who graduated college, how do they stand out? Like graduating college to me is not a standout thing. Why? Because if you had a thousand applicants and 500 of them graduated from college, how do how do you stand out, right? Like what are what are the things that you do that make you unique compared to other people? That's I think the trick. How do you stand out? There's a lot of noise. How do you stand out? Uh I mention college all the time because in my country companies highly value it. Yeah. And I think like you know in a lot of places you'll see like basically every job descriptions like must have you know graduated from college university and these types of programs are or similar people like they're setting a bar right there they're there's a lot of volume people are saying set the bar this will either deter people or they're actually scanning for it. I would say if you feel like you meet the expectations for the rest of the job description and don't meet that, I would still apply. Uh what are your thoughts on the guy that built an AI tool that overlays in a laptop stream to answer uh interview questions automatically? He got suspended. Yeah. Uh this is an interesting one. Um you know, I think parts of it are awesome and other parts of it I don't like. Um, the part that I don't like, how do I how do I say this properly? Um, I think there's something really cool there. Like, and I mean that honestly. Um, I don't like that the there's a lot of stuff I don't like. And I don't just mean like from the guy's perspective. I mean about the whole scenario. I don't like that we have stuff where if you're interviewing someone and they need to use an like rely on an AI tool, I'm like, what do you like what are you're not actually interviewing the person and that's the whole problem, right? But the point is if someone felt that using an AI tool to answer your question was going to give them a better answer, like maybe you're asking the wrong questions, right? Like it just feels like not it's not we it's just not right. So, this goes back to what I was saying about lead code questions. Like, it's not it's just not a helpful way to gauge people. And when we're trying to hire people, we want to make sure that we're getting on people to the the team that can that have a track record of working well with other people that can navigate ambiguous problems that are quick learners that are interested in learning and being curious. They're analytical. They're good problem solvers and they're resourceful. If you're using AI to go answer stuff, you could be being very resourceful. However, if you're using AI to like answer a behavioral interview question, like then you're not resourceful. Why? Because you should know the stuff about your own behavior, not asking AI about the behavior. Like that's the wrong use of the resource. So, I kind of like don't like the whole interview environment. I actually mostly hate it and wish I could make more sweeping changes in the industry about that, but I'm just a guy with no hair and white in his beard. So, I don't know how much uh pull I have on that, but um technology aspect I think is super cool. I think it's very interesting that they're finding ways to like layer that stuff in. I think I've seen he's like calling it like how to cheat like on anything in life and the So, super cool. But then the other part I don't like about this is now it's almost like gimmicky where it's like the they had a video where he's like on a date with a girl and I I had it muted so I didn't see but I could tell but based on the reactions some of the body language like he's kind of using it to like in a situation I'm like couldn't you just be a human? It just it starts to feel like the wrong use of this kind of stuff. And so I don't know, kind of I got mixed feelings cuz I think it's a cool opportunity for stuff, but like I don't know, like they just now it just feels like silly AI meme hype or something. Um, let's see. Then you show them the department that they should never enter. Okay. Well, most tech I make is high highly OCD optimized that I plan on selling as a service. Well, okay. So, Omega Kaizen, you're talking about selling stuff, right? Like you network with the people that are going to buy it, right? Like I'm I'm building a SAS company on the side called Brand Ghost for social media stuff. I'll share it more at the end of the stream, which actually is coming up pretty soon. Sorry. But um like I love building software but the thing is if it's a SAS service we have to talk to customers or potential customers. So we have to network we have to sell right I can't just sit there and wait for for users to come. So it's it's a similar thing the goal is different. Well a shared goal is that you're networking right? It's a common common thing between the two. It's just that the end goal is different. One's for a job, one is to be able to sell a product. Um, I also tattoo for a living, but before tattooing, I was going to take up development full-time, but tattooing kind of took off. That's great. Yeah. Santiago says, "Just do it." Game and Yun, welcome. Sorry it took me so long to get to your chat messages. That's from like almost 10 minutes ago. But Gaming Yun is in the house. Thanks for being here, Gaming Yun. Um, as a high school dropout, this is from Devin. My current position requires a bachelor or better in CS. So Devin, if you don't mind, um Oh, if you don't mind sharing, I think I know the answer, but um your current position requires a bachelor or better in CS. You're a high school dropout. How did you ever get that position? Because clearly you don't meet the requirements. I'm using a funny tone of voice for a reason. But if you don't mind sharing, Devon, I think that would be really cool for other people to hear. Again, sorry for taking so long to get through the um the chat. I guess I read slow or something. Maybe maybe the internet's slow and it took a long time for the the messages to make it to my computer. That's what it is. Um networking is what Deon says. Yeah, he good looks. Well, maybe both. Why not both, right? There's a there's a meme for that. Um, yeah, networking, right? So, Devin, you happen to chat with the, you know, the right people. Let it be known you're you're kind of networking. The recruiter randomly reached out on LinkedIn. Okay. And they were okay with you not having a degree. Seems like it, right? Um Gaiman Yun says, "I think people are afraid to make mistakes because the stakes are very high." Yeah. In a technical assessment, if you get the wrong answer, you don't get the job. Yeah. And this is so this may be why they rely on and I Yeah. Game and I don't um don't disagree, right? I think the stakes they do feel very high. Now, part of it is again I think that that framing for the interview is broken. And I'm not saying that you're wrong because I agree that that's a true statement, right? Have a coding question, you you fail it because you don't get to the answer. Okay, interview's over, right? You failed the technical part. This is what happened to me when I interviewed at Google. I couldn't get one of the technical questions because it was about networking hardware and data centers. seems pretty weird to me, but that's what I had for my technical question. And yeah, and so I failed my interview because of that. Now, the whole idea of getting the wrong answer for these questions, I think, is set up for just hiring incorrectly. It's very, how do I say this? When we're building stuff as software engineers, what's the right answer? What does it mean to have the right answer? Right? Software engineering is about doing analysis based on what goals we have under certain constraints. We build software solutions under those constraints. In ideal circumstances, we find the thing that we can build the fastest, the most reliably with the most confidence, that's extendable and extensible, that's highly performant, that has the best user experience. Optimize all those things in the best scenario and we win. And by the way, minimize the amount of time that it takes you to estimate that and get it done. That's ideal. Now, how often does that happen in reality? Approximately 0% of the time. So, we always have some set of constraints, something that we have to optimize for more. And I think the more important thing to think through is not here's a question and get me the one correct answer. I think what's more important is here's a scenario, walk me through how you approach optimizing, coming up with a direction for a solution. Now, if I have different constraints on this, how does your problem solving change? How do you start optimizing for these other things? And why do I think that's more valuable? Because that's actually a lot more real than trying to reverse a linked list and doing stupid sort algorithms that you have a package for already. Like, it's just like it's a waste of time. It's not reflective of reality. Um, what was the company called? You said you were starting. Um, so it's called Brand Ghost. So, I'll just put a link to that in the chat right now. That is the thing I am building. Man, that background's really bright. [Music] Uh, but yeah, gaming unit. I think that's a fair point. I think that's why people are leaning on AI because they're going, "Oh crap." Like, I don't know. I'm going to do this. Don't mess it up. And then ultimately it's a weird situation for everyone. Um, engineered by Evan says, "What would you say is the best method of networking right now? LinkedIn inerson events etc. I live in southern Ontario, London." Whoa, that's so close to where I was living. You missed the Jack Wang from the University of Wateroo. If you don't know him, look him up. Celebrity from our class that graduated in 2012. Um, the best way I think it's going to be very situational. I think personally LinkedIn works extremely well for me. I am kind of weird. Um, a lot of people don't know this about me. I'm extremely introverted. And you might say that sounds like, pardon my language, sounds like because here you are doing random live streams on a Monday night. You do them every week for like a year. Make a bunch of YouTube videos. You're not introverted. Yes, I am. I don't like being around people. My energy gets drained like immediately. I actually don't really know how I can get by talking to a camera. I think just from forcing myself to do it with YouTube videos. So, LinkedIn works very well for me because I don't have energy for in-person events. However, I have been trying to push myself outside of that comfort zone. So, I did like a speaking event last year and it made me realize like I should do more of that to network more because I think it's such a good opportunity. So, I think it's very situational. I think if you can get on LinkedIn, if you're doing like building projects and stuff and you're comfortable building in public, get on LinkedIn, get on Blue Sky, get on X or Twitter, whatever we call it now, get on threads, post, share stuff, do this kind of thing, connect with people. Um, what I didn't get to, and we're getting close to the end here, I didn't get to it in my in my newsletter article that I was sharing, but the thing that I want to recommend to people when we talk about networking is try not to lean into like, what is this person going to do for me? Sounds kind of weird because you're like, I want something out of this. I want to get a job. Don't start by what is this person going to do for me? Because they're a person with their own priorities and they're probably busy. And if you start asking them to do stuff for you, it's very likely they're going to say, "I don't know who the hell this person is. I got my own stuff to do." Either ignore, block, whatever. Sorry, not interested. Like, it's just not a good start. So I when I recommend networking like on LinkedIn or social media platforms, start by being curious. Engage in conversations and what people are posting about. It's slow. It's not It's not like a cheat code that's going to like boom, tomorrow you're going to have 50, you know, job applications that have been accepted and you're getting like a million interviews. It's slow. No, I'm not trying to trick people into like this is the one quick tip to, you know, 10x your interviews. No, it's going to take time. It just increases the surface area for for luck. Um, I think I'm not the right person to comment on this, but inerson events, I think that if you're down for it, could be tremendous. Um, I if we talk about like remote work for a moment, uh, I very much enjoy remote work. If I had to choose between the two, I would be, you know, it's either in office or permanently remote kind of thing. I'd be remote hands down. As an engineering manager, I do enjoy having some opportunity to be face to face with my team. I think there is a lot that we can learn from people's body language. Um, communication could be more clear. There's some things like brainstorming sessions I find work better in person. Um, and I think that when it comes to like actually meeting people and learning about people, I do think there's something that's beneficial about being in personally. So, I think if you can do it, lean into it. Um, companies that do remote, this is from Roma, companies that do remote interviews need to know somehow consider need to now somehow consider people cheating using ISO so it's fair playing field for everyone. Yeah, he even made the overlay move around the screen for eye movement. Yeah, it's like I just don't think that it's uh we're asking the wrong things that people have to use AI for it. Um Devon says because sorry I'm jumping around all over the chat, but Devon was able to get his current role that requires a degree without having a degree. And I think Devon said a college dropout, sorry, high school dropout. So, didn't finish high school and says, "Oh, man. I'm so far back in the chat. I'm so sorry, folks. I'm just like super slow. Degree never came up. It's all in the job description. Uh because that's what you do, right? It's actually my second job that required a university degree." There we go. Game and Yune. I guess the right answer would be a program that produces the desired output. Therefore, can be multiple right answers. That's right. So that was in response to like what's the right way to go build things. There's going to be multiple right answers. Um yeah uh Omega Kaizen says I feel like it should be like marbased. I want to see your codebase and projects. How languages they use? How everything work? Do they use a framework? Is there uh is there a farm of dependencies? How clean is their code? Yeah. Many errors. So on how does it look? How fast does it perform? Yeah. There I think that personally I think that there's just better ways than asking like lead code questions. Engineered by Evan. I lived in Kitchen or two. Awesome. Great spot. Miss it. Uh, don't miss the weather. It's cold. It snows. Snows a lot less here in Seattle. Rains a lot more, but those are trades we make. Uh, if you ever need branding, let me know. It's a cool name and concept. Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, Daniel Ward, I also highly recommend going to user groups around your language interest. Yeah. P. There we go. Like that's awesome. Thank you for the recommendation. Um, engineer by Evans says Blue Sky. I haven't checked that yet. There's a lot of people that were on Twitter actively in the developer communities that for unknown reasons migrated away from Twitter to go to Blue Sky. Uh, plastic surgery be funny. Uh, thank you Gaming. I appreciate that. Uh, says I'm a great speaker. Communication through these videos are great. I do appreciate that. Thank you. Um, I was tell So, let I'll come back to this. Let me get through the questions. I'm coming back to the the communication through the videos part. Um, figuring out how to navigate the conversation. We both know why I'm messaging them. Yeah, I think it would thrive in person. I'm a new grass, so trying to get there is important. Yeah, I think yeah, if you can get in person, it's helpful. Um, infected FPS says that works great early career, less so later when all the code you've worked on is the companies and can't show it. That's a really good point. you you need to be able to have like side projects to show for that and becomes challenging if you've been spending all your time building company stuff. Um, and thanks Codemat. Come back next week 700 p.m. Pacific. Be there. Be square. That's what they say, right? Um, yeah. Unknown reasons. Okay, I'm going to wrap up the stream, but I got some some closing remarks. So, um, I was, and this is just a small thing. It's kind of funny, I thought, but, uh, Gab and you was talking about communication through the videos. I was saying to a colleague earlier today, so for those of you that don't know, um, over the past like five months or so, I talk about this a lot on Code Commute, but sorry, there's like a a flailing cat or dog hair just like blowing in the breeze. Um, I've been working on a project for roughly 5 months at work and have been like just completely burnt out. So, try not to show it as much as I can. Um, but I talk about it on CodeCute a lot. Uh, it's made it so that if you're on my my normal YouTube channel, you might be like, "Hey, Nick, you used to put out like a bunch more videos." And you're right, I did. Um, it used to be like three videos a week plus the live stream. I haven't been able to do it. And um it's because I've been working on this project and I've just been so burnt out. So I either have not physically had time to commit to YouTube videos or or the time comes up and I'm like I'm I'm so exhausted like I don't I don't want to like I don't have I don't have energy or you know I don't want to do anything. I just want to go to sleep. And so that's burnout. So, I've been talking about that a lot on code commute, but today was the day we wrapped up the project. We did our final presentation for it. I think it went very well. Uh, very proud of the team that worked on it. There's a lot of people. Um, just yeah, I don't I don't have words uh for like how thankful I am for everyone that that participated because I know it was hard and uh they put a lot of time and energy into it. I was talking to a colleague of mine right before I had to go present and we're presenting to our CVP. So, it's a it's a pretty big deal and I was saying it's kind of funny because I've been doing these live streams in particular for like over a year now almost every Monday and I don't really have a problem, right? Like I mess up when I'm talking. I say dumb stuff sometimes. There's been times where I'm on the live stream and I'm like, I don't I actually don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. I'm a human. It happens. And I was saying the really messed up part is like I'm about to go start this presentation to our CVP and I know for like the first 10 minutes of that presentation, it's going to be like I don't actually know what I'm even saying. Like my brain will just stop. So, I don't know why that happens, though. Like, I'm not I'm very confident about what we're presenting. I feel very proud of it. Very good. You know, there there was a pre-eread. I saw the questions that she had. I felt like we had good answers for them. She's uh she's a great leader, right? Like, she has she asked very good questions. Like, you should have a good answer for this because it's a good question. And she will debate things, right? So, she'll tell you like, "I don't agree with that." And she's not saying it to like to be mean or cuz she's awful or something. No, like it's a good question. She has a perspective on it and she's open to hearing what you have to say and it's like it's a really good conversation. So there's like no reason to be like afraid, but it's just one of those things from like I used to tell myself for years and years and years, you are a bad public speaker. The side effect of being a bad public speaker is that you are afraid to speak in public and present. Now, if you are someone who is like me or what I was like and you're like, "Hey, Nick, that's very familiar. I'm also a bad public speaker. I also hate speaking in public. That's so cool that you're just like me." Here's the secret. You're not a bad public speaker. You might hate public speaking because you're bad at it, but it's because you don't do it. So if you want to stop hating it and you want to stop being bad at it, you can solve literally both of those problems by doing it. And if you want some proof of that, if you go back roughly about 2 years and 4 months, that's when I started making YouTube videos pretty regularly. I've done I think around 600 YouTube videos now on code commute. It's like 230ish. My main dev leader channel is 300ish. There's another YouTube channel that I don't really promote. Um, so like 550 to 600 YouTube videos. It's taken a lot of practice, but now at this point, I have stopped saying I am a bad public speaker. I'm not the best public speaker. There's no doubt about it. Do I love public speaking? No, I don't hate it and I'm not bad at it. I've improved, but there's more room to improve, too. So, um, stop um stop telling yourself that you're bad at things because you will be bad at them because you don't do them. So, that's a a little extra side lesson for folks. So, uh, thanks Devin. Um, I appreciate that. I'm going to take the whole next week off of work. which will be good. Which means I'm going to go fill that with making YouTube videos to catch up. Probably do a lot of coding, too. Um, and yes, thanks Gab and Yune. We'll take some vacation. It's going to be good. Okay, folks. I'm going to do the thing that I do at the end of the streams because I got to do it. I got to got to pitch you on stuff, right? So, um Oh, one more sec. Let's read Daniel Ward's comment first. Another use user group comment since I organized one. Oh, awesome. Um, Daniel, which uh which user group do you organize? Put that in the in the chat. That'd be awesome. Um, we love getting messages from people interested in speaking, especi especially locals. It's a good entry point for speaking low risk. Don't need to be a leader. Yeah, you share experiences about things, right? Here's what here's what I learned about something. Um, different people have lots of different experiences to share. Like, it can be really cool. But yeah, definitely. Uh, Daniel, share um share which user group if there's a link and stuff. I'm going to switch over to the stuff. That's Scott Hansselman. That's my ugly face. You can see I had a little bit of hair still. There it is. Um, a little bit less white in the beard maybe. No, probably about the same. It's just that I shaved a little bit. So, this is the newsletter. I'm just going to put it into the chat so you have it. Um, folks on Substack, you're already there. So, here is the newsletter. Again, friendly reminder. It's an email newsletter. No, you don't have to subscribe if you think getting emails to your inbox is dumb. I don't blame you if you don't like that. That's fine. Um, but if you like the live streams and you want to see these types of topics before they get talked through, there you go. It goes out on Saturdays. So, you get Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to read through to see what the live stream's going to be about. Um, these are courses that I have on dome train. So, there still is a sale. I thought the sale was done because I feel like last week I'm not not trying to to rat out Nick Chapsis, but I feel like the sale was done. Maybe it wasn't though. Maybe I'm making it up in my mind. But I feel like if you watch the last live stream, there was probably a countdown. I feel like this is a marketing tactic. But it is the end of the month, so maybe this one is actually the end. Um, or maybe it goes like right until the 30th. So, disclaimer, I don't know. But there's apparently 40% off right now. I'm going to put the link to the courses in the chat. Um, I do mostly, if you're on my YouTube channel, you know I post mostly about C stuff. So, if you're interested in learning C, I have two courses. You can get them as a bundle and they're discounted. But getting started in a deep dive. Um Deon says, "No, it was literally 3:30 hours last week." Oh, so we we got some extra time. Okay. Yeah. So, I don't know. It's not my site. Okay. I'm There's a discount. Take advantage of it. I think it's a great deal. Please, please support me. Um, no, but the these two I'm very proud of because uh it was really cool to be able to have on like one of the leading C course platforms to be able to get like the the intro level stuff out of the way. So these two together are 11 hours 11 and a half hours of C um programming from scratch. But uh there's a couple more C things on here as well. However, if you're like, "Hey Nick, I don't like C." It's okay to be wrong, but um I do I do have other courses for you. I'm just kidding. There are other languages that are close to C and they're acceptable. But if you're interested in advancing in your career a little bit more on like the soft skill side of stuff and maybe stuff that we've been talking about on these types of videos, um I paired up with Ryan Murphy on Dome Train to do we have career management for software engineers getting promoted, behavioral interviews, um and soft skills down here. the the two of us are engineering managers. I'm at Microsoft. Ryan Murphy's at Yelp. Uh so it was really nice to be able to pair up with him and kind of put our heads together on those. For folks that aren't on the main YouTube channel, I will put a link to that. Boom. There you go. Um Oh man, even more. Look at that. Look at that. That's a head of hair. I mean, not in the front. It was already It's already kind of gone, but that's why I shaved my head because that hair was not coming back. So, this this channel has a lot more like C tutorials. Like I said, there is a podcast. Uh latest one I did with uh Emory Fischer, which is really awesome. There's the resume review. I forgot I should shout this out. If you are interested in having your resume reviewed, um let me just Can I get a link to that? share. Boop. Here's a video for ré reviews. If you watch the beginning, it explains how you can submit your resume. Um, but what I do is I walk through people's resumes they submit. They're anonymized and then I give feedback on things that I think are working well, some opportunities and stuff like that. It's totally for free. Um, literally costs me money because I have to go get the editor to go edit it and that's not free. And then the ad revenue doesn't count. Like sorry, it doesn't cover it. Ad revenue doesn't cover anything. It's terrible. So, um, that's my way of trying to give back a little bit and try to do something helpful for résumés because people were submitting them to me and I'm like, I don't have time for that. That was one of the things in the networking article. I said, don't just send your resume to people randomly in your opening message. So when people were actually having conversations with me and then saying, "Hey, can you review my resume?" I was like, "Man, like now I feel guilty. I'm like, "This is how I would recommend networking, but I still don't have time." So I said, "What if I start trying to make content and then I can help other people when I'm reviewing resumes." So that's how this came about. So um, check that out if you're interested. And then Code Commute is the other YouTube channel. There's a few folks, like I said, that have joined the chat from Code Commute. Um, for me, this channel is super fun. It is a lot smaller than my other channel, but it's a lot more engagement. Um, the videos are not edited. You can see that I don't make thumbnails. This is just random thumbnails that get clipped out. Uh, but if we go click on I always like looking for the Insta 360 ones, but I haven't done one in a while. But it's just me, just me driving to work or staying still. Come on, car. See, just me driving to work. And then I talk about software engineering topics. So, if you're interested in sort of this style of topic, um, code commute's kind of like that. Apparently, I'm falling asleep while I'm driving there. But um the idea is that you could submit questions on code commute either in the comments or send them into me to like dev leader on social media anywhere and I will try my best to uh answer them for you in a video. And that's almost it. One final thing is Brand Ghost. I put a link to that in the chat earlier. I'll post it again. Brandos is the SAS that I'm building on the side. If you follow me on different social media accounts, uh, Brando is what I use to post to all of my social media. And um, so I built this so that I could support how I approach content. That means that for me, I can just go make my content and I add it to Brandos and it gets posted automatically on a recurring schedule for me. So if you are interested in starting in content creation for folks that are on this live stream that might look even like learning in public brand is totally free to use to crossost and schedule content. So if you're like okay we were talking earlier about posting on LinkedIn and to threads and to blue sky. You might be sitting there going I ain't got time for that. Um, I'm just going to maybe try out LinkedIn a little bit and see what happens. Or maybe Blue Sky. Try that out. If you get in the habit of posting to these platforms, you could just post it through Brand Ghost and it will go to all three. So, that's the benefit of it. Goes to Maston as well. You can see all the different social media platforms. Uh if you're more advanced as a content creator, I realize maybe not this target audience right now, but um if this is a path you want to go down and you're interested, you can always reach out to me, ask me questions about it. But a lot of the other functionality we have in Brand Ghost is around supporting like a more sustainable content approach. So uh the examples I like to share are that uh I haven't written a technical blog article in one year almost like one year to the day and if you look on my social media I post a link to a blog article every single day at noon I'm able to do that because I have over 300 blog articles written and I just post one of them every day. They will repeat. The great thing is those blog articles should be mostly timeless. So, it's okay if they repeat. You might not have seen the one from 365 days ago that's coming up now. There you go. Um, one of the other things is I shared that last last October. Yeah, last October I went to Hawaii with my wife. That means I'm going to be taking time off from social media, right? I don't have to schedule content. It's already done. And one of the things is I was trying to build up um my meme collection because I started to post memes on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And I forgot I didn't add more memes into my we call them topic streams where your content continuously posts. I'm going to switch back to the full screen so you can see me talk with my hands. So, I didn't post or I didn't add a new meme into the topic stream and I forgot. So, this meme gets posted the Sunday before I go to Hawaii. I just forgot or we were in Hawaii on the Sunday, whatever. And I was like, "Oh crap." Like, I that's a repeat meme. Like, uh, I posted it like I don't know a few months back, but like it still feels kind of bad. Like, I wanted the memes to be fresh. That meme ended up getting the most likes, comments, and impressions that I've had from anything that I've ever posted on social media. It was a repeat post done automatically for me while I was on vacation in Hawaii. So, there's a lot of really cool stuff that happens when you can schedule content and then focus on other aspects. And so one of the reasons that I'm building Brand Ghost is because it's now at the point that if I did not have Brand Ghost, I would have to stop creating content because I would be so overwhelmed. So um that's why I build it and I'm hoping that I can help a lot of other content creators or people that are trying to become content creators because the biggest thing is really like getting something sustainable that you can be consistent with. So hope to help more people. Like I said, if you're interested in learning more about Brand Ghost or how you can post to different social media platforms, even if you're just getting started, send me a message. It's literally free to get started using. And if you only ever want to use the posting and the the crossosting and the scheduling and you're like, I'm not going to pay this guy a dime, that's totally cool. Use it. And then I want your feedback because I want to make it better. So, thank you so much for tuning in to the live stream. uh folks that come every single week, I do appreciate you being here. Um it's great to to be networking with you and kind of see the familiar faces every week. So for everyone, I hope to see you next Monday, 7:00 p.m. Pacific. In the meantime, though, you know where to find me. And if you want to have more content like this, head on over to Code Commute. We got a week full of videos coming up and you can join in on the commute. Some people like to play it in the background while they're cleaning, while they're commuting, that kind of stuff. So, appreciate you being here. We'll see you next time. Devin, I'll see you on Code Commute soon.