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PL-1862
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PL-1862
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Transcript
Introduction and Audience Engagement
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the live stream. This is a Q&A, so get your questions in. I've got a bunch of questions already submitted, so...
Guest Introduction: Dane Miller
00:00:11
Speaker
Just to give you a little bit of background, I'm friends with Jamil. My name is Dane Miller, former developer at Google, former presidential innovation fellow at the White House. You can find more if you're curious about me, Dane Miller, D-A-I-N-M-I-L-L-E-R.org. That's kind of my home base.
Upcoming Hackathon for Veteran Homelessness
00:00:26
Speaker
Friends with Jamil. So just a quick, before we get into questions, quick update on the new hackathon. I know everybody's curious about that.
00:00:31
Speaker
The next fall in Hackathon is November 18th to 20th. The keynote will be by former CIA agent, Andrew Busmante, and I'll be a judge. And the theme is for all the projects, the theme is how are we going to help homelessness, specifically veteran homelessness. So if you have questions about what you might want to work on during the Hackathon, I'm happy to answer that, but just happy to answer any questions in general about how to get into tech.
00:01:03
Speaker
So let's start with some of the questions that we got here from the audience previously. So I will read these. Let me see if I can get the mic out of the frame here.
Motivation and Transition into Tech
00:01:15
Speaker
You served as a PIF in the White House, but never the military. What made you want to join the military? What makes you continue to be motivated to learn, tech, and create, and what got you into coding and the specific technologies that you choose? Yes, this is a good question. So I've always wanted to be somebody that, like, I always wanted to serve the country. That's actually what attracted me to government work in general. They even, like, when we joined, they even called it a tour of duty. Like, you actually had to leave.
00:01:42
Speaker
like you couldn't stay on for like 20 years that you had a tour in the government, you know, assigned to a specific agency and then you were kind of, you know, pushed out, you know, after your tour was complete and some people could extend their tours and stuff, of course, but
00:01:57
Speaker
Um, yeah, I just always have been like called to like serve in some way and especially because For some reason i'm one of those weird people that really loves this country I guess it's just because i've had perspective of you know what it's like everywhere else in the world And so i'm one of those people I know there's a big trend to not like this country That's like a big trend these days, but i'm just one of those people that's always loved it So i've always wanted to join the military. Unfortunately medical stuff, right? So it's like been a kind of a bummer like when I was younger
00:02:25
Speaker
I couldn't do that. So, you know, joining the White House was actually a huge opportunity for me. The innovation pose, it was like, I'm actually going to be able to help people. You know, it was kind of a bummer in a way, because when we got in there, we weren't helping people to the degree that I thought we were. So that was kind of a bummer. But you know,
00:02:44
Speaker
And then to finish the question, how, like what keeps me like motivated and pushing forward and stuff. Honestly, it's like now I used, like I told you, I used to want to serve and help the country, right? And I kind of had a bummer of an experience there trying to really have an impact and realize the impact wasn't quite as big as I would hope. And now if anybody here is trying to become an innovation fellow, don't let me turn you off.
00:03:07
Speaker
There was 16 17 18 people out of the 24 people in our batch that went on to have a huge impact I mean they created two government agencies I didn't have anything to do with that So that just goes to show you if you do play the game correctly just like in the military I assume if you play the game correctly, you have a huge impact
00:03:29
Speaker
So don't let that turn you off of being, you know, applying for the Innovation
Algorithm for Pursuing Opportunities
00:03:33
Speaker
Fellowship. It's something that you should definitely apply for if you think you're and honestly apply for it, period. That's like what I'll tell you, like one of the tips that I'll just give you right out the gate, guys, is like, it's like, think of this like an algorithm, here's the algorithm, say yes to everything until you can't and you're forced to say no, that's the algorithm. So the algorithm is
00:03:53
Speaker
I'm going to apply for every freaking thing I could possibly imagine. That's what I did. I'm going to apply for everything I could possibly imagine, everything I could touch. I was doing interviews at Twitter after 12 months. I never wrote a line of code in JavaScript. And then 12 months later, I was applying at Twitter as a front-end engineer. Obviously, I was getting declined.
00:04:14
Speaker
But the point was I was applying and applying and applying at every freaking opportunity I could possibly take. And the same, that's what got me the inspiration of being like, this innovation fellow is saying, I could probably apply to this, right? So that's something everybody needs to learn. Okay, you don't need to wait for permission. You don't need to wait to feel like, Oh my God, am I ready? Am I not ready? Do I know enough? All of that is BS. Okay, so there's a question in here about that.
00:04:41
Speaker
that digs into this topic even more. So let's move on to the next question.
Is it Too Late to Enter Tech?
00:04:45
Speaker
In your opinion, is it too late to get into coding? Tech lead from YouTube, for instance, has a huge following and is suggesting it may be too late. You always seem positive. How do you initially react when you hit a major blocker in coding? So those are two questions. So is it too late to get into tech? No. Tech lead is one of these guys that is controversial just to get, he's really intelligent.
00:05:09
Speaker
So he uses controversy to garner attention, right? That's what really intelligent people do. In fact, I should be doing that more. In fact, I do do that when I teach people to learn a framework instead of a language. So if you've ever been out there and you're like, I want to learn to code as fast as humanly possible, it's the fastest way. Don't learn a language. This is like something I teach, right? Learn a framework. Don't learn Ruby. Learn Rails. Don't learn JavaScript. Learn React. Don't learn JavaScript. Learn Ember.
00:05:34
Speaker
And when you learn the framework, you will implicitly therefore learn the language because you're a smart guy or a girl. If you weren't smart, you wouldn't be on this live stream, right? You wouldn't be coming to a hackathon. So it's just the way it is. You will pick up all the little bits and bobs, but you've got to focus on a big actionable thing that you can do. And a framework is exactly that. A framework is how do I actionably go from zero to one? How do I publish something into the world and get other people to see it? That's all a framework is.
00:06:03
Speaker
I don't care if it's Rails or View.js or Amber or Angular or Django, it's just, how do I get people to see what I've coded? By the way, it could be an app development framework, not just web development. It could be a game development framework.
00:06:19
Speaker
If you want to learn game development, learn Unity, don't learn C++, because as you learn Unity, you will learn C sharp, or you will learn C++. This is all super important. This is how to hack the process and make it quicker. That's what Tech Lead does. He garners this controversy. No, it's not too late at all. Then the next question was...
00:06:42
Speaker
How do you react internally when you hit a major blocker? Yeah, this is something that like happens with a lot of people. So we hit a blocker when we go to write a like, let's say I assigned somebody a tutorial, right? Like they have to do a tutorial. And when you do the tutorial, you have an error message that pops up in the code.
00:07:00
Speaker
That's like a legit blocker that people are like, oh, dang, what do I do? Guys, it's not that complicated. I literally tell people to act like a freaking robot. Copy the error, paste it into Google. Click the first link. Stack overflow. Three answers.
00:07:18
Speaker
Take the first answer, copy what they say, paste it. Does it fix it? Yes, no, no, next one. Copy, paste, does it fix it? Yes, no, no, next one. Dude, it's a robot. A robot could do this. In fact, robots are doing this. Robots are writing code. You're infinitely smarter than a robot.
00:07:38
Speaker
So you can have the courage it takes to apply for a job. You can have the courage it takes to actually put yourself out there in a way that's creative. Get a blog going. Get a Twitter going. Get creative about this. Don't just sit behind your computer like, I'm going to learn C++ like a freaking mindless drone. Get creative about it.
00:07:57
Speaker
Like, it's just something I'm passionate about, right? Because, guys, you could do this 10 times faster than you're doing it. You could have the job 10 times faster than you're getting it. You could get to the next level 10 times faster than you're getting there, OK? And if you don't believe that, I'm proof, right? I'm very not. I'm not smart. I'm not smarter than you. And I've done that infinitely over and over and over in my career. So that should be proof enough. Next question.
Future of Coding and Technology
00:08:26
Speaker
And guys, ask questions, please in the chat, I will happily answer. So can you, this is a great question. I love this question. Okay. Can you expand on divergent versus convergent thinking and your thoughts on the future of coding in a hundred years and 21, 22. So this is like a super advanced concept. So I love this. So convergent thinking is so like we're in the Myers Briggs personality test, right? INF, I'm an INF.
00:08:55
Speaker
And by the way, I'm like half I, half E, half P, half J. It's a spectrum. You're not 01. It's a spectrum for each letter. So the last letter, the P or the J, the perceiver or the judger, that is related to your default state of thinking. Are you a convergent thinker or are you a divergent thinker?
00:09:16
Speaker
So this is like absolutely critical in the way you approach the world and and by the way, this isn't like you're not stuck This is just something you need to be aware of so you go when I approach a problem I'm probably going to default to this state and Then I'm maybe for this specific issue. Maybe I need a switch
00:09:32
Speaker
So let me give you an example. Let's say you're going to research a topic you have no idea about. And let's say you're a J type in the Myers-Briggs. Well, that means that you actually default to convergent thinking. That means you're an optimizer. Every time you go on a road trip, you're like, what's the fastest way to get there?
00:09:52
Speaker
Every time you go to a carnival or festival, you're like, what's the fastest way to get through all the rides I want to ride and then come out like as fast. Like that's a classic J type. I know many people like that. And if you're a T and a J, um, that's even more like extreme in that, in that area. Now.
00:10:11
Speaker
Let's say you're the opposite, a P-type in the Myers-Briggs in the last letter, right? You're typically going to be more of the explorer. The algorithm in your brain is not an optimization algorithm. It's an explorer algorithm. You're literally wandering through the world like, can I find more to explore? So this is a completely different type of person. So you have to actually be aware of this and use this in your day-to-day life as you go about coding. Like, I don't know why I have these in. Nobody's talking. Or there's no way you can talk.
00:10:40
Speaker
Um, so basically as you go through this, this journey, like, let's say you want to research something you've never done before. You've never experimented with it. You actually have to switch to divergent thinking because your brain has to go out like this.
00:10:54
Speaker
And you have to touch on like 50 different topics and see like what are all the possibilities out there in the world? And guess what? If you're a J type, you're not going to want to do that. If you're a J type, you're going to want to go, what's just like one I could look at? What's the quickest one? You're going to not want to do that. But you have to do it sometimes. Let's say you want to be creative.
00:11:14
Speaker
If you want to be creative, you need to use divergent thinking. If you want to do advanced research, sometimes you'll use divergent. There's a lot of reasons you might use that, right? In general, it's when you're studying many topics at once and your thinking is going outward. Convergent thinking is the exact opposite. When your thinking is coming inward and it's converging to a single topic. So after you've researched the 50 frameworks that are possible that you could learn, you then spend 10 minutes with a piece of paper and you go,
00:11:43
Speaker
Let's converge on a single framework. Let's converge on a single topic that I'm actually going to focus on for the next one month. That's convergent thinking. And by the way, if you're a p-type in the Myers-Briggs, you're not going to want to do that. If you're the type of person that's like, you know what, I've jumped from language to language to language to framework to framework to framework, that's you. And without even knowing you, you're a p-type. Okay, you're
00:12:09
Speaker
like desire is to explore. Okay, and that's great. But you have to like you have to kind of like, look, you have to manage yourself guys. I mean, the most important book you'll ever read managing oneself by Peter Drucker, you have to be able to manage yourself.
00:12:25
Speaker
If you want to make six figures, the only thing between you and six figures, or even mid six figures, my mentor taught me this a long time ago, and I'm right there with you. I need to learn this more too. I'm right here with you guys, but I know this to be true, that the only thing holding you back is your ability to manage yourself. That's the only thing holding you back from that.
00:12:45
Speaker
Now, if you want to get to seven figures, etc., it's a little bit different. That's not just managing yourself, that's managing other people. But the only thing holding you back at first is knowing who you are, what's your personality type, and then how do you manipulate that such that you can actually get the results that you want based on the challenges that you're facing right now?
00:13:05
Speaker
Like if you switch from yoga to weight training to CrossFit and you can never stick with one thing, that's because you're a P-type and there's nothing wrong with that. Just understand it and instead go, you know what? I'm going to allow myself to switch, but I'm only going to switch after doing one type for three months.
00:13:22
Speaker
You have to actually make progress. You can't just switch one day CrossFit, one day this, one day this. You have to actually pick one and make progress. So if you're P-type, great. Make a decision, though, that you're going to spend three months on a framework, three months on a language, three months on this train type, right? No matter what it is. It could be chess. You're learning chess, right? You're going to spend three months learning it. And then you could be a P-type and switch to something else. That's totally fine. So you have to manage yourself, guys. OK.
00:13:52
Speaker
And then I love this question, what is the future of coding in 21, 20, I guess, or what is the future of coding in 100 years? So honestly, this is, you know, I don't know, to be completely frank with you, I don't know.
Impact of External Pressure on Learning
00:14:06
Speaker
How will people learn? I think I do know, you know, maybe not relevant for this conversation, but
00:14:15
Speaker
the future of coding, I don't know. A lot of people are saying that programming won't be here. People won't be coding. Here's my intuition. I don't want to be negative. This isn't really negative, but this is my intuition. Here's the deal.
00:14:32
Speaker
You know how like on the highway when they build a bridge, they take like a component of the bridge and they like bring it into the like, like there's a big bridge being built and they have like a piece that they need to build, right? So they have like some company that pre-built this piece and they bring like a machine that like lifts it and there's like six people. Notice what I just said, there's like six people working on the bridge. So there's still people guys, this isn't negative.
00:14:56
Speaker
And they kind of like bring this big component of the bridge and they chink it in and they connect it and stuff. That's kind of the vibe I get as to how coding will be in the future. There will still be people like you and I programming. We will still be needed. We will still be required. In fact, let me give you a mind hack I think will be paid a lot more.
00:15:16
Speaker
because it will be a lot more difficult. But on the surface, it may seem simpler because I think what we're gonna be doing in the future far more is like chinking together big components that are already pre-built. And guys, that's what we do already. Like if you use Ruby, I've been using Rails for the past like 10 years. That's all we do. I mean, there's like coding and like you write a lot of code, blah, blah, blah. Like most of the stuff is like take this library, connect it with the output of this library.
00:15:47
Speaker
you know, I think in the future, it's going to be far more like specific, like the output of this goes into this and it'll almost you can almost imagine like a visual.
00:15:55
Speaker
Like there will probably be some kind of visual UI tool where you can actually pull things in and like chink them together and be like, I want this API to connect with this API. It'll be like a visual kind of like board on your computer or like 3D, right? Like hologram, like the Apple AR glasses. Like you're probably like moving shit around. I mean, that's probably, if I had to guess guys, that's probably what it's going to be like, which is not bad. Okay.
00:16:23
Speaker
Okay, how old were you? And when did you realize that our brains were supercomputers? And what are you currently do to push yourself more? So this is like person asking a question about a great concept that I have, which is like, you have a supercomputer in your brain, right? We talked about this earlier as well. You have a supercomputer in your brain. And so you think, I don't know if I could learn that I could literally slap you. If you said that to me, like, I don't know if I could learn that. Like, guys, you have a supercomputer in your brain, you can't learn that.
00:16:51
Speaker
You can't learn that. That's so obscenely ridiculous. That is so ridiculous. You could learn absolutely anything. And let me give you a mind fuck here. You could learn it on the fly. If you had to learn something on the fly that was extremely complicated, guess what? You could. Now, nobody wants to hear this, but this is the truth. The degree to which, or let me rephrase this, the speed at which you learn something is directly related to the
00:17:20
Speaker
degree of pressure that's on you. Nobody wants to hear that. You guys are veterans. So hopefully you understand that a little bit more than the average person. But the more pressure and stress that's on the human being, and by the way, stress is seen as a bad word, but it's actually a positive thing. So the more pressure that's on the human being, the human organism, the more we could do, the quicker our brain,
00:17:47
Speaker
just the way it is. Like I can't explain. I'm not a freaking biologist or whatever, but that's just in my experience in 20 plus tech jobs, working with like thousands of people. That's just the way it is. Okay. So if you really want to learn something really quickly, like let's say.
00:18:03
Speaker
you're in a bad situation and you really need to turn it around, put a bunch of pressure on yourself and not in your own mind. This isn't what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about internal pressure. I'm depressed. I'm anxious. I'm sad. I'm not that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about external pressure, external pressure beaming down on you. You go and talk yourself into a job where you have to write JavaScript code and you've never written JavaScript code before.
00:18:29
Speaker
and it just so happens to be for the second largest bidding site in the United States. Oh, and it just so happens you're the only front-end JavaScript developer. Oh, and it just so happens they want a JavaScript test suite. Oh, and it just so happens you're gonna be fired in two weeks if you don't figure it out. That sounds absolutely insane, but I promise you that is a perfect scenario for performance. You will perform.
00:18:57
Speaker
Sink or swim, right? You'll sink or swim. And I think most people that are listening to this right now are not the type of people to sink. If you just refuse to sink, I refuse to fucking fail at this. I've never coded JavaScript before. Talk myself into the job through like a side channel or whatever. I will do whatever it takes to make this happen. You want me to learn this? Okay, I'm at home the night before learning it.
00:19:22
Speaker
That's what I was doing, right? I had that same scenario. I was at home the night before. I would literally look at the task board and be like, what do I have to do tomorrow? OK, let me go home and kind of learn that tonight and focus on like, what do I need to like? OK, I need to learn Mocha back in like 2013 when I was going through this scenario.
00:19:41
Speaker
mocha.js was a test JavaScript unit. I didn't know what it was. So literally the night before I had to start doing the code for it, I was at home
00:19:57
Speaker
Learning it and by learning it what I mean was I had a clone of the entire project on my laptop and I would open the project on my laptop and Literally write it as if I was replicating being there tomorrow. So like I see
00:20:13
Speaker
It wouldn't have helped if I would have just read about it. It wouldn't have helped if I would have just watched about it. Like I had to literally type the code like, OK, this is a replica of what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. Let me work on it right now. Guys, you have to be actually doing like to learn as fast as humanly possible. You have to be doing you can't be watching only can't be reading only. You have to be doing it. OK, I mean, pretty straightforward. This is like pretty logical. So like thus far.
00:20:43
Speaker
Okay, I got some questions from the crowd as well.
00:20:48
Speaker
Awesome. Victor Campos, talk about how QA is not there to find a developer's bug. How do you find that QA is a developer's friend? Yeah, this is a really good question. QA is like a really close relationship. Victor, I love this question. So QA in development is like a very close relationship. So there's a number of issues with the way developers view QA. Number one is,
00:21:14
Speaker
They don't take ownership. Let me skip all the bullshit I couldn't say here. The number one thing is take ownership. If you write code, take ownership of absolutely every aspect of it. I write code and it might interfere with this code this other guy wrote. I'm not going to wait for QA to find it. I'm going to go over to that other developer.
00:21:34
Speaker
I'm going to go over to that other developer and go, hey, man, I just wrote some code. I have a feeling it's going to interfere with something you're writing. Can we talk about it for a sec? Or can you look over my shoulder and just see what you think? Or can you review my pull requests? I'm going to try to own it as much as humanly possible, do you see? This way, think about it. All the negative relationships with QA come from when QA feels like we don't care about them, when they feel like our babysitter.
00:22:00
Speaker
when developers are like, here's some code, you figure it out. It's almost like developers are like, here's the code, your job is to get it into production. That's so ridiculous. That's so ridiculous. And by the way, I don't care if you have a development team and a QA team and a product and DevOps team that get like, if the job is literally yours to just write the code and that's it, I don't care.
00:22:24
Speaker
you still have to have the same level of ownership as if you were actually pushing the code into production yourself and QA-ing it yourself. By the way, this doesn't take much time. Don't act like this takes so much time. You wrote the code, only you could test it faster than anybody else. Therefore, don't give me like, oh, it takes too much time. Dude, you wrote the code. You could test it faster than anybody else. Just give it a cursory test. Maybe give a quick analysis of what might break.
00:22:53
Speaker
Go ahead and reach out to anybody that you might think this code interferes with. Go ahead and reach out to QA. Let them know, hey, I've been testing it. Here's the results of my test thus far. I wrote some test code TDD. TDD is very important here. I tested what I wrote as I wrote it. Here you can actually see my file with all my TDD tests. You should be set up for success. The QA team goes, perfect. I'm set up for success. You're my friend.
00:23:19
Speaker
Clearly, I can tell you're my friend by how you behave, not by what you say. What you say is completely pointless. How you behave in a tech company, and really any company, is the only thing that matters, okay? But that is a good question. No, Victor, keep asking, man.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, so Victor basically asks, I don't mean to, he basically says, other developers find him intrusive when he says a developer's job should include performing QA's test cases. Okay, so let me give you some advice that changed my life.
00:23:58
Speaker
There's something called, and don't look this up, let me just give you the word and the way I want to give it to you. There's something called controlled folly. This is a technique used by Native Americans thousands of fucking years ago. Now, the definition online is different than what I'm going to say, but here's the deal. You basically have people throughout your life that expect you to behave in a certain way.
00:24:22
Speaker
And sometimes they can feel, if you just behave straight up however you want, sometimes they can feel a certain type of way. That developer that you're talking about, he could be like, man, this guy's kind of trying to one-up me here. Controlled folly is basically the ability to present to every individual what they want to be presented. So to that developer, you would communicate to him
00:24:51
Speaker
that you're just trying to make sure that your code, specifically the code that you wrote, is solid. And you could even say something that is self, what's the word where it is not self-inggrandizing. It's almost like self-defeating. You could be like, well, I'm actually just worried I'll get in trouble if I don't do this. That's controlled folly. You know you're doing it because you're taking ownership. You have ulterior motives to be the best developer, whatever. But you don't want this other developer peer of yours to be like,
00:25:21
Speaker
man, this guy's like fucking me over here. He's trying to one up me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want him to be like, I get it. He's looking out for himself. And I should probably look out for myself. Like come up with and by the way, guys, this takes creativity. This is a super advanced topic. Okay, I'm not going to go super deep on this. This goes to the very depth of the way you behave as a human being. But in all ways,
00:25:44
Speaker
You could use controlled folly. So when I walk into a gas station and the gas station and maybe my mom just died, which didn't happen, thank God, I'm not going to would. But let's say my mom just died. The guy at the gas station goes, hey, how are you? I go, good. How are you?
00:25:57
Speaker
I'm not good. My mom just said, I knock on wood, that's not true, right? But the point is that's controlled folly. The gas station guy expects me to say, good, how are you? Because it's a folly of the way that the human society has been structured. That developer is reacting in the sense of a folly of the way that the team has been structured. So you're not gonna, are you actually gonna let the folly of the way a team has been structured or the way society has been structured impact your
00:26:28
Speaker
Capabilities and your potential that's that's total bs Okay, you need to manipulate and engineer this situation and by the way manipulate not in a bad way You don't want to manipulate people to be like hurt or anything. You want to do it to help them if that makes sense Super like that's a very in-depth answer. I mean, it's like a very kind of weird answer I guess but that's just the way it is
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah.
Ownership in Code Development
00:26:52
Speaker
So can you share your thoughts on developers using QA test canvas to test their code? So honestly, this isn't really a super big issue. QA test code on the developer's code. I don't really, can you elaborate? I don't see why that would be a huge issue.
00:27:06
Speaker
You could do TDD and make sure that your code is specifically tested and that you have your code prepped up and ready to go from a unit perspective. I have feature tests. I have my unit tests. I might have more like a controller test or whatever they call those nowadays.
00:27:24
Speaker
So you have like different layers of testing. And then as far as like, if the QA engineer, if there's a QA engineering team and they actually write QA test code, then that's there. That's not your responsibility. You don't want to go, like, you don't, that's different code. Like I worked with a team that wrote Node.js QA test code that used Node to like attach to the UI and run UI tests.
00:27:51
Speaker
I'm not really going to be the person that goes in there and writes code for him. Because I don't need to. Because I've tested my code. I've manually tested everything that he's going to write automated tests for. So, why do I need to go in and do the duplicate work of testing my code with the code that he's going to write? That's totally duplicate.
00:28:14
Speaker
I've manually gone in and tested my UI, and then I've actually written my model tests, my feature tests, whatever they call controller tests nowadays, whatever. I've done that, so therefore, you can allow the QA team to take... See, this is another controlled file thing. You have to let the QA team take ownership of their world.
00:28:34
Speaker
You don't want to put your foot too far over the line. But at the same time, are you going to let that stop you from taking ownership? Guys, this is super nuanced. Okay, this is not like a simple topic here. Okay, where this is like a super nuanced topic. In general, in life, you're going to constantly come up with situations where you're like, I'm trying to take ownership, but other people are going to feel disrespected. Other people are going to feel like I'm stepping over the line. Other people are like,
00:28:59
Speaker
You have to use controlled folly. What does he want me to, what does he want to hear right now? What is his, what is his world that he's trying to own that I don't necessarily want to step into. I still want to take ownership of my world so that I can have the maximum impact and reduce the challenge in his world. Right. So yeah. Thanks guys. Michael. Yeah. It's a super interesting concept.
00:29:22
Speaker
again, it impacts every aspect of life. My wife has this issue all the time, like with her mom, you know, her mom is super, you know, like, let's use a political example. I'm not political, so I'm not going to say anything. But like, let's say you're at Thanksgiving dinner. Okay, this is a great example for controlled folly.
00:29:40
Speaker
You're at Thanksgiving dinner. Um The table is talking politics and it's the exact opposite politics you believe let's say you're republican They speak liberal. Let's say you're liberal. They speak republican, right? Everybody believes something you don't Are you actually going to damage your relationships with your family members that you love? Because of something that came out of their mouth
00:30:03
Speaker
If you did that, that wouldn't be controlled folly. That would be, basically it would be lack of wisdom to do that. So it would be extremely wise to somehow steer the conversation in a way that you could agree with them. Somehow steer the conversation, okay? Such that you can actually show that you're on the same side as them.
00:30:29
Speaker
Right, this is not easy, but this comes up in everyday life all the time for many, many people. Okay, most people fail at this big time. So, let's go. Michael, feel free to ask a question. Victor, please ask more questions. I love these questions, Victor. Got more here in the pre-call checklist, so let's go through these. What's your reading schedule? What's one of the hardest technical problems you've solved? Okay, so let's stick with those two. So the hardest technical problem,
00:30:59
Speaker
It's a good question. Probably, I mean, it sounds weird maybe, but the mid-roll podcast advertising application. So I worked, I was director of engineering technology at a company called mid-roll. We acquired Stitcher in like 17, 20 super long time ago, guys, 2016, something like that, long, long time ago.
00:31:23
Speaker
And I was director of engineering technology at both those companies for a while. And I think the way that the mid-roll, they had a Rails application, a Ruby on Rails application, I did not build it. It was built by some agency.
00:31:38
Speaker
And it was funny, the agency that built it runs the Honey Badger.io application, which I don't even know still exists. The Honey Badger.io core team is actually on the Rails core team. So, a member of the Rails core team, just from God's, like, just total luck, like, it was just total random luck, but a member of the Rails core team,
00:32:00
Speaker
Ended up working on an agency and that agency ended up getting hired by mid-roll to build the first version of this podcast advertising inventory management Application it was the most complicated. I have never seen I'm gonna tell you I'm just being honest
00:32:17
Speaker
I felt like a child. I've been able to pretty much master anything I've touched as far as tech wise. I literally every day I opened that application, I was like, I am a child. I do not get anything here. And the funny thing was they had me assigned with one of those team members. It wasn't the Rails core team, it was another member of that team to ask questions. And when I asked him questions, he was like a robot.
00:32:42
Speaker
meaning I would be like, hey, man, can you walk me through this code? Or does this function do this? And he would be like, yes. He was literally like a robot. He'd be like, no. Yes. No. He wouldn't elaborate. So I'm really somebody that needs to have some elaboration to understand the context in order to understand it. I think everybody's like that. So I really just felt so childlike. I was like, I don't understand the code. I spent hundreds of hours in this application.
00:33:10
Speaker
Just it, you know, the application was allowing sales guys to book million dollar campaigns for like 50 companies, Doritos, et cetera, all these different companies. And there would be bugs like the sales guy would send me a screenshot.
00:33:24
Speaker
There's a campaign being built and it's a million dollar campaign that he's going to get commissioned for so he's pumped up and then he clicks submit and there's a rails like error and he sends me the screenshot with like the million dollar campaign like the million dollar sum is right there and then it's like error and I'm the one that I'm the only one like I'm the only tech hire the only tech hire in the entire to like, you know multiple companies, right? So it's like
00:33:50
Speaker
see so this is actually a good topic is like one thing is you don't typically want to be um like one thing that i've noticed guys is like if you're if you're if you're i don't want to how should i phrase this
00:34:04
Speaker
You don't want to do everything yourself. Let's say one of you gets the opportunity to be a CTO or a co-founder at a tech company. I guarantee one of you listening is so savvy that you could probably build everything that company needs on your own. That's what happened with me.
00:34:22
Speaker
and except for this specific sub-application, right? I'm not talking about that. But everything else I could build, so I never needed to hire anybody, right? And that was a huge mistake. They kept asking me to hire people, and I kept just being like, fuck it, I'll just do it. It'll be faster if I do it, right? So this is a big mistake I made.
00:34:40
Speaker
Okay, so one thing that I would have done differently if I had that job today was I would have slowed down and I would have acted more like a leader and I would have said, what am I gonna need 10 years from now, five years from now in this job to be successful? I'm probably gonna need a little team of badasses. So I'm gonna hire a Rails guy, a real expert Rails guy for this. I'm gonna hire expert iOS guy for this. I'm gonna hire an expert Android guy for this. We ended up doing some of that. We ended up hiring an iOS guy from Australia. We flew him over.
00:35:09
Speaker
He used to be an editor of TV shows, fishing TV shows in Australia. And this is a case study for you guys. All you guys that want to get a tech job, here's a case study. I met a guy on Twitter, became really good friends with him just via Twitter, just chatting back and forth. And he wanted to learn to code. So I told him to try to build an app. He built an iOS app. It was a calculator. It was kind of pretty, but it wasn't like super advanced. It was real pretty though. He's like has a skill for design. So, you know, you have some kind of skill and that's it.
00:35:36
Speaker
He didn't do anything else. He didn't have any website. He didn't have any portfolio. He didn't have anything else. Just this app. And that was enough for me to be like, I'm going to hire him, move him from Australia to the United States and pay him a hundred plus thousand dollar salary. And after.
00:35:55
Speaker
six and a half years of working on an iOS app, he became the chief product officer at Stitcher. So he went from iOS developer, never been in the tech industry before, was editing TV shows in Australia, not famous TV shows like fishing shows and shit, making no money. And now he's chief product, he's basically chief product officer and chief designer, total badass, just super genius guy. And he's one of the smartest dudes I've ever met. So like, that's why I'm so like, I always tell you guys to put yourself out there.
00:36:25
Speaker
make a blog, make something, put something out there. Because this guy, I talked to him enough, and he had a Twitter, and I knew he was above average intelligence. I knew he was just like something was super different. He was super out like, he was he's one of the smartest guys I've ever met. I'm just gonna be honest with you. He's one of these guys that can take like we when we bought stitcher, we bought stitcher the podcast at mid roll. And there was a scenario where we actually had to migrate
00:36:54
Speaker
all the users from Stitcher to mid-roll or something like that, right? Some kind of like migration of users, super complicated. I'm not making this up. This is our true story. The product officer at the company, super like technical, complicated guy. He comes from Amazon. He was a former marketing manager at Amazon.
00:37:12
Speaker
He made a flowchart of the possible flows at which people could come into the app from this other platform. And there was 38 flows. Like there was 38 possible, like the chart was like pages and pages long. It was 38 flows that people could take to get there. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not adding any numbers to that. I remember it in my head to this day, because I was like, we were all just jaw dropped. Like this is so complicated.
00:37:41
Speaker
AJC, that guy that I was just telling you about, the iOS developer, he's one of these guys that I always leaned on because he's somebody that can simplify. He's a simplifier. He's a convergent thinker. Dan, the other one, was a divergent thinker. So, he was thinking of every possible scenario.
00:37:58
Speaker
So AJC, I said, AJC, can you take a crack at this? For some reason, I just have a hunch that you could make this a little bit simpler. He came up with a way to get three flows. That's it. Three possible flows from 38. That was the one scenario where I was like, this guy is going to run the entire company one day. This guy is a fucking super genius. I'm maybe hyping him up a little bit because he's my boy, but he really is somebody that I really looked up to as like, he's a simplifier.
00:38:26
Speaker
Guys, if any of you guys can be like that, simplify, man. The value of simplification. A lot of people are like, man, it's so complicated to be in tech. I'm going to be honest with you. The biggest thing a company values is a simplifier. I'm technical, but I'm able to simplify. Okay, super kind of deep topic, but yeah.
00:38:48
Speaker
What's your favorite cloud platform, AWS, MS, Azure, Google Cloud, and what are their benefits advantages over each other? Honestly, I'm not sure. I think AWS is what I've always used. I don't really have a lot of familiarity with Google Cloud or Azure. I know people that use them.
00:39:10
Speaker
I know the former Brian Beckham or something. I don't know him personally, but I know of him through the PIF network, Brian B. Something. He was the chief scientist at Microsoft, brought from this time warp operating system in the late 90s. And then from Microsoft, he went to found Amazon's air division.
00:39:33
Speaker
Amazon's like he was one of the first three programmers that built the infrastructure for what we're gonna see in the future the drone Delivery system from Amazon. He's got like a hundred patents submitted at Amazon. He recently quit Amazon to go found his own company And he I know he uses Azure and he swears by he only uses Azure He's like famous for that, but I use AWS. I've never really used anything else so
00:39:58
Speaker
Google though, I know Google has a pretty good one. And then let me answer some of these other questions here. What's one of the hardest non-technical problems you've solved? Yeah, so that was the hardest technical problem. Obviously the like 38 flows simplified into in the mid-roll app. The hardest non-technical problem would be just leadership in general. So as you guys grow in your career, you could pick one of three path or one of two paths really. There's three, but we'll simplify it. Like a management path or a leadership path or like an independent contributor path.
00:40:27
Speaker
An independent contributor path is like I'm a developer and then become a senior developer, then I become a principal developer or architect, and then, you know, that's pretty solid. That's a pretty solid path, right? You could make a lot of money, you could have a lot of fun. Or you could pick more of a management path, which is like I become a developer, then I become a team lead or a senior developer and then a team lead and then a
00:40:49
Speaker
you know, a director of engineering and then a VP or a CTO. And if you're curious about the difference there, CTO and VP work hand in hand. So a CTO is somebody that focuses on the future of the organization's technology and the VP of engineering focuses on the people. That's the way it works in the organization.
00:41:08
Speaker
specifically the people in the engineering organization and the structure of those people, right? So for me, the biggest non-technical challenge was exactly that. So I was like the apprentice VP of engineering when we worked with a consulting VP of engineering at Stitcher to figure out how to fix that company.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so I was kind of like driving a lot of that change with him, just co-working with him every day. And that was very difficult of like, we have seven teams that are isolated functional teams, iOS, Android, ingestion. All these teams are very isolated and there's a bug on iOS. Guess what? That same bug is on Android. Guess what? That same bug is in web. And by the way, we fix that bug in iOS. Nobody else knows about it.
00:41:52
Speaker
Android fixes that bug three weeks later. Nobody knows about it. Web fixes that bug. This is a shit show. There was a process we had to go through of killing all of those teams and reorganizing the company into pods where there's a pod of people and they all work on one part of the platform across every device. So they might work on media.
00:42:17
Speaker
And that media team has an ios guy an android guy and a web guy And when the web guy finds a bug the ios and android guys, they both know about it So this is like a much more efficient kind of this is kind of the biggest challenge that I went through is like learning how to do that Good question though
00:42:35
Speaker
When you were thinking about news from Michael, when you were thinking about new software projects or adding features, what is your mental model for chasing down problem sets? What does it look like in a convergent divergent model? When you're thinking about new software projects or adding features, what is your mental model? So Michael, I'm not sure if you're overthinking that or overcomplicating that. A lot of the times people overcomplicate this shit. When I use like advanced terminology, like convergent divergent stuff, like don't overthink this stuff, okay? Like if you're going to build something, build it.
00:43:05
Speaker
like don't think about it too much, just start building it, and then look up on Google how to build it. Like, it's not that complicated. I mean, like a lot of that super esoteric stuff, like control volumes, you don't need to use that right at the beginning. That stuff that you more need to use once you get into a company and you start having some influence
00:43:26
Speaker
with like convergent divergent. That's really not something that you need to use unless you're struggling deeply. If you're really struggling deeply, that's when I start to coach somebody, like a coaching client, I do coaching. That's when I introduce them to that. Like if they've been stuck for a year.
00:43:43
Speaker
Like, I'll kind of help them with that. It's an issue with convergent divergent
Learning New Technologies Efficiently
00:43:47
Speaker
stuff, right? For you, if you've been stuck, like, we could definitely go into that. But I think, honestly, if I'm looking at fixing, if I'm looking at a software project and adding features, I'm just going to say, what are the features that I need to add? And then who has added those features in the past? Do I know how to write that code?
00:44:04
Speaker
If not, where do I want Google to figure out what tutorial or what resource is going to show me how to write that code so that I can learn it, and then I open it and start typing, immediately start typing what I'm seeing. And then my brain is going to connect all the stuff that I've done in my past 10 years, or for you, let's say it's you, the past one year or two years or however long you've been, and your brain will start connecting the new information with the old information. And the nodes, the nodes in your brain, they connect.
00:44:32
Speaker
And then you learn. That's how learning happens, guys. So I know people are like, how do I learn? Learning is just connecting old contextual nodes to new data. That's all it is. Super simple. So the quickest way that I teach it is to open a tutorial resource. What's something that can teach me? A great example is, let's say I'm trying to make a web app. I use the book rental application all the time. So let's say I'm trying to make a library application where I can rent books, and it's a list of books. And the feature is I need to add the list of books.
00:45:01
Speaker
I have maybe the user authentication part, but I don't have any list of books yet. So what I'm gonna do is in my head, I'm gonna go, okay, what resource can I use to pull a list together? Well, let's say I'm using Rails, right?
00:45:14
Speaker
I'm gonna Google, or in my head, I'm first gonna think, okay, what's a list? A list in Rails of books is the same thing as a list of blog posts. The same thing is like a list of to-do items. So I'm gonna Google, like, because I know people write tutorials on how to build a to-do list with Ruby.
00:45:33
Speaker
how to build a blog with Rails, how to build a to-do list with Rails. I'm going to Google that. I'm going to pull up that tutorial. I'm going to scroll to the tutorial where it shows me how to build a list of to-do items. Then I'm going to take that code, and I'm not going to copy and paste it. I'm going to type it. Never copy and paste it. I'm going to type that section of code that shows me how to build that list, because the code is the same. It's what goes inside of the dynamic process code that changes. By the way, that comes from the database.
00:46:03
Speaker
What are the columns in the database? What are the rows in the database? The code is the exact same, okay? So every feature has the same code. The only thing that makes features look different across every language, every framework is what is coming dynamically into the code because code is formal language. Formal language by definition isn't informal. That's kind of maybe a weird answer, but it's just the way it is, right?
00:46:32
Speaker
Cool, so another question here. What's your framework in building yourself to understand and learn things very quickly? I heard you talk about mass acquisition. Could you expand upon that? What was the biggest factor to your growth? Yeah, like the fastest way to learn something is, that's a great question because we just talked about it, right? The fastest way to learn something is
00:46:52
Speaker
literally to start typing it. And I'm assuming we're talking about code, right? Let's say it's not about code. Then I'm going to have like, you know, there's something called swarm learning, which is like really a successful model for learning. Let's say you have six books on the same topic. Open all the books and put them in front of you. Start reading through all of them at the same time.
00:47:13
Speaker
Oh my God, I've never thought about, I've never done that. I can't read but one book at a time. You have a supercomputer in your brain, you could read as many books as you want. You could read six books at the same time. Nobody ever does it because they don't have creativity. Nobody wants to hear this. This is an odd advice anybody's given. It's the truth. You could do it. Same applies for code.
00:47:32
Speaker
If I want to learn how to do a certain feature or some kind of new framework, I'm going to do like 60. I used to tell people 30 tutorials. Honestly, I'll do 50 tutorials. Like back in the day when I wanted to learn JavaScript like test driving TDD in JavaScript, I just did like for an entire month when I was at home at night after work.
00:47:54
Speaker
I would do tutorial after tutorial. I mean, just so many how to do this in Mocha, how to do this in, you know, this unit testing framework. And I would just do it over and over and over and over. And eventually, I actually built my own, like, I believe you should do testing like this. And I had my own belief system by the end of that. Like, honestly, like,
00:48:14
Speaker
I don't know much about Ruby, but I have my own belief system now about how to write good Ruby. I don't know much about JavaScript, but I have my own belief system about how to write good JavaScript because I've done it so many times that I don't need to be an academic about JavaScript. I've done it so many times in so many practical, real-world scenarios that I know, okay, this is kind of the best practice.
00:48:37
Speaker
And same with Ruby. I'm not an academic. I don't, I don't do a lot of like contributions to the rails or the Ruby repo. Right. But that doesn't mean I don't know the best practices for that. And it's again, just from doing it over and over and over. So something you got to do.
00:48:53
Speaker
Next question. What do you think is the state of the world and state of the nation? What can we do to individually chip in and make the world a better place? Any app or project ideas? So this is a little bit over my pay grade, obviously. I'm not somebody that's like fixing the world right now.
00:49:09
Speaker
I do think that everybody right now is way too selfish in general. And all you listening to this, if you're a veteran, you're probably not, right? It's probably the other, the civilians out there that are this way. We're probably all too selfish.
00:49:25
Speaker
is the general gist. We're all too focused on ourselves, what we want, what we can do. I've wanted to write this book for a long time called The Helping Habit, which is basically like if you want to help yourself, help somebody else. And it's the truth. If you want to help yourself, help somebody else so much until it comes back on you. And I think if everybody did that,
00:49:46
Speaker
things would be a lot different.
Using Technology for a Better World
00:49:51
Speaker
You know, I do think that like with technology, there's a lot of people in my like circle that are thinking, you know, you probably heard this, the internet's like a bad idea. Like this is kind of this went around a few years ago, right? It went around maybe four or five years ago when the Facebook investors were coming out, Chamath, Polyapetea and Sean,
00:50:10
Speaker
was coming out saying it was a bad idea to make Facebook. We're making the world a worse place. It's not a better place, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of people in high-level circles now talking about that's probably true. It's probably not a good idea. The problem is it's here to stay. It's here to stay. There's no on doing this. There's no putting the rabbit back in the box. So we have to now take this scenario that we've created for ourselves, and we have to make it better.
00:50:37
Speaker
So every time you go online and you complain about something, every time you go online and create more division, every time you go online and you tweet about something that's negative about something else, about some political party or somebody else, even if you truly believe it.
00:50:50
Speaker
You're adding to the problem. You're simply adding to the problem. You could believe these things. Don't add to the problem. Don't create more division. Don't create more problems. Let's try to unify over here. This is an absolute nightmare right now. This is the worst. And every generation thinks it's the worst generation, so I'm not going to be myopic, so myopic to think that's not the case here. But at the same time, Russia is probably pretty happy right now.
00:51:17
Speaker
right, like how divided we are. You know, a lot of this stuff, it comes down to like, the the Elon thing of like, Elon actually finding out how many bots are on Twitter, like how many bots, you know, like a great example is like, this is pretty inside baseball, but there are some pips that work on data crunching, like data processing at a pretty high level. And there's some inside baseball stuff going on where like,
00:51:39
Speaker
when the COVID pandemic hit, there was a lot of bots retweeting or like rewriting and posting the same like, same tweet about there's a specific tweet they found where it's like, there's a guy he works in a hospital
00:51:55
Speaker
and he was running around and everybody was hiding like all the nurses were like hiding or something basically it was fear like it was somebody who worked in a hospital and he was like so afraid because the hospitals were overwhelmed and they found like there was some inside baseball talk like they found the exact
00:52:12
Speaker
bot that was running this and creating thousands of versions of this. I mean, this shit happens every day. Right. So when we log into Twitter and we're like kind of getting hyped up or we see news and we're getting hyped up, you know, it might not be a human doing this. I know this isn't new. This is like non-news to anybody. This is like obvious. But at the same time, we have to keep this in mind. Right. So if you want to help the world, like you're going to buy into it.
00:52:36
Speaker
Like, you can certainly believe things, but you're going to promulgate negativity. Not a good time. Not a good time. Focus on your mission. Don't be so selfish, though. Focus on your mission half yours and then half helping other people. It's the only logical approach. If you're logical, 50-50. The only logical approach, 50-50. 50% for you, 50% for other people.
00:53:00
Speaker
absolute common sense logic, okay? So 50% of the time working on stuff for you, 50% of the time going, you know what? I have learned a little bit about coding. Let me hop into the fall in Slack. Let me hop into this group. How can I help you guys? Hey, I've spent two years learning to code. How can I help you guys? That would be a very, very positive use of time for you. That's just the way it is.
00:53:25
Speaker
So how do we get to the forefront of new tech such that veterans can be more up to date on technology? So yeah, this is like something Jamil mentioned. Jamil runs the fall on hackathons you guys met. You guys know Jamil. So apparently he said, and this is like news to me, but I trust his belief. So he believes that veterans sometimes are behind, like you're a little bit behind as far as like new technological advancements.
00:53:54
Speaker
That's not that big of a problem. If you really want to be on the cutting edge, though, what I will say is a great way to do that is RSS feeds. This is something that I've been teaching my coaching students for a long time. It's not really that hard. This isn't like news to anybody. RSS feeds have been around forever. But literally be intelligent about it. I'll have my students make an RSS feed. Let's say you're a JavaScript guy. First of all, you have to pick.
00:54:19
Speaker
What language do you wanna focus on? Do you wanna focus? And by the way, my concept of the subconscious learning system, that's what I teach people to learn to code with. The very first step is to pick a language and framework that you're gonna focus on 100% until you get that first job.
00:54:35
Speaker
Okay? Or if you already have a job until you get to the next level. So for now, let's say you don't have a job and you're going to pick. So just pick randomly. There's millions of languages. They all have jobs related to them. You can reverse engineer, but for now, let's just pick. Let's say it's Python Django.
00:54:52
Speaker
So honestly, like a lot of the times what I'll do is I'll have them create an RS use Readly, Readly or there's a bunch like Reader is like a free reading app on the Mac and you'll create a folder and then you go Google top Python Twitter news feeds, top Python
00:55:10
Speaker
news blogs, top Python GitHub pages, and, like, I'll Google all that, or the student will, and then we'll take all of those top Python news YouTube channels and put all of that, because you can actually convert all of those into RSS feeds. I don't know if you knew that.
00:55:29
Speaker
So you take all those and you use resources online to convert all of that into RSS feeds, put that into one folder, call it Python. So that way, when you open your RSS feed, you click that folder and then you scroll through, you're up to date.
00:55:43
Speaker
Super easy, right? So if it's JavaScript, you need to focus on what area of JavaScript. Are you a React guy? Are you a Vue guy? Are you an Ember guy? Angular guy? Because each of those areas has a vastly different world. Are you a TypeScript guy? Maybe you play in a bunch of different sandboxes, but you're a TypeScript guy. So you'll find all the Twitters related to that and focus on creating an RSS folder for that. That's just like, and by the way, newsletters,
00:56:08
Speaker
I don't know if you guys know this, but with newsletters, let's say there's four or five JavaScript newsletters that are incredible. They have some of the best up-to-date knowledge and information. There's websites, if you go to on Google, you can actually find past issues. There's apps that let you pull up past issues of newsletters.
00:56:29
Speaker
even if it's on different platforms, like a MailChimp newsletter or whatever newsletter, like you could find past issues. And then you can generate an RSS feed from that app. And then you could put that RSS feed in the reader. So you don't actually have to use the email. You just open your reader and you have all the issues there. So this is like a really nice way to do it.
00:56:52
Speaker
When, next question, why am I continuing to get stuck even though I am, so this is another question from Jamil. So he mentioned that developers sometimes are like, or veterans are really hungry for information, but a lot of the times you guys can still get stuck.
Pursuing Tech Careers and Ethics
00:57:06
Speaker
And I think that's common with everybody. So I think everybody can get stuck. So that's like fairly common, but what I think is going on here, and I see this a lot, where you're very hungry, like you're committed and passionate about learning, but you're stuck.
00:57:20
Speaker
So this may be the last question if nobody else has another question. But honestly, the solution here is a courageous one. You have to have courage or some kind of ability to hack the process or not follow rules.
00:57:36
Speaker
You don't have to follow rules, right? You don't have to. You should follow ethical rules. You should follow moral rules. I'm not talking about that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about rules like get a certificate if you want to be a cyber security guy.
00:57:50
Speaker
that's a rule. You don't have to follow that fucking rule. You don't have to get a certificate. Okay, my god, this is so like, are you that did not do you lack that much courage? You're so scared that you're you have to be system oriented. You know what this is? This is a system orientation that humans have developed because of fear. You have fear.
00:58:11
Speaker
You lack courage, you lack self-confidence, you lack self-esteem. What you had in the military, everybody here is a veteran, you had all that shit in the military. Take that shit and apply it to this. You have a supercomputer in your head, so you should have as much courage and as much self-confidence as you imagine is possible because this fucking supercomputer will do whatever you want it to. Therefore,
00:58:33
Speaker
If you want to achieve something, you can just go get it. What is the fastest path to get from here to there? I need to get a job. Let's apply for, let's create something that's creative, like a blog or portfolio using tutorials to build a web application that I actually write myself. I don't copy paste. I actually build the web app myself, put it on a portfolio, have a little blog with three posts, have a Twitter account with like 12 posts, have my face on the website, and then send 60 job applications.
00:59:02
Speaker
Oh, I got a job. Like I could have waited two years to do that. But oh, I just got a job. Like, I mean, guys, you could do that in 26 days, 25 days. So anytime you're stuck, absolutely anytime you're stuck, okay, comes down to I'm not using as much courage as I should be. I'm not hacking this system as much as I can, okay. And by the way, let me back up a minute. So a lot of you guys, I've noticed just in general humans,
00:59:31
Speaker
don't want to hack systems or skip steps because, yeah, you have fear. Yeah, you lack all that stuff. But on a surface level, you feel like, well, what if I say I can do something and I don't live up to it? What if I send those job applications and they hire me and then I fail? Well, here's the thing, right? That's a legit question.
00:59:54
Speaker
Like here's the thing though. Are you ethical? Are you an ethical person? Do you have morals? Do you have ethics? I'm going to assume yes. Okay. I'm going to assume you are. If you're an ethical person and somebody sends you a thousand dollars and says, can you figure this out for me?
01:00:10
Speaker
You're either gonna send them the money back or figure it the fuck out, correct? So if somebody says, I'll pay you 60K a year, you're a junior developer. I know you're new to this. You've done some stuff in the past, it looks like on your portfolio there. Can you just figure out how to do this? You're gonna be like, I'm ethical, I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna figure this out. Sorry, I can't talk to you. You have a wife. Sorry, I can't talk to you for the next three hours. I gotta figure this shit out. I've got ethical duties to my job to not let them down.
01:00:39
Speaker
So if you're ethical, then you should have self-confidence. If you're ethical, you should have courage. If you're ethical, you should not have fear.
01:00:49
Speaker
I think a lot of people have little crimes. Like you're doing shit you don't like. Maybe you're doing drugs or doing, I mean, maybe not you guys, but a lot of people I meet, they're doing stuff they don't like about themselves. Like, oh, I know I shouldn't have done that, but I did it anyway. That's going to, like, it's going to erode your self-confidence. Shouldn't be doing drugs. Shouldn't be stealing.
01:01:11
Speaker
Like you guys all know this, you're veterans, right? But like civilians, I see this all the time. I don't know about your community, but I see civilians where they do these like little micro crimes. Maybe it's not even that big of a deal, right? Like maybe they borrowed money and they don't like send it back. It's like, and I've made that mistake, right? Like I've made the same mistake.
01:01:29
Speaker
So it's like you have to go back and fix those issues. Otherwise, you're going to have a subconscious loop in your head that goes, I don't do what I say. I don't do what I say. I will. I don't do what I say. I do. This is a nightmare. If you have a subconscious loop that says, I don't do what I say, I will kiss everything. Goodbye. Kiss your future. Goodbye. Kiss your fucking career. Goodbye. Kiss all that shit.
01:01:52
Speaker
The biggest hack that I've learned from a $5,000 coach that I hired a long time ago, not recently, a long time ago, was go back into your past and fix every single thing that you fucked up. This is a super advanced concept I'm not going to get into, and it goes very, very deep. But everything in your past that you fucked up or you made a mistake or you lied, cheated, steal, did something you shouldn't have, you got to go back and fix it.
01:02:17
Speaker
even if you stole candy. Like, let's say you worked at this restaurant, you stole a pie every day. Well, you got to go back and you got to pay back for those pies, because it's still in your head. And the fact that it's still subconsciously deeply buried in your head is going to impact how quick you can get a job today. I know this sounds crazy, sounds super out there, but this is just the way it is, guys. Okay, so nobody's going to be talking about this, except I mean, they'll talk about this shit in another 100 years, I'll tell you that.
01:02:44
Speaker
Um, anyway, so do you guys have any more questions? We will stay. Okay. Yeah, Victor. Would you recommend learning via a coding boot camp or finding someone to mentor you? Yeah. So here's the deal. Um, boot camps are about the biggest scam that's ever been perpetrated on planet earth.
01:03:00
Speaker
Not all of them obviously you guys have a GI bill so you could pretty much I think I have some knowledge from Jamil that says that you could learn for free maybe I don't understand GI bills, right but He told me something one day that made me think the GI bill let you sometimes get a boot camp for free Like you don't have to pay it back. If that's the case that's different if that's the case For sure, like go to a boot camp. Um
01:03:27
Speaker
But like, honestly, the fastest way to learn this stuff is to get somebody to teach you all of the shit that I've been talking about for the past 50 minutes is how to hack the system, how to go faster, how to use your subconscious mind to learn 10 times faster than your, like every bootcamp is going to teach you how to consciously understand something. And then they expect by God's green earth, like some miracle happens that your subconscious mind learns it too.
01:03:54
Speaker
it's backwards. They will be teaching this in 100 years, the opposite way in schools, they will be teaching subconscious first, because then your conscious mind can grasp it 10 times faster, 10 times easier, maybe even 100 times, maybe even 1000 times. The problem is, when you go about doing subconscious first learning, it doesn't look like conscious first learning. Therefore, most people go that's not learning.
01:04:18
Speaker
incorrect. There's a whole backwards. I'm one of the only people that believes this, by the way. So I've got tons and tons of coaching students that have proved that this shit works. But I'm one of the only people that says this. So you know, this is not a common belief I'm propagating here. But you know, subconscious first learning, it's the future. They will be teaching that in 100 years in schools. I absolutely promise you that.
01:04:37
Speaker
And every boot camp, I would very closely ask them, how do you teach? Am I assigned somebody that's done this before? How is he going to help me? Is he going to, like, sit there and teach me JavaScript lessons over Zoom? Is he going to, like, that's a waste of time.
01:04:55
Speaker
You get on Zoom and do a JavaScript lesson. This is conscious education. I'm trying to consciously understand, okay, a loop is this, a variable is this. Like, I don't understand it. Like, bro, just type it. Type it, type it, type it. Hundreds of fucking thousands of times, dude. The more times you type it, the more subconscious your, the more like your subconscious mind will connect the nodes of what it means. And then two weeks, three weeks, four weeks later, your conscious mind goes, aha.
01:05:23
Speaker
Aha, I understand what that means. Oh my God, it's a miracle. I get it. You will not understand it the first 50 times, the first 30 times, the first 40 times after a while, three weeks, four weeks, two weeks, whatever it is, everybody's different. For me, it was two weeks. For a lot of my students, it's four weeks.
01:05:39
Speaker
After a certain amount of time, your conscious mind clicks and you go, oh, shit, I actually understand that very well now. It took me typing that about 60 times or six. I mean, everybody has different IQ. OK, I'm going to be honest with you. Some people it could be 10 times. Some people might be 60. That's OK. Everybody's we're all the same here. You can be however you are. But no matter how you are, what your IQ is, the subconscious approach is 10 times faster.
Subconscious Learning vs. Earning a Salary
01:06:03
Speaker
But try to ask anybody but me this advice. Everybody will think I'm crazy. Not true.
01:06:09
Speaker
Anyway, any other questions before we go? Best books to hack the subconscious mind? Yeah, I do have a book. It's called The Power of the Subconscious Mind. Let me get you the exact author. The Power of the Subconscious Mind. Honestly, okay, so I'm going to give you a book so that I actually have some resources for you guys.
01:06:27
Speaker
So, by Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. M-U-R-P-H-Y, you can find it. Joseph with a P-H on that. Here's the problem, though. These books are great. There's a lot of books about the subconscious mind. The concept that I'm teaching you right here about how to have
01:06:47
Speaker
the subconscious mind do learning the the the thing that i'm telling you about here how to use the subconscious mind for learning to i've i've read more books than anybody i've ever met i promise you there is not a single book that has ever been written on this topic unfortunately i wish to god there was a book on this topic now
01:07:06
Speaker
I would still read this the power of your subconscious mind by Joseph Murphy, still really good to understand the way it works and everything. It's basically like I like to think of it like there's an elephant underneath and you're the you're this is a great concept in the happiness hypothesis book talks about this to like, you're the rider on the top of the elephant, the rider is the conscious mind.
01:07:24
Speaker
The elephant is the subconscious mind. And if you know anything about riders who ride elephants, they can't be like, you have to go this way because the elephant is very big. The elephant is very powerful. So there's some mechanism that the elephant rider uses to say, please go this way, please go this way. And it's more of a suggestion. This is the way you influence the subconscious mind with suggestions.
01:07:50
Speaker
You can't force it to do anything. So that's why you have to do the coding over and over and over again. Eventually, after doing enough times, you suggested it enough. You've connected all the nodes enough that the nodes propagate up to the conscious mind and then enlightenment occurs. Enlightenment happens in the conscious mind through subconscious expression. People think it's the exact opposite. I don't understand why. Anyway, that book is really useful, though.
01:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, of course, Victor. Thanks, man. So any other questions, Jamil, I know you're here as well. If you have any other questions, feel free to pop them in. We've been going for about an hour and eight minutes. Happy to stay on if you guys have more questions. And if not, like I have a spreadsheet as well. Maybe I have, I don't want to keep you guys here too long, obviously, just seeing if there's any valuable questions here or anything on my mind.
01:08:46
Speaker
Um, I will give you guys the last tip, I guess is the last tip would just be you have to focus. Okay. So this is like a big problem is focus.
01:08:54
Speaker
I said this earlier, but you have to pick one language and one framework. If you've not yet got a job, and I know a lot of you guys have gotten a job, and I apologize if this isn't relevant, if you haven't gotten a job yet as a developer, pick one language and one framework and do not skip to another one until you're getting paid to learn. Look, every day that you're sitting at your computer learning to code, you should think in your head, what is the
01:09:21
Speaker
What is the downside risk of this? What is the downside of sitting here at my computer and learning to code? Well, the downside is that you're not sitting at a job that's paying you to learn to code. They would be paying you, if we do some basic math, 80,000 per year,
01:09:38
Speaker
I mean, this isn't like super exact math, but let's just say it's $333 a day. That'll be about 121,000 per year. That's not exact math. Take taxes out. It's going to be like 80,000 with like 75,000 after taxes, et cetera, especially in California, maybe even less.
01:09:54
Speaker
So like, that's not an exact math, but let's say it's $333 a day. Every day that you do not have a job, you should think the opportunity cost of sitting at my computer, learning to code, and not learning to code at a job is me burning $333. There's $333 on this desk right here. Every day I choose to sit here in my comfort zone. Instead of getting out of my comfort zone and getting that job, I'm burning that 333. Burn it, burn it, burn it. Every day you're burning it.
01:10:22
Speaker
And you have the capability to go out and get a job.
Focusing on a Single Language for Skill Improvement
01:10:25
Speaker
To do that, you need to focus on one language, one framework. Use tutorials to build a web application that you pick. Make an idea. If you don't have an idea, let me give you one. A book library application. How do you build an application, a web application? If you're a web developer, if you're an app developer, do this on the app, where I'm able to log in and rent a book. Oh my god, how do I do that? OK, Google.
01:10:49
Speaker
Let's say you pick Python Django. How to do authentication log in register in Python Django. Perfect. Type it. See the tutorial. Type it out. Exactly what it says. Could be a YouTube video. Could be a tutorial. And then build all the components. This is what I do. I teach my coaching, obviously. Build all the components of that application using components from other tutorials.
Building a Personal Portfolio Website
01:11:10
Speaker
Type it, though. Don't
01:11:12
Speaker
copy. If you copy, your brain does not learn anything. Your subconscious does not learn anything. Type it. After you typed it, build a little website, just like mine, daymiller.org. You're going to want a little bit different, though. You're going to want home about portfolio contact. That's it. Home page, just a big picture of you. Say what you do. I'm a front end developer. Always talk in the present tense.
01:11:39
Speaker
You are a, not you want to be, no hiring manager. You think I'm going to hire you if on your fucking website it says, I would like to be a front end developer. Dude, that's such baby's shit. What is this, 1965? You are a front end developer. That's why I'm going to hire you. So speak in present tense, even if you've yet to achieve it yet. How hard is that to understand? I'm not being mean. I'm just like, I get kind of passionate about this.
01:12:04
Speaker
Then, on your portfolio page, take that web app that you just built. It should take you about 20 days, a focus, consistent effort. It could take you a little bit less if you get less errors. If you get an error every single day, it's going to take about 20 days. Take that web app, put it on that portfolio page, deploy it to Heroku for free. Do not use the $7 per month service. If you can't afford it, you can deploy it for completely free or to AWS.
Creating a Compelling Personal Story
01:12:27
Speaker
They have ways to deploy to AWS for free as well.
01:12:29
Speaker
and then put a contact page with your email address and your phone number if you want and then your about page have like a little story people buy into story the only thing that matters in the world is story this is like this is a business now we're getting into business the only thing that matters in business is story and honestly in life the only thing that matters is story so if you want somebody to hire you you need to tell a good story about yourself
01:12:55
Speaker
I used to work at the circus and then I decided to run away from the, I ran away to join the circus and then I hated it there. So I ran away from the circus and I, you know, like don't lie. I'm not saying to lie, but whatever you've done in your past, make it into a story. If you worked at the circus, that's part of your story. If you worked at McDonald's, that's part of your story. Whatever it is, turn it into a story and put it in your freaking about page. Okay. Could be this long, not that big.
01:13:23
Speaker
could be this long. It's not a lot of text. This shouldn't take more than three hours. A story has an intro, a hook, characters, drama, a climax, and then a resolution. All stories follow that. By the way, I don't know how to do stories. Watch a mafia movie. Who's that producer or the director that does Martin Scorsese? Martin Scorsese, an expert in storytelling. Watch a mafia movie and have your notepad open.
01:13:53
Speaker
What is this part of the story? Is this the intro? What is he doing here? Like, bro, reverse engineer success. I don't know how to do stories. And you have a Martin Scorsese movie that you could learn from. Reverse engineer the goddamn success from that, okay? Fair? Pretty straightforward. Then have a little blog
Writing Blog Posts to Attract Employers
01:14:10
Speaker
post. You could do it on the website or on Medium. Doesn't have to be on your website. Write a few blogs. This is how to get a job the fastest way imaginable. Write a few blogs, okay?
01:14:22
Speaker
what should those blogs talk about? Number one, your passion. Why are you passionate about being a front-end developer?
01:14:30
Speaker
Why are you passionate about blah, blah, blah? Talk about passion. People want to hire people that have energy and passion. I'm not going to hire you if you're dull, lame, and lazy. I ain't hiring you. I'm going to hire you if you're passionate, energetic. I don't even care about how smart you are. I care about that you're passionate, humble, hungry, and energized. That's all I need. I don't need IQ. Throw that to the birds.
01:14:56
Speaker
So you're gonna write a blog post about why you're passionate about this, come up with a reason, controlled folly. How could I think my way into being passionate? I'm really not passionate about front end. How could I think my way into being passionate about front end? Come up with something, okay? Then have another blog post. Maybe this one you talk about, maybe a little bit more detail about your story, maybe a little bit about your background, how you got into tech, why you became interested in this, what it's gonna do for you in the future if you could figure out if like,
01:15:26
Speaker
not what it's going to do from you because that's not present tense. Remember the rule always right in present tense. So why you love tech because how it changes your life by being able to work remotely or something like that, right? So anyway, you want a few blog posts. The reason you want these blog posts is because a hiring manager does not know you. He does not know you. So he needs to be able to get a glimpse inside of your brain
01:15:52
Speaker
I'm not going to hire you if I don't see your brain. How does your brain work? If you just tell me I'm passionate, I'm energized, why would I believe that? I need to see it. Do I see it exuding off you? Well, it's a remote interview. The interview is over Zoom. How the frick am I going to notice if you're passionate unless you're speaking like I am right now? Most people don't speak like I am right now.
01:16:13
Speaker
OK, most people are like, hey, how's it going? Bro, you need a blog post that shows this. Even if you come off bad on Zoom, he knows because he read the blog post, you are passionate.
01:16:24
Speaker
Okay, talk about your military. All you guys have been in the military. Talk about that. That's freaking awesome. Make that part of your story. Oh, we went to Iraq and we did this. That should be part of everybody's story that went there. That's fucking badass. That's part of the story. Even if you're like, I don't really like to talk about that. Control Folly, what would he like to hear about? Come up with something. Okay, it's part of your story.
01:16:48
Speaker
Now, that's it. Send 50 applications, and there's a whole method for how to send applications. And I will tell you, there's one other hack that I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on in the call, but my coaching program goes super deep on this. So danemiller.org, you can book time on my calendar if you're interested.
Freelance Experience as a Stepping Stone
01:17:04
Speaker
But basically the last step is, and this is only for a few people that are like really serious to get a client. The fastest way to get a job as a developer is to go from freelancer to developer, okay?
01:17:15
Speaker
So I teach people how to get their first client, get one or two clients. It could be for anything. It could be for a fucking WordPress website. It doesn't matter. Then in the interview, you go, I'm actually looking to specialize. Right now, I'm kind of like doing everything. I'm like doing accounting and billing. And it's kind of annoying because I love programming. I'm a craftsman at heart. But right now as a freelancer, I have to do the entire business.
01:17:37
Speaker
But the reason I applied for this job is because I would like to specialize and this front end position would allow me to go from running this entire business to just specializing in this one area and being that craftsman of which I am. That is the best way to approach an interview.
01:17:54
Speaker
Just everybody I've coached with that framework and that frame going into an interview with that frame has got the job. Within the first or second or third or fourth interview, it's absolutely a dominating frame. Frames are like an advanced topic. We don't have time for psychology stuff. They don't even talk about it in books.
01:18:15
Speaker
That's a frame that you really want to use if you don't know what it is. Just, I need to get a client. Get any client you can. WordPress client, doesn't matter. Hey, I need a website for my business. Build a Squarespace, give it to them. It's not that hard, okay? Then you go into the interview and go, yeah, I've actually done a couple websites for clients. Do you need to tell them it was a Squarespace website? No. Because you're ethical, right? If they hire you and they say, I need you to learn this, are you going to learn it? Yeah.
01:18:45
Speaker
So you're going to do whatever the fuck it takes to get that job to support your family, right? You should. If you're not, you're scared of something. You're scared of yourself. You're scared of not abiding to what they want. You're scared of not fulfilling your duty. You're scared of not being, you're scared of something. Okay. And all of y'all shouldn't be scared.
01:19:02
Speaker
Okay, so I guess that's where we'll end it. Please provide a tug plug for your mission. What does it cost? What type of commitment is required by a student? Yeah, so it's just on danemiller.org. You can book a call. We'll talk about it. It's different for everybody. It's cut like the, there's no like one price for everybody. It's like customized because everybody's different. Some people are like, I'm working at NASA as a robotics engineer, and I want to learn coding.
01:19:27
Speaker
I've had that. And that guy, he's got a full-time job. He's got a wife and two kids.
Personalized Coaching Program at danemiller.org
01:19:33
Speaker
He can only do coaching with me once a week. So the price for him is going to be very different than if you tell me, I need to get a job three weeks from now and I will work with you every single day. That's totally different. Do you see that? So you can book a call. It's a totally free call on my website if you're interested. If not, totally cool.
01:19:53
Speaker
Also, my web, my YouTube has a lot of resources, youtube.com slash start here FM and my podcast start here web dev obviously fall in is a lot of has a lot of great resources as well. youtube.com slash start here FM. That's a great resource as well. Cool. Jamil, any other questions? Let's see. The lighting is getting crazy. Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks for that.
01:20:22
Speaker
Yep, so Jamil said not on his end. Okay, cool. Cool, guys. Alrighty, well, so hey, real quick, before we go, fall in Hackathon, November 18th to 20th.
Hackathon Promotion for Homeless Veterans
01:20:32
Speaker
I want all y'all to be there. I'll be there. Okay, former CIA agent Andrew Bismonti will be there. Okay, you're going to be helping homeless veterans with your projects. Do you care about helping people? Do you care about fixing this world? You need to be there. Okay.
01:20:45
Speaker
I don't know what to do. I don't even know how to do anything. Good. Be there. I don't care. Show up. Show up every fucking opportunity you need to show up for. Just like in the military, they said to be aggressive first. That's the way you're going to approach life now. Aggressive doing everything you can showing up to every single opportunity you can to get this job. This is the first one. OK. All right. See you guys there. Bye.