Hey everybody, thanks for coming to another episode of My Angular Story. I'm
your host Aarren Frost, and today we're extremely lucky to have Tracy. We
do one of the biggest names in our community come and be on the podcast.
So, Tracy, this is all about you, but give go ahead
and do a short intro of you know who you are. Hi, my
name is Tracy. You can follow me on Twitter at lady Leep. I'm
the CEO of a company called this dot Labs. We spend a lot of
time helping large scale enterprises build really cool applications. More more recently, we've
been helping companies with their AI and VR related you know, initiatives, which
has been really, really, really fun for us. We've been focusing obviously
a lot on Angler. A lot of our team is Angular developers, and
we love graph ql, but we also equally love reacting you at the same
time, so it's a fun adventure, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
This episode is sponsored by Century dot Io. Recently, I came across a
great tool for tracking and monitoring problems in my apps. Then I asked them
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you. Century provides a terrific interface for keeping track of what's going on with
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deployed makes things better or worse. They give full stack traces and as much
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love that they support open source to the point where they actually open source Centry.
If you want to self host it, use the code dev chat at
centriy dot io to get two months free on Century small plan. That's code
dev chat at Century dot io. And you guys have been this dot labs
has been around for how long I think two years now or so? Cool?
Yeah? Cool? And you also have some other this dot company too
as well, Like yet, isn't this dop media a thing too? Yes?
So this dop Media. We kind of split the company into two pieces
because one of the main reasons we started the logs portion was because we get
so excited about bringing the JavaScript community together. So we have the Stop Media
where we do tons of events. So every month you can find Angular meetup
dot com. It's a global Angular meetup. It's the first Thursday of every
month. Uh. And then we have you know, react jsmeetup dot com,
which is the second Thursday, and then view meetup dot com which is
the third Thursday. So but heb ourselves pretty busy. I mean, we're
really focused on helping try to change the ratio and tech as well. So
we do a lot of work trying to help women in tech. Next year
we're actually going to start some public mentoring programs to try to help women attech.
You know, we just really believe in just trying to create a more
inclusive, you know, community for us for ourselves. Cool. And that's
that's this dot media that does that. Yes, it's not media, this
dot dot ceo. Yeah, terrible way to spell it. Yeah, that's
awesome. So how did you How did you start in the text? How
did I start in the text? Yeah? I started off because my boyfriend
at the time was a developer, and I remember the first time he he
was like, oh I'm a developer. I'm like, okay, whatever,
you know, who cares, right, I dated Weirdly enough, every single
guy I've dated has been a developer, except for one sales guy. Two
sales guys. Yeah, exactly. It's funny because they're so different. Sales
guys and developers are so different. It's very true. So I grew up
in the Bay Area Sulicon Valley, so I guess everyone's a developer there anyways,
So maybe that's why. But yeah, so I remember he said,
oh, I do JavaScript. I was like, oh, Java, you
know classic? Right? Yeah? But you know he you know what,
what developer doesn't want to teach their significant other hawd to code? Right?
So guess who learned how to code? Cool? You guys started like just
coding as like date date night. You'd sit down and do some code.
Yeah, like call it healthy or unhealthy, But that relationship was basically I
mean I took a boot camp, right, I took a two or three
week boot camp to learn the basics. But you know, we basically spend
our entire lives like hacking. Actually, you know it's funny. I used
to go on dates and I used to be like, you know, okay,
we can get through the days we like each other, but how effective
can we be sitting in a room quiet on our laptops together. And that
was like my idea of like, okay, we can we can actually start
dating now. You know, I'm sure all developers can relate, right like
you don't want that significantly that. It was just like, not shut up.
I need to focus. I need to focus exactly. Yeah, like
sometimes, I mean even yesterday I yelled at my husband. I was like,
dude, I have headphones in. Don't talk to me. Can't you
see my headphones are on? Do you not know? What? Is he
a developer? He's a developer. Yeah, and he was coding as well,
but I think he was like doing some random stuff. I was like,
I'm done talking. I that's just funny developer relationships. That should be
an entire podcast developer. Well, Devrell, that'd be funny. I guess
you could take that two ways. DevRel personal. I'm hearing new podcast coming,
I see happening. That's funny. So this this person you're dating,
is like, oh, get into this and you're like all right, and
then so okay, so let me tell you. Let me tell you from
my point of view. Okay, I've never heard the name Tracy Lee.
And then like it felt like overnight, that's all. I just heard your
name. Like, oh, Tracy, Tracy, Tracy, Tracy, you
just showed up everywhere all of a sudden. That's that was my experience.
I was like. And then after hearing about you for a while, I
met you one time in San Francisco, so yeah, that was kind of
my you. You came up quick in the community, like really really fast.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happened there,
but I mean I do love the developer community, and it's kind of
hard to get away from it. I think, like as you you know,
like I just, you know, honestly, I just started developing because
I wanted to play. I mean, it was fun for me. I
fell in love with it. It was hard. You know, I have
a marketing background. Marketing is not hard, but like development is hard,
you know, So you know, I I and you know, I was
surrounded by friends who just coded, so you know, me and Ben Lush
and Jay Phelps, Like what would we do when we were hanging out,
like we would just you know, I mean, me and Jay would.
I remember this one Thanksgiving, I woke up forgetting how I could actually get
into my bed, but me and Jay had actually built a really awesome add
on you. Yeah, we basically spent like three drink like three bottles of
wine and like coated, so you know whatever. And you know Ben is
the same way, right, Like we used to just sit around and and
like do that type of stuff. And you know, that's how I started
got involved in the rsg's quarantine. I mean, I think they needed some
help from a community perspective to like just figure you know, figure things out
from like a non tech perspective. So I kind of started helping with that.
And I'm so proud of how the our XDS core team has grown.
Now. I mean, you through our extress lives, so you've seen like
going from you know, Ben and OJ and uh David right and and Paul
and Matt, but like, you know, a very small subset of people
to all of a sudden having like you know, Yon Nicholas super involved,
Nicholas Jamison involved, and that's that's just been really cool to see it really
cool to be a part of. I really like that. So how did
you meet it? Seems like Jay and Ben are kind of your besties.
Yeah, how did you meet those two? I'm pretty sure I met them
both on Twitter, which is why I love Twitter so much. So if
you're not on Twitter, highly recommend uh. But we they you know,
they both actually I met I met Ben when he was working at Netflix and
I actually ran I run modern Web, so we actually do this every other
month in the Bay Area. We run modern Web Bay Area, so you
can go to meetup dot com slash modern Web and we actually co host it
almost every single time now with the Angular Mountain View meetup. So it's really
nice to partner with Stephen Fluin on that type of stuff. And you know,
like, actually it was my boyfriend was like, oh Ben Lush or
ex jus. I was like, is that important? All right? Fine?
And then you know, and then I invited Ben to can speak,
and then you know, we became friends. And then Jay at the time
was working in LA and then you know we uh, you know, then
Jay moved to Netflix, and then you know, me and Jay became really
good friends. And I feel like Jay was always like my stand in date.
You know, it's like Jay's never doing anything that exciting. Sorry,
Jay, I love you. So like Jay's always available to do anything,
which is great because then he's just always hanging out right, So are we
wait lots of time together? I like j Jay's dude. Yeah, smart,
really sad, super smart. Yeah. Hey, folks, this is
Charles Maxwood and I just launched my book, The Maxicoder's Guide Defining Your Dream
Developer Job. It's up on Amazon. We self published it. I would
love your support. If you want to go check it out. You can
find it there, The Maxicoterer's Guide Defining Your Dream Developer Job. Have a
good one, max out. So okay, so you said you said you
were in marketing before you became a programmer. Again you got into it.
Yeah, so talk to us about pre programming Tracy. Pre programming, Tracy,
I was all about building communities. And it's kind of weird because my
life even back then, you were still a community builder even Yeah, I
think you know when did I start? I think I discovered Twitter somewhere around
two thousand and eight or so, and you know, that was like kind
of around the time where I started my first startup, well, like my
first tech startup, right, it was like the time when APIs were you
know, I was at an API conference, like look at these things,
They're cool. Yeah, exactly, And I was like learning what an API
was. And I remember, you know, like I was always interested in
like just bringing people together. So that's always been my thing, Like if
I see a bunch of people, how do I bring them together? How
do I help the community? Right? Like I really love helping people.
So my last company, dish Crawl, we were in two hundred and fifty
different cities. We had over two hundred and fifty women across it was like
ninety nine point five percent or something crazy like that woman and we helped them
dishral it's called Dishcrawl, Yeah. And what we did is we took people
on food adventures like pub crawls, but with food. And so we taught
them, you know, in a five week period, how to do marketing,
how to do social media, how to do PR, how to do
restaurants sales, and how to actually host an event. Right, Like it's
a pretty intense program. Yeah, but when I really loved about it,
I mean, you know, obviously we were a startup so we made a
lot of mistakes, like imagine a bunch of twenty year olds, like trying
to run a business with two hundred Like we grew to one hundred and twenty
five people in less than three months, and so like you have these like
twenty something your old girls going like, oh crap, what do we do
now? You know, but like the you know, our our intent was
that, you know, let's try to help get you know, actually I
don't know what the intent was, but what ended up happening was we were
able to help a lot of women get jobs and like find their passion.
So a lot of women love food, right, so they're always interested in
getting involved in the food industry. So we helped enable that and create these
like little entrepreneurs in all these different little cities, which is really cool and
it's kind of funny because you know, now with this thought, I feel
like, you know, I'm really focused on trying to help women at tech
again or like women in general again. And also you know, we've been
doing this apprentice program this year, which is trying to help get women their
first job. So you know, like I think themes in your life,
right, like whatever type of human you are like if you kind of look
back on your life, you'll start finding these sort of patterns emerge, and
mine is basically community and helping women apparently. Yeah, well that's good.
That's good. You have a lot of passion for it's you're inspirational for a
lot of us that watch you and see what you're doing. It's it's good.
You're a good example for the community. So I'm glad you. Thanks
and you have fun doing it, you can tell. Yeah, I mean
I get excited about it, But I mean I think it's actually been kind
of interesting for me to go through. So I've been going through this for
a year now. I've been bored, can you believe it? Super busy.
So I don't know how you're bored. Well, like internally I sort
of have this like unrest, like what's the next thing? What are we
going to do next? You know? Like lately I've been really focused on
you know again, like AI, machine learning, AR stuff, VR stuff,
like just thinking about like I think angler is super interesting. I think
like graph QL for example, is super interesting, react view, et cetera,
et cetera. But like thinking about like what technology enables, you know,
like what's the bigger picture, Like we're all doing stuff, we're all
developers, we're all building stuff, we're all hacking on things. But like,
what's the greater picture, Like what's the what's the like, what's the
big thing? And I don't know what the answer to that, but hopefully
i'll have the answer in a few months, yeah, or an idea.
Anyways, what do you think? What do I think about? What about
you? Do you think? What do you think is like the bigger thing,
like the big you know, with the whole Like three or four months
ago, you remember when the react community kind of caught on fire, Tatiana
Mac asked people to read some books. Well, she suggested some books,
and I read a couple of them, and they were really powerful. I'd
only ever been like impacted that much by books a couple of times in life,
and so I don't know, I'm still I'm still chewing on those to
figure out what I could do, because you know, sometimes you do have
a bigger reach and you do have a bigger opportunity to help people, and
it seems like you should use that to help. Yeah, I think I'm
kind of like you, maybe still figuring out what that means. I'm not
sure yet. Yeah, I think I think it's difficult because like, as
you become a leader within the community, like whether you like it or not.
And I think with the whole React thing, part of it was because
I feel like, you know, not good or bad, right, but
just the way it is, Like I think the React community leaders are just
like, yeah, you know, we're building stuff for Facebook and like there's
this React community and you know whatever, like you know, like they feel
responsibility, but they're not like we need to mold the community, whereas the
Angular community is very intentional about how they want to mold the community, code
of conduct, being inclusive, et cetera, et cetera. So like,
you know, I look at some of the opportunities I have, for example,
and you know, positions I get put in, and you know,
if I don't do anything right, like what what am I doing? I'm
setting an example? By not setting an example. Yeah, by not doing
anything, you're setting the example of what to do, which would be nothing.
So you have to do something right. And I think that's really difficult
because it it's like I think this is also the burden, right. This
is also why the React leaders are kind of like like you guys deal with
it because it's it's so much emotional energy, Like people can't account for the
amount of time and energy spent on just like thinking about it, dealing with
it, whatever, which is probably one of the most difficult things that leaders
typically have to do. Right, Like the Angular team spends a lot of
time making sure that the community is right, and that takes a toll on
things that also takes away from development time, et cetera, et cetera.
But you know, yeah, whatever, that's just the way it is.
Yeah, it is. And yeah, I'm trying to figure out my place
though, because yeah, as a white dude, sometimes I want to talk
in the conversations, but I don't feel I don't feel unwelcome, but I
don't explicitly feel welcome. Yeah, and so it's like, you know,
a lot of it. So I'm kind of in this put me in the
game coach, like I'm watching, I'm ready, I don't know where I
fit. I'm kind of it's kind of like there's a bunch of people playing
jump rope and I'm like waiting to jump in, trying to see you,
Hey, can I jump in yet? Can I? And so I'm kind
of I don't know. I'm on the I'm ready though, and I've made
a couple of attempts. But well, I think like things like m G.
KOMF and you know, doing the diversity scholarship for example, like that
that's a great example of I think being a leader where you can my fit
one of my one of my really good friends, you know, whenever we're
in a group and when there's a bunch of women like he is, he
wants to open his mouth, and I'm like, dude, stop, just
don't open your mouth because I think, you know, regardless of the intent
of you know, men or white men or whatever it is, trying to
help in that situation, Like it's it's like you never know how somebody's gonna
take it rong or right. You will literally never know, and so it's
scary. It's it's like you can mean good and it could come out bad,
Like you just don't know, yeah for sure, So you have to
be careful right to your point, right, So I think, like,
I don't know, I mean, I think a lot of people have different
opinions about this, but like I think that sometimes when put in those situations
like just don't get involved in the conversation, how are what you want to?
But like help in other ways, right, like the diversity scholarship.
You know, I think William Apple, you guys do a lot, spend
a lot of time and energy like trying to get woman up on stage and
stuff like that, which I think is important. So you know, there's
tons of different ways people can help. Yeah, there's hero Devs has been
fun. We we have a lot of Central and South American employees and so
that that for me, has been a lot of fun since I was a
teenager. When I was a teenager, I went and lived in Mexico for
two years and just kind of fell in love with fell in love with this
this culture I'd never known, but I just you know, it became a
part of me. And so hero Does has been fun the last year two
to get more opportunity to to mingle with and just work. Oh man,
that's the funnest this practice because now I emerging, I'm learning Argentine Spanish.
Yeah, and it's so different, like all the swear words don't they're not
the same, like all the like even food is called everything. So it's
it's it's fun to learn another another version of Spanish. So yeah, all
the tacos, but I mean, are to you're not eating tacos. I
guess you're eating in Argentina. But you were just there for the tacos erin
Come on, yeah, exactly, I was. I was there for the
Tacostish Adventures in Angular is a dev chat dot tv production made in partnership with
hero Devs. Hero Devs is a group of Angular experts who can help your
team code like true developer heroes. If your team needs an Angular expert,
reach out to Aaron at hero dot dev today. So what's next? Your
your focused? So right now? Okay, so you're balancing. You got
a lot of balls in there. You've got our ex ys core team.
Yeah, you've got this dot, both of this dots, right, You've
got a bunch of community stuff you're doing around the Sorry you've said the name
like three times before we're talking. It's like an escalation bracket. What's that
escalation? What else would be going on? I mean, I think,
like I'm not that involved in the rxgs core team right now, Like I'm
more involved. I feel like sometimes if there's a fire and I need to
calm it down. That's why I'll get involved, but I'm not as deeply
involved just because I've been traveling for the past few months. So November December
I'll probably pick back up again and see see how it can be of use.
This year, I spend a lot of time keynoting conferences on diverse student
inclusion. Also this thing we call this the pan stacks. Yeah, and
it's all about like process, abstractions and mentorship and this new way of thinking
about building development teams. And I get really excited about that because I think
like building inclusive development teams with just you know a lot of common sense things
ideas is really impactful and can help you know, a lot of these larger
organizations succeed. But you know, I really want to play around with Verro
like I think. You know, it was interesting because when I first started
development, I literally was just like, all right, I'm excited about this
thing. I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to write about it,
I'm going to talk about it. That's what I'm going to do.
Right. So initially, when I started, you know, speaking, I
just spoke about angular and burun react and view, and you know, was
really excited about angular material, you know, so spend a lot of time
talking about Angular material, and I think one of the struggles I've been having,
which is funny because everybody has the struggle, right, it's this idea
of like what do I do next? Like what are people going to care
about? You know? Is that interesting enough? Whenever? And I realized
just recently that like I've been spending way too much time thinking about the cool
thing versus like forgetting about why I started development in the first place, which
was just to like do something and get excited about it. So Vero,
which is this really cool framework for AR. It's like, so to use
eron, oh my god, you would be like, it's just crazy.
It's just zero v v I R. Oh yeah it is. It's like
as easy as using Angular material for AR though, yeah, but for AR.
Yeah. So that's what I'm super excited about. If I can get
my life back. Is it web based or is it like what what what's
Vero focused on? Is it more like native Android iOS or what is it?
So the demo I saw you can actually use React native and Viero.
Cool, and that is all I know. Yeah, that's awesome. I
was planning on spinning it up with React NATA, I need to get more
involved in that stuff. Did you say you guys are doing AI as well?
Oh yeah, yeah, we've been doing like you know, everybody's all
about using machine learning and AI to kind of optimize business processes. I feel
like, especially in supply chain, right, Like, there's just so many
cool things out there. I think if you look at sort of more old
school organizations, what you'll find is still a lot of processes that are very
hands on, like kind of like you know, call centers, right,
But you know, we've been thinking a lot and helping some of our clients
with things like how do you optimize call centers or you know, call scripts
right based on building a model to learn what the best thing to say is
next, or doing things like you know, like VR wise like if I
guess, I guess mainly and shipping you kind of see this stuff. But
you know, like there's so many different applications out there right now where you
can literally just hold up your phone and you know, using using AR,
I always say vr AR, but using AR it can actually tell you like
what's wrong with your truck and then ship you apart immediately, right, Like,
So there's so many amazing cool ways you can kind of like use these
new technologies, which is something I get really excited about because I really get
excited about like helping enable enable businesses. That awesome. Yeah, obviously everybody's
also just migrations. I mean, so I have one last question to ask.
I just I just kind of learned this about you when you were when
you were stuck in Taiwan, you said you're from Taiwan. I didn't know
that. Oh yeah, I'm Taiwanese. Okay, So how long did you
live in Taiwan? How many times did you go how often you go back
talking about your Taiwan I'm Taiwanese, but I'm American born, so I was
actually born in the Bay Area. Taiwan was actually my first language, and
then Mandarin was my second, and then English. But really mm hmm.
But I mean, you know, when you're young whatever, like, you
can learn languages so easily. Yeah. So, I mean I speak it,
I speak, I can understand Taiwanese, and I can speak Mandarin,
but I can't speak business man like. That's very different. I mean I'm
sure you know, does does like does your mom and dad both speak Taiwanese
and Mandan? Yeah, I mean people who speak Taiwanese like they speak Taiwanese
and Mandarin at the same time. Okay, Okay, I didn't know that.
Okay, So a similar ishue or are they not very similar? Mmm?
Sometimes it's similar and sometimes it's not. Like you know how, I'm
sure in your family you speak like Spanish English, right, so it's kind
of the same thing, except it's Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese and Mandarin at the
same time. Yeah, yeah, I understand. Okay. Well's cool.
So, Tracy, if anyone wants to get a hold of you, talk
to you, need some help with something. What's the best way for the
community to get a hold of you. They can always email me, I
mean, you can always email me Tracy at this dot ceo, or you
can always find me on Twitter at lady Leit DM is open, dms are
open. Yeah cool? All right, so lady at Lady lead or Tracy
at this dot Tracy t r A c y Yes at this dot co.
Yeah, okay, this dot dot co. Sorry, this dot dot com.
Cool. Well, let's let's move on to picks real quick. In
case you haven't listened before, everyone, we've kind of picked something and share
something that we like with the community. So I'm gonna pick, and it
can be anything. So I'm picking CBS Survivor, the game show on TV,
Survivor. I've watched it for years. I'm going to be on it
one day. But this season has been the last three episodes have been really
interesting because they go really they've never done this before, not even one time,
and now it's three episodes in a row where they go deep into social
issues, like, uh, three episodes ago, these two buddies, they're
like buddy buddy buddies, and one of the guys called the other guy's bandana
do rag and the dude who got his pandemic called the dog. He felt
like it was kind of racist, and so there was like this breakdown where
they there was a teaching moment and it got real between these two friends.
I was like, that's awesome and I got the chills and I was like,
man, that was a really good episode. And then the last two
episodes have been really powerful as well. So I'm gonna pick. If you
haven't watched Vive recently, I'm picking. I'm picking Survivors, So go check
it out. It's got some good social messages this season. So, Tracey,
do you have any picks? Yes? So I recently was in Sweden
and I went to this place called scanned Witch like sandwich but Scandinavian scanich.
Yeah, and it was so delicious. So I've been stalking their Google reviews
and basically researching how I'm going to make all the different styles of these scanwitches.
So Scandinavian sandwich is basically an open face sandwich. Okay, so it's
just a piece of bread that's really good and like nicely grilled in butter.
And then this one they had pork belly on top, and then they had
like an Asian sesame oil slow, like a Carra pinnegri slaw. But yeah,
I really yeah scan Witches, and they're only in Europe. Well,
I mean Scandinavian sandwiches, I guess. So you have to go to Scandinavia
to eat these open face sandwiches. But this one particular was really good.
Oh I also learned something new. So did you know that Scandinavia is like
Scandinavian area is like the biggest consumer of eating candy? No, yeah,
because more than America. Yes, because apparently there's this thing in Sweden,
where I don't remember what it's called, but it's basically called like sweet Saturday,
where every Saturday, kids can go to the store. And I'm probably
getting this wrong, but sweets can go to the kids can go to the
store and they have those bulk candies and they can just pick out candies and
like that's their Saturday, every Saturday. How cool is that? That's as
a kid, that would be awesome. Yeah, good for your health.
Not as a parent you'd be like I'm going to hit my kids in the
head when they come home. But yeah, yes, exactly. As a
kid, that'd be awesome. All right, that's cool. Well, Tracy,
you've been an awesome guest. Thanks for all that you do in the
community and for all the good examples you are showing the rest of us.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, and to the listeners, I
will say thank you and we'll see you next time. Bendwidth for this segment
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