Speaker 1: Welcome back to React Roundup.
Speaker 2: It's a panelist show today where we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about is working at a large or small company better
Speaker 2: for your career? With me today is TJ Van Told
Speaker 2: everybody and Page meeting House. Hey everyone, all right, I'm
Speaker 2: going to start off with saying where I worked and
Speaker 2: why you guys kind of fill in what you have
Speaker 2: done so that we can kind of give us some background.
Speaker 2: So I currently work at a seed stage startup, which
Speaker 2: means that we haven't yet gotte our Series A or
Speaker 2: Series B or serious funding. So it's very small. There's
Speaker 2: about seven people in it, and it's a productivity startup
Speaker 2: called Centered App, and we do kind of a flow
Speaker 2: type system so to get you into the flow productivity.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 2: And before that, I was working at Nike and Walmart,
Speaker 2: So I've kind of done both the small company and
Speaker 2: big company thing just recently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can go back to this is is TJ.
Speaker 3: And I've sort of ran all stages of this as well.
Speaker 3: So I started off in big insurance fortune five hundred
Speaker 3: insurance company is big stuff. From there, I worked for
Speaker 3: a hosting company, liquid Web that was sort of I
Speaker 3: guess like medium size, so that was like three four
Speaker 3: hundred people when I was working there. Then I went
Speaker 3: to work for Progress, which is a fairly large company
Speaker 3: as well, and then currently I work with Paige at
Speaker 3: Blues Wireless and we are a startup of twenty some people.
Speaker 3: So I've got experience from sort of both large and
Speaker 3: small and somewhere in between.
Speaker 4: And I have a similar set of experience, but it's
Speaker 4: not all in web development, which is a little bit
Speaker 4: unique because I'm only I've been in web development now
Speaker 4: for about five years. My first web job was with
Speaker 4: home Depot, so the largest of large enterprise companies, and now,
Speaker 4: as TJ mentioned, we are at the smallest of the
Speaker 4: small startups with twenty I think we had our twenty
Speaker 4: fourth or twenty fifth employee just joined recently. But prior
Speaker 4: to that, for about five years, I worked in various
Speaker 4: marketing agencies, and I worked for medium sized ones of
Speaker 4: a few hundred people. One was acquired and became part
Speaker 4: of a giant publicist marketing group, and then I went
Speaker 4: to a startup of about forty forty people when I
Speaker 4: was there, So everything from very large to very small
Speaker 4: and back again, and all of them have definite benefits
Speaker 4: and definite drawbacks, And it just depends, I guess what
Speaker 4: you're looking for or what you place more value on
Speaker 4: as to which ones you might be happier with, and
Speaker 4: of course what stage of your career you're in too.
Speaker 4: If you're just starting out, maybe a startup where you
Speaker 4: get to touch everything is really exciting to you, or
Speaker 4: it's terrifying because you don't know what you're doing and
Speaker 4: what other developers and people to kind of mentor and
Speaker 4: help guide you. So that's a kind of probably a
Speaker 4: good place to get started, is what benefits are there
Speaker 4: or what pros and cons to the various sizes and
Speaker 4: stages of companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely think there's a huge advantage in kind
Speaker 2: of a work life balance in the larger companies that
Speaker 2: I've seen. If you are in the middle level, midway
Speaker 2: through your career, or maybe you're looking to spend more
Speaker 2: time with working on a family, I think a big
Speaker 2: company is probably a better choice. You know, usually you
Speaker 2: have larger teams and a little bit longer schedules so
Speaker 2: that you can kind of predict more and be like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm actually going to take a vacation this year ooh exciting.
Speaker 2: Whereas the seed stage startup, you know, you don't really
Speaker 2: have an idea kind of almost day to day sometimes
Speaker 2: what you're going to be working on or what the
Speaker 2: intensity level is going to be, so there can be
Speaker 2: a lot more challenging in terms of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, big companies in general are far more predictable. There's
Speaker 3: there's more. There's more just process behind everything, which can
Speaker 3: be interpreted as both a good or a bad thing.
Speaker 3: Like to bring Jack's example up, like for the vacation thing.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes it can be a good thing because there's very
Speaker 3: little that would be totally unexpected. Nothing's going to like
Speaker 3: throw you off and suddenly make you Chances are like
Speaker 3: lose some time out of the blue. Things are far
Speaker 3: more structured that way. But at the same time, you
Speaker 3: could also view that as a negative because sometimes all
Speaker 3: that process can get in your way when you're trying
Speaker 3: to do something. I know all of us could tell
Speaker 3: stories of like absurd things that happen at large companies
Speaker 3: that stop you from accomplishing very trivial things, whereas in
Speaker 3: small companies chances are at least there are always degrees
Speaker 3: of this, but siances are you have a little bit
Speaker 3: more freedom to do what you think is best accomplished,
Speaker 3: what you think needs to get accomplished, with less getting
Speaker 3: in your way. But again just to the constant thing
Speaker 3: of trade offs, because that does make you more responsible
Speaker 3: for things. There's less of a crutch for you to
Speaker 3: fall back on if you can't get something done. You
Speaker 3: might have to do something that you don't want to do,
Speaker 3: but there's no one else to do it at a
Speaker 3: small company, so there's it's tricky.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One thing that I appreciated coming out of my boot camp,
Speaker 4: because I went to a coding boot camp for four
Speaker 4: months and then transitioned into web development, was I wanted
Speaker 4: to go to a medium or larger sized company because
Speaker 4: I wanted other developers around me who were better than
Speaker 4: me and more skilled and more knowledgeable and all those
Speaker 4: things that I could learn from. Because if boot camp
Speaker 4: taught me one thing, it was that there was so
Speaker 4: much to learn that I just didn't know. It was
Speaker 4: how much more there was after this kind of initial
Speaker 4: crash course that I had gotten. So being able to
Speaker 4: go to a company the size of home Depot, for instance,
Speaker 4: was fantastic because suddenly I was on a team of
Speaker 4: eight plus other developers from staff level all the way
Speaker 4: down to software engineering level, and everything in between, people
Speaker 4: who'd done it for decades, people who'd done it for
Speaker 4: a few years, people who had computer science degrees, people
Speaker 4: who didn't, and having all of that around me to
Speaker 4: learn from, and being part of a team where we
Speaker 4: were responsible from everything full stack, our back end services,
Speaker 4: our front end services, our build pipeline, doing testing, doing
Speaker 4: code quality scans, setting up our GitHub repos and maintaining
Speaker 4: those and making sure that they were up to standards.
Speaker 4: All of that stuff was fantastic because I got to
Speaker 4: touch and learn about all these different things. But it
Speaker 4: was also very structured, like you say in that this
Speaker 4: was our project, this was our lane, this was what
Speaker 4: we were responsible for. And then if you needed something
Speaker 4: done anywhere else, you had to talk to another team,
Speaker 4: or you had to submit a form, or you had
Speaker 4: to fill out X, Y and Z pieces of red
Speaker 4: tape to get it done. And sometimes it was great
Speaker 4: because we could just something would come to us and
Speaker 4: we could say we're not responsible for that, go talk
Speaker 4: to this other team. Or stuff would come to us
Speaker 4: and we would be either responsible for it or we'd
Speaker 4: have to figure it out, or it would be very painful,
Speaker 4: like you say, to get it done what should have
Speaker 4: been trivial if somebody had had the level of clearance
Speaker 4: that was required to make what seemed like a small change.
Speaker 4: So a lot of benefits to it, especially early in
Speaker 4: your career, because you can just go tap someone on
Speaker 4: the shoulder and say, hey, can you look at this
Speaker 4: code with me or help me figure out what this
Speaker 4: is doing or how to do it. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, a lot of processes and potentially a lot
Speaker 4: of time in between things getting done shouldn't really take
Speaker 4: that long if you knew if you were a smaller company, I.
Speaker 3: Guess, yeah, that's funny because that's similar to how I
Speaker 3: got my start with big insurance. It's just like a
Speaker 3: junior developer role.
Speaker 1: And I think.
Speaker 3: Another advantage of that is these larger companies they're more
Speaker 3: likely to have like established training procedures and like the
Speaker 3: budgets to do that sort of thing, whereas your small startup,
Speaker 3: you know, they don't have the money to throw around
Speaker 3: or the time to do that sort of thing. But
Speaker 3: a larger company can have a whole training department that
Speaker 3: at least the insurance company I worked for did. They
Speaker 3: had people that that was their job was to train
Speaker 3: other people and programs to help you get ramped up
Speaker 3: and get more involved. And it was more of a
Speaker 3: gradual on ramping that I definitely appreciated at the time.
Speaker 3: And I only have good things to say about going
Speaker 3: through that process and that company because it did help
Speaker 3: me get up and running and you know, get my
Speaker 3: career jump started.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree with any of that, but I do
Speaker 2: feel like we're kind of short shifting the whole startup
Speaker 2: experience here, because there is a coolness to being able
Speaker 2: to say, you know, hey, I watched this really great
Speaker 2: YouTube video on.
Speaker 1: Fire Store or whatever it is, you know, and.
Speaker 2: It's filling a void in our ecosystem, and I'm we're
Speaker 2: just going to go in there and bring it in
Speaker 2: and get it done, and we're going to do it today.
Speaker 1: And you only do that kind of thing at a startup.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, if working at big companies, if you
Speaker 2: want to get a new technology, like let's say that
Speaker 2: they're doing traditional rest and you really are a huge
Speaker 2: fan of graph quel, you have to go and drive that.
Speaker 1: Thing daily every day.
Speaker 2: Working with engineering management, product management, project management. These are
Speaker 2: big ships and they are crazy hard to steer. And
Speaker 2: so when folks are saying, oh, it's really hard to
Speaker 2: get something done, the yeah, that's politics, and it's everything else,
Speaker 2: and it's schedules and and it's all that.
Speaker 1: So there are some advantages to that small company vibe of.
Speaker 2: You can kind of just you know, get it done,
Speaker 2: which is is a really nice feeling sometimes.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, if you're ready to take ownership of stuff, you
Speaker 4: can kill it at a small company. You just have
Speaker 4: to be. I guess the biggest thing a big shift
Speaker 4: for me was I I was used to going through
Speaker 4: a lot of communication channels before getting minimal access to
Speaker 4: whatever it was that we needed at home depot from
Speaker 4: you know, from another team or an API endpoint or whatever.
Speaker 4: And I had learned pretty early on that suggesting new technologies,
Speaker 4: new potent, anything that was going to cost money probably
Speaker 4: was never going to happen. They decided at a much
Speaker 4: higher level than my team, or my manager or even
Speaker 4: my department, what technologies we were using, what vendors we
Speaker 4: had access to for anything, and good luck getting something
Speaker 4: from the grassroots started that you heard about that you
Speaker 4: thought would be really useful to the team. That was
Speaker 4: just that was going to die on the vine. But
Speaker 4: in startups that is absolutely the case. It's like, if
Speaker 4: you see something and you have an idea of a
Speaker 4: way to make it better, you can just throw it
Speaker 4: out there and probably start running with it that same
Speaker 4: day if you have the time and the energy to
Speaker 4: do so, which is awesome. It feels so good and
Speaker 4: knock stuff out that quickly, and it's a great way
Speaker 4: to look.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 4: It's true, you can you can get into a mess
Speaker 4: of spaghetti and a lot of vendor charges really quickly
Speaker 4: if you're not keeping up with it. But at the
Speaker 4: same time you can also you could also really improve
Speaker 4: everything in a very short amount of time if if
Speaker 4: you make the right decisions and kind of value your options.
Speaker 3: So fun story back in my big insurance day is
Speaker 3: one of those like political battles that I fodd or
Speaker 3: tried to spearhead was getting Chrome installed on everybody's PCs
Speaker 3: because this was back when Chrome was was pretty new
Speaker 3: and we were all on lockdown windows setups right, so
Speaker 3: you couldn't you had no admin access, you can't, you
Speaker 3: couldn't install a program. And so Chrome came out and
Speaker 3: I was like, well, people are starting to use this thing, right, like,
Speaker 3: we should have it. It has good developer tools, This
Speaker 3: could really benefit us and the executives, Like like I
Speaker 3: had to schedule meetings with executives to try to get
Speaker 3: this to happen because they were saying, well, our apps
Speaker 3: don't support Chrome, why do you need this? And like
Speaker 3: just the absurdity of that entire process, right, Like, especially
Speaker 3: given the benefit of hindsight and looking back at this
Speaker 3: is just it gets frustrating at a certain point. Like
Speaker 3: if if you're the type of person that wants total
Speaker 3: control over what you're doing and want to be able
Speaker 3: to try and experiment with things, that those sorts of experiences,
Speaker 3: I mean, things like that are eventually why I left
Speaker 3: that company is because that's it just gets ridiculous. Right,
Speaker 3: At a certain point, you just can't take that sort
Speaker 3: of thing anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the there's a bias here when you
Speaker 2: think about like a company culture and how it can
Speaker 2: go wrong. I think in the in the small startup case,
Speaker 2: the going wrong tends to error towards workoholism.
Speaker 1: Right, it's just we or we just do we just
Speaker 1: got to go go, go, go go kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and it's just you're it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Whereas in the big companies when they go bad in
Speaker 2: terms of culture, they kind of bias towards just politics,
Speaker 2: just endless politics, endless meetings that never resolved anything, and
Speaker 2: it's just kind of soul crushing and grinding. And then
Speaker 2: so I guess that's that is a decision point there
Speaker 2: is like, Hey, if things go wrong, which direction do
Speaker 2: I want them to go wrong in? Is it is
Speaker 2: it overworking myself or is it just kind of being
Speaker 2: frustrated to the point where I'm just like, ah, peace out,
Speaker 2: I don't need this stuff anymore.
Speaker 3: And I think though, like that those might just be
Speaker 3: good red flags to look for if you're like interviewing
Speaker 3: or evaluating a job, right Like, if you are interviewing
Speaker 3: or if you are looking into a startup, those are
Speaker 3: the sort of questions you want to ask, right like
Speaker 3: how many hours am I expected to work? Is overtime
Speaker 3: going to be a thing here? Is it expected? Like
Speaker 3: I think startup you could probably expect to do a
Speaker 3: bit more work. But you know, unless unless you're really
Speaker 3: that sort of person that wants to throw yourself headfirst
Speaker 3: into this stuff, like I would definitely consider it a
Speaker 3: red flag if they told me, you know, you're expected
Speaker 3: to work fifty sixty hours a week or to do
Speaker 3: the weekend work, And so that's the sort of thing
Speaker 3: I would look for. And on the flip side, like
Speaker 3: with big companies, I mean, you would want to ask
Speaker 3: questions about how much authority do developers have, how much
Speaker 3: are they involved in the decision making processes, you know,
Speaker 3: how much do they get to say, and what technologies
Speaker 3: are used because I've been involved. Even though those are
Speaker 3: like stereotypical things about these companies, there's certainly pockets of
Speaker 3: big companies that operate more like a startup, right and
Speaker 3: there are startups that are a little bit more stable
Speaker 3: and secure. So those are the sort of things I
Speaker 3: guess to look for as you're exploring your options.
Speaker 4: And another good thing to consider is what kind of
Speaker 4: experience are you looking to gain, Like do you want
Speaker 4: to go super deep into one particular either area of
Speaker 4: expertise or one product like that's because that's typically what
Speaker 4: you're going to have on the enterprise level, is you're
Speaker 4: going to have one product that you are responsible for
Speaker 4: and it's but it's going to be a complex product
Speaker 4: more more likely than not, So you're going to be
Speaker 4: handling the databases, you're going to be handling the back ends,
Speaker 4: the front ends, and you're going to be doing some
Speaker 4: probably some pretty complex stuff with it. But if you
Speaker 4: are if you like having a variety of things to
Speaker 4: work on, then maybe a startup is a better choice
Speaker 4: for that because you'll probably be touching one website one day,
Speaker 4: and then you'll be looking at some kind of an
Speaker 4: SEO tool the next day, and then you'll be trying
Speaker 4: to get analytics a third day and figuring out how
Speaker 4: to connect all these different pieces of the company into
Speaker 4: things that make sense. So if you get a little
Speaker 4: burned out on one piece, you could probably go pick
Speaker 4: up a bug somewhere else and get kind of a
Speaker 4: refresher and a little respite from it, and then you
Speaker 4: go back to it in a few days time. So
Speaker 4: it's kind of like breadth versus depth. And there's small
Speaker 4: companies startups still are doing very complex things as well,
Speaker 4: but there's still going to be probably a better chance
Speaker 4: of you getting more experience in more different things than
Speaker 4: there would be on a larger product team in a
Speaker 4: big organization.
Speaker 2: And there's definitely I mean, when you think about a startup,
Speaker 2: right you've got your your seed round startup, and that's
Speaker 2: basically pre product market fit, meaning that they still don't
Speaker 2: really know what they're doing, and.
Speaker 1: That can be wild.
Speaker 2: Everything's changing all the time, versus like a C like
Speaker 2: a Series A or a Series B or Series C,
Speaker 2: where the company knows what it's doing now it's just
Speaker 2: a question of like scaling it up and getting to
Speaker 2: be larger, and there's a bit more of a of
Speaker 2: a comfort zone in there. And then on the big
Speaker 2: company side, there's there's tech companies like Google and Facebook,
Speaker 2: and these are companies that are have kind of a
Speaker 2: cored engineering, like a heart in engineering. And then you've
Speaker 2: got your sort of brick and mortar startups like your
Speaker 2: home depot, your Walmart, your Nike, where they're companies that
Speaker 2: culturally are really about like having a star and you're
Speaker 2: like the weird tech folks coming in saying, well, way
Speaker 2: we can sell this stuff online?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So there's definitely when you talk about like the things
Speaker 2: to look out for in the interview and questions like that,
Speaker 2: got to think about those like where is this company,
Speaker 2: what's its background and is.
Speaker 1: That going to work within my career? And where I
Speaker 1: want to take my career. Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I worked in Big Insurance, we had to wear
Speaker 3: a shirt and tie into the office every day because
Speaker 3: there was an insurance company right the whole it aspect
Speaker 3: of it was just one component of it, and it
Speaker 3: was just a company policy you wear shirt and tie.
Speaker 3: So I got dressed up every day. I was prepared
Speaker 3: every uh every like wedding and events like. I was ready, like, man,
Speaker 3: I got a full I got a full wardrobe, ready.
Speaker 4: For this business, casual, ready for anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got a smock at Walmart, a full on smock. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I actually knew the cheer too.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, I had.
Speaker 1: I was a principal engineer. I wasn't anywhere near I
Speaker 1: did you know? I would go into the store. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: I worked there.
Speaker 4: I guess home Depot, Apron, the whole nine yards. But before,
Speaker 4: right before I got there and got hired, everybody, even
Speaker 4: people who worked in our corporate offices, were required I think,
Speaker 4: to do maybe three or four store days a year
Speaker 4: where they would go in and be on the front
Speaker 4: lines helping customers and dealing with all the stuff that
Speaker 4: store employees do on a daily basis. And once I
Speaker 4: was hired, they had actually made that they had gotten
Speaker 4: rid of that as a requirement, So you did your
Speaker 4: one store day when you first started, and then pretty
Speaker 4: much never again because they wanted you working on whatever
Speaker 4: it was that you were actually hired to do. But
Speaker 4: I you know, I really enjoyed it, and I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people gained a lot more empathy for
Speaker 4: the amount of stuff that customer service or customer facing
Speaker 4: people put up with on a daily basis, and especially
Speaker 4: when it's something like home depot hardware, where people come
Speaker 4: in and something is broken off of their window but
Speaker 4: they have no idea what it's called. You have no
Speaker 4: idea what it's called, You've never even seen this piece before,
Speaker 4: and you're expected to try and help them find it
Speaker 4: in the store and replace it. So it was a
Speaker 4: I think it's a great wake up call for people
Speaker 4: who have not worked in customers facing jobs before just
Speaker 4: how difficult that can be and how tiring it can be.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I also very much understand
Speaker 4: we're paying you a lot more, most likely than we're
Speaker 4: paying the store employees, So do your job, whatever it
Speaker 4: was we actually hired.
Speaker 3: You to do. I do think like it. I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is strictly speaking true, but at larger
Speaker 3: companies you do feel a little bit more removed from
Speaker 3: whatever it is the company is doing. You feel a
Speaker 3: bit more like a cog and a giant system. And
Speaker 3: I have to imagine that home depot program was trying
Speaker 3: to help you rectify that or bring people close to
Speaker 3: it to it, because when I worked in commercial automobile insurance,
Speaker 3: like I never met anybody that was actually insurance agent
Speaker 3: or an actual policy holder, so it was very I
Speaker 3: was very far removed. It felt very just esoteric random
Speaker 3: stuff I was doing. And it does give you, like
Speaker 3: a little bus motivation. It does help when you really
Speaker 3: feel like you are doing something important or worthwhile or
Speaker 3: have a connection to whatever it is the end product
Speaker 3: or service that it is you're producing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2: I mean for me, the reason that I got into
Speaker 2: software or writing code when I was kid was I
Speaker 2: wanted to make games for my friends, and so it's
Speaker 2: been that virtuous cycle. Always wanted to put stuff in
Speaker 2: front of people that are like, ooh, that's neat, you know,
Speaker 2: and get that little buzz of like wow, I made that,
Speaker 2: and people like it, you know. But if you're working
Speaker 2: in insurance.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe that's not a thing that you know, Wow,
Speaker 1: I made rich people a lot richer. Woo you devise
Speaker 1: that algorithm? Woo. Yeah I got with an additional point
Speaker 1: zero or zero one percent. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, at the end of the day, you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: I want maybe I want something in my life where
Speaker 2: I want to give people something, you know, new And
Speaker 2: Nike I did this feature where you know, you would
Speaker 2: recommend shoes based on the shoes that you'd already bought
Speaker 2: and that sort of stuff, and being a person as
Speaker 2: a runner with flat feet, that actually was something cool
Speaker 2: to me because like, that's a better kind of experience
Speaker 2: they might get in a store where you know, you
Speaker 2: talk to somebody and you want to get you know,
Speaker 2: get some advice. You know, here's an algorithm saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you know you bought you know, these kind of motion
Speaker 2: petrol shoes whatever. And then I felt like, oh, I
Speaker 2: had an impact in somebody's life today, and that's a
Speaker 2: good thing. That's a nice way to wake up in
Speaker 2: the morning and feel like, ah, you know, I'm changing
Speaker 2: in the world this.
Speaker 1: A little bit today. Yeah.
Speaker 4: That that user feedback that you get if you get it,
Speaker 4: if you're lucky enough to be able to see some
Speaker 4: of what people say is is awesome. Like the team
Speaker 4: that I worked for within Home Depot, we were an
Speaker 4: internal team and our clients were actually Home Depot employees
Speaker 4: as well, so from time to time they they had
Speaker 4: to use our tool to do their jobs and we
Speaker 4: would get feedback both negative and positive. But some of
Speaker 4: the times when we'd get positive feedback, people would say
Speaker 4: things like we'd saved them hours out of their week
Speaker 4: with stuff that we had made and done, which was
Speaker 4: so rewarding. And that's the kind of thing exactly that
Speaker 4: really motivates you. It's like you might not see as
Speaker 4: you're building something the benefit or the impact that it's
Speaker 4: going to have on somebody else's job, But hearing things
Speaker 4: like we'd saved them hours of work a week was awesome.
Speaker 4: And that's something that kind of was attractive to me
Speaker 4: when I was starting to interview at Blues where I
Speaker 4: work now. Was seeing the product that they're making and
Speaker 4: hearing how it could improve so much was really enticing.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a product that makes it easy to
Speaker 4: have an Internet of Things object that doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 4: access to Wi Fi. It gives it that cellular connection
Speaker 4: so that it can take the data from the sensors
Speaker 4: that it's got and send it up to a cloud
Speaker 4: really easily. And when you start to think about all
Speaker 4: the potential use cases for that and how many people
Speaker 4: or how many products it could positively impact, that's really
Speaker 4: really cool to think about all the things that it
Speaker 4: could help make better and make easier. And that's something
Speaker 4: that I wanted to be part of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think like that sort of thing doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily have to be a small company big company thing.
Speaker 3: I think it's probably easier to be more involved in
Speaker 3: a smaller company. But I mean, I've also had experiences
Speaker 3: when I worked at Progress and we sold software, but
Speaker 3: I very rarely got to see any of the people
Speaker 3: using it. So I used to like going to events
Speaker 3: like JavaScript events, software events, because sometimes people would come
Speaker 3: up to we'd have like booze or just see them
Speaker 3: and people would say, Hey, I use your stuff, or
Speaker 3: I've read your blog post, and it's it's an amazing
Speaker 3: like just jolt you get because lots of times when
Speaker 3: you do stuff like that, you put work out into
Speaker 3: the ether and unless somebody tells you, you just kind
Speaker 3: of assumed well, it's out there, and who knows if
Speaker 3: anybody's going to see this or do anything with it.
Speaker 3: So just getting that, like that reassurance that your work
Speaker 3: actually is being used, you have a purpose in life
Speaker 3: at least for this.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, you can feel like you're screaming into the
Speaker 4: voids sometimes when you're writing content and nobody comments or
Speaker 4: shares or just even likes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I felt that before. Yeah, Well, so.
Speaker 2: That actually brings an interesting point, which is, I think
Speaker 2: it's undervalue that engineers need to market themselves. It's a
Speaker 2: lot easier to get a job when the company's coming
Speaker 2: after you as opposed to you going and wanting to
Speaker 2: work at a company, right, so that there's a great
Speaker 2: incentive that's going a different way. And to get there, right,
Speaker 2: you got to build an aim for yourself, and that
Speaker 2: is in some senses a risk at a big company,
Speaker 2: because big companies are gonna have you know, closed source systems,
Speaker 2: and unless you're going to get on an open source
Speaker 2: project that is well well supported inside of a big company,
Speaker 2: lots of big companies start oss and then just let
Speaker 2: it die in the search for you know, profit, which
Speaker 2: is of course important, but you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: thing you want, you're going to be able to build
Speaker 2: up some blog posts and content around your resume. I
Speaker 2: think maybe a little bit more at the tech company
Speaker 2: or at the like smaller medium sized company that's kind
Speaker 2: of doing some innovative work and wants to put something
Speaker 2: out in open source, maybe get a little buzz better
Speaker 2: for recruiting. And I think there's many more opportunities for well, sorry,
Speaker 2: but like selfless self promotion at like in some of
Speaker 2: these companies. And that's the thing to keep you an
Speaker 2: eye out for, because you do have to promote yourself.
Speaker 3: You do.
Speaker 4: And that was something that I got that another scene
Speaker 4: developer told me pretty early on in my career, maybe
Speaker 4: i'd been working for about a year, year and a half,
Speaker 4: and he made the comment that I really, if I
Speaker 4: wanted to kind of show my cred, especially because I
Speaker 4: didn't have a computer science background or degree, I was
Speaker 4: going to need to or it would really benefit me
Speaker 4: to start writing about what I was learning at work.
Speaker 4: And even though I worked on an internal tool, I
Speaker 4: found plenty of opportunities to take what I had learned
Speaker 4: and change it into something that I didn't use our
Speaker 4: internal source code for, you know, I could make a
Speaker 4: much smaller example that I would put into my own
Speaker 4: GitHub repo and then put out in the community that
Speaker 4: was free of all the home depot specific ip or
Speaker 4: I would just take a concept that I had learned
Speaker 4: about and create some small, much simplified version of it,
Speaker 4: or even even stuff that I had built inside projects
Speaker 4: was a great one that I would be able to
Speaker 4: use because they were it was my own code, and
Speaker 4: I would, you know, I would refer back to stuff
Speaker 4: that we had done at work to figure out how
Speaker 4: to make it work for my side project. But it
Speaker 4: was all written by me and my own stuff. But
Speaker 4: that was a huge, huge thing, I think in helping
Speaker 4: me get further in my career because it was something
Speaker 4: that I could point to internally when somebody would have
Speaker 4: a question, I'd be like, oh, I wrote a blog
Speaker 4: post about that, and so you know, people on my
Speaker 4: team could benefit from it. My managers could see that
Speaker 4: I was doing it. It helped kind of solidify yes,
Speaker 4: I do know what I'm talking about, and I have
Speaker 4: at least learned enough to be able to write and
Speaker 4: teach somebody else about it. But it also was an
Speaker 4: outside signal to people outside of the company. That I
Speaker 4: was doing good things and giving back to the community
Speaker 4: in this way and making my way.
Speaker 1: And I am.
Speaker 4: I know that. Because of that kind of stuff, I
Speaker 4: started getting opportunityes, Like a couple of software's and service
Speaker 4: companies asked me, after I'd been publishing for probably a
Speaker 4: couple of years just on my own, if I'd like
Speaker 4: to write for their publications, and they paid me to
Speaker 4: do it. And then I was invited onto one of
Speaker 4: the podcasts here because I'd written an article for log Rocket,
Speaker 4: and suddenly I was on JavaScript Jabber, which is a
Speaker 4: sister podcast of ours, talking about it. And then I
Speaker 4: was invited to React Roundup because I'd done a conference
Speaker 4: talk on responsive design and React and that had been
Speaker 4: picked up by one of the newsletter publications. So that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff not only does it build your credibility
Speaker 4: and give you a platform which a lot of other
Speaker 4: developers are not doing, so it's a huge visibility booster there,
Speaker 4: but it also can potentially lead to paid speaking engagements,
Speaker 4: paid writing engagements, new jobs because somebody saw that you
Speaker 4: did X, Y and Z and they're like, I need
Speaker 4: somebody here to do X, Y and Z. Also, it's
Speaker 4: ridiculous how if you're consistently doing stuff like that, you
Speaker 4: can turn it into something much bigger than what it
Speaker 4: started out as.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I feel like because I had a similar
Speaker 3: journey in terms of working on my own to you
Speaker 3: get my name out from outside of a big company.
Speaker 3: And the thing is you do have to jump through
Speaker 3: some hoops because I had to do some similar things,
Speaker 3: Like you're very careful to make sure you're not using
Speaker 3: any code that it was originally there. You almost like
Speaker 3: feel like awkward, you're foresuer doing all of this on
Speaker 3: your free time, not as part of your work time.
Speaker 3: And I feel like in a startup, there's because there's
Speaker 3: less bureaucracy, you have more ability to get your name
Speaker 3: out for sure, because you have more freedom to work
Speaker 3: on stuff you're interested in and therefore more willing to
Speaker 3: write about. Small companies in general aren't going to care, like,
Speaker 3: you know, lose my care if you take like an
Speaker 3: entire section of code you've been working on for a
Speaker 3: long time and throw it out there. But if you're
Speaker 3: just referencing something you did, it's like, oh, that's like
Speaker 3: good pr Probably like putting the name out there, it's
Speaker 3: it's not a big deal. There's there's less concerns, So
Speaker 3: I feel like you definitely do have more freedom at
Speaker 3: a smaller company to try to make a name for
Speaker 3: yourself than you do instead of like a giant organization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think page you put like a great recipe
Speaker 2: there for just starting out and getting into it. You know, Hey,
Speaker 2: I ran into this little thing. I'm going to go
Speaker 2: and you know, do a quick dev too on how
Speaker 2: to fix this one particular issue, and you'll end up
Speaker 2: in a bunch of Google searches because other people will
Speaker 2: get stuck on and be like, oh, yeah, you know
Speaker 2: that guy's you know, I've got a good, you know,
Speaker 2: recipe for how to get around that, and then it
Speaker 2: kind of builds on it and you get more and
Speaker 2: more exposure and that's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, a really good recipe there to get into
Speaker 2: the world of self marketing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, I just have a note on my phone.
Speaker 4: It's the most basic thing ever of stuff that I
Speaker 4: have figured out how to do, either through work, through projects,
Speaker 4: and when I come across something else that I think
Speaker 4: would be interesting or that I think other people would
Speaker 4: like to see how I did it, I'll just write
Speaker 4: it down as a note to myself, and then when
Speaker 4: I'm when I have time and when I'm looking for
Speaker 4: something to write about, I'll just reference back to that
Speaker 4: and pick one of the topics that still sounds good.
Speaker 4: And it's a great jumping off point because I know
Speaker 4: a lot of people struggle with, well what am I
Speaker 4: going to write about? Well, what are you doing all day?
Speaker 4: You're probably solving interesting problems. So just kind of try
Speaker 4: and keep a reminder to yourself of something interesting that
Speaker 4: you solved. You know, probably somebody else, you know, they'll
Speaker 4: run up against it too. You're probably not the only
Speaker 4: person who will meet this particular thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And honestly, if you're not solving interesting problems, then
Speaker 3: it might be time to consider, right, Like, there's it's
Speaker 3: a great it's a higher you know, there's a good
Speaker 3: time to be a software developer. That's what I'm what
Speaker 3: I'm getting at. There are opportunities out there, so the
Speaker 3: interesting problems don't have to be you know, the world's
Speaker 3: most inventive startup, like you're at the next there, BnB
Speaker 3: and Uber. You can have interesting problems to solve in
Speaker 3: all sorts of markets, Like there were certainly interesting insurance problems.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there are interesting home depot problems, Nike problems
Speaker 3: as well, because those types of companies have like there's
Speaker 3: something to be said about solving something at those sorts
Speaker 3: of scales as well, like you really do have the
Speaker 3: potential to touch a lot of people to make a difference,
Speaker 3: Like it's it is funny because bigger companies also tend
Speaker 3: to have more ceremony and process, but that's somewhat for
Speaker 3: a reason, Like sometimes you get to deal with some
Speaker 3: interesting problems of hitting sometimes huge user bases and large
Speaker 3: data sets that you're going to have trouble finding at
Speaker 3: a startup, So sometimes you can find some unique and
Speaker 3: interesting problems to solve at big companies.
Speaker 4: Also, Oh absolutely, one of the ones that springs to
Speaker 4: mind immediately that was pretty new when I left, or
Speaker 4: have been solved recently, was we had some product data
Speaker 4: that was two hundred and fifty thousand potential rows in
Speaker 4: an Excel spreadsheet that we either needed to upload and
Speaker 4: ingest into our system or make downloadable for the user.
Speaker 4: So yeah, those were nightmare things to solve, but our
Speaker 4: users lived and died by these Excel spreadsheets, so it
Speaker 4: wasn't even a question of if we could make this work.
Speaker 4: It was more how do we make this work? Because
Speaker 4: it needs to work. It was just so, yeah, those
Speaker 4: are ridiculous problems. But because it was a larger company
Speaker 4: and has been around for forty years, you couldn't just
Speaker 4: say we're not going to support this anymore because the
Speaker 4: users would mutiny and come with us, come at us
Speaker 4: with pitchfork. So yeah, there were definitely lots of weird,
Speaker 4: interesting problems that had to be solved. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, these are the same kind of problems that
Speaker 4: I know other companies of large scale and maybe older
Speaker 4: are also struggling with. Not everybody can start out as
Speaker 4: Google and just be all information systems data from the
Speaker 4: get go. There's lots and lots of brick and mortar
Speaker 4: stores that are struggling with legacy systems and old processes
Speaker 4: that they can't just shut down. They have to revamp
Speaker 4: them and make them bring them into the twenty first century,
Speaker 4: but also support the older way of doing stuff. Well,
Speaker 4: one thing that I wanted to bring up that I
Speaker 4: don't think we've really talked about is the various sorts
Speaker 4: of roles that you can have at different companies like
Speaker 4: a large store or a large company like home depot
Speaker 4: because of what they do, they're not going to have
Speaker 4: things like developer relations that they just don't need it
Speaker 4: because they're selling hammers and they're selling chainsaws and they're
Speaker 4: selling mails. But if you want to be maybe a
Speaker 4: site reliability engineer, they definitely have a team that is
Speaker 4: all about that, making sure that the infrastructure underneath all
Speaker 4: these applications is stable and sound and scaling and doing
Speaker 4: everything that it needs to where like Blues, developer relations
Speaker 4: is a huge part of our culture because we want
Speaker 4: developers to really like using our products and to think
Speaker 4: of us when they're looking at their next IoT initiative
Speaker 4: and evaluating the options that are out there. So it
Speaker 4: also really depends like where where do you want your
Speaker 4: career to go. Do you want to specialize in a
Speaker 4: large company where you can be a real subject matter
Speaker 4: expert in a particular area or field, or do you
Speaker 4: want to be out in front of the public because
Speaker 4: that might make it more sense to be at a
Speaker 4: smaller company trying to get help get the company's name
Speaker 4: out at the same time as you're making a name
Speaker 4: for yourself at that company. So it's there's a lot
Speaker 4: of different things to consider based on where you want
Speaker 4: to go next.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, I'm just thinking, look at Progress. We
Speaker 3: had an SEO team with like a handful of people
Speaker 3: that just specialized in that, and thinking, like the smaller
Speaker 3: companies have worked for a blue like there there is
Speaker 3: no SEO team, there's no SEO person, Like, it's si
Speaker 3: SEO is going to be what it is, right like,
Speaker 3: so I think get bigger roles just because there's there's
Speaker 3: more people, there's naturally going to be more specialization. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've worked at bigger companies that had like people that
Speaker 3: their entire job was specializing in one database. They were
Speaker 3: just the database person for that technology. They knew it
Speaker 3: in and out, and that database was important enough to
Speaker 3: the company to hire someone specifically for that. So if
Speaker 3: that's your thing, like, if you have a niche that
Speaker 3: you love, that's your life's passion, you probably can find
Speaker 3: a role for it at a larger company, or at
Speaker 3: least you're probably more likely to.
Speaker 2: I've always been impressed by that. I was a guy
Speaker 2: a company I was working on who was the my
Speaker 2: sqel guy just straight up like that is what he knew.
Speaker 2: He knew every single look and cranny of my sequel
Speaker 2: and down to like the dot the triple Dot version
Speaker 2: of Patch releases, right, But you know you're like, well,
Speaker 2: what happens when if my sequel isn't around anymore?
Speaker 1: I not that it won't I'm not saying it won't be.
Speaker 2: I'm just like putting it out there, like I think
Speaker 2: about it as a career longevity thing, and it's like, no,
Speaker 2: it's always going to be. And it's like, wow, that
Speaker 2: is an impressive amount of dedication to a very very
Speaker 2: focused piece of it. But then again, you know you
Speaker 2: do that and if that's your gig, I mean I'm
Speaker 2: guessing you probably get paid some decent money for that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and if you do the work as you
Speaker 3: said earlier, to like be able to pro public profile
Speaker 3: around it. If you need a MySQL specialist, because you know,
Speaker 3: some big company somewhere is going to hit some MySQL
Speaker 3: airs over and over again and do a Google search
Speaker 3: to look for someone right there, you'll be exactly Yeah.
Speaker 4: I had a friend, a coworker at my old job,
Speaker 4: and he would tell me about a previous company he'd
Speaker 4: worked for and they had the coball guy and the
Speaker 4: Cobyal guy only came in like two weeks out of
Speaker 4: the year to maintain their mission critical co ball system.
Speaker 4: But he got paid big bucks because he was one
Speaker 4: of the few who still nose cobaal and like I said,
Speaker 4: only had to work a minuscule amount of time. So
Speaker 4: if you want to be if you want to go
Speaker 4: into one of those archaic languages that are still powering
Speaker 4: so much of our industry, it's probably not a bad idea.
Speaker 4: But if you like being on the newer side of
Speaker 4: the technology, which will give you a lot more job options, probably,
Speaker 4: I mean, he had job security forever because this system
Speaker 4: needed to exist and needed to be maintained. But you
Speaker 4: probably want to have a more flexible, more up to
Speaker 4: date skill set if you plan on being in this
Speaker 4: industry for another twenty thirty years. But yeah, there's definitely
Speaker 4: a place for those people, for sure.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting point, right.
Speaker 2: People seem to think about well when they look at
Speaker 2: one of these jobs as maybe an eight to five job,
Speaker 2: And I really don't think that technology is an eight
Speaker 2: to five job. You have to go after hours and
Speaker 2: train yourself and keep up with the new technologies. It's
Speaker 2: there's just more to it than that, and it's we
Speaker 2: get paid a lot of money, And there's a good
Speaker 2: reason that we get paid a lot of money, and
Speaker 2: it's because not necessarily just overworking, but like you have
Speaker 2: to make sure that you are also driving your own
Speaker 2: technology in your own career, and that's going to push
Speaker 2: beyond an a defined boundary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sort of depends on what you want, right,
Speaker 3: Like there are certainly people that I have friends that
Speaker 3: are working in big insurance still and are still doing
Speaker 3: the same nine to five job. And there's something to
Speaker 3: be said of just finding a comfortable place that's something
Speaker 3: that you enjoy doing, because there are certainly roles that
Speaker 3: you can keep doing without having to do the grind,
Speaker 3: and you might not get as far into your career,
Speaker 3: but it's just what you're comfortable doing. So it's it's
Speaker 3: about finding what you want to accomplish and then you know,
Speaker 3: valuating your options and trying to figure out how to
Speaker 3: get there. And definitely say that those jobs exist in
Speaker 3: the larger company, Yeah, companies that almost expected that you have.
Speaker 3: You're you're passionate about technology and always learning and that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. I remember when I was working a
Speaker 3: name which is a host of the social network company
Speaker 3: and Steve jobs is still around. I mean, the entire
Speaker 3: company would shut down for watching that keynote because we're
Speaker 3: all just glued about what was going to come out
Speaker 3: of WILLI Wan because chocolate factory, you know, this year,
Speaker 3: and and you go into bigger companies and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it's Apple release day.
Speaker 1: What are we doing? They're like, what.
Speaker 2: Nothing the other day at the office, dude, Yeah, yep,
Speaker 2: all right, well this has been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about picks. Anymody got one?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can go first. So I'm going to pick
Speaker 3: a app for the Mac called Rocket, and it's an
Speaker 3: app to but you drop in emoji in any application.
Speaker 3: You essentially hit colon. You have to give your Mac
Speaker 3: like full accessibility access to this app, but you just
Speaker 3: type of colon in any application anywhere where you can type,
Speaker 3: and it brings up a little like system wide emoji picker.
Speaker 3: And I've really enjoyed using it. I remembered it because
Speaker 3: I got a new Mac for the new job and
Speaker 3: I went to take colon in something and my emoji
Speaker 3: picker didn't come up, and I was like, oh man,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize how reliant I had become on this thing.
Speaker 3: But it's also smart enough to you can filter out
Speaker 3: certain apps, so like Slack is essentially blacklisted because Slack
Speaker 3: already has an emoji picker, right, so it doesn't like
Speaker 3: you don't get two emoji pickers conflicting with each other,
Speaker 3: and you can sort of configure that. But for lots
Speaker 3: of times, if you're just like in a random textbox
Speaker 3: and Chrome, sometimes it's nice to be able to type
Speaker 3: an emoji and just have it work. So I found
Speaker 3: it's a pretty nice littleb for doing that. So that's
Speaker 3: my pick.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, nice, cool.
Speaker 4: Those are fun. So my pick for this week is
Speaker 4: going to continue on the IoT train that I have
Speaker 4: been on as of late. This one is one that
Speaker 4: actually I posted to Twitter last week and it got
Speaker 4: a lot more engagement that I was expecting. And it's
Speaker 4: called The Raspberry Pie Beginner's Guide, and it's a yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a kid's book. It's built for kids to get
Speaker 4: started with their first Raspberry Pie and kind of get
Speaker 4: into programming, and it's fantastic. It is two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty two color pages with pictures and code blocks and
Speaker 4: all kinds of good tips for people who don't know
Speaker 4: anything about raspberry pies, but are looking to learn, and
Speaker 4: even though it is aimed at kids, I found it
Speaker 4: really useful and helpful. And apparently the rest of Twitter
Speaker 4: agreed with me, because there were plenty of people who
Speaker 4: were writing about how they had used it, how they
Speaker 4: and their kids have used it. How no shame in
Speaker 4: buying a book that's aimed at kids to get you started.
Speaker 4: So I would highly recommend it if you are looking
Speaker 4: to get into that kind of industry or start tinkering
Speaker 4: around with this, because it's very helpful. It's cleared up
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that I just didn't know. I
Speaker 4: didn't know about raspberry pies and how to kind of
Speaker 4: begin the IoT learning. So it's it's a good read.
Speaker 1: So when are we going to get to see some
Speaker 1: of your IoT creations?
Speaker 4: Well, as soon as I finished the book, and I
Speaker 4: have a whole bunch of sensors that I have ordered
Speaker 4: from a company called the Seed with three e's. They
Speaker 4: make all sorts of sensors for pies and Arduino's and
Speaker 4: all those little micro controllers and reco processors. But they
Speaker 4: are I think their factories in China, so I'm waiting
Speaker 4: on the international shipping to oh yeah, get done. It's
Speaker 4: taking a little bit longer than something like Amazon.
Speaker 3: But soon I feel like we need more books like
Speaker 3: that for adults. I don't know if any of you remember.
Speaker 3: I don't think these are a thing anymore, but I
Speaker 3: think it was head Start.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, those are great, yea.
Speaker 3: And they were just fantastically written because they would have
Speaker 3: just like cartoons all over the place, and also head First.
Speaker 1: I thought it was maybe head First. Was it head First?
Speaker 3: I can't remember, but I had.
Speaker 1: A lot of the cartoons and that was fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know what happened to them, but those books
Speaker 3: were great. And sometimes they would have those books on
Speaker 3: pretty advanced topics. I remember learning like some advanced Java
Speaker 3: from those books, and it was just so presentable. And
Speaker 3: I feel like we don't, like, we don't do textbooks
Speaker 3: much anymore in the first place, and when we do, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I feel like we'vearied on too much
Speaker 3: of the side of like text informational, unless on the
Speaker 3: fun sort of aspect of presenting some of this content.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the O'Reilly books, as detailed as they can get,
Speaker 4: are usually a little bit dry, and it's very nice
Speaker 4: to see little cartoons of people picking stuff up and
Speaker 4: holding pies and connecting things and diagrams and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I agree with you, we need to bring
Speaker 4: the fun back to tech full stuff.
Speaker 2: Having written a couple of those, they do it digitally.
Speaker 2: They do have a very strong tone and the editors
Speaker 2: will enforce that on you if you don't like. My
Speaker 2: tone is much more jovial and fun and kind of approachable.
Speaker 2: So when I write books for myself there, they're very that,
Speaker 2: whereas you know, you get the Ariiley thing and they're saying, oh, no,
Speaker 2: you know this is this is a bit more of
Speaker 2: a textual reference kind of thing. But they did have
Speaker 2: that head first series and it is very good. If
Speaker 2: they had a head first mL, I'd be all over
Speaker 2: that right now for sure.
Speaker 1: Yep. All right, Well, my pick for this week is
Speaker 1: Virtual Coffee. IOW.
Speaker 2: It's a kind of get together for folks in tech.
Speaker 2: It's really good. They're very strong in terms of keeping
Speaker 2: it a safe space and making sure that there's a
Speaker 2: large diversity of folks in the chat and the one
Speaker 2: that I went to, we talked a lot about work
Speaker 2: life balance and getting burnt out and how to deal
Speaker 2: with that, and I thought that that was really cool
Speaker 2: and it was interesting because the topic time just came
Speaker 2: out of nowhere. It's like the thing that was foremost
Speaker 2: some people's minds. I think the pandemic and being inside
Speaker 2: all the time has really kind of brought to the
Speaker 2: fore all these issues of like burnout and the rest
Speaker 2: of it and how do we manage that? So very interesting.
Speaker 2: It's great to be able to talk to other people
Speaker 2: on network, and so what we talked about before about
Speaker 2: self promotion, you know, find these kinds of ways that
Speaker 2: you can get your name out there and say, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm in the community looking around for work, or this
Speaker 2: is what I've been doing lately, and get your name
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this has been wonderful. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to REACT. Round up and see you next week, hie,
Speaker 1: everybody see you then. I