Hi everyone, we are back. Q&A #10 We hit double digits,
very proud of that. We got a record number of
questions there about personal branding, a little bit about
podcasting, a little bit about me, and still some career
related stuff. So sit back, relax and enjoy.
All right, question number one, we're going to hit off on all
the content creation and more so personal branding questions
first. Does content creation help you
grow in your career, especially for beginners in coding?
I would say this is an interesting one.
And I mean in your educational journey.
This is what my parents told me and my teachers told me is
whenever you read something or whenever someone tells you
something, you can write it down and you might remember it more
clearly. And for me, content creation is
very similar, right? Because throughout your learning
journey, you're going to perceive things as they are.
And if you create content and share that content, then it's
going to help you gain a better fundamental understanding of
what you're actually writing down.
And then based on the feedback that you get, if any, you'll
hone your craft basically. So it's a very interesting way
of gaining knowledge and becoming better at what you do
throughout. I think anything career related,
but especially in tech since this learning journey is kind of
never ending. The only thing is that it can be
a bit daunting, especially for me.
I don't like making mistakes and that's an issue especially when
you're in front of a camera with a microphone and you can just
blabber on. And especially in writing, I can
just go over and over and over on the thing I wrote until it's
perfect and it's never going to be perfect.
So I had to get over that initial hump and just produce.
In essence, if my essence is fine, then the way I format it
can always be tweaked. So yeah, I would say try it.
It's not for everyone. And what type of content you can
create might also be related to what type of content you'd like
consuming. If you watch a lot of videos,
you might want to create a video and see what it is behind the
scenes. I think the most is true for
reading and writing. If you love reading, you might
actually be a really good writer.
And for me, I like listening. So here I am podcasting.
If someone would like to start a podcast tomorrow, what are the
steps they need to go through to make it a reality?
I would say there's a few things you need to think about kind of
your topic and what type of branding you want to do.
For me it was I wanted to have conversations with people in a
one-on-one format because that's what I enjoyed.
Listening to group would have also been fun but that's just
harder to set up. So for me the easiest would be a
one-on-one conversation. I wanted to talk about things
that are technical but not too technical, hence also be named
the we coined the name Beyond coding, which I think is still
very apartment. And then honestly, it's starting
and trying it out. You'll never know if you don't
try it out. So find a person that's
interesting. Get kind of a minimal setup.
Microphone wise, we had I think a quite elaborate set up because
the audio quality is very good and has been from the start.
We've never changed microphones. You don't need an insanely good
microphone, but you definitely need a good microphone with
regards to a podcast. And then we also had a camera
set up, which was just two tripods, which would only record
for 30 minutes. And then we had to switch out
the SD card. So I actually parked the
conversation, switch it out and then continue.
We've since upgraded, as you can see, but that was our bare
minimum set up. We sat in one of the meeting
rooms upstairs. You need an isolated room.
You can also do a podcast just by yourself answering questions
or thinking about or speaking your mind.
And then I've especially seen good audio quality for people
that do it in their car because it's a really good isolating
environment, very soundproof ish, but really good for a
podcast setup, especially if you're talking about something
bare minimum. Record a few episodes before you
start releasing. Figure out what your release
cadence is. I still advocate for weekly at a
minimum to get up and running to get into this rhythm and routine
of creating content and podcasting and executing.
And then see if you can optimize, see if you can
experiment. Keep having fun with it.
Try things out. If they don't work, it's fine.
You learn and you continue. So yeah, editing is not that
much work. It depends on what type of
format you want to do. If you want to do something very
educational, very much like a newspaper, then you might want
to have very fast-paced content and make sure you don't make any
mistakes. If you just have a conversation,
it's easier on the editing side because if you keep it a
conversation, then pauses and UMS are just fine in the audio
content there. So choose something that works
for you. Choose something that you think
is interesting. Try and make it as resilient as
possible throughout and honestly, just start and have
fun with it. Sorry, I will start my own
podcast now. Yeah, in my car.
Your car. I think you could do it.
I don't have. I think you have the personality
for it. You can do it one day.
One day I'll definitely start a podcast.
All right. If you could record a podcast
with anyone in the world, who would that be and why?
Yeah, depends. If it's this podcast, I want it
to be kind of in the tech scene and obviously big, big idol is
Joe Rogan, so that would be an honour.
Elon Musk could be fun just because of the thoughts that go
on in his head and trying to pick the brain of his,
especially now that he owns Twitter and does seemingly a
trillion jobs at the same time, which seems ridiculous.
So figuring out how that is possible On the acting scene,
honestly, I've been listening to the audio book of Arnold
Schwarzenegger. I just finished it.
So that man has done so much, which would be very interesting
to talk to. Other than that, a lot of
YouTube idols. Mr. Beast would be fun to figure
out what he has cooking. But then I'm not really unique
because those people have already done a lot of podcasts.
So yeah, those would be my initial first thoughts.
The Rock, interesting guy. Kevin Hart, big, big favorite
when it comes to comedy. That'd be a lot of fun.
So yeah, is the podcast still a part of your work or do you
record the episodes outside of working hours?
Luckily, I actually get time to do this.
I get about four hours per episode.
I don't know why I said about I get 4 hours per episode.
It might not be enough, but it's good enough to do it during
working hours. Everything else around it I do
outside of work and I try and manage.
In the beginning, I didn't get any hours.
I did everything kind of outside of work, which was a lot of
work, and then we got the ball up and running to the point
where I actually got time for this, which I'm really thankful
for. Otherwise, I don't think we
could have come this far, right? Because the four hours are
usually spent for the recording, which takes about an hour, hour
and a half. I want to make sure that the
people that come on here also have a nice experience, so if
I'm really time managing, then that experience is just going to
be ruined by virtue of me rushing through everything.
I need time to find people, to have an intro call to do
research on the topic, research on the person, record the
episode, editing. I get help now, which I'm also
very thankful for out of my plate.
And then it's making sure the episode is nicely packed with
visuals and then released to the public.
We don't do a lot of marketing. I think that's the only thing we
can improve on very much still because hopefully we have
interesting content now. People just need to see it.
So yeah, that's kind of the format of the podcast and I'm
very thankful for these hours. Don't, don't take the money.
How do you investigate the main topic and guests before your
podcast? I used to do 2 things.
So previously or very much early on, I had a list of topics and
then I would find the guests and that's actually really hard.
But then I have a specific topic already in mind.
Now what I do is the opposite. I find the guests and together
we brainstorm on a topic and I always do an intro call.
So I get to know the person that's in front of me.
I get to know their passion and that's usually in the topic.
And then afterwards, offline, I just call the person.
I see what type of talks they've done, if they've done any other
type of podcast to get a better feel of kind of what makes them
tick. I'm experimenting with two prep
questions which I sent them and they give me back the answer.
It's mainly, if you were to share this with anyone, what
would you want to have in the episode?
That tells me a little bit about them as a person or what they
think is important. And then what is your opinion on
something that might be controversial within the topic
that we've defined? Which also gives me a little
insight in how their mind works and how they think about certain
aspects which might be different.
And I think different sometimes is interesting for listening
experience. So that's part of my prep for
the guest side. Topic wise, it's the same as how
you kind of analyse any topic. I try and go deep enough for me
to have a conversation but still be interested and not be
anchored or biased in a specific perspective.
I rely a lot on the experiences that I've had and I try and
throw that up in the conversation as well and see if
their experience is aligned or opposite.
And we bounce off of that. And it's very much right now
kind of second nature. I would say it's very much in
the gut which type of questions we ask or I ask.
Basically, there's no we. I don't know about the person in
front of me, but yeah, I think throughout this three-year of of
experience, I've just gotten a better sense of how much prep I
need to do. In the beginning, you might over
prepare. I would never recommend over
preparing, but that's also the type of person I am.
I like being flexible. I don't like being under
prepared, but I am almost always in some form or way under
prepared and that allows me to freestyle because that's, I like
kind of free flowing conversation and seeing where it
goes. So, yeah.
All right, all right, all right. This is a very nice one.
Patrick, you're the king of discipline.
Thank you. That makes me really happy.
How do you battle with procrastination and laziness
when you do weekly podcasts? Yeah, I don't think I'm the king
of discipline. It's a huge compliment and I
thank you for it. The only thing that really
helped me was schedule, and I'm not the best planner, so this
was really due to the help that I got early on in creating a few
episodes. We always had a batch of five
episodes parked and ready to go so that when I'm lazy for a week
or two, I can catch up by recording two episodes and I
still have 5 parked ready to go. Right now that's not the case.
I am on edge and sometimes recording and then releasing the
week after and I need to do better.
But that also means I'm actually not procrastinating.
I think I'm just having a lot of fun recording.
So then doing this continuously. I do have the discipline and the
motivation to do this weekly because I think that's always
been a bare minimum. And right now the motivation
after three years is just to keep the streak going.
Like I love gamification and it's like a combo and a
multiplier and we're almost at 170 basically.
That's enough motivation for me to see how far I can take this,
and I take pride in that number, the amount of episodes, even
more so than the amount of views of the subscribers.
For me, this is more of the personal motivation part of it.
In the beginning, everything was new, and I think whenever you do
something new that excites you, it's really hard to stop doing
it, basically. At least that's for me.
I would have to have someone Take Me Out of my focus to stop
doing sometimes. I would have to take myself out
of it to eat sometimes. I would get obsessed, honestly,
with podcasting, with statistics, with creating
episodes, with finding people, with creating better content,
with experimenting. And I think more so in the
beginning than now, but still, I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Experimenting keeps it fresh and with freshness you can also keep
your motivation up. It's kind of a mangle of an
answer to be honest. Find what motivates you and make
sure that never goes away. I think that is the essence of
it. For me, it's the one-on-one
conversation. I love learning through people's
experiences. I love when someone is a really
good storyteller and just listening.
Listening has always been the joy, which is also why I think I
love podcasting. And nowadays, I like sharing
more and more as well. So thank you for letting me do
this. Q&A episodes and as well
motivate themselves when there's no response in the form of
likes, shares, comments, or any other metrics.
That is how everyone starts out. If that is your only motivator,
then you will not make it because you won't get over that
initial hump and keep continuing.
So I think at the beginning you have to have a vision and the
time is going to be the only variable.
If you think you can be DJ or wait.
This is not even the DJ question.
DJ question was next. I'm getting ahead of myself.
If you want to be the next Joe Rogan of podcasting, it's going
to take time, it's going to take fame, it's going to take a lot
of sweat and effort, basically. And if you're OK with that, then
you just do it. And time is the only variable.
If I do this for 20 years, it might happen, might not happen,
but as long as I believe in it and I keep doing it, it might
happen. There's a chance.
And however small it is, if my belief is strong enough, that is
enough fun motivation for me to keep going.
Honestly, metrics like view subscribers and watch hours,
watch time, I think those are the biggest ones on YouTube as
well As for a podcast because that feeds the algorithm and
then your content gets recommended more and more.
Those are a little bit of a vanity metrics.
Obviously they tell you about the performance of an episode,
but if you like more of an easygoing conversation rather
than fast-paced Tiktok content, then yeah, your content might
not be for everyone. People need to sit down for it,
go for a walk, their dog, go for a ride.
And then a podcast is really good rather than this, let's
say, fast food of media content that people, a lot of people
consume in volume. I don't think a podcast is that.
I think it has its own niche. It has its own time and place,
which means that the burn is a bit slower and the ramp up is a
lot longer. It's a lot of long tail content
that people watch. I think 50% of the content that
people listen to with regards to my podcast is all from before
half a year ago. That's the statistics YouTube
gives me, which if you think about it, is ridiculous because
I need to have that bulk of content.
Six months is 6 * 26 * 4 is 24 episodes of content basically,
which is already half a year. And then people kind of ramp up
maybe initially. So yeah, if you fixate on that,
you'll never make it. Just have fun with it, do it for
yourself and find a smaller group of people which is really,
really enthusiastic, which really engages because that's
better than a million people that don't engage at the end of
the day. So, yeah, Have you ever
calculated the marketing value of your reach for the company?
Very interesting question. I have not.
I get a lot of emails or whatever.
A lot of is subjective. For me, it's a lot because I
never got these about sponsorships and I don't need a
sponsor necessarily. I think it's interesting.
So I might just dabble in the process to see and learn from
it. But that's the only value that
people have with regards to the podcast is about the breach.
And they ask me for the numbers. What is your rate?
How much do you charge per episode?
How much do you charge per long segment versus short segment
versus multiple segments versus an integrated thing or just a
something that you put in front or after the episode?
I have no clue. Honestly, I think it's valuable,
but it's very hard to quantify how valuable, right?
When a podcast is used as a marketing tool for a company,
it's on the highest level. And at the end of the day, I'm
really happy that the company doesn't really care on what the
returns are because in essence, they care about the quality of
the content. And then whatever outcome comes
out of this podcast, they're going to be happy with it.
If someone on the street software engineer is looking for
a new job, sees throughout YouTube, the algorithm, any of
the marketing efforts that we do, some of the conferences or
meet ups that we have this podcast and that that's a person
that just started it within this company and therefore they
apply. That's already gold, right?
If another, because it's a consultancy company.
If a customer says, well, these people talk a lot about data in
AI or they talk about Web 5, or they talk about IoT
specifically, because I can see on this podcast, then this might
be the consultancy company to actually start a conversation
with and engage regardless if there's an assignment there or
not. The fact that people then would
engage based on the content that they see, which is very high
quality, I think that's it. And we don't know what outcomes
have come. Sometimes I can quantify it
because people that are new here tell me about it, but whatever
outcome comes out of that, that's the trust that the
company places in the podcast and in me, and I'm really happy
with that. I don't need to quantify it
necessarily. Whenever I do do a sponsorship,
I'll definitely circle back and give you feedback because that's
going to be an interesting learning journey.
But what it is worth right now, to me, it is this little piece
of gold, this golden nugget, and it's growing more and more and I
never want to let it go. For me, it's worth a lot.
But that's just me because also it's mine.
So yeah, not for everyone else, basically.
What are your top three favorite topics to cover on the podcast?
That is very difficult. I think if you look at the
backlog of episodes, you can see numerous topics.
Personally, what we've never covered is anime.
I love anime. That's a little bit about me.
I love games, and I might do an episode with a game director
talking about how they switched from software engineering
architecture to more of a game director, which is very
interesting to me. So that's more of the gaming
side, but I've never done that. I like right now, like everyone,
what the AI technologies kind of open up in possibilities.
I very much love startups and failures and success and grit
and discipline because I think that's very inspiring.
Any topic that can be motivational or inspiring.
And then the people I have on to be unique in their perspective,
in their storytelling. I like people that can tell
really good stories, but that's more about the person, not about
the topic. And then whatever topic makes me
better, either software engineer, product manager, or
just person and consultant with regards to life and what I do in
this career perspective. It's kind of a honestly, I just
told you everything that we have basically.
So yeah, it's really hard to choose.
Don't make me choose. I don't know if that was a good
answer. I will.
I thought so. That was my answer.
This is the interesting one. How do you validate your brand
identity when you don't have real people for feedback, like
being an artist or DJ validating your brand identity?
I think branding and personal branding is very interesting.
And if you think about it, everyone has a personal brand.
It's just within your own sphere of people that you connect with,
within your family, you're known about a few things.
I sometimes am late. I sometimes can be lazy or
procrastinate. If you ask my siblings, they'll
tell you all of that. Basically, they know me the
best. They know the personal brand.
That is probably the family perspective.
And then within my team and within my colleagues, people
know me as to be responsible or reliable or sometimes still
procrastinating and being very direct in the way I communicate
and sometimes a no bullshit, very practical attitude.
There's a lot to unpack there. And different people see
different versions of me. And then when you go beyond, the
people that listen to this podcast have only a reflection
of me. Basically, I have no clue how
they perceive me. They perceive me as a host, as
someone that might talk very eloquently, that is very curious
and driven. Hopefully I'm a making a lot of
assumptions. So if none of that's true, let
me know. But in any case, as someone that
has created 170 episodes, whatever they think of that is
basically my brand and identity. And some of that I have in
control and some of that I have no control over because that's
just who I am. And that's people perceive who I
am. And the truth is almost always
somewhere in the middle. How my perception is versus how
your perception is. The truth is probably somewhere
in the middle when it comes to your brand, the only thing that
you can do. Is do what you do best.
So whether you're an artist or whether you're a DJ, if you want
to be perceived in the outside world outside of your family or
your networking career sphere, is by creating content and
seeming like you are an authority on that subject.
And the seeming is basically impossible because when you
start out, you're not an authority.
You're just the person that creates content and that already
is good enough. Do that over and over and over
again. And just by virtue of you being
really motivated and wanting to perfect your craft, whether
that's an artist or DJ or whatever, you will get better
and with better comes close to perfection.
At least that's what people perceive.
And then all of a sudden they identify you with whatever you
create. So if you're an artist, I love
the people on Tiktok that create paintings or do awesome drawings
and I just see them having a catalogue full of content and
that makes a lot of sense. And then I think, OK, these
people are amazing creatives. Whether they see themselves as
artists or creatives, I have no clue.
But that's my perception based on the content that they've
created as well as the legacy of content that is already out
there. And somehow the recommendation
algorithm just gave me the latest or somewhere one of them
that is the most popular or one of them that might be in the
style of an anime I like especially.
That's probably it. So yeah.
And identity is very interesting.
You can already think of yourself, what you're known for.
It's basically reputation within different spheres of networks
that you have. The closest one is probably your
friends and your family. Then the next one is probably
the people that you work with that are like adjacent to
friends or actually you see them as friends or are close to being
friends. People don't like throwing out
the term friends. I like throwing out the term
friends. I have a lot of friends.
And then the people that you might know, you might have
worked with or just know you by virtue of being in the company
or have seen some of your blogs or any of the content that you
create, that's like very far away.
They still have an opinion of you based on what you created
and that is still your brand. Do things consistently.
If I were to talk about early on software engineering career
perspective and only did that, probably my brand identity would
have been a lot more concise and people would see me as the guy
that only does that. So that is a brand identity that
I have more control over. I right now do a lot of
everything, which means my brand might be all over the place, but
I don't really mind. If that's still my brand and
that's what I like doing, then that's fine with me.
Don't make me spit. Do a spit take.
Ah, not a question. I just think you're doing an
amazing job with the podcast. Thank you so much.
How do you handle guests?
We're not able to communicate that well.
Yeah, this is a hard one. If they make it to the episode,
I don't know how they make it to the episode.
There's only been one episode that was, quality wise, not good
enough for me to air. And then I give the person the
option. We either redo it because this
is my feedback basically. And I tried to be nice about it
because this can be crushing if you basically say we do an hour
conversation and then at the end I say it's not good enough
basically. But it was also too long.
I had a few reasons and we redid it and the episode is still
there. Basically, it's a good episode.
Second one went way better. That's the only one that was
like OK, I cannot do it. I think the quality is below
whatever I want to put out. Other than that, I usually make
sure that I do my homework with regards to who I'm talking to
and the intro call allows me to filter out people that are not
that great of communicators. And it might sound harsh, and in
the end it is harsh, I think, but a podcast is still something
that people listen to. If the person does not
communicate that well, I have to really carry the conversation.
And it might not be interesting because I'm also having them on
with regards to their experiences, perspectives, or
expertise on a certain topic. And if we're not able to convey
that well in the episode, then the episode's not great.
So I make sure that that doesn't happen, to be honest, throughout
doing research before I even reach out to people.
Then when I've reached out to people by doing that intro call,
it's non negotiable. Some people have said can I skip
it? I say no.
And then we don't do the episode if they don't want to do it.
That's it. Those are my boundaries
basically. And then in the end, in
practice, it doesn't happen on the episode itself.
So yeah, do your homework. I think it's a good life advice
for everyone. Make sure it doesn't happen.
Best advice ever. How did you overcome disliking
hearing your own voice? I hated it when I put on these
headphones. Episode one was being recorded
and I hurt myself because you hear yourself with the delay.
Now I would like them now because it isolates me.
I can better zone in on what the person is saying and I can chime
in when I need to or interrupt them without breaking the flow
of the conversation. Better because I'm in focus mode
and I'm in an isolated kind of sound environment.
Now back to episode one. I was like, can we turn this
off? And the answer was no, I don't
think we knew how to do it. I still think I can do it
somehow. But we always kept it on.
And then when I was editing the episodes or listening back to
the content to try and improve what questions I would say or
how I reacted, or honestly just try and see what my state of
mind was. If I was too tired, if I liked
what I said or not, if I actually was listening or not,
to see if I could do it better the next time, I would do that
so often that it just sounds like my voice and I'm happy with
my voice. What really helped was that
people said you have a beautiful podcasting voice, which I'd
never thought about, and that's very much vanity, but it did
help. I think for me the biggest
factor was just trying to listen to it and get over it.
And if you do it often enough, it sounds very silly sometimes.
But what you don't like, if you do it often enough, it's just
there and you don't really care for it.
I don't really have an opinion, and I don't think my opinion on
my voice matters that much. So yeah, don't really care for
it. What are some surprises about
your brand that evolved over time?
Surprises about my brand. I don't necessarily know if
there were many surprises. I used to create content with
the state of mind that I had a good idea of who the listener
was, who the viewer was. I don't know what it was based
on, to be honest, but I just thought I had it and it turned
out I was completely wrong. People that listen to it are
very varied and very diverse. Some people listen to it to help
them get a better understanding of the English language because
English is not their first language.
They like listening. They also are interested in
these tech topics. They might be in the educational
journey or they might be early in career and they might be
later in career and they listen to it and they enjoy the English
aspect of it. That's something I never could
have imagined and the only reason I know is because they
tell me in the feedback in the comments, which I think is
amazing. I still think people are there
for the educational part of it. Whatever topic we cover, if we
talk about Web 5, someone might be interested in what Web 5 is
or it might trigger them with regards to let me just figure
out what this is about or it sounds interesting or I might
actually like it in so much so that I want to pursue something
with regards to a personal project, side hustle or actually
a career path. Now those are very, very big
bets that I'm making right now and the smaller bets turn out to
be true. Honestly, it's people like me,
people that are very curious, people that have a broad set of
interests, people that don't mind necessarily switching or
trying things out for half a year or a year that takes
everything with kind of a grain of salt and are very flexible in
how they set themselves up. And yeah, I don't know if that's
how it evolved to be. I don't know.
I, I definitely didn't think that was it at the start.
And also I think I can steer with the content, what I think
my brand needs to be or might be more effective to be or might
give me better and more vanity metrics, subscribers and views
and stuff like that. But I just don't care for it.
So I don't do it. And my brand is whatever it is,
which is probably a lot who I am as a person.
And that was very introspective. If you could start over, what
would you do differently? Yes, I hate these types of
questions. I don't like saying that I would
not make the mistakes that I did.
Like, for example, we don't do any remote episodes anymore.
Why? Because I did that.
The audio issues were numerous. Even recording, we had
challenges with it. So I decided I don't want the
headache. I don't want to do it.
I could say I wish I never did that, but then I never had the
learnings of going through it and then now knowing what I
know. So it's not going to be based on
failures or mistakes or I like all the learnings that we did.
I like the consistency that we did it.
I like the fact that it's English and non edited, non
negotiable. Basically.
What do I not like? I mean, all the learnings that
have streamlined this process I think would be very valuable.
I think I I think I could have experimented more early on.
At some point it was very formulaic ish and with it being
static, the formulaic part, The only difference is the topic and
I really needed to find motivation in the topic.
And some topics were not interesting but I think I
thought it would be indeed contribute to more views or more
subscribers or more likes or comments or whatever.
Right now I don't really mind and I really enjoy doing it for
me and I'm really happy that people still think it's valuable
to them. But those are all learnings
based on what I did in the past. So I I wouldn't really change
the thing. I would experiment more.
And earlier I think Q&A's for me have been a really, really fun
journey. And this is number 10, which I
think is incredible. We could have been way, way
further, and I think that would have been just as incredible and
it would have had just as much fun.
So probably that I did this earlier, that I maybe started
the podcast even earlier. Even though he was not
comfortable in front of a mic, even though I was way more early
on in career, even though I probably wouldn't have offered
as much of A perspective I can now, I think I would have had
just as much fun. I think I would have been even
better because I, if I would do it earlier, I would just have
more years under my belt, which means probably my execution
would be even better. So that's the only thing that I
would change. Start earlier, start
experimenting more often and just start.
I have a real hard time starting.
So it's a miracle that this thing started.
And I, I'm really good at keeping things going, which is
what we're doing right now. When you're in Amsterdam, what
do you do beyond coding to reset your mind?
I know you like to surf surf, but I assume that's not possible
in Amsterdam. I go through phases and I get
these obsessions with things and I do them obsessively.
Started with skateboarding, which was years ago, and I
didn't really want to be a trickster skateboarding.
I just really like going fast on those four wheels and going from
point A to point. BI loved it.
I would take my skateboard. People at the office would say
and make fun of me and say that's the skateboard.
I did not care. It would even be people at a
client, which, yeah, at the end of the day, I didn't really
care. And luckily they did not care
enough basically to not like me. Because of that.
I think it showed personality. I got into a really big cycle of
bouldering, and I haven't bouldered actually for a long,
long time, but it was very much there last year.
It was a lot of fun trying to figure out different things.
Klein I had learned that I am not flexible, which I know, but
that it's a big, big issue with bouldering.
And I tried getting flexible. It's really hard, still not
flexible. And now the surfing phase was
definitely in Sri Lanka. I would wake up, surf, do it all
over again the next day. I loved it and I wish I could do
it, but this is not Sri Lanka. So I get these phases.
What I do consistently, I would say to just take my mind off,
mainly work is spend time with friends and family.
I think that's my joy. That's never going to go away.
I like taking walks, I like eating, I sometimes like
cooking, and I like watching different types of medium,
whether it's YouTube, whether it's anime, whether it's
listening to a podcast, reading a manga.
I think all of that are like little joys.
And then when I don't have this obsessive hobby, sometimes it's
gaming. Right now it is a bit of a
gaming phase. Yeah.
It just that goes away. And I found something else and I
get obsessed with it and my YouTube recommendations blast me
with it and I consume all the content and I execute whatever I
want to do, whether it's bouldering or thinking of
getting into arts and crafts and stuff, because I think that
could be fun. It's been podcasting for a
really, really long time, very much early on, more so than it
is now. I still have thoughts of being a
video content creator and actually just buying a really
good camera with a good mic and just start vlogging, talk about
food and anime. So yeah, I have these thoughts
and sometimes I actually do it and I get obsessed with it and
it's really interesting. I don't think obsessive
behaviour is a good thing, but it helps me take my mind off and
actually decompress. So yeah, sometimes I'm a couch
potato. I don't do thing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not this hyper productive person, I never
will be. I have phases and I think that's
fine. What soft skills are in your
opinion, crucial level up from junior to more advanced
developer? Specifically soft skills.
If I were to pick one, and I'm not going to pick one because
I'm a greedy person, one would be when it comes to you and how
you're perceived by others is how you break down something
that is technically complex and make sure that everyone in the
room can understand it. And you also check in with them
and you ensure that they understand it because some
people just nod and they don't actually understand.
Breaking down something that is complex in simple terms makes
people perceive that you actually really, really
understand it. And I think that holds true in a
certain essence, but that is the soft scale of communication.
Basically, if you really understand your craft, whether
it's technical, whether it's something else, and someone does
not, and the topic is complex, it can be complex in numerous
ways. The way you communicate it and
break it down, make sure that you actually know your stuff,
and that's how it's perceived. That for me would be kind of #1
whenever it comes to team effectiveness right now as APM,
I'm very mindful of team productivity.
Basically, if everyone is in the room and we discuss something
for two hours and we don't have an outcome, then I wasted
everyone's time for two hours, right?
So if you can set up something with a specific agenda and a
goal and you can execute based on that, you get more stuff
done. And you can get a lot of stuff
done as a junior. But just by virtue of you
executing more people might see you more senior in that aspect.
So that's being more mindful of your own time, everyone else's
time, making sure that when everyone gathers, it's
effective. It has the outcome that you
wanted it to be or it has a outcome whether you agree or
disagree. And just by virtue of me saying
that, I think that's a really good thing to not be fixated on.
You can be wrong, and I think you need to acknowledge whenever
you're wrong and it's OK. It is very OK to disagree and
commit. I've heard that term more and
more often. Let's just disagree and commit
and test and reflect and shift gears.
Be flexible. But that's more of an execution
thing. That's not really the soft skill
thing. Break things down, explain them,
practice that, get better at it and you'll do well.
What is your process when starting a new project and can
you give examples for reference on how a senior dev would start
a project compared to a junior? What are the key differences
that defines then a senior and a junior in starting a project?
Big, big disclaimer, I don't start new projects very often.
I don't have many side hustle projects.
I'm thinking about doing one and again, I'm very bad at starting.
So I've been thinking about this for a while and I need to start
but I haven't started. So that's one of my flaws there.
I think it's picking and choosing and not falling into
this information. Analysis paralysis has been one
of the biggest strengths that I've seen other people be really
good at it. I don't think I'm good at it
myself, right, When you have this big, big overview of what a
software engineer needs to do and what they can do and what
they can be good at. I'm not good at starting.
So I think if you take the starting part, I might be very,
very junior at it. Actually, I have not done it
often, but when I did that and I was in a team with people that
had done that numerous times, what I saw them do was take non
functional requirements, take things with regards to team size
and the cost of ownership, break a whole slew of options down in
just a few, and then just pick. And they did not do what I
thought they would do is compare all the options and then pick.
No, they just picked. They said, gut feeling.
This is what I already used. This is what I could get fastest
up and running. We pick this.
And then it turned out to be wrong.
And it did not matter because with those learnings, we
pivoted, we shifted and we integrated something else.
Sure, they had the knowledge to make sure that we would push
hard enough with this one solution and then see what the
bottleneck was. And they still were flexible
enough to switch. That's more of a mindset way of
working. They also make sure that the
code, the software that we created was architected in a way
that would that it would not ruin everything else that we
created. But we just plug and play your
software architecture can help with that think.
Oh my God, that word is hard. Hexagonal architecture for
example. We just honestly removed one of
the databases which was no sequel and we created a sequel.
We used the SQL database, everything was on cloud for
example. We had everything serverless as
well. So it was very easy and it took
a day or half a day for this person to actually shift out and
create what we had with another database.
I was like mind blown honestly. Speed, the decision making and
flexibility. They did not care that whatever
they created turned out to be wrong.
They took the learnings and they continued and the execution
power is incredible. I think once you've done that a
few times, you'll get better and better at it.
You'll make sure that other people don't fall into this
analysis paralysis. You'll make sure that decisions
get made because at the end when you're starting, the decisions
count. But not every decision counts,
right? And you need to spend your time
and effort in the decisions that count.
And it might be very few decisions that count at the end
of the day. So honestly, that's been the
biggest differentiating factor that I've seen in people being
very, very good at executing early on in a project.
I also think that that's a skill.
So the skill of starting something is very different than
the skill of picking up something that is already live,
making it more effective, seeing what is honestly noise and AB,
testing your assumptions and making sure that whatever you
have is effective to the T. That's very different than
starting and getting up and running and doing that fast and
getting fast feedback and creating something that can go
live, in essence, very different.
And you'll learn what you like. And you might not be good at the
whole thing, but that's also why we work in teams.
So have fun with it, enjoy, practice, experiment, learn.
Good times. So cheesy, but it is good times.
What would you do for a living if you could not be a developer
or as of now, a product manager? Yes, with my current skills,
it's very limited. I would love to be a full time
podcast host. I would love to do YouTube
content full time, and I think I'd be good at it.
I think I'd have a blast with it.
I think I could do it for a long, long time.
What else? If I were to do everything all
over again and I would not have the option, let's say, to do
software engineering or anything in product.
I'm I'm going to be very biased and influenced by the show I'm
watching, which is The Bear. I would love to own a restaurant
and be really good at cooking. I never did that.
I think I can still do that. I just haven't done it because
I'm really bad at starting, but I would love to be able to do
that. I did that in the past.
I worked in the service industry.
It was a lot of fun, very tight knit team, a lot of bonding,
very fast-paced environment. Executing, making people happy
with food like that just warms my heart.
It might be my upbringing, the culture and my parents are
Turkish. Like food is a big thing
culturally. So yeah, I could see myself
doing that and really, really enjoying that, helping others
through food, man. That's the tagline Alternate
reality. That might be me.
Fetrick Descher. Fetrick Descher.
My name is Sheer. Yeah.
All right. What is your take on starting a
side hustle slash volunteering at work versus outside of work?
Side hustle, volunteering in work, outside of work,
volunteering. I actually get a day off to do
volunteering work, so I can do that with work or outside of
work. It depends on what fulfils you,
right? Some people I've seen
volunteering, they do that and that's their day and they love
it, right? It fulfils them.
So they make their work out of it.
They do it inside of work, outside of work.
It's incredible. I'm not that person yet.
I think, I think I could be, I'm not that person yet.
I'm not that my heart is not made of gold, which I think
those people do have a golden heart.
So I tried to find a balance of doing things in work and outside
of work when it comes to a side hustle.
A lot of people I've heard that spin that off and create a start
up and continue with that said they did it within work ish.
So in work outside of work, when things were when you had not as
crucial of a project, not just not as urgent of features that
you need to deliver downtime here and there, they would
create a side hustle basically. But that's also probably because
they have the motivation, the ambition to do it.
They probably didn't really like their job, so they didn't really
want to push for the career ladder.
So then it might be possible. Would I advise that?
I mean, it depends what you want, right?
If you really want to do this, then probably the best way to do
so is to start doing. And you can only do so much in a
day. So if you work, if you really
choose to not pursue this career ladder, some people call it the
corporate ladder, I don't really care.
I am pursuing multiple things at the same time.
Then you can choose to spend your time working on this side
hustle, right? And test your assumptions and
don't basically shift your life and throw away your job and
start from scratch. No, start gradually.
I think you can do it in your job, but if your motivation is
high enough, you're not just going to do it on working hours.
You're going to do it after working hours as well.
And it's going to move gradually to something you want to do full
time. If that's not the case and you
only want to do it during working hours, I honestly think
it will never succeed because then you're that person that
only works nine to five in your startup environment as well.
And I don't think that, I don't think I know anyone that's made
it with that kind of mentality. If you get obsessed about this
thing that you want to create your side hustle and you want to
make it your main thing and do it day in, day out, then you
need that obsession to execute and to make sure it succeeds.
Otherwise, you're just trying things.
And in the end, trying things is not a bad thing, but it might
not be for you if you really don't have that motivation for
it. Yeah.
Do you miss coding in your current position as APMI?
Think I, I think I covered this last time as well.
Yes, I miscoding, I miss the part that is executing
basically. And there's a lot of fulfilment
that is there when your feature goes live, when you see people
use it, when it actually delivers the outcome that you
had in mind or that the team had in mind or from a product
perspective that everyone had in mind.
If that's not the case, then you learn from it and you continue.
And now that I'm APM, I'm very mindful of the value that we
deliver because from my stance, we can do a lot of things and
that is a big, big problem. So the things that we do, we
need to make sure that we don't optimize to AT because
optimization, right? They always say that your
execution, you can do 90% quite quickly.
And then the last 10% might be just as much effort as the 90%
from my perspective is not worth it.
And that might be a new learning from the product side.
So, yeah, but I do like the coding side of it.
Executing, delivering. It just fulfills me and it's
always fulfilled me and I miss it.
Or was I? I lost my questions.
Yeah. To follow up on that, what do
you like about coding? Coding, not the coding in and of
its own. I do love when I'm in a really
good flow, when I have my music on, when I'm just standing there
typing away, when in my head I know what I need to do and I
execute really quickly. Honestly, that's a really good
feeling, the feeling of flow. And then at the end of the day,
making sure that it goes live without a hassle because
sometimes you're in an environment where that is mind
blowing, where you deliver something quite quickly and it
goes live without any bugs or issues.
I don't think you can prevent any, any types of bugs.
I don't think that's the perfect environment.
There will always be issues and you need to be resilient.
But when that happens, Florida State and people are like, damn,
that's nice. That fulfills me.
Which is like the the vanity side of it at the end of the
day. Then people using it and knowing
that that is something that I created or that was something
that was my idea. Yeah, I'm part of this bigger
machine then that is something that people use.
And my small part and my contribution is what fulfills
me. I only have a few questions
left. I'm going to round this off
soon, all right? If I want to pursue a career
creating Devtools, how do I get involved in this Devtools
specifically? The audience of developers is a
tricky 1. And luckily when it comes to dev
tools specifically, a lot of the stuff is open source.
So for me, that will be the starting point with what I know
now. And I recently had this
conversation with Leo, who works at Dino.
He contributed to open source because Dino is open source and
it landed him a job. And he says it's not an easy
path. It's quite a hard path.
He wouldn't even recommend it actually, but I still think it's
valuable to gain that experience and if that's really what you
want to do and pursue, I think it's very interesting that you
want to do that. It's very niche, very admirable,
and honestly lucky that you know that you want to do this, or at
least you have this inkling and try it out.
Open source is then the best part.
I think you can contribute to different parts, maybe in your
favorite language, maybe something that you use on a
day-to-day as a developer and contribute to that and see if
you can make it better. See if you can create this
feature that you miss or that you think could be valuable.
Test those assumptions with the people that are maintaining that
open source and start. And honestly, once you've found
your groove, you can apply maybe at those, if they have a company
around that open source software, you can apply with
that. Or in any case, you have just
built up this legacy of contributions to open source
tooling, dev tooling, which then if you apply to a company
actually more formally, not throughout your network, maybe
they will see that and they will probably admire that because I
think that's very cool. Movies, YouTube, TikTok,
audiobooks, podcast, all mediums to convey information.
What do you think the future of sharing information and
storytelling is going to look like?
And this is like one of the broadest, biggest questions, but
very interesting. I think.
I mean, all medium kind of has its place, right?
Because only a medium is established.
A medium is only established by the virtue of the people that
consume that medium specifically.
So YouTube found its footing. I don't know.
It's been 20 years, 18 years, 15 years ago.
I was I was there very, but looked ugly as hell.
But it was a way for people to create videos, publisher, and
for others to consume and see those videos.
And it started out with just entertainment.
I think the biggest topics were very early on actually just
gaming tutorials, walkthroughs and stuff like that.
Maybe I think that because that was kind of the space that I
that I was in basically. But it only took off, even
streaming nowadays, it only took off because people consumed it
and found value in it and it was entertaining enough for people
to stick to it. Streaming is now up and coming.
I think people gaining live insights and having someone that
interacts based on your feedback builds community in that way,
and I think we're going to see more and more of that.
I think there will be a medium where you can see things, live
with people and interact with each other on a level which
maybe not text based. Maybe it's not even something
that we speak, maybe it's something that just happens in
the brain automatically. I think it'd be really cool to
break that language barrier and not have something that is
spoken, but just understand someone automatically by putting
on headphones or doing whatever. Still don't know what technology
is going to fix that, but at the end of the day, the mediums that
are there are going to stay established.
I think there was that one tool which was like Vine I think,
which was six second videos. I don't know why that died.
I think it was like a maybe bad business decisions or anything
like that. Tiktok is very similar to it or
like Shorts on Instagram followed after maybe Instagram
killed it. But yeah, there was also a
medium that was there and that was just consumed and then all
of a sudden it was not. It's like very shocking.
It's the only one that I can think of that died so abruptly,
at least in my view. Everything else will probably
stick around. I do see this trend of going to
more fast food media like Tiktok, but then also people
that despise fast food media and go to the ultimate opposite.
And that's just following someone that's like a
bodybuilder in the gym and he streams for four hours and then
puts it on YouTube, which is the complete opposite of fast food
media. But as long as people have an
appetite for it, there will be content to satisfy that
appetite. And I don't see any type of
content going away currently because people are diverse and I
think it's a good thing Create content for people that want to
find the content. Horrible closer.
Yeah.
Now, last question, probably the biggest of them all, and I'm
going to try and keep it brief. How would you build a SAS
company and launch it? How would I build a SAS company?
Big, big disclaimer. Sometimes I have to do that.
I have never actually done this from scratch, right?
I've been in teams where an organization already had an idea
and I had to execute and put it live.
And it was mainly, my biggest experience was in e-commerce.
I would say IoT was a really, really fun project, but there
the things were already more clear.
I think with software as a service, it's a very broad
market, so you have to find out if whatever you're building is
actually solving the problem that you think it's solving.
I don't like this sunken ghost fallacy of development.
I don't. I have a really hard time
starting and maybe that's part of it because once I start, I do
need to have the motivation to execute and I don't like big
bets. Maybe I'm very risk averse in
that aspect. I need to make sure that
whatever I'm building, I actually have a good valid
understanding of the problem that is there and the solution
to this problem. Now from the product side, I'm
more and more thinking about, OK, what problem are we solving
and can we solve it in this way? And is this actually the way
that we solve it or can we solve it in a different way?
Or in the end, if someone gives feedback and we already have
something that solves the problem, then do we really need
to incorporate the feedback, which is complete visual design?
No, not waiting. I just went on a Segway there
and rambled. But in any case, I need to make
sure that whatever SAS product I'm building, if I'm in this
imaginary world where I'm doing that, or maybe in the future,
that it's solving the problem that actually needs to be
solved. Now, I'll never know.
You'll never know for certain, right?
You might have done enough testing of your assumptions
through interview, through research, through qualitative
data. Quantitative data doesn't really
matter at the end of the day. But let's say you have that
feeling that whatever you're executing is going to solve that
problem. Now the second part of it is
making sure that if I'm creating it, I'm going to do it with my
favorite technologies because I don't like working with
technologies that I don't like. Yeah, I lose motivation if a
language is just in the way of what I'm trying to execute.
So I'll probably stick to a tech stack that I've used in the past
that is more established that I'm comfortable with and that I
can deliver with. Basically, that's on the tech
side. And then honestly, I need to
figure out with what type of version I can go live with.
And I like going live as fast as possible, even though it might
not be finished. Whether that's just honestly
doing a mock up and not even starting any coding, but having
a mock up which you can click through and walk through, that
would already be enough for me to make this big bet smaller and
smaller and smaller at the end of the day.
And then when we talk about the technical aspect and having it
gone live, I really liked the part of the project where I was
in where I could AB test seamlessly and actually test
assumptions by quantitative data.
I don't think there's enough projects I've been in where that
was the case and I really enjoyed the project where that
was the case. So I'd make sure that I can do
that seamlessly because I think that's very powerful.
Whenever I'm in a project, people are like, oh, I think so
and so, and I think blah, blah, blah.
And honestly, sometimes the opinion does not matter because
we don't know unless we actually build it, ship it, and then test
it. And the building shipping can be
faster if at the end of the day, we test it and we can just throw
it away. All right.
And if people actually use it and you turn out to be right,
then we can make sure the quality is in place so we can
use this for the long term. And the only way to do that is
AB testing and testing your assumptions with actual users
rather than just this meeting that never ends.
People's opinions are valuable, but at the end of the day,
whoever's using your tool, their opinion matters a lot more,
especially if it's a larger quantity, because then you have
volumes of people apparently not acting the way that you think
they will. So I'd make sure that was in
place and then incrementally build on top of that, however it
evolves because I really think it's hard to isolate a problem,
make a solution that solves that problem.
I think your problem definition will evolve.
I think the thing that you're building will evolve.
And then whatever outcome is going to be there is going to be
completely different than you imagined.
And I think that's very natural. So I would also expect that to
happen and I try and be fine with it because it's really hard
probably having been in the seat that someone has never done it.
But that would be my kind of vision in a nutshell.
It's easier said than done, don't get me wrong, and I admire
everyone that does it. I love thinking about it and I
would definitely love doing it someday as well.
That was it. Those were all the questions.
Thank you so much for sending in your questions.
I was honestly mind blown with the amount of questions that we
got this time. Very fun talking about
podcasting, personal branding, things that are still career
related and that people face on a day-to-day and some of the
personal questions that you had for me.
Thank you so much for asking them again.
If you have questions for the next round, feel free to drop
them in the comments below. Let me know what you think of
this episode because I love feedback and we'll see you on
the next one.