Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil and if
you're interested in technical content creation, what the
difference is between a job and a career, and what it's like to
Be Your Own Boss, then this episode is for you.
Joining me today is James qu quick, who's a developer
speaker, teacher and content creator.
I'll put all his socials in the description below.
Check him out. And with that being said, enjoy
the episode. One of the questions I got
recently was like now that you've started the podcast and
you've been hosting, or even coming on as a guest here and
there like, what is the main skill?
That you've noticed that kind of carries on professionally, and I
didn't really know a good way to answer that other than like, I'm
really comfortable in, voicing my opinion now, and I'm a bit
more direct with that, and I'm so much more comfortable in
communicating that have you noticed that as well, or is
there, maybe? Like, even a third one you would
add? Yeah, that's definitely big one
for me. That's something that I've
talked about as being kind of a Hack.
And my career was, I started off in technical evangelism which
wasn't specifically podcast but it was content and speaking and
videos and that sort of stuff. And then I went to a more
traditional software development role at FedEx and I didn't have
the engineering experience that other people had.
Yeah. But I like quote-unquote had
found my voice. Like I was very comfortable with
my voice and exactly like you said being able to communicate,
voicing my opinion and especially being able to
communicate to less technical people up.
Management chain which kind of helped get me some visibility
and led to eventually. I'll skip level promotion to an
architect because of the ability to not only be on top of the
technology but also to be able to communicate that to people of
varying different degrees of experience.
In fact, you have noticed that as well when you started off in,
kind of your first step as evangelist, then was it more so
clear, what you had to do on a Content level because I think
the term evangelist first and foremost has kind of morphed in
either developer relations, or developer advocacy.
These I don't think we see evangelist on the market as
much, but even with a developer Advocate role, if I would get
that now or in the future, I don't know if the responsibility
of like figuring out the content strategy would be up to me or up
to a team or more. So already defined for me that
just tag along. How's that for you?
I think it depends on the actual team and company that you're
joining and especially the how long they've been around.
So when I did developer relations Deverell at all Siro,
that was Really Niche that. I kind of fell into based on my
previous experience and interest in content, and I forget there
was, there was a title that I ended up getting through a
promotion that was something technical content, media manager
or something. And it was basically like the
vision and strategy for YouTube content specifically and we had
separately content team for like blog post.
So they were they have been around for several years and had
full team and strategy and process.
And all that kind of stuff. And we were kind of building up
the other part of that for video content.
So I think it just really depends on like how how long the
team has been around that? You're that you're joining.
Yeah. With that kind of responsibility
and maybe even promotion in mind.
How do you define like a Content strategy for a product company
in a way than? Because there's a lot of, like,
avenues for you to go at it. There's a lot of platforms to
eat for you to be visible at, but I think one of the first
steps would be like, figuring out where your audiences and
then more. So tailoring for that.
That be like a step 1. Yeah, I think, honestly, I think
you should probably choose a platform of choice.
Like, I think it would be hard to go really wrong with
investing in, in one platform, over the other, like, I think a
couple of things that, that would depend on is like, maybe
you have an idea of where your audience is already, but most
likely I would think you wouldn't.
Yeah, and then you also have like, what are the experiences
and interests of the people on the team?
Like some people will hate creating video content, they
would rather write some people love doing.
In video content. Some people love doing funny
video content, which may be makes more sense than something
like Tick-Tock but still relevant to the brand and the
industry. So I think probably the most,
the more important thing is just choosing something and being
consistent and having that then lead to learnings a few months
down the road of like, okay, is this do we think this is paying
off? And if not, we can pivot to
maybe another platform or maybe different styles of content on
the same platform but I think the more, the more and most
important thing is just establishing establishing that
So that you can take your learnings and then adapt based
on that. Going forward.
Yeah, I love that perspective. Looking at the people that you
have and what they are either apt at or what they would love
to do. And doing that already, kind of
gets the ball rolling in a way and at least it helps a lot with
kind of their ambition, enthusiasm doing the thing that
they're going to do and down the line then checking back
reflecting and even pivoting, if you've feel like you could do
something different or better in a way or staying with the same
thing, because then you've proven it works.
X. And then you can just chug along
with that when it comes to consistency because that was
kind of the one key thing you mentioned, what I always get
asked even with this podcast. And even other videos is like,
how do you balance consistency and quality?
Because you want to have like a base level of quality for you to
be consistent over? But then if it drops below that,
what you kind of choose not to be as consistent to uphold your
quality? How do you balance those two in
kind of the things that you've been doing?
Yeah, it's definitely a balance. I would say the more important
one is consistency and I think I think the idea of something not
being for, there's a, there's a big gap between not being
perfect and being detrimental to your brand.
Yeah. And I think that Gap is bigger
than a lot of people think I'm not a perfectionist.
And there are other people who are perfectionist and that holds
them back from releasing content that makes their their
consistency not consistent. They lacked consistency because
Trying to make it perfect, but I think we think the gap between
perfect and detrimental is very small but it's actually like
much bigger than you think and if you look at my content
specifically this is something I want to do more of and get
better at regardless but I don't do a ton of video editing like
there's other YouTube channels that have a ton more editing and
b-roll and zoom ins and text overlays animations.
I've never really done much of that.
I do more now, but I've not done much of that in the past to
maintain assistance e. So I think there's lots of those
smaller details that you can sacrifice to accomplish
consistency, while still not being detrimental to your
channel. But the other aspect of that is
to make sure we're as you publish stuff and maybe you are
borderline detrimental that. You pay attention to the
feedback on the channel. So if people are commenting, I
couldn't understand what you were doing because I didn't have
context or overlays or it's edited poorly, or the audio was
whatever if you start to realize those comments.
Now, you're now you're needing to pay more attention to figure
out what that Fine is of of quality while not being
detrimental to your channel. Yeah, but because you put
yourself out there people, I mean people that care will
comment and people that really care and disagree, they'll be
like, well, you did this wrong or I should have got that, you
should have done this and this. What do you because that's
something I wonder and sometimes struggle with, as well.
What do you take with you and be like, okay, this is a real
quality improvement, like I agree with this.
Well, you can also be like, well, I fundamentally disagree
with this, so we're not going to Do it like, where is the balance
in listening to that feedback and still upholding your own
vision of things? Yeah, I think two things that
become important there that influence each other.
Our experience and confidence in yourself.
I think I'm a big fan of advocating that all feedback
should be considered regardless of if it's positioned in a
terrible way and you get the stereotypical like disrespectful
comments and stuff on YouTube and other platforms
occasionally, I think I think you have to look at Hose and you
have to take them for a face value of like people are just
people which sucks some of the times honestly.
But then to try to dive One Step deeper and say, is there any
actual feedback in this comment that I should make a change on
or that I could make a change on or that I should should consider
and a lot of the times it's the answer is no and I think the
experience and confidence gives you the ability to decide no for
those given pieces of feedback and just move on past them.
Like there's there's not really any point in going back and
forth with them, you just get to a point where it's not worth
time and Energy to invest in those responses.
So, you just kind of cast those to the side and then there's the
group of people that are actually trying to be helpful
with feedback and that still doesn't mean that you agree with
them. You can say, thanks for your
feedback. I don't think that's a change
that I would make for my Channel right now, for this reason or
maybe that is a specific feedback that is more specific
to that one person than it is the rest of the people watching
the video. Yeah.
And so you still have to gauge like even if it's presented
well, even if it is valid feedback you still have the
right to disagree and to decide that's not That I'm going to
change and then you also have stuff that is presented well,
and is good feedback and influences things that you do in
the future. So I think every piece of
feedback is valuable, I think the more experience and
confidence, you have the quicker, you can cast aside the
ones that just don't make sense. And then for the ones that are
relevant, you still have to make a personal decision to say, is
this something I should actually make a change on and there's
only so much time in a day so you can't make all the changes
even if you think they are the right thing to do, you can't do
them all. So then you have to get down.
Into priorities and that sort of stuff.
But it is. It's a fun challenge to figure
out how to filter through all of the messages and comments and
feedback that you get when you grow a brand and become more and
more public. And this is the you kind of
touched on this, but the cliche idea is, people are much more
likely to comment and provide feedback if they had a negative
experience than if they had a positive experience.
Yeah. So for people that are new maybe
just keep in mind that like sometimes those those comments
Not going to be very fun but you have to learn to kind of move
past them and focus on the ones that actually deserve your focus
and time. Yeah, exactly.
I think it's, I think it's a pretty unique experience to put
yourself out there for others to judge because that's kind of
what they do or even to allow them to voice their opinions in
that way, right? And there can be value in
feedback in there somewhere that can be disagreements here.
And there, or they can just be comments.
They're just mean to be mean. Like, you also have those
people, but for me, and I'm going to give myself an example,
when I started this point, Cast. I had friends that came up to me
and they were like, well, I've listened to the first few
episodes and like, I have a piece of feedback.
You say this one word. Like every so often like every
every few sentences, even when someone else is speaking, I was
like, yeah, not anymore because I completely agree with that.
Listening back. It would it would even irk me
that I was like. Okay, I'm going to pay attention
to that because I believe that that feedback was valuable to me
and I think if I accommodate it for that feedback that the
episodes would be better for it now, I've had other comments.
And there when it comes to the intro and of accommodated that
do the intro is now very short as well.
Have you had any feedback throughout the content that
you've put out, maybe even more so early on.
That has really stuck with you when it comes to kind of your
journey and your career path ahead.
Yeah, there was an interesting. This is from a technical
perspective, but there was an interesting situation I had,
when I was explaining a topic in JavaScript and somebody
basically said I was wrong on how I explained it.
And so, I kind of, I kind of paused.
I was trying to take this comment seriously and I honestly
over thought that response and and kind of like pushed myself
into believing that I was wrong to the point of where I question
myself. I decided I was wrong.
I pulled down the original video posted a second video saying
Here's a better explanation. And after publishing the second
video, realized I was actually right from the beginning, like
maybe there was some specific verbiage that would have been a
little different, but I was actually right.
And what I was saying and then published a third video to say
like, all right, let me clarify, I really over thought this like
I was honest about the whole situation, this is actually how
it is. And I think the, the takeaway
from that is 21 not given to quickly again, like being able
to filter out like what feedback is valuable or not.
And when people have technical feedback, it's your
responsibility To go and do the research to actually make sure
that the stuff you're communicating, because as a
technical as a YouTuber, that does technical content, you are
teaching people out there and for however many people watch
your videos. That's the thing that they're
going to consider to be the truth unless you start to lose
their trust. Yeah.
And so I think the big takeaway There Was, You Know, make sure
that you're prepared technically to explain things not only at a
high enough level but also at a detailed enough level to be
correct and what you're saying. But then also based on feedback,
do your research Research to make sure that you're accepting
the feedback and doing that research to be able to respond
confidently, one way or another and and that could be being
honest and saying, okay, I messed up here.
I'm going to do another video to follow up.
Yeah. Or it could be to say like I I'm
not wrong, I'm correct. And the situation and and
explain why, and if it goes beyond that and I'm pretty
confident myself, probably just leave it alone.
Because there's some conversations that I'll just
never go anywhere. But I think, I think the big
thing is the big learning for me, there was To make sure when
necessary to take the time to do the technical research.
To make sure the things I'm explaining are correct and
explained in a correct way as well.
Yeah, the explaining the correct way.
Like, when some people don't understand the explanation, then
they can say, well this is how it was explained to me in the
past and therefore, you are wrong, but that is because
they've gained either experienced or perspectives.
Also, from other people which is really hard, right?
Because then they're like, okay they put you in a position where
you think you might be wrong and for me, that has happened on a
Professional level. But then the the benefit of that
is usually you're not alone on a project, right?
Usually you have your team that can either you have those
discussions with and then you have like a shared outcome and I
think a shared outcome is always better than kind of a single
perspective, because as more people better discussions in
that way, more perspectives. But yeah, when you are kind of a
soul content creator in a way, you have just a voice of
comments out there and those can get to you when it comes to
actually being right or wrong. And from your perspective, you
just want to put out educational content.
So then the essence of that being right is very important in
there that you are truthful with the things that you're saying.
So I get out one. But then that must have been a
hard experience, but I learned it was.
Yeah, it was just an awkward one to be honest because I like
gone. I did a publishing three videos
and like, a day and a half or something trying to be correct.
So it was, it was an interesting one.
It was a learning experience. And from there, like thinking
about being alone, there's more research that I can do on my own
right. But there's also I've got a
whole community of people People and Discord and on Twitter.
So I went and actually post it on Twitter.
I think of like, how, how would you define?
I forget exactly what it was but like, sure how would you define
this situation and then taking those comments, kind of
reinforce the fact that I think I was correct and the original
explanation and then led me to create that last video
explaining that. So there is, it is a challenge
being on your own verses on like a team of people that you can go
immediately to. But that's where Community, I
think comes in. When I have technical questions
and things that I could use some additional Clarifications on.
Yeah, I've said that before. I think the community aspect of
kind of being in the technical, domain is one of the most
awesome like benefits that is out there.
People are so open and willing to share it with what they know.
And I don't know if you have that in other domains.
I think the, the power of information there might be
stronger, which leads people to, like, hold that hostage, in a
way, but because we are trailblazing more on the
technical domain. Whenever people find out like, a
weird way to do something, they're like look at this.
This is what we found. That's pretty cool.
Cool, isn't it? And then other people like yeah
that's pretty cool. That's just is shares in an
ocean of information there which I think is pretty interesting.
I mean you alluded to it earlier but I want a dog the beat deeper
in kind of your early on Career Journey because you said you
joined as an evangelist and I forget what it was I think it
was Microsoft but in there you mentioned you found your voice.
Like was that did that really have to do with what you were
doing at the time when we did finding your voice even come out
earlier? How did you find your voice in
the first place? It was all about that.
First roll, to be honest. So I like I have a computer
science degree, which I feel like I'm abnormal now.
So many people in such a cool and amazing and inspiring way go
through boot camps and self, teach and stuff to get into
programming and development roles, which I think is amazing.
But I have the traditional CS degree and for me, like, I
really didn't learn the things that I should have.
At the time, I was more approaching it from a, get good
grades perspective than I was of like, actually trying to learn
what was Non-programming why? So I think my programming skills
coming out of college were really poor to be quite honest
and that showed in a couple of my interviews.
Thankfully, the Microsoft interviews were less technical,
they were kind of conversational and they were about like my
excitement for building stuff and learning not typical
programming questions that you would get an interviews.
But anyway, I applied for a few roles at Microsoft that I got
turned down for, and they, they had liked me enough to say,
like, those roles didn't work out, we think you'd be a good
fit for my Soft. And so, the recruiter came back
with another opportunity, which happened to be technical
evangelism. And, at this point, I've never,
I've never been a content creator.
I've never created any piece of content.
I've never thought about content.
I've never thought about public speaking.
I mean, I was just as terrible as everyone else in high school
and college. When you have to do a two-minute
presentation for the class or whatever like yeah, it's really
bad. Like I've never thought any of
this stuff would ever be part of my career and I got thrown into
it. Hmm.
And that was I think probably one of the biggest that that
role was one of the biggest influences on my career
partially because of finding my voice, a lot of it was building
my own networks like as as an evangelist coming out of
college. I was one of the I think I was
the only person that was in a territory by themselves.
So I was in South Florida, I Mentor was in Tampa, which was
four or five hours away. All of the other people starting
out of college were in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New
York City, which all had teams around them in that specific
location. Yeah.
So I think that level of Independence that level of
networking that level of going out and kind of building my own
things on my own, really added to the ability to find my voice.
And the other thing, I think that was really impactful was
the people and groups that I was around.
So, I worked a lot with students and I worked a lot with
startups, and I kept seeing, like, students in high school
and college, that were, well, beyond my knowledge of
programming, and well, beyond my ability to just build something
programming wise, like they were already doing.
Doing it. They were looking at the world
as like an opportunity to go and use their skills to build
whatever they wanted and they start ups.
We're going and raising millions of dollars in selling products
and doing all these things with skills, that like, I didn't
quite have that level of skill. I had some that I could build
things. And so I looked at all of the,
the people around me is real inspiration of.
I talked a lot about this in in career talks but like taking
control of your career. Using what your skills are to
build, whatever it is, you want to build doing things.
That make you excited and that's what I saw around me.
So in addition to being forced to be independent, to find my
own voice, to learn how to communicate to create content to
kind of scale out the things that I was doing.
I also had this huge source of inspiration to look at careers
and opportunities and things going forward totally different
than I'd ever thought about it before because I had only seen
really people in my family, have jobs not careers.
And there's, there's a very big difference in somebody that goes
to work every day because they have to Just to make enough
money to make ends meet versus the person who gets it.
Do something. They enjoy every day, feels like
they have the ability to have a career path to progress in their
career, to make more money to make good money and to continue
on and optimistic journey and their career.
So that was a really game-changing couple of years
for me, at Microsoft for The Voice aspect and then the
inspirational aspect of just the people that I was surrounded by.
Yeah. I mean thinking about about the
way you laid out the difference between a career and a job Think
in my educational Journey, there wasn't a lot of like light on
the difference there because in my thought it was going to be.
I have a job and that's what I'm going to do for the next 30
Years and that's never going to evolve or even grow.
But yeah. Just just because you laid it
out like that. I have a career path and it's
going to be a path and it's going to Pivot here and there
and I might have a step back before I do a few steps forward
but it is a journey in and of its own and that I don't know
when it changed but that mindset has completely shifted from me
throughout. Out and I can very much pain
Point like important steps that I took with in my career.
I mean, for you, it was really finding your voice and getting
inspiration from the people around you.
For me, it was kind of the same finding something that I really
loved being driven by those around me as well.
That a lot of people say you shouldn't really like, compare
yourself to others. But that is internally, what I
did a lot because I was like, man, once I found the people
that were like, really good at programming, and that was what I
wanted to do, because I came from an operations background as
I get. This is Where I want to be but I
also I felt like, man. I'll never be as good as these
people as they've already been doing this for like 10 years.
And I don't know if that mindset has shifted because I still know
those people in the still way better at their thing of doing
things, but I find them, I found my own way to kind of add value
and it's on a different level than theirs, because I am on a
different career path there as well.
I don't know if it's good to kind of compare yourself to
others in that way. I think there's pros and cons,
but yeah, for me, it was a big kind of most motivational thing
in that way. Yeah, that's actually one of my
favorite topics is the idea of comparing yourself to others and
most people do, especially for people that are early on, in
their career. They're learning they're going
through bootcamps are going through school.
One of the biggest things that you will always face is imposter
syndrome. And this is talked a lot about
intact, but I think it's probably ubiquitous it's
everywhere. Yeah.
But anyway, I think the other approach and the approach that I
take is to actively compare myself against Others because if
you only look at yourself, you only think you're capable of
doing things that you've already thought about, or seen?
Yeah. And so, if you haven't seen
someone, go out and be successful and do the things,
like, going back to your career versus job me, looking back at
my family, all I knew similar to you was shop, like I go out
work, my job, it's gonna suck. I'm going to get enough money to
get by and that's going to be it.
But because I saw other people doing these other things and
looking at careers differently and making a hell of a lot more
money than I ever imagined based on my parents now, Mindset has
changed. So if you only look internally,
you're only capable of thinking about the things that you've
already seen in the things you've already experienced.
But if you start to look around you, the world opens up a lot
because the possibilities are endless because you see people
in these different categories and different Industries and
different levels in an industry. Doing things that you never
imagined before for yourself. But I think the important part
of that is to also do that with respect, self-respect, or
respect for yourself, with grace for yourself.
Empathy for yourself because even if I can get inspired by
someone else doing X, Y & Z, it doesn't mean that X Y, and Z is
going to happen for me, and the same time frame.
It doesn't mean it necessarily is going to happen for me at
all. So I have to have understanding
and empathy for myself to say, like it may not work out like
these people in the same time frame and the same outcome as
these other people that I get inspired by but I at least know
it's a possibility and I can at least look at the things that
they're doing and try to figure out some of those steps of why
they're becoming successful in that.
And Imitate that myself actually really struggled with mentally.
When I was trying to grow my YouTube channel, I would watch.
I've been doing YouTube videos for several years and had become
focused on trying to grow. And I watched a few other people
will come out of nowhere and grow channels, much, much bigger
than mine in a much, much much shorter time period.
Yeah. People like floor and pop and
Jesse from the code Soccer Channel.
And on you Kubo, who are three of my favorite people in content
creators in the world, but I would watch them and I would, I
Any kind of struggle with like, okay, why am I not able to do
what they're able to do? And there's this like kind of
Divergent path, like okay, I can use that and I can get really
down on myself and I can give up the whole thing because I'm not
capable of doing what they are or I could look at them and have
respect and empathy for myself but use them as inspiration and
use them as they this is at the very least possible and so I
ended up hitting one of those major goals for myself, which is
to make it to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, based on
taking what was around me and using that as inspiration.
And knowing that that sort of growth was possible.
And I think that was a again, I continued mindset shift for
myself of now. I'm much more comfortable
continuing to take advice that I just gave myself or that.
I just mentioned of comparing myself to others but having the
understanding that, it may not look the exact same, but at
least I know that's possible because I've seen other people
do it. Yeah, I completely understand
that. I mean, that's that's for me,
always been the hard part, right?
Being kind of lenient on yourself or you.
I call it empathy and Grace and self-respect.
Yeah I think those things maybe don't come as natural for me
because when I would compare myself, exactly, those thoughts
that you would have these. People have already done these
things in the X amount of time, span?
Yeah, those things those are all the variables I need for me to
be like, okay, it's not going to happen for me, but I like that,
you can turn it around right and be like, this is a possibility
and the time may vary, but the fact that it is a possibility
means I can do that as well. And sure I might not be apt at
it, which means the time is going to vary or there's
different ways of going about it, but the fact that is Apollo
possibility that can be a lot of few in and of its own, like the
fact that a lot of people are doing a lot of cool stuff out
there. It doesn't exclude you from
doing so that can be many people doing these things, which is
kind of the, the wonder of the world that we're in, not, just,
on a technical level, but even on a Content creation level, I
think YouTube has opened up so many avenues for a lot of
people, which Why? I mean, I've been on the YouTube
seen for a long, long time as a viewer.
And I've seen so many like Trends, I think you would call
it trends, like come and go even when it comes to like YouTube
Rewind and all the drama that comes with that as well.
It's a lot of fun to look at and a lot of people thrive in it and
that means it is an option for you if you want it.
And the only time investment that you're going to have to do
is the time investment from yourself, which I think is
really neat. Yeah, I was wondering because
you mentioned you started out as an evangelist and you, you said
you really happy with that because that allowed to file,
allows you to find your voice as well as surrounded you with kind
of driven people and allowed. You kind of the setting of
things to build your network in a way that has allowed you to
thrive, as well in your career path.
But you then mentioned you stepped away from that.
So you weren't an evangelist in the next row.
You went back to kind of a program engineer, not to say one
is better than the other but it Different was kind of the what
was kind of decision path that led you to that.
Yeah there are a few different things that factored in the big
thing. For me was my dad had gotten
really sick, and had called me and told me that they had given
him six months to live and I wanted to be home, my wife, and
I had kind of thought about moving out of New York City
because I mean it's expensive. We had a dog and a tiny
apartment and all those things we were kind of thinking about
potentially moving at some point in the, my dad was really sick,
so I kind of rushed everything to move home to Memphis, which
is where we are now. And during that, I was kind of
looking for opportunities at Microsoft I and no way he wanted
to leave Microsoft. There's more money in stock
options than things that I would get at FedEx where I ended up,
but I just didn't find a role that made sense.
So I didn't really find anything that worked out and I had
interned, at FedEx in college. And so I reached out to my
former manager said, hey, I'm moving back to Memphis any
chance that you're looking to hire developers, and I actually
had an offer for them full-time. This is a different story,
graduating college and decided to go with Microsoft, which
again, I think it was a A good decision at the time, but she
said, we actually just acquired this company and because of that
we're hiring basically like eight different roles on on my
team and so I had to wait a few months for that to work out and
my wife was getting a little nervous because it took a like a
month or two longer than we thought, but it all worked out.
And I think another aspect of this that was convenient is as a
technical evangelist at the time, coming out of college
with, not the programming experience and knowledge that I
as I mentioned, I think I should have had or I should have had.
I was missing that technical experience and I wanted to be
able to add to that. And so, coming into this role, I
didn't really know how I would fit in as a developer.
Like I didn't really know how good of a developer or not.
I was or could be. And, and thankfully, I caught on
really fast. And I like ramped up really,
really quickly. Quickly, became a leader on the
team, moved into the architecture role, because of
the combination of technical experience and knowledge and
being able to communicate that to different people.
So I would say I was very successful in that but I think
at that point in my career I needed that Hands-On real
engineering production level experience on a day in day out
basis. Yeah.
Because now that makes me a different person as a content
creator because I have a different level of experience
that I can pull from. When I teach people, From
Concepts and I have so much more knowledge technically than I did
before that role that I get to include in conversations that I
have in content that I create Etc.
So, I think that, at that point, it was it was convenient because
we were kind of making a change based on mostly family
decisions, but it worked out because I just needed that type
of experience at that point in my career.
Yeah, yeah. I struggle with that myself as
well because I think, and I've set this on the show again, I'm
kind of repeating myself. But for me, career-wise, I like
to look at the options that are out there.
And one of the ones that has really attractive to me is kind
of the developer advocacy role that is kind of part, of where,
my enthusiasm for doing this podcast comes from.
It's either going to be that for me personally or it would be an
engineering management position where I see myself and what I
would add a lot of value with the skills that I've gained both
on a technical level as well as more of a soft skill level.
But then I'm like, yeah, you step out of your developer role
and things from a developer's sense can change pretty rapidly.
I'll just the tools that we use, but the way of working together
and stepping out of that and still being kind of responsible
or adjacent to that would kind of make me feel or that that
perspective kind of makes me feel uncomfortable.
Then I'm like, okay what my past experience be enough to kind of
bridge the gap of the dynamic changing, right?
Because if you step out of something that dynamically
evolves, it might evolve past to pass the level where you are
kind of experience has ended, I guess.
Have you have you seen that or how do you try to accommodate?
Or that, or has that been a feeling in your past as well?
Yeah, it's definitely, it's absolutely a concern.
And I think it's something that as people consider going from
just traditional engineering roles to Something.
In Devereaux, it's something for them to consider because you're
not going to get that hands-on experience on a day-to-day basis
that you would some companies. And some deverill team,
specifically have more opportunities to contribute to
sdks or to do a month rotation, every quarter or something on a
development team. So there are opportunities.
But I think it's like definitive that you're going to sacrifice
some of your engineering chops is the kind of cliche phrase
that people use. So for me, like, I can't go out
there and advocate for people that I'm the best engineer
because I'm not, I actually am very confident in myself
technically. Yeah.
But I can't, I can't say I'm a better engineer than someone.
That's actually done 15 years Hands-On engineering every
single day because I just don't have that experience.
But I am confident enough to know that, like, I'm capable of
learning anything and I'm capable of Of kind of adapting
with the changes in the ecosystem.
And I think the, the interesting thing about how quickly stuff
moves, and the advantage that we have doing content with content,
we have the ability to try out these new Frameworks and
methodologies and languages and things quicker and easier than
companies do because companies aren't going to progress very
quickly, like it's you see react and so kid and all these
languages and Frameworks and tools and things.
And there are a ton of fun and they're really exciting and I
love playing with them, but the reality is companies aren't
Jumping ship and changing their stack, every year they just
don't have the capacity to do that.
So if you look at what companies are using a lot of that stuff is
pretty outdated. So the advantage that I have Is
even though it's not hands on day-to-day production level code
that I write I do get to see more of the modern Trends and
experience more of those modern Trends which again, gives me a
perspective. That if I'm, if I'm teaching
something I can teach people that have a lot more engineering
experience, and I do something new, not because they're not
capable of knowing it, not because they're not good
Engineers, but just because they haven't seen that before.
Yeah. So from a Content perspective,
you have that Advantage but I think you also sacrifice the
actual engineering skill set. Of doing that day to day.
And one of the things that I would like to do this is not on
immediate goal for me this year because this year is kind of all
about sustainability with content for me longer-term.
Yeah, but one of my specific goals is to build a SAS product
of some sort some day and I've built a little small, tiny
things, kind of like everybody else has four demos, but I would
like to prove myself that I'm capable of building a real world
production level product of some sort, no matter how big or small
that people find Value in that people actually, Pay for and
maybe build that into a business at some point further down the
road, but to get like to get that Real World experience as a
teacher. I always tell people, the best
way to learn is to build and so I have to like, I have to take
that to heart too. So that's something that'll be
kind of on my radar over the next several years of
potentially building. Something taking it more
seriously investing more time in it and try to grow that as a
real world production level product.
Yeah, it's really cool. And I really appreciate your
honesty in there. That that it is the thing,
right? It doesn't matter.
Are you move on to it? Might be a leadership position,
a management position or to devrel you do a trade-off and
the experience that you've gained is only going to like,
it's going to be a stop time wise.
You're going to take some experiences with you, write your
technical knowledge and you're going to be apt enough to pick
up those new technologies, but really Hands-On working in a
team. That's not going to be you
anymore. You have to be able to accept
that. And I love the perspective that
organizations want stuff that is resilient, right?
That is tried and true that has been proven and been Chopped up
by the community because of a new framework pops up.
Like it does like every day or every other day.
I don't even know, might be one today, but if an organization
would adopt that and that framework all of a sudden
doesn't get the time and attention anymore that one of
the tried-and-true Frameworks does that.
Yeah. That's a big risk for them
because that would have to do a complete overhaul of their code
base again and then migrate to something that is sustainable.
And that is resilient for that organization.
So organizations large organizations especially are
mostly not going to Be trailblazing and experimenting
with new technologies, but people like yourself that are a
bit more on the Forefront, trying things out and also
educating other Engineers, you do get the time to do that
because you can do that in more of a demo sense, you can play
around with it and be like, listen, this is what I thought
of it or this is what I think of it.
This is what I experienced with it.
So this is also a perspective for you to take with you.
When you try and like fit in your organization, it might be a
good idea, but it comes with a huge risk and for people to make
those. Surgeons.
We need other people to educate us on that as well because
otherwise like you can't have everyone be a Trailblazer that
can only be a few Trail Blazers and their job is to done also
educate. I feel the people that come
behind them which I really love that perspective.
I mean, you mentioned one of go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to say that was one of One of the pieces
that I brought to the table conversationally, when I was
talking to my manager at FedEx about wanting the thinking I
deserved a promotion. But then also communicating like
I want to I want to be looked at as a leader in technology one
because of the communication skills that we talked about a
lot. But also the second piece of
that is like, I'm actually interested and passionate about
the stuff that we do. Which means I'm going to be more
exposed to those different changes and those different
Frameworks and things that come out to be able to bring those up
as potential options for the Team while other people are like
not as Ford Focus they're focused more on the execution.
I can go out and look more broadly across the ecosystem of
tools. Yeah.
That was actually one of the the conversation points that I
brought up and looking to get get a promotion and then that
turned into the skip level of promotion to an architect which
I think was at that point the perfect, perfect combination of
like the things that I was interested in the skill sets
that are brought to the table. Yeah.
That's amazing.
I mean it, it's weird that at some point, you have to advocate
for yourself. Self because otherwise in a team
sensor, even your manager. Like if things are just a smooth
operation, why change anything, right?
But if you want to actually make a career path for yourself, then
you have to advocate for what you want and it's then up to an
organization to allow you to grow into that position.
And if they say no, you have to either accept that and give it
more time or that's why people look to other organizations
because there's also opportunities that other
organizations, right? But it's your career path, those
decisions are for you to take but you do have to Advocate and
Allow the organization to know that you want them before.
I feel before you look outside, right.
That's kind of your I wouldn't I wouldn't call it a Roman
soldier. Yeah, but it is kind of
responsibility. At least that's how I see it.
Now, one of the things you mentioned very early on, and
I've been curious about this also because I mean, you do
content creation of full-time, it's more.
So work ethic, right? You came into this evangelist
position at Microsoft and you mentioned being like, I don't
know where your Mentor was, but they were four or five hours
away from from you, right? So you started even remote
without a team like around you. How did you get your work ethic
up to a par? Was it has it always been like
motivation wise and then even doing content creation?
Do you catch yourself working way too many hours and have you
kind of gone around that or handling that?
I think one of the central themes that I feel like I have
more and more control over in my career, but one of the central
things in my career has been just excitement and people talk
a lot about almost in a negative sense.
The idea of passion for roles and I think they bring that up
from a perspective of if a company is looking for a
passionate person and Technology they interpret that as they're
looking for someone, that's willing to work, 68 hours a week
above and beyond, etc, etc. Yeah.
Yeah, I so so the idea of passion actually.
I feel like in Tech gets looked down upon from that perspective,
I think we miss that. Like yeah, if I like if this
person is going to work 40 hours a week and I've got a passionate
person who's excited about the stuff, I've got someone who's
not excited about it, who are you going to hire?
You're going to hire the person that's excited about what
they're doing and they're passionate about the topic and I
feel like that has paid dividends for me over and over
in my career this was not a requirement but when I was at
FedEx, I was going home and creating content and Adding side
projects and doing things where I would come into work.
And I would already know, like, oh, I just experienced this
thing on my own now that wasn't because they expected me to that
was just because I was passionate and excited about it
and when we took on new challenges, I was excited and
passionate to go and learn those new things.
So I think the that's been essential thing for me is doing
things that I get excited about and that helps me and content.
It helps me from a technical perspective.
It helped me at Microsoft having that inspiration around me being
around people that I was Excited to be around.
That makes the job that much easier and that much more
enjoyable. So, I think, again, that's been
a central theme that I feel like I've had more and more control
over in my career and that definitely is one of the biggest
reasons for me going content, full-time is I get to pick and
choose everything that I do every single day.
Every minute that I spend every meeting that I do or do not
have. Yeah, I get to make that
decision based on what makes me happy and combining that with,
like, making money. But thankfully, those two things
are fairly aligned if I get to make good money, doing the
things that I enjoy. But on the flip side of that,
the the number one thing for me, I think in any potential role or
opportunity that I would take or working for myself, as work-life
balance, in my worst fear to be quite honest, is, is being in a
situation job-wise where let's say only given year, I've got
three weddings and there's a family reunions and my wife and
I want to take a trip and whatever it is.
Yeah, my worst fear is that I don't have enough vacation days
to do those things like that. I know this is the reality for
like 95 or A higher percent of people in the general Workforce.
Yeah, but how ridiculous is that there are sad just a higher
level /. Like it's so ridiculous that you
have to pick and choose to not be able to do these.
Really like big moments or big opportunities or big experiences
with your family and friends and that's my like or sphere.
So a lot of a lot of tech now has like a limited vacation
which has mixed feelings depending on how well the
culture and Company actually support that and I've been lucky
to be in positions where it was very supported.
Yeah. But I don't want to be in a
position where I've got two weeks vacation and it's just,
it's honestly not very much. So that's always really
important to me is making sure that I have the flexibility and
the time available to do the things that are important to me
in my life that are not work related.
The other thing is, I maintain my wife and I maintain them
together like all these hobbies that we really enjoy doing.
So I don't I don't really run the risk of overworking because
we do all these things that we really enjoy.
We played co-ed soccer together for ten.
Plus years, we just ran a half marathon that was training for
six months getting to that play basketball on a regular basis.
We both like to be active as you can.
Probably tell us, we do different versions of working
out. Etc.
We have dogs, we've got nephews, we've got two of our best
friends in the world. Just moved into our neighborhood
like two blocks away. Yeah, so we got all these things
that like, that, that we get to do that.
We really enjoy and can separate ourselves from from the work
stuff at the same time. There's also like Just the
flexibility of working for myself where like, if we're
sitting around watching TV and not really do anything, I could
still answer emails and stuff and it's not taking away from
family time because we're just kind of watching TV but when I
want a need family time friend, time to get away from work, I
have the ultimate flexibility to do that.
So that's always been. If you fill out any surveys
about like how do you enjoy a job or what aspects of the job
or most important? Number one for me always is
work-life balance. Yeah yeah.
The flexibility to pick up and let go of work whenever It fits
you. That is does amazing.
That is I think how a company can distinguish themselves in a
compensation sense, right? You might not pray like number
one prize like Netflix does when it comes to compensation.
When it comes to flexibility. That is actually I think easier
for a company to offer, right? And it can be in a way of
unlimited vacation days, but I love that you have a little
asterisk there that says, it needs to be supported by the
company in the culture, right? Because there's a lot of
companies that say unlimited vacation day Is and no one ends
up using any vacation days. Then all of a sudden you don't
have two weeks anymore. Anyway because everyone's like
are you taking the day off? Okay yeah you don't want to have
any of that but for me that's that's always been an important
factor as well and it's something I've I haven't
realized early on I hadn't realized it when I wanted my
first job. It's something that has kind of
grown on me write that work-life balance is an important thing
and I think I've had to be in positions first where it wasn't
there and then all of a sudden I was like, yeah, because I have a
huge family. This year, I had on last year,
this year would be hard, but last year, I had three weddings.
And I went to all of them was in Sweden was in Greece.
When was in Amsterdam and we went to all of them.
And I didn't have to think about having enough vacation days
because I did, because there is that life work?
Work life flexibility. Exactly that's the one for me.
It's also hard though because As you mentioned, if you're really
passionate about that, something that has been confronting, is if
I pick up the laptop and no one says, all right, it's time to
stop working. Sometimes I can catch myself
working and it's midnight and either I haven't eaten or I
haven't gone out for the whole day.
And there's a lot of things that I didn't take care of myself
because I was so passionate. And so in depth in this rabbit
hole and I didn't want to get out, that is my choice, but that
might also not be healthy. And I think that when you're
working for yourself or you start, Your own company that is
a greater risk because you don't have a team.
You don't really have that Rhythm and routine or rather you
have to reinvent yourself to kind of figure out your own
Rhythm and routine. Have you have you had any of
that as well? Those experiences not really, to
be honest. I think, I think I'm kind of
naturally a little more cognizant of that than, than
most people are, it's good. But again, I think I think it's
like, we have so many things. To potentially do and that we do
on a regular basis that it's, it gives me natural breakups from
from work. And also like I was kind of
telling my wife yesterday we were talking about this, like, I
end up doing, I don't know, like, yesterday, I went to the
doctor because I've got a knee injury, and I was gone for like
two hours and I went somewhere else during the day, and I don't
know if I work 40 hours a week, to be honest, which is a great
story to be able to tell ya because I do all these different
things and have the that ultimate Stability and stuff.
But that also means like it's reasonable for me at seven or
eight. If I, if I feel like I need to
get some things done to go ahead and do it.
And that's just based on the flexibility.
If like, I took care of a lot of stuff away from work earlier.
Now, I need to get some stuff done.
Yeah, but yeah, it's not something that I've really
struggled with. I had a few, I actually was
really into this because I've sometimes and super productive
at nights, especially writing code and I hadn't done this in a
long time, but I ended up working on some updates to the
Discord bought that we have and the web.
And I was having a lot of fun and I did a couple of streams
from 8 to 9:30 or eight to ten or something at night, which is
abnormal for me, but I was just really in his own.
I was really excited about it. And again, I don't think that
was like, over working because of how much other things outside
of work. I do during the day but it was
kind of a different thing. I'm always had gone to bed and I
didn't feel like again because she was asleep.
I wasn't missing out on any like us time, but I don't know.
Yeah, I think it hasn't been something I've struggled with as
much because And maybe this is cliche but because I enjoy
spending so much time with my wife and I, and the hobbies and
things that we have. I feel like I've definitely seen
that more in people that maybe don't have, maybe you're single
and I like that's a stereotype and that's not fair for
everyone, but some of the cases I've seen are people that didn't
have someone else to to go home to, which is like just different
points of wives. But for me, that's always been
kind of a tether as we just enjoy doing so much time to or
so many things together spending.
So Much time together that it's easy to know that, like, there's
other things to do that are important.
Yeah, I agree with that. If I don't have people to take
me out of that context, then it happens that I just don't, don't
get out of my work context, right?
Because no one takes me out of that.
In that way, I mean, everyone's context is different, right?
And one of the interesting things, I love kind of
reflecting back on right now or with my experience in mind is
people that are coming out or that are early in career.
Have a lot of choices to make when it comes to the Domain,
right? We mentioned developer Advocate
now is a role and you can grow in that and you can get better
in that. If you're really enthusiastic
about content creation, finding the right product Market, fit or
even talking more to your developers and tailoring to them
for what they need. But that is one of the roles
that wasn't really there as much.
Now, it's more of an up-and-coming thing and
companies are adopting it. More and more product companies
in and of its own. You still have the traditional
software engineering job. But that has also specialized,
we now have data Engineers or cloud.
Engineers. Right?
There's so many options out there on more of a day-to-day
thing. What you're going to do and then
you still have the type of organizations, right?
Is it a start-up? Is it a medium sized
organization is that a huge organization?
Is it a consultancy or an agency or you have so many different
flavors? What would you kind of advise in
someone that is early in career for their career path?
Because they want to have a great career path?
They want to grow as fast as possible.
What environment with the kind of look for?
What would you advise there? It's hard.
It's actually interesting. There was a comment about this
on Twitter the other day. Someone saying I just can't
understand why someone would go and work for a company like
Google. When there's like so much upside
to working at a start-up for Learning and all these things,
and I kind of retweeted it with a snarky comment a little bit.
But I feel like to say they wouldn't understand why someone
would work at a company like Google, which is one of the
biggest Tech names in the entire world.
It has Best salary and benefits, like, top-notch in the game like
you say, you can't understand why someone would work there.
Seems utterly ridiculous to me. I think I saw that.
Yeah, it was one of, I don't, I don't usually like, quote tweet
things, but that just, it felt it felt very dismissive.
Yeah, like my point here is I don't, I don't think I have a
recommendation for. Like, I wouldn't tell people to
go and work at a start-up or to go and work at a big company.
Yeah, I think that changes that's very personal to people
in their career and their goals, Etc.
So I think I wouldn't, I wouldn't give To pigeonhole
people like that if you want. If you're looking for, if
stability is the number one thing for you, you wouldn't go
work at a startup that just doesn't make sense.
Yeah, if you if you are thinking about the upside of working at a
small team because in that case you get more experience with
more different things, that's great.
If you want to go more Niche and deeper on one specific topic,
working at a bigger company, probably makes sense because
they have the ability to break down into those different into
those different Niche areas, because they have so many people
working on the Team. So I think obviously there's
like there's trade-offs and all of the above I worked at
Microsoft, I work at FedEx, multiple 100,000 employee
companies. I worked at all cero when I
started with 600 people, I went to planet-scale that was 80 when
I started now work for myself and I wouldn't have traded any
of those experiences for anything but they had different
impacts for me in my career at different points in my career.
One thing I will say like thinking about progression is
you have to honestly really be open to Teams and changing
companies. And I've actually got a keynote
talk that I'll be doing in from the time of recording now and
two weeks at that conference and Texas and the, the idea or the
title is feeling stuck in your career, dot dot dot.
Now, what like, how do you, how do you recognize being stuck?
How do you get out of being stuck, Etc?
And a lot of the things that people feel stuck by is like
title. They don't feel like they can
get the promotion to the next level that they're looking for.
They think they're limited by the amount of money that they
can make. They are limited by the
technology because they're not able.
To do the fun stuff that maybe they want to and those are all
things where you're like, yeah, you're going to get to that
point in your career and now it's your responsibility to
start looking elsewhere. Honestly and I there's this
balance of like the stereotypical Millennial is
jumping from job to job every year and there's like there's
some truth to that. But also I think it's really
this more impactful mentality of taking it taking control of your
career and not being at the whim of your employer.
Yeah. Because if employers pay people
really well people aren't going to leave or they're not going to
Leave as much as if they didn't pay them very well at all.
And if they see the potential for career progression and they
see the potential for leadership Etc.
They're going to be much more likely to stay and if not they
should go and consider other things.
So I just recommend to people like stay open for job
opportunities. Like you never know someone may
reach out with a job. You never know what that may
lead to or not. Stay open to it.
It doesn't mean you have to take it.
It doesn't mean you have to go and do an interview but at least
I have the openness to kind of see what's out there on
different. Different times.
I think there's obviously a balance of like I wouldn't do
that. I wouldn't leave a job every
year. That's not, that's not my,
that's not what I would you personally.
So every couple of years but you can be open along the way and
networking and all these things, but I think a lot of it just
comes from being willing to make the change and then communicate
and we talked about this earlier to management and your team
about what you want and to be able to stand up and advocate
for yourself and that's where that having my voice.
Voice comp being comfortable with my voice, became my
superpower because I was able to go to my manager and tell her I
think I deserve a promotion. These are the, these are the
reasons why these are the things that I think I can offer that
other people can't offer and that led to something really
good for me. And so I think it has to come.
It has to come from ownership, from yourself of exploring
opportunities, being open to things.
Also communicating to the the people and team and management
around you what it is. You're trying to accomplish.
Yeah, we like that perspective because I mean, I struggle with
this because I also struggle with giving advice on this
because there is no right path, right?
You started in the way you did. I've started in the way.
I did you just mentioned. You wouldn't trade your
experience for the world. Well, I have the same feeling
with that, which means that neither of our paths were right
or wrong, right? It's just right for the context
that you're in. So then, I think figuring out
what context you're in and where your value lies or where, you
think your value lies. That's the only exercise you
need to do. Then you kind of know the types
of organizations And from there, it's just going to take time,
right? You're going to grow into the
position that you're going to get the most enthusiasm out of
that, you're going to be the most passionate about, well,
that's data, science or Cloud, engineering, or programming or
developer advocacy. At the end of the day, it
doesn't really matter and you don't have to find like you
don't have a have to hit a hole-in-one, you can pivot, you
can try things and I think that's amazing that we have the
opportunity to do so because I think in different fields and
different jobs, you wouldn't necessarily have that.
So using that time and it Variants to actually experience
what you want, make sure you're happy at the end of the day, I
think that should be kind of the end goal and whatever you're
doing career wide career was or job boys, absolutely and that
that changes on a day to day, week to week month, to month,
year to year basis, right? Like you being happy one day,
doesn't mean you're happy the next.
And so that's something I've talked about, as well as being
honest with yourself and giving yourself like real check-ins to
see, do I still feel the same way that I thought I did before?
Do I feel differently? And if it's, if it's Different
in a negative way. Why is that, what do I feel like
I'm missing? And how do I first start by
communicating? That that I would like to fix
this thing by doing X Y & Z or again, to start looking at
opportunities to help fill that void and I know there's a lot of
their stigma and again, moving around from job to job every
year or six months or something. It's not the that's not a habit
that I would build. Like my my threshold is kind of
two years at least. So if I take a roll, I'm most
likely invested in a couple of years on Something really
drastically changes but I've also seen people take different
roles and within six months of being at a job and I think
that's it's not a habit to get into but if you just end up in a
situation that wasn't what you expected and you try to
communicate and things aren't changing and they don't seem
like they're going to change. There's no reason to just stay
there and be miserable. You that's your opportunity to
go and make a change for yourself again, not a habit.
I would get into but it happens like we think we're going into
something that we're really going to enjoy.
Yeah, and we don't whether or not it's just something we don't
enjoy whether or not the culture is not what we thought it was or
the text acts. Not what we thought it was or
whatever, the circumstances there's there's no reason to
just wait it out if you have the opportunity to go somewhere else
and be happier. Yeah, I agree with that.
It shouldn't be shooting me a rhythm or routine but it comes
back to kind of the self respect for yourself and the empathy,
right? If you really not happy in that
position, why would you punish yourself and kind of stay just
because of your pride or kind of your the general Kane.
Ation on how you think the world works or even others because
that usually has a bigger Factor than your own sense of thinking.
That way I really love this conversation.
James talk about your career path and even your advice in
your take on everything in the tech sector more so early in
career, early career related, is there anything that's still
missing that you'd still like to share.
I don't know, just content in general.
If people are interested in finding more of my content, I'm
James qu, quick on most things YouTube, Tick-Tock Twitter also
run a Discord community that I've kind of alluded to a few
times called learn build teach, and the idea is kind of been a
philosophy of mind for several years of, as developers.
We spent a lot of time learning new technologies as we talked
about things. Change all the time we use.
What we learn to build stuff to build apps, and demos and
Software and all these things. And then I think the next step
of that is to teach other people how to do it, because through
teaching you're able to help other people.
But also able to help reinforce the things that you've already
learned or at some points. And I go through this as a
content creator realize I didn't know the thing as much as I
thought I did and use that as a an opportunity to go through
that learn built each cycle again.
So, that's something that I'm particularly passionate about as
a motto. As a framework for myself, also
has become a Discord community, and if people are interested in
finding that it's That learned built each.com.
Awesome. I love that.
We admire that thank you for coming on.
James. I'm going to put all James's
socials and the Discord service in the description below.
Check him out. James qu quick.
And with that being said, thank you for listening.
We'll see you in the next one.