Each encounter teaches us a lesson. Every setback is a victory. What Can You Do To Take Control Of Your Career? Chuck and Subrat join the show as Chuck takes the lead in sharing his past work experiences and his inspiring journey towards his road to success. He also talks about his current plans for Top End Devs such as conferences, book clubs, meetups, and many more!

Hey, and welcome to another episode of Adventures in Angular. This week on our panel, we have Subra Mishra.

 

Hello, hello.

 

Charles Max Wood from Top End Devs. Today I'm gonna be talking about some of the things that I'm putting together to help you all with your learning journey and kind of explaining where I'm coming from. But before we get into all that, Sue, you just moved recently, how's that going?

 

Yeah, it's pretty good. I it's a pretty new country, new experience. So I moved to Amsterdam for all my listeners. I'm saying so I moved to Amsterdam. So it's a pretty different culture from from India.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

The weather is different. The specially I like the winds a lot here. Like it's always windy. Yeah, you go in the morning

 

Ha ha

 

when

 

ha!

 

they winning. It's always windy. So the temperature is around 11, but the field temperature is seven or eight. So

 

Mm-hmm, right.

 

it's a huge difference due to the wind and lots of canals, lots of water. So I also got a house near the water. So if I'm going to the rooftop, I'm seeing big ships and there is a free ferry to go from one part to another part. So those things are pretty cagey. I cycle everywhere. I, you see a lot of cycles, like hundreds of cycles. If you go, go anywhere, that's, that's crazy. So it's a pretty good, good experience, pretty, pretty good country. So enjoying it till now.

 

Yeah, I think I read somewhere that Amsterdam was the city with the highest number of bicycles per capita.

 

Yeah,

 

So... Ha!

 

yes. I think maybe the number I don't know but 23 million, I think 23 million people and 26 million psychos.

 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I've lived in Europe. I didn't live in, uh, Amsterdam. I've been to Amsterdam, but yeah. And it's, it's a cool city to visit for sure. But, uh, yeah, uh,

 

Yeah,

 

most

 

it's

 

of

 

the

 

the

 

CT.

 

places I lived, there were a lot of people that, yeah, they just

 

Psycho.

 

use their bike to get around. Yeah.

 

Yeah, yeah. So it's a city for everyone. Like a old person, a small one, like a bachelor just before marriage. Also they are also coming here to do the party and also for experienced people. I think also I'm sure I'm, I think the Netherlands government is trying to make it as a tech hub. So all the companies

 

Mm-hmm.

 

are also coming into, so I joined in booking. booking.com in Amsterdam

 

OK.

 

so that's my that's that's where I came to Amsterdam with a lot of opportunity lot of I think lot of conference are also happening near around so the best benefit is everything is close by if you want to go to Germany it's four hour train if I go to Paris it's three three to four hour train so I think

 

Oh nice.

 

yeah Europe you can explore the whole Europe by staying here

 

Cool. Well, the topic, like I said, it's basically all the learning opportunities that are out there. I mean, I'm putting some of these together, but there's no reason why you can't find something similar in a lot of these areas that I'm working in.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

If you go look, it just depends on how much work you want to do and things like that. But the thing that really got me started, and you can probably... fill in on this too was, so I got into programming and Ruby on Rails about 16, 17 years ago. And at the time I got in and I started going to some of the users groups. And at the same time I was, you know, my first job I was just working with. So there was a Rails developer that was working where I was working, and he was kind of mentoring me while I picked things up. If anyone's listened to the Ruby Rogues podcast, it's Nate Hopkins, he was a host on there for a while. But, you know, most of the time I was working on client stuff, that was six months, and then I was working alone at a client, and I was just craving having a group of people that I could nerd out on. programming stuff with, right? I wanted people

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I could talk to Ruby about, talk about Ruby with. I wanted people who I could talk about career stuff with. I wanted people who just, you know, it's like, hey there's this neato whizbang thing with this kind of proprietary programming language that you can do awesome stuff with, right? I just wanted to explore it all and I wanted people who were enthusiastic about stuff and for the most part I wasn't finding opportunities to work on that. And then the next job I got, I was on a team with and worked with a bunch of other people that literally just wanted to show up and collect a paycheck. Right. So they,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

they

 

Mm-hmm.

 

could code and they liked it, but as soon as, as soon as the work day was done, you know, they weren't involved. And again, you know, I just, I really loved programming and really wanted that. And so I've been looking for that community. And like I said, I kind of found it with the users groups and I kind of found it with some of like the discussion groups online. Um, you know, when Slack came out that, you know, there were some Slack channels that came up, but yeah, I was just, I was really, really just dying to connect with people and. I couldn't find it. And you know, eventually, you know, I started the podcast and I kind of had some people that I could do that with every week, right. But, um, Anyway, now that I'm kind of on the other side of this where, you know, I'm fairly advanced in my career, I'm fairly well connected within the programming community and things like that, you know, I had some things go down. I was kind of coasting just doing the podcasts and, you know, some stuff changed and it made me really reevaluate where I was at and what I wanted to do. And that's kind of... where a lot of this comes from. So I'm gonna tell you two stories that kind of illustrate where I'm at and kind of the thinking behind this, and then I'll explain what we're putting together. And like I said, there's nothing stopping people from putting groups together wherever they're at. The difference is that because of the widespread nature of what I'm doing, I'm able to get some people that are maybe a little bit better known and organize a little bit more. a few more people around for folks to connect with. So the first story is effectively that job changed between that first job and that second job. So I was working, and it was my first programming job, right? I had like a year's worth of experience. It was a consulting shop. I was working for a company and they had looked at download.com and they wanted to build basically a clone of it. So that's what they were paying me to do. And A few people are aware of how businesses come to rely on things like the Google algorithm to get traffic. This company was very much in that way. Their primary source of income was distributing music on the network that ran, what was it, Lime, what was it, LimeWire, something like

 

Mm-hmm.

 

that? Napster and some of those others. It was kind of in that era. little after that, you know, after Napster got shut down or whatever. But anyway, so, um, I was working there, uh, but they were the client, right? I was, I was contracted to them through my employer and

 

Mm-hmm.

 

they had promised me when they hired me, they're like, yeah, you know, and we understand sometimes you wind up between job, you know, uh, clients. And so we'll put you on the bench and we'll have you go, um, you know, kind of level up your skills and then we'll find you another contract. So anyway, the Google algorithm changed, all their traffic went away. After a few weeks, it was pretty obvious that they weren't gonna be able to recover from it.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

You know, it basically sunk them, right? So they

 

Okay.

 

started laying people off, and since I was a contractor, I was the first one to go. And so I remember walking into my boss's office and I interviewed with a few other clients that they had that were doing Rails, and none of them would take me because I only had one year. professional experience under my belt.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And if you want to talk about imposter syndrome, I mean, that's it, right? It's

 

Yeah.

 

like, nobody wants me. Nobody,

 

Yeah.

 

right?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

So I go in, right, and I'm expecting them to say, look, we're gonna bench you for a few weeks, and then if we can't find you work, we're gonna have to let you go, but in the meantime, make sure you're leveling stuff up and that you're doing the stuff that you need to do. And so I walk in and... sit down with my boss and I'm ready to have this conversation. He looks at me and he says, we're going to lay off.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

No warning, just boom. You know, so yesterday I had a job today. I don't have a job. Right. And I had one year's worth of experience. And like I said, I didn't, I basically interviewed through them for a couple of other contracts that they could have put me on and nobody wanted me. And so I was freaking out. Right. Because if nobody wanted me through them,

 

that,

 

right through

 

right,

 

people that

 

people

 

they had

 

that

 

a

 

they

 

relationship

 

had a relationship

 

with, right?

 

with.

 

I had Nate vouching

 

Mm-hmm. And they'd vouch

 

for me,

 

for

 

uh,

 

me.

 

that I was

 

But

 

good.

 

I was good.

 

Um,

 

Um.

 

I was like, I'm done, right? There's no way I'm going to get another job. The absolutely no way to get another job. Um, at the same time I had started doing the podcasts and I had also started doing a video series called teach me to code where I was showing people how to build stuff with Ruby on rails.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And. Um, but you know, I didn't know anybody. I knew people from the users groups and, you know, I was going to go hit some of them up and see if any of their companies were hiring, but I didn't really have my hopes up because everyone was saying he's too new, right? And the only way to not be new is to get more experience, but to get more experience, you have

 

Yeah,

 

to go get a job. Right. And so.

 

it's always chicken and chicken and egg.

 

Right. And so I went home and it was our third wedding anniversary. So, you

 

Okay.

 

know, my wife and I had been married for three years to the day, right? We had plans to go out to dinner that night and celebrate our wedding

 

Mm-hmm.

 

anniversary. Right. So I show up at home at like 10 in the morning. Right. And, you know, I've got two little kids, we've got a mortgage, you know, and she looks at me, she's like, what are you doing home? And I was like, I got laid off. And she's like, well, what are we going to do? And I was like, I don't know, right? Um, and, and I just, I, I had no idea what to do. And so I, I just, I went on the job board and by the way, the job board isn't what I recommend people do these days to get a job, but I didn't know what I was doing and so I went on the job board and I just started sending my resume to everybody, right? I mean, if they had a Ruby you're on rails job open. You know, it was like, Rails architect, right? We want somebody with 20

 

Hehehehe

 

years experience, even though Rails had only been around for like two, three years, right? Anyway, but I didn't know what to do, so I just started sending my resume around. I got a phone call that afternoon from one of the companies I'd set my resume to. And the guy said, look, your resume looks interesting. You know, you've listed your website on here with your videos. I haven't had a chance to check them out, but you've got a lot of stuff here. And I thought, that I would call you up and see if you wanted to come in for an interview. And I was like, sure. So I drive down there, right? And it's, it's right down the hill from my mom's house, actually.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Um, uh, right by the mouth to Provo Canyon. And I get down there and, uh, you know, I walk in and I'm thinking these people, you know, I'm going to talk to them and they're going to, you know, they're going to say, well, we looked at your resume and you're too new. I mean, I, I fully expected that. Right. So I go in and I sit down and, you know, dude named Jared, he looks like he's 14. And he's, you know, he's interviewing me and, you know, talking about Rails and, you know, and I'm, I loved, I loved programming and I loved Rails. And so I was just, you know, the second we start talking about stuff, I'm just nerding out on this stuff. And so I walk out of there and I'm like, well, it didn't go horribly. We'll see how it goes. I was out of that office 10 minutes. when he called me up and he said, he said, I wasn't sure about you. I looked up one of your videos and I watched it and you obviously know what you're doing.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And they, he's like, when can you start? And I was like, tomorrow. Right?

 

Yeah.

 

And so I went in the next day and within two weeks, I was the team lead on that team.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And a lot of that was down to that enthusiasm and just, you know. I was putting videos out and showing people what I knew. And so that's one thing, one area where I just, I want to show people because it wasn't the traditional thing that got me that job, right? It was, it was the fact that I was doing the extra stuff. I was going the extra mile. I was taking control of my own learning journey and I was putting myself out there so people could see what I could do. That's what got me that job. And so the years of experience and the fact that my resume was really short, it didn't Right? It mattered to some people and I probably didn't get in

 

Yep.

 

the door with some of those folks, but it opened some of those doors. The other story that I want to tell is a little bit later on. So, Where do I start this one? So things kind of went sideways right before COVID hit. And I'm not gonna

 

Yeah.

 

go into all that either. I probably write

 

Hmm.

 

a blog post about it at some point and just say, hey, here's what happened. But anyway, I wound up having to get a full-time job, right? I wasn't having a whole lot of luck, put some feelers out to see if I could find some contracts. And I think I probably would have found something within a few weeks. But a friend of mine was working for Morgan Stanley. He told me to come in for a job interview and then basically said, And it was funny because I had worked with him at two other places, but he basically said, I can't do the interview with you because we're friends. We already know each other. And he would have been my boss. And so I sat down with the people that he, um, that were doing the interview. And the second I sat down, they just looked at me and said, we love your podcast and that was the interview. Okay. You know,

 

Yeah,

 

we just

 

that's

 

sat down

 

all,

 

and

 

yeah.

 

did you, you know, what's it like to talk to DHH? You know?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Um, and. Again, I kind of wanted to... I mean, that's where a lot of this has gone at this point. I got to the point where if I ran out of contract work when I was contracting, I would literally just say so on my podcast and I get phone calls, right?

 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

I had people call me up because they liked one of my video series and needed something built that looked sort of kind of like what I'd built on the video series, or what Eric Barry had built on the video series before he handed it over to me. And so all of this stuff kind of came to a head and has kind of worked out that way. One other thing that I want to talk a little bit about is that in a lot of cases I've been able to meet people, not because of the podcast, but just because I'm showing up in these other places. And by virtue of knowing these folks, a lot of times it opens up opportunities for me to go and be places and do things. I had somebody who listened to Ruby Rogues. get a hold of me. He arranged an entire track at a conference, and then I wound up going on.NET Rocks podcast

 

Mm-hmm.

 

with Richard and Carl. They were just doing a panel at the conference and they had an extra chair, and they offered it to me. So I wound up going on there. That relationship has borne a bunch of fruit, where I've gone to a bunch of Microsoft events and interviewed their experts and things like that. I'm not trying to go on and on about all the things that I've been able to do, but what I want to illustrate is that if you go out of your way and do a little bit of extra work, you can have a little bit different track to your career, then I've got to go grind my nose against the grindstone for five years before somebody will look at me and go, oh, maybe you're a senior now, right? Senior developer. And then I've got

 

Mm-hmm.

 

to go grind another five years before somebody goes, oh, you're an expert now, we're going to hire you and pay you as an expert. Um, by virtue of the fact that I was consistently learning and I was consistently creating, um, content. I was able to turn that into after a year, literally after a year of professional programming experience, I was the team lead and I

 

Mm-hmm.

 

was being hired as a senior developer after two or three. And, and so those are, those are the things that I'm talking about is. You know, what can you do to take control of your career so that at the end of the day, um, you can present yourself as the person who merits the kind of job, the kind of work, the kind of thing you want to be doing, or if, if programming isn't like kind of the jam that you kind of see yourself focused on for the rest of your life, it at least provides you the kind of living you need so that you can do those other things, right? So maybe you want to travel Europe. Right? So is it paying you enough to pay your bills and your travel expenses? Right? Or maybe you have kids and you want to homeschool them. Right? So are you finding work that is going to be flexible enough to allow you to do that, or,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, maybe you have a parent who needs extra help. I was in that position a few years ago with my dad, you know, is, is the work situation flexible enough to allow you to. take him to all of his doctor's appointments and, you know, in my case, drive him to dialysis and, you know, um, you know, go help him out when he needs help at his house, cause my mom's at work, right? You know, and so whatever that is, right? Um, you don't have

 

Mm-hmm

 

to go and grind for five years in order to get that job. You can have it now, if you can prove to them that you can solve the problems they have. And then the other thing is, is that, yeah, if you really

 

Yeah. You

 

enjoy

 

really

 

this

 

enjoy

 

and you're

 

this.

 

passionate

 

There's

 

about it. There's nothing better

 

nothing

 

than

 

better

 

a group of people who

 

than

 

are

 

people

 

also

 

who are

 

passionate

 

also passionate

 

about it, right? Who you can get

 

about

 

with.

 

it. Yeah.

 

And then the last thing is, is that like, I've worked at a couple of places that offer all kinds of benefits. Um, they, you know, they give you all kinds of opportunities. They want you speaking at the conferences and nobody out there is teaching you how to take advantage of that, right? Nobody explains to you how to manage your retirement account, you know,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

that the company is providing to you. In the U.S. it's a 401k, I don't know what they call it in other places. Nobody explains to you how to communicate in specific ways on Slack unless your team comes up with some mechanism for how they want it done. Nobody teaches you how to demonstrate leadership so that you can get a promotion at work. Nobody explains to you necessarily how to use some of the new technologies that are out there. unless you want to go out and buy a course, right? And then the other thing is, is how do I evaluate which ones are worth it? And usually I pick that stuff up by talking to people. And so I need that community. So that's the other thing I'm looking to build is I want people coming in and going, oh, these are the people that I can talk to about this stuff. And finally, the whole learning journey as a whole is much easier if you have people who are moving in the same direction and working on the same kinds of things you are. So that kind of leads to where I'm at now. I've seen people, well actually I'm just gonna open it up. I mean, is there anything you wanna add to that?

 

I think I can relate a lot to what you are saying. I also had similar experience. I will just write a small story. Just before Covid, I was changing a switching company. And I almost got selected for a project, but that projects are down. So they told me that we can't hire you for the project, but we'll have another round of interviews. So what happened? Project wise they will take around seven rounds of interview. So I thought again, seven rounds. So I, I was just about to say, they're going to do again, seven rounds of it. I will say, no, I will, I will stick somewhere else. But the manager called me and told me that I saw your videos and I saw that this guy knows the stuff. So he just explained me that when, what the project is about and, uh, when I can join and all. So that's simple for the next round of interview. So that's the one of the my story, for example, of which video or content helped me to get the stuff. And another one thing is due to the YouTube or the content creation, I am able to join a podcast like your podcast. That's also a pretty big opportunity for me. And through the podcast, I have like... I might not have imagined of so many people I can talk with up from so many geographical locations to which I got opportunity to the podcast. So obviously, if you are trying to achieve something through the passion, like things happen like good things happen as a side effect. So like, yeah, obviously, someone can plan from the beginning like this I want and it will be easier. Uh, but most of the case I, what I saw, like, if you just do the things by what you want, uh, good things happens, uh, in, in the behind the scenes. So that's, and w and once you like, like, I think, uh, like Steve jobs states that you can connect the dots only in backwards or like, if I'm thinking now, then I say, okay, this happened due to that, this happened due to that. And now can connect the dots. This always, you, if you do something, you never lose. There is something you will gain in future.

 

Yeah, I agree.

 

Thanks

 

I

 

for

 

think

 

watching!

 

some things they'll materialize if you put out there that that's what you want

 

Mm-hmm.

 

and some things materialize because you're doing the things that connect you to people in the right ways, make them identify with you or give you a chance to, you know, to meet and to know them. And then those opportunities come up, even though those weren't the ones you were looking for. And yeah, there's, there's a ton of. of power to that. And that's kind of been my experience too, right? So like going to the Microsoft events and doing the podcast episodes and being involved in all of that stuff, that wasn't something I was looking for. And it came out of me going to the, what was it? Tech, tech ed something? Anyway, it was in Vancouver, you know,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

but that wasn't even an opportunity that I was looking for. It was just something that, you know, James Kovacs. had the opportunity and created for me, right? And I'm grateful to him for that. And so anyway, yeah, that's exactly the case. In other cases, now I'm looking to deliberately create a community where these things are available. And so I can work toward that and create some of the opportunities to lead to that. But that doesn't mean that some of these other opportunities aren't going to come up, right?

 

Yes.

 

And so... So yeah, there's a bit of both, but yeah, I mean, most of it just is down to what do I need to do, you know, what can I do to, you know, create those opportunities. And so anyway, kind of leading back to this story, there's one more kind of scenario I want to walk through. And that is that... So for the last, I don't know, like eight years, I've been in a mastermind group. And the mastermind group that I've been in, it's just the same about 10 people. Right. And some people have come in and left. Right. But

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, there's, there's a core of like five or six people in that group that, that we've been in for a while and really know each other. And, um, and so we connect on a regular basis and we kind of talk through life and things like that, not specifically this area of career. We talk about

 

Mm-hmm.

 

our careers, but They don't have the expertise to help me build this, right? But they helped me build the rest of my life and it's awesome. And, um, there are several groups within the organization that the mastermind's part of and one of the guys that used to be in there reached out to me and he was building something for entrepreneurs. And what he wound up doing is he wound up creating, um, a group where you get, you get some courses that are, they're part of the, the membership. And then you also get access to calls twice a week, right?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And so the calls can be about anything, right? Usually, at least two of them every month are Q&A calls, right? So he just coaches people through stuff, right? And I've been doing that. I've been coaching people through starting technical podcasts about leveling up in their career, how to get a promotion or a raise at work. or find a job that's gonna give them what they want, certain levels of job satisfaction, getting out there and meeting people. I've introduced people to influencers out there or open source contributors to major projects that I feel like are mutually beneficial to the person I'm introducing and the open source contributor, if that makes sense. And so

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I've been able to do a lot of that work and create opportunities for other people through a lot of that. And so... I want those same kinds of calls and I want to be able to offer that to more people. And so for a while I was doing coaching, right? So you just pay a monthly fee for coaching and I would just sit down and every week we'd get on the call and I'd ask where you were at and if you'd done the stuff you'd committed to last week and we'd get into, okay, what are you going to do this week? And a lot of it was focused, like I said before, around building a podcast and building an audience. But there are a lot of ways

 

Mm-hmm.

 

to build an audience and it doesn't have to be podcasting. It's just, that's where I've spent most of my effort.

 

Yeah.

 

So, we're gonna do the Q&A calls, right? And so if you're stuck on something in your career, I know a lot of creative ways to get around it, right? If you wanna be a senior developer and you only have two years worth of experience, we can get you there in six months, I promise you. If you will do the work, we can get you there, right? If you want to start a podcast, if you want to start speaking at conferences, if you want, right. And the other thing that's terrific about it is that we'll have a bunch of people on the call and if I don't have the answer, odds are good that somebody else on the call will. And just to illustrate that. So I was on one of the calls yesterday for this entrepreneurial group and the main presenter was talking about setting up memberships and I've tried every membership platform under the sun and they

 

Yeah.

 

all suck and that's why I'm building my own, right. And so, um, so she was covering each of the different platforms that she's used. Right. And there was one that I hadn't used, didn't have all the features I wanted, but if you were setting up a basic membership, it looked really, really good. Right. But she was talking through it. And then I was just chiming in through the chat, you know, if it was like, you know, she talked about one platform and she'd tell her experience with it, which was usually pretty close to mine. And then

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I'd say, oh, and there was this and this and this that I liked and this and this and this that I didn't. Right. And so it. I was able to add to the conversation just due to my experience. That's what I've seen with a lot of these where if it's kind of an open call, which is kind of what I want, then that's an option. I'm also putting together the book club. We're doing Clean Architecture by Uncle Bob Martin

 

Mm-hmm.

 

as the first book. I know Bob, right? We do a podcast together. I was like, hey, do you want to be part of this book club? He's like, I don't know if I can make it every week, but sure. And so he's going to show up to some of the calls about his book, right? In January,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

in December, January. But again, you know, then we get a bunch of people and we're all thinking about the same things and talking about the same concepts and moving forward on, on these topics that are going to help us in our careers, right? Cause if I can help devise better, cleaner architecture, then I can write more maintainable code, uh, you know, and I, I have something more to offer to my employer or future employer. than where I'm at now, or if I wind up building my own thing, I can do a better job there. But yeah, you know, so the calls there, the other thing is I want to do a call every month for each of the shows, right? So I want to do an Angular specific call. And the other thing is, is I don't have to lead it, right? If there's something that I think I have to add, right, to the conversation with Angular, then I may lead it. Or if you have something that you think people need to understand, then you may lead

 

Mm-hmm.

 

it.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Or there's a... I could see like they come out with a new version of Angular, right? So they come out with Angular, you know, 99 or whatever. And,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, so everybody just jumps on and just talks about their experience after playing with it for a little bit,

 

Yep.

 

right? However that works, but, you know, having that open conversation so that people can be a part of it. You know, so we'll do JavaScript and Ruby and Angular and React, and Vue and Elixir and DevOps and machine learning, and I'm probably forgetting one or two, right? All those will probably have a careers one, because I'm gonna start a careers podcast, right? And I'm also looking at starting a leadership podcast, so we'll do that, right? And so we'll have those meetups every month that people can come in and participate in,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

be part of the conversation. And we'll record them and we'll put them out so people can watch them, right? So that's kind of the main thrust, but I

 

Yeah.

 

feel like that's only a small part of getting to know people and learning. So the other thing I want to do is, when I was brand new at Ruby on Rails, there was a video series out there called Rails Casts. And I don't know if you're familiar with them, but Ryan Bates, what he did is he put out a video every week and it was like a 10 minute video and it just showed you how to do something in Rails. Right.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And then he upped it so that there were two videos that went out every week and one of them was paid, right? So you pay for a subscription and you'd be able to get it. And so I want to do that for each of our areas as well of expertise. And then maybe some others that aren't specific to a podcast. So what I'm imagining is like, we'll have a JavaScript series where they talk about, you know, Hey, here's how to do promises in JavaScript or here's how to use RxJS for a few weeks, right? Um, and then, um, you know, same for Angular, same for Ruby, same for, you know, maybe a Ruby one and a Rails one, even though we only have one podcast, right? And then I could also see like a TypeScript series,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

right? You know, and again, so then it's, hey, I'm learning something new every day, even if it's just watching, you know, 10 minute video

 

Yeah.

 

on the deal. And then from there I can imagine, you know, putting together like retreats, right? So maybe we put together a retreat in Amsterdam or in Netherlands, right?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And anybody who's in Europe can come out, right? I mean, it's not part of the membership you'd have to pay to come, but then we can get together in person and help you with your career, or help you advance in your open source contributions, or speaking, or wherever your career is gonna take you, right? And then we do some in the US, which is easier for me. But

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I wanna make these opportunities available to whoever can come, right? And so... I kind of see all of those as just opportunities, but I want to create opportunities for people not just to excel in their work, right, with the calls and the meetups and the videos and things like that. But I also, and if people don't want the full Monty, you know, I'm going to make it available so you can just sign up for the series that you're interested in. But

 

Yeah.

 

I feel like you'll... You'll succeed more if you're able to connect. That's also why I'm putting together the online conferences next year. So Angular's in April, JavaScript's in March, Careers is in January. Anyway, so I'm trying to create those opportunities. And if you're a member, you'll get discounts on the conferences. But all of this stuff,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

it's there be with these people who really love what they do, love being a part of this community, and we can all kind of grow together and create those opportunities. And that's kind of the big thing, right? But some of the meetups I should say, or some of the weekly calls are also going to be on topics that are not technical, right?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

So I mentioned like, what do I do with 401k? Well, We'll have an investment expert show up and talk about investing your retirement funds, right?

 

Yeah.

 

We'll have an expert show up and talk about networking or, um, submitting talks to conferences or, right? So these aren't things that you're going to do at your job, but they're things that are going to be important to your career or your life goals

 

Mm-hmm.

 

and, and help you get where you want to go. You know, maybe have somebody come in and talk about billing and launching a SaaS product.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

You know, so all of these things, you know, I have a lot of friends that are in the freelance space. So, you know, maybe somebody can come in and talk about getting started with freelancing, you know, or maybe I can do it. I have, you know, I did that for a long time. So anyway, so that's what I'm creating. And I want this to be a community, right. And I want it to cover the things that are going to help people move ahead. And, um, I feel like if we have this, if we have some opportunity for people to get together and connect and talk and work through some of this stuff and explore some of the options in some of these areas that we can give people the tools to create a fulfilling career instead of creating one where you grind it out until you get to the next level and then realize that there's another level to it that offers even more stuff and you just wind up back in the same grind again.

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, this like what I want to say is what you are trying to build will give a pretty big boost to the start of a career or if someone is switching their career as well. Like if I remember when I start, there's not much content on YouTube as there are today's. And then not much communities as has been built as it's today. So, and it's pretty easy. Like if you start something, people are talking everywhere, every topic. And always community helps a lot. To be honest, I got to a solution. Most of the time I got to, I got the solution while discussing that with someone. I don't know how, but it happens with me. Like if I just try to discuss the problem, someone in, in, in the moment of discussion, I, I get the solution of solution of that. So having a community discussing with the, the problem or getting the knowledge from, from seniors who already done that, you already cross the path. And they can sweep the street line. Just go where, go this way and you will reach, reach a distance pretty fast. this will always help and I think what you are building will help lot of people.

 

Yeah, well, and that's the whole point, right? Is, you know, just to kind of hark back to some of the stuff that I went through a few years ago, right? So, you know, the end of 2019, I had a bunch of people come after me on Twitter. And that's when I started to evaluate where I was headed, right? Because I felt like I was making a difference out there in the community. We were doing the podcast. But, you know, as time went on, especially after, you know, we went through all the stuff with COVID. I realized that a lot of people are really still stuck, right? And we cover technical topics and a lot of times career topics on the podcasts. But

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I want to, I want to lift as many people up as I can and help them recognize the opportunities that they have and show them the way to do it. Right. Because a lot of this stuff too, it's not like I talk to people about starting a podcast and they're like, well, I don't have time. And I'm like, you could do it. 10 minute podcast twice a week and it won't

 

Yeah.

 

take you a ton of time. Right. And so I want to show people that these opportunities are available to them, even if they're constrained on time or location or language or things like that. We're starting to see more content come out in other languages for,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

for programming. And those

 

Yeah.

 

are opportunities that are gold, right? Because there's not a lot there, right? In Spanish or

 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

you know, some of the European languages where those languages are only spoken in a handful of countries. You know, and so there are a lot of opportunities out there that people just aren't taking advantage of. That if you became the, you know, Italian programmer podcast, you know,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

or the Dutch programmer podcast, right, if you speak Dutch, right? Yeah, it's not spoken all over the world, right? I think there are a few places that Netherlands colonized that may still speak some Dutch.

 

Mm-hmm

 

There are millions of people that live in that country

 

Yeah.

 

that may not speak good English or be able to understand English very well that you could speak to and you can build the kind of following there that is going to give you the opportunities you want. because most of the opportunities you want are available in Netherlands. Right.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And

 

Mm-hmm.

 

so, yeah, it's anyway, that those are the doors that I want to open for people and then just again, help figure out, okay, so I'm, I'm building my personal brand and the other angle is, is I'm also learning the skills that I need, right. And so there's a directed way that I teach people to do that so that they're picking up what they need to. In order to achieve the things they want, right? So they can go into a job and it's, I know who you are, I know how capable you are, and I can see that you've consistently been learning and you've picked up the skills that we need. And so I don't care that you've only been doing this for a year or so.

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like, it's always, I like to repeat, it's always good to have a community which will help, which can help. And I think, like you point out on the regional languages, I think it's pretty good. Like mostly from India, I got a request from a lot of people like, can you please explain this in Hindi? So I... Just write them in the comment about that in Hindi. And so India is a different type of country, but for a lot of country, there are a lot of people with the same same reason language like you just have example of Dutch. So here, if someone want to do, I think in the last last podcast, someone came as a GD, he is trying to write the content in French. I was listening to that podcast and I was just thrilled about like how regional language can help a lot of people at least who all are starting their career and they don't know much much English initially.

 

Yeah, exactly.

 

Yeah.

 

The next thing that I want to just point out on this is that I am putting courses up that people

 

Mm-hmm.

 

can take on specific things. Most of it is just depending on where I think people are and what they need. The first course that I'm putting up that if you're a member you can get it or you can just go buy the course is the Ultimate Resume and Cover Letter Guide.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

The reason is because at least here in the US... We're seeing a lot of places lay off staff, including programmers. I mean, uh, you know, Elon Musk took over Twitter. I'm not going to dive into the politics of that. That is a,

 

Yeah.

 

that's a quagmire that I'm just not going to get into. Um, and I think there's a lot that remains to be seen in that situation, but you know, they laid off a bunch of people, including programmers, right?

 

Yeah.

 

Um, Facebook announced or Metta, whatever they announced that

 

11,000.

 

they're laying off a whole bunch of people. Twilio did it a month or two ago. It's just kind of across the board. A lot of these companies are saying, hey, we did a lot of the speculative work, but we're not going to pay for that right now. And so

 

Mm-hmm.

 

these people are out there looking for work. And so, hey, all right, well, let me help you with your resume and cover letter. And so maybe if this continues as a trend, maybe I'll put together an interviews course. I'm

 

Mm-hmm.

 

also working on rewriting my job search book. And so those are the next few things that I'm looking at having come out. And I also feel like the book club is an opportunity that gives people the chance to, when they go into an interview, say, you know, I, I'm involved in this book club for this, for clean architecture. And that, that says a lot to employers about the kind of initiative you're willing to take and so,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, all of these things, um, you know, that, that's the kind of content that I want to put out too is okay, you know, Let's put you in the best position to put your best foot forward so that you, if you're one of these people that got laid off, you're not out in the cold very long before you're back in a position that's working for you.

 

I think I was going everywhere like a lot of plays often

 

Yep, it is. And you know, a lot of times it's not really your fault, right? You're, you're just

 

Mm-hmm.

 

working on the thing that they decide they don't need attention on right now. And so it doesn't mean that you're bad at your job or that you were the lower person on the totem pole or anything like that. It just means

 

Mm-hmm.

 

that they don't need the work you're doing anymore, or they don't think they do.

 

Yep.

 

And so they're going to lay you off. And anyway, it's, it, it sucks. And I feel. badly for these people, but yeah, if there's something that I can do to do it, you can also just get my resume template for free at topendevs.com slash resume. I basically just took my resume and took my cell number off of it.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Anyway, so that's kind of the areas that we're looking at advancing in. And yeah, you know, you could get on the Q&A call and say, you know, I sent my resume around a whole bunch of people and I'm not getting calls back. What's going on? do a resume review or talk about who you're approaching or anything like that. That's what I kind of imagine those calls are going to be is five to 10 minutes of live coaching just to help you get unblocked so you can move on to the next stage of things for yourself.

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's the reason is a pretty important thing. I think once you get into a company, you will you find a way like way in and how to deal with. But for a lot of a lot of companies, I think getting a call for an interview is pretty hard for a lot of a lot of people. I think it's a kind of a mess. It's kind of a mess nowadays because. The algorithms are developing day by day and they are also kind of experimenting on the algorithms for the for the resume and It's happened with a lot of people like that some resume got a lot of calls and Some some didn't got any calls. I Think it's all depends on what keywords we are using and how the algorithm with the company searching for matches together. So for as you told expert help will always be a good boost to the resume to get calls at least and then then it depends on the person how to how to represent yourself in the interview.

 

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. But what I find is that there are some common mistakes that people make. And then sometimes

 

Mm-hmm.

 

it's just, you know, there's something specific that you left off your resume or that you put on your resume that is hurting your opportunities. And so, you know, just by

 

Mm-hmm.

 

having a look at what you're doing, a lot of times it's okay, just tweak these couple things and then you're good to go. So.

 

Yeah, yeah.

 

And that's the kind of coaching that I want to provide, right? Is, okay, well, you've kind of gone and picked up kind of the general advice that's out there, right? That's true for most people and it's still not working. Well, what individual tweaks can we do to specifically

 

Mm-hmm.

 

what you're doing that will open the door? So

 

Yeah.

 

anyway, if people want to sign up for this, what I've decided to do is, Eventually, I'm planning on charging like 150 bucks per

 

Mm-hmm.

 

month for a membership. And then I'll probably have a lighter version that gets you access to just a couple of the calls every month. If you want to do that for like 75 bucks, but if you want the full membership to get you access to everything, all the courses that are part of the membership, all the calls, the conference discounts, you know, the whole nine yards, you get my resume course right off the bat because it's part of the membership. Right now it's $39 on

 

Mm-hmm.

 

topendevs.com slash sign up. And so yeah, you just jump in and click the button and go sign up. And then what I'm going to do is every time we reach 20 people that have signed up at that price, I'm going to raise it $10 until we get to the $150 a month. So

 

Mm-hmm.

 

if you're one of the first... 20 people, you'll get it for $39. If you're one of the next 20 people, you'll get it for $49. We'll just move it up until we get to $149. So that's the deal. This is the first podcast I'm putting this out on. So

 

Okay.

 

you all are going to get that opportunity ahead of everybody else. And yeah, if you have any questions, you can just email me. Actually, me and my team at support at topendevs.com. and we can answer any questions you've got. But yeah, that's the deal. So yeah, looking forward to seeing people sign up and I'm excited to see where things go from here. But yeah, that's kind of where things are headed.

 

Yeah, pretty cool. I think you have planned for a pretty good journey ahead, like for all of all the people who will sign up.

 

Yeah, and that's what I want. You know, I want to see people leveling up. Cause that's,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

honestly, that gets me off more than the money, right? I get really

 

Yeah.

 

excited when it's like, hey, look, you know, we put our heads together and we really move the needle for you. That gets me

 

Mm-hmm.

 

excited, right?

 

Yeah.

 

Make another 40 bucks a month, I mean, it's nice, but

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, and I need it to pay the bills around here, but that's not what gets me up in the morning. It really isn't. So,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, as far as any of that goes, I'm really just looking to, you know, make my rent, right? And be able to put as much time as I can into the people who sign up. So, there you go.

 

Yeah.

 

All right, well, let's go ahead and do some picks and then we'll

 

Yes.

 

wrap it up. Do you have some picks? Do you have some things you wanna shout out about?

 

Yes. Yes. So I think I'm just going through again with the JavaScript, new things had happened like the proxy symbols and those things so I'm just reading the MDN docs for nowadays, just to recap my what I have left on like not using mostly those methods and we're not using in our day to day code Once you get the knowledge, then you'll start using them. So I like to pick the JavaScript documentation. Go ahead and read it if you have some time. And I would also like to say here, like maybe for a long time, I haven't put any video on my channel, like due to the movement from India to here, a lot of things happened. I need to move stuff here and there. So soon I will. no record and put the video so I would like to shout out about that as well.

 

Awesome. Yeah, get those videos out and let us know so we can promote them.

 

Yep.

 

All right, well, I usually do a board game pick and I've got a doozy today. So

 

Hehehe

 

if you like the games where you kind of get to go explore the game and then work together to win, we played this on Sunday with some friends of ours, my wife and I did. The game is called Betrayal at House on the Hill. Came out in 2004,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

so. Some folks may have played it. Board Game Geek has a weight of 2.39. My sister actually brought this game over and we played it a couple of times with my kids and they all enjoyed it too. So, it's a little complicated for my six year old but you know, my 10, 11 year old, he was fine, right? Everybody else older than that could pick it up. Board Game Geek says it runs about an hour, but it really kind of depends on the game you end up with. So just to give you kind of a summary, the premise of the game is that you're a bunch of kids that go to explore the haunted house on the hill. And I think it's based on like a book or a video game or something. But anyway, you go into the house and you can explore the house, right? So you can move through the rooms and you know, you pick up different... items and stuff as you as you go through the house. And, um, you also pick up what are called omen cards and the omens are basically items, but the difference is, is that you roll the dice to see if the haunting starts yet when you get one and when the haunting

 

Mm-hmm.

 

starts, it'll, it semi randomly selects which haunting you're dealing with. Right. So

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you could have any number of different scenarios that you're trying to win from most of the hauntings. One of the players winds up being the, the betrayer. And so then it's everybody versus them, but they usually wind up with like monsters or minions or, you know, some other or super power that helps, you know, helps them fight. And I found that a lot of them are pretty well balanced, right? So it's, it's just down to, you know, who can basically outmaneuver the other. But yeah, so then you're moving around and finding items and trying to complete, you know, your end of things. And so yeah, if the heroes escape, then they win. And if the betrayer, you know, captures or kills or whatever other win condition they have, right, then they win. And so anyway, it's really, really fun. And you can play it over and over again and you get a different game every time. And

 

Mm-hmm

 

so... Yeah. So I really liked that. Uh, and so I'm going to pick that Betrayer at House on the Hill. And then, um, I've kind of talked through a lot of this stuff, uh, already as far as what I'm building out. So I'm going to skip that. Um, I've been listening to a book called, um, what is it? Loadstar? It's the fourth book in the series from, um, Oh, what's it called? Keeper of the Lost Cities? And like I said,

 

that is

 

it's kind of a juvenile

 

kind of a

 

fiction

 

juvenile fiction,

 

magic

 

magic,

 

elves

 

elves,

 

book.

 

and both. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

It's fun. You know, I mean, it's not Brandon Sanderson, but it's good. So, there was something else I was gonna pick and I am blanking on it. Anyway, I guess I'll just wrap it up there. One other thing that I'm looking to do, within the next week or so is open up a forum for members in Top End Devs. So that, you know, and it's going to be, it's going to be what you expect, right?

 

Mm-hmm.

 

As far as like discussing Angular or Ruby or React or whatever, but it's also going to have a discussion of prep notes for each of the podcasts, right? So we'll invite our guests in and give them access to the forum so they can post and interact. But we'll also have topic areas where you can suggest topics or guests and people can upvote it

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And so I'm working on putting that together So if you want to be a part of that, then you can jump in with that as well Yeah, and then we also have a slack channel and If you if you get an account, but don't sign up for a subscription you can get into the slack channel It shows up on your dashboard. So Anyway, those are my picks Thanks for coming, Subrat. I'm sorry I talked a lot, but

 

Anyway,

 

I'm

 

the

 

super

 

project

 

excited

 

is pretty

 

about

 

good. So,

 

this.

 

I'm happy with that. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's pretty good.

 

Alright, well we're going to go ahead and wrap it up and until next time folks, Max out.

 

Bye bye.