In this all-panelist episode, Chuck, Dave, and Valentino give insights on how to choose your career path, how to kickstart your career, how to take control, and how to advance in your profession. They also share their experiences and some advice on what qualities you should possess in order to become successful

Hey there and welcome back to another episode of Ruby Rogues. Trying something new. This week on our panel we have Dave Kamura. Valentino stoll?

 

You know.

 

I'm Charles Max Wood from Top End Devs, and this week, I kind of accidentally booked this episode, but there is something that I wanted to talk about, so I just left it. I've been working lately, and I've been talking to a whole bunch of people about potential like coaching engagements and things like that. A lot of people are looking for ways to advance their careers, whether they're juniors trying to prove that they've got the chops to be mid-level or seniors. And usually it's tied into like getting paid more, getting more recognition, you know, and just advancing in general feel like they're moving forward because a lot of people feel stuck. And then a lot of the advanced folks, it's kind of the same deal except, you know, so they want to get paid more and stuff like that too. But they're looking for a different level of fulfillment, right? So if you're a junior and you're trying to move up, you're just trying to you're trying to open the door to, you know, better, usually technical jobs. But people at the top end, what they're looking for is, okay, where do I go now? Right? And how do I even know what to focus on or what to work on or who to talk to or things like that? And so I've kind of condensed all this into how to stay current. But what it really is, is it's how to take control of your career. who have kind of taken control of their career this way, trailblazers, and that's probably a term I'm gonna be using more and more and more. But being a trailblazer developer, you know, and I feel like, you know, to a certain degree, Dave's done this with Drifting Ruby and some of the other things that he's involved in. You know, Valentino just being on the show and some of the initiatives that, you know, we've talked about that you've been involved in at Doximity, you know, and you seem pretty confident that, you know, you're where you wanna be. It's down to that, right? We see John working on Ship Lane, and he's kind of charting his own course. What I find is that a lot of that winds up being built on the back of the people you've gotten to know, the skills you've built, and your ability to kind of stay up on what's going on in the industry. Anyway, so that's what we're talking about. Just in full disclosure, I'm actually doing a presale on a course that I'm putting together that will walk you through this process. basically giving it away in the pre-sale and adding some stuff on because I want feedback from people who are going through it and I want to give people a chance to really nail it, get some testimonials and stuff. And then I'll probably up it from there. But if you go to topendevs.com, I'll put a link in the show notes, it's easier rather than trying to read out a URL. But if you go there, it's going to be $47. I'll drop a lesson every week. I may go back and edit lessons based on feedback, but I'll drop a lesson every week and we'll do a weekly Q&A call. And so if you get stuck on anything from that lesson or anything in general, you have questions about your career, you can just bring it to that call and we'll hang out for an hour or so and make sure that the course is what people like you need, but also make sure that you're getting what you need out of what I'm putting out there. So that's kind of it. for both of you as we dive into this though, like what do you do to put yourself in a position you want to be in with your career, with work, with the community, you know, have opportunities come to you and be able to kind of end up where you want to end up. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Thanks for watching! Usually. Yeah. Maybe. But are you advocating for doing this on your own stuff or just sticking around longer than a year at wherever you're working? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, that's the first step that I've come to as well, to be honest. The first lesson is, what do you want? And effectively, yeah, that's what it boils down to, right? And what I'm talking about is, to a certain degree, there are two parts to that. I mean, one of them is, what do I want in the short term? Right? You know, I want to get paid more, right? You know, we're going through inflation and stuff like that. And without getting too politically involved in all of that, right, stuff costs more. Do I need to get paid more? Do I want better benefits? Do I, you know, short-term pain that I'm gonna solve? And then yeah, the longer term is, what do I want my career to look like, right? Do I wanna be an influencer? Or do I wanna be the go-to expert at the company I work at, right? And then I'm happy to do that. I wanna work at a startup where I'm a co-founder, or I want to work at a big company that's just gonna take care of me. And you know, and none of these are wrong. that kind of help you frame a lot of this stuff, but then you can start to work your way backward. Well, if I want to be the CTO at a startup that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I need to learn enough technical knowledge to be able to kind of bootstrap things until I can hire people. And then I also need to have the team building skills and leadership skills to be able to run a technical organization within a company to get the job done when we grow. And so, you know, that's where we start building into, okay, now that I know what I want, yeah, then it's, okay, now who's putting the information out there that I want? You know, who can I grab as a mentor? Who can I, right? The other steps to learning what you need to know. And then also, yeah, you're going to want to stay up to date so you can take advantage of the latest technology when you're in whatever position, right? Whether you're the ex-technical expert or the influencer or the CTO or something else. so that when it comes down to it, you can make the right decision for the circumstances you find yourself in. And so a lot of this is just prepping for wherever you're going to end up in the future, what you're going to encounter as you go. How much more money? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

 

Yeah, you know, so much of this depends on... really who you're working for, right? Like whether or not it's yourself or if you're gonna be working for somebody else, who are their clients, right? Like is it a product company that you plan to be working for or a consultancy where you're gonna be working for many other companies, right? I think these are very important questions to like choose the direction that you're headed And a lot of those decisions don't even come up until you're at a certain stage in your development.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And so early on, it really is important of just finding the right company. Because I mean, for the most part, I talked to a lot of early career people. I've volunteered at many of the Ruby conferences before as a guide. And it's just like the stories you hear from people starting up, it's always, you know, how do I know like what company to pick, what direction to take, like, how do I make sure that I'm up to speed on all this stuff to learn, which you know, if as soon as you join a pick your pick what company and path that you want to go to, anyone is going to be better than nothing, right?

 

Well, the other thing is that a lot of times, especially if you haven't experienced working at a big company versus a small company, or a startup where they're scraping things together versus an established product, you don't actually know which one's going to be the thing that you like.

 

Yeah, and I mean, seeking advice from somebody on what which one is better, you know, is still going to be hard to know. Right. Like even if you go and you say, OK, well, we're in a bigger company, you're going to have you may have more departments that you have to deal with. More people trying to steal your time may not be as flexible. Right. In the kind of work that you'd be doing or something like that, you could say all these things, but it's really not going to make sense until

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you that, right?

 

Right.

 

And so it's kind of hard to convey those kinds of messages. But what I think is more important is kind of like talking to somebody who's gone through a year at where they're at and they're either dissatisfied or something that, you know, they need to change something. Sometimes it's, you know, not necessarily a good idea to move or change directions. Maybe there's just moment in your life, right? And I that's kind of where we're getting at now, right? Is how do you how do you pick that path? That's right for you. When there are so many possibilities, right? Like you do you want to like, create your own content? Do you, you know, should

 

Mm-hmm.

 

if you if you have enough money, like you're talking about Dave, where you can take the risk and start up your own thing, like is that even something you want to do? Right? So how do you how did you guys decide to take the pass you're on, right? Like Dave, what made you decide, oh, I'm gonna create Drifting Ruby, you know? It may take some pain

 

Because he's

 

in

 

cool.

 

my life. You know, this is cool, I'm having fun. Like what decisions and factors like went through your mind to make that decision?

 

Mm-hmm. Yep.

 

So let's talk about like how does somebody get involved in pursuing that next step, right? Like so that's your kind of goal, David seems

 

Mm-hmm.

 

like you want to be doing drifting Ruby full time, right? Like so I mean, the first first thing maybe is like you've already created this thing that you want to do, right? Like you've already made that path. of other people in the Ruby community too. Started writing about, you know, the memory allocator in Ruby and how the garbage collection works. And she focused on that and wrote a book and ultimately I feel like it helped Pat pave a way for her current role at Shopify, right, where she's working on a core team that's committed to, you know, committing to Ruby. And she has that knowledge paving that path for herself. And similar with Nate Berkuspect too, right? It seems like they have a, he took on Puma as an example and kind of created this go-to performance company, right? And has specialized in performance in Ruby and subsequently Rails, right? And Dave with your screencasts, right? of picked a niche at a specific thing where, you know, that's kind of seems to be the parallel where something is created in a niche that you're creating content for. And that's great. And unfortunately, you know, as for all of you that I've mentioned, you know, you has like worked in some capacity for a larger organization to hopefully get to the end result. And I feel like for a large part of that path, it's going to be for everyone. Is you're going to ultimately have to decide to work for an organization that's going to help support you in that path to your future. Hopefully you've disclosed that to your

 

Mm-hmm.

 

for that. That is an ultimate goal and hopefully the organization will help support you in getting there, right? And I feel like that's been true for, you know, Nate, for you, for Gemma, and for a lot of other people I follow in the Ruby community. And it kind of seems like that's something set up in the Ruby community is that ecosystem of like pursuing your own future and kind of going against huge company where a lot of that, you know, personal pursuit might be lost. And so I'm kind of grateful to be in the Ruby community for that reason. You know, for myself, I don't have enough focus to do that for myself. I just am interested in too many different things at once to focus on one thing for too long. But I totally commend you for, you know, for following that. But I guess what I'm getting at is like, you know, what is like something that you see similar like this in the past that can help decide what to focus on, right? Like, because that that ultimately is the biggest thing. Like for me myself, I have a problem focusing. Right. And so like, I'm into hardware sometimes. So I'll write about Ruby doing hardware stuff. but I just can't find the focus or attention or I don't know what it is, right? But I can't find that thing that I just be like, okay, this is what I wanna do, right? Like what do you guys like is something that you've latched onto and been like, okay, this is what I want.

 

Well, I mean, you're kind of hitting on the next piece, so to speak, of what we talk about here, right? Because a lot of people, they'll get that idea, right? I want to be a major open source developer or this or that, right? And they don't see the path, right? Dave, I feel like, is kind of in a lot of ways inventing the path. I mean, there are people that did it. Ryan Bates did it with Railscast Pro. right? And so yeah, you know, it's okay. Well, what are the steps? What are the next stages that I need to go through? And then what do I need to learn? Usually it boils down to a handful of questions. It's what do I need to learn or know? Who do I need to hire? And who do I need to get to know? Right? So you brought up Nate, right? On Puma, right? I mean, how long did he contribute to Puma and other projects before he finally got a break and was kind of the Puma guy, right? I don't know Gemma, but I'm assuming again that she built relationships. She did a bunch of legwork to figure out how Ruby worked. And then finally was able to step up and step over the barriers that were in her way to get to where she wanted, right? And it's the same thing with Dave, right? drifting Ruby. We don't talk about it nearly as much as I think we probably ought to to push people that direction. But it's the same kind of thing. Who can be out there championing your stuff? And how do you get to know those people? What tools, technologies, techniques do I need to learn? What marketing techniques do I need to learn? And so that's where the rest of this breaks down is, okay, so I've got this end goal out here. I've got this this idea, right? Drifting Ruby full-time, right? So how do I get there, right? And I mean, on paper, it's relatively simple, right? It's just a number, right? I have so many, you know, people paying me and that means I make so much every month and that's enough to pay the bills. And so I can go to my employer and I can say, I really appreciate everything, but I'm going to go do this other thing. And so, yeah. So who are those folks, right? What And that's kind of the next stage. So, you know, and I push people because you, Dave, you also said you have a five year plan. But then I like to break it down. What do I need to do over the next three months? Right. How do I knock that out so that, you know, I'm making the kind of progress I need to make toward my goal. Right. And so it could be, you know, I need to learn these marketing things or I know that this things coming out that I need to be on top of. my videos. You go learn those over the next three months, right? And you feel like that'll attract enough people in. So that's kind of the next stage and just walking people through that process. There's a book out there called The 12 Week Year that I have adopted a lot of stuff out of for that. But yeah, I feel like it's really down to consistency, right? It's just consistency and not spending your time on things that aren't going to move the needle for you. you're not spending time on the things that aren't gonna move the needle for you. In other words, figuring out what those next steps are and then doing them, right? Then you get eventually to that point where things pay off for you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's interesting that you brought the example that you did, because most of the things you're going to do that are going to be negatively impactful to your career are down to the people in the way that you talk to them or treat them. If you came and you raised the concern, hey, look, we've got a bunch of people on this product and it really makes a difference and blah, blah, blah, and you're reasonable about it and they come back and they say, well, we're going to move all the features over to this other product and we're going to move all the customers over or two, and you make the case for why you think that is or isn't a good idea, and they make the case for why they're going to do it anyway, you're not going to get fired. But if you go in there and you blow your wad because you're emotionally compromised, and you're insulting to people, and you do the things that really you shouldn't do in the way you treat people, that's almost always why I see people lose their job. not because they weren't technically competent or because they made a major technical mistake or anything like that. Usually it's because they did something that you know caused somebody else in the organization to react to the way that they were behaving. And so, yeah, you know, there are definitely detrimental things that people can do. Um, I, I really do plan to focus mostly on the positive things that people can do because I think, I think if you're focused on, uh, consistent learning, building relationships and, um, you know, kind of showing up within the company and within the community, those are going to be the things open doors for you. And I'd rather talk about opening doors than the things that are going to, uh, close the doors. that sometimes it may be detrimental, but it may be worth taking a stand as well. And you've got to know when to pick your battles. Right. So for example, and again, I'm not going to make a value judgment on this, but I know a lot of people that lost their jobs because they wouldn't get the COVID-19 vaccine, right. And you know, you can argue whether they're right or wrong. I'm not interested in that, but a lot of people felt like they were in the right. That was the right thing to do to take a stand because they felt one way or the you know, whatever. So I feel like if they firmly believed that it was harmful or unnecessary or infringed on their rights and they were willing to take the hit for it, I feel like that was justifiable, right? But if you felt like, you know, maybe I just don't know or I don't care or I'm really gung ho about it, you know, you getting the vaccine and keeping your job is also the right call, right? And so if you're making sort of a moral judgment, I guess, on what you believe, that's fine, but you also have to be willing to accept the consequences. There's some of that that plays into it too. Can I go home and feel good about myself if I make this decision? At the end of the day, I'm not your conscience and I have no interest in being it. That's a call you have to make. Like the example you gave Dave, there's no positive outcome for posing a resistance or building a resistance because they're going to do what they're going to do anyway. Yeah, Twilio. They're not the only ones either. Mmm. Oh yeah. right. Yep.

 

Yeah, I was going to say a lot of this reminds me of too, there's kind of like an extra component, a layer on top of all of this that seems to trigger a lot of this. And that's kind of like your gauge of how much work you're doing. Right. And I'd like to visit this topic because there are so many people that get burned out in our industry. I mean, in a lot of industries, It stems from putting too much work in specific things and not taking the appropriate time that your body needs. Because it's so easy to get caught up, especially once you start building a family and there's other dependents that start depending on you and taking your time. Your time is only going to get smaller as you get older, right? And then you get grandkids and then it opens back up again. But from now on, from when you're

 

Mm-hmm.

 

young, your time just starts compressing itself down. And we keep talking about focusing on your five-year plan or whatever that you want to get done and accomplish. And it's very easy. Dave, I imagine when you started drifting, Ruby, that you were putting in more hours than you had available. Because I know I've done that on side projects where I've just started dumping time in because I was really excited about it and Then you know realizing that my body actually needed a break from the things that I was doing And the work that I was doing and it's very easy to let that also affect You know your paid job too if you start giving your time too much attention outside of work too that can also create these problems That could manifest themselves different ways that maybe you're not thinking about. And so it's, I just want to say it's good to get time for yourself and not set your expectations of yourself too high. In that, you know, know what you can do and don't do more

 

Mm-hmm.

 

than that really. I think it's very easy to just let things

 

Right.

 

fall apart and think that you're not in control, which you are. all the time that you have to use. So, you know, if you feel overburdened in any way, you know, it's time to just take a stint time it's not done. And they're at RailsConf recently, there was a great talk, I forget her name. But there was a great talk, she joined Vimeo recently. And she was talking about her just getting burnt out, putting too much time in, over writing blog articles and you know trying to do it all and just not taking the time that she needs for herself and I know that's a common thread in a lot of things and it ends up you know with people be either getting fired or themselves leaving you know especially a great place to work and I want to circle back because like finding that great place to work that an environment very important. And maybe one of the most important things when you're looking, you know, for a place to help guide where you want to go even, you know, there are so many great companies that do Ruby that help nurture, you know, your your future.

 

Yeah, I think there are a couple of things that I want to point out. I think depending on, again, where you want to get to, you may just have to, for a while, burn all the fuel you've got. That's usually more the entrepreneurial ventures, depending on where you are and how you're set up. Versus, yeah, if you're trying to advance within a company or work for an organization like that, They'll give you the resources you need for that kind of a thing. But if you're on your own, a lot of times you're on your own. The other thing that I want to point out is that if you want results that you don't see the majority of people getting, you've got to be doing things that the majority of people aren't doing. Generally, what I find is that those are the things with a little bit of planning that you can fit into the day without a ton of time being taken up. burnout things is we've picked something that's really big, that only has a small payoff, and there are only small parts of it that really are going to matter. But yeah, it's not worth losing your health, it's not worth losing your family. And so yeah, there's definitely a balance to be found. But what I find is that a lot of people will look at something, it'll feel hard or uncomfortable, and then they'll find excuses not to do it. And I worry that somebody's going to say, well, this puts me out of balance, where in reality, if they do it, it's going to pay off for them. And so I think there's a balance there. And I think everybody has to evaluate where that's at. I do want to talk real... Oh, go ahead, Dave. And then I kind of want to take us into kind of the handful of things that I tell people to do as part of this, you know, staying current and building up your career. Mm-hmm. Oh boy, I've been there. I've so been there. Yep. Yep, absolutely. And I think that kind of comes back to what I've been talking about with a lot of this stuff is it is that consistency, right? It's constantly delivering for yourself and for the people that you're committed to serve. So there are a few things that I tell people to do as part of this process. So once you know where you wanna end up, then it's okay. What do I need to do? Who do I need to be in order to have that? And one of the things that I tell people to do on a regular basis is just learn something new. I tell people that you can do this in 10 minutes every day. You see a lot of these folks out there that are, they seem to just have this instinctive knowledge for how this goes together, how that works or whatever. of is a consistent learning regimen of some kind. Now in order to know what to learn right because we're talking about how to stay current there are a couple of tricks that I have for this. We're gonna run out of time before I go through everything that we should do but you can sign up for the course I'll walk you all through it. But one of the major things that I've done is I use a program called Feedly. We can count that as a pick. So what Feedly does is it allows RSS feeds. By the way, podcasting, if you listen to a podcast, it's all delivered through RSS feeds. I think most people understand what it is. If not, it's an XML file that lists stuff, content. So a lot of blogs out there have them. If somebody's on Medium, they have it. Podcasts have them. YouTube channels have them. They don't publish it. RSS button on the YouTube website, but if you put in the YouTube channel, Feedly and some of the other ones can pick it up. GitHub repos have them. And so, you know, a lot of the things that you're going to want to kind of stay current on, you can do, right? And so for me, what I find is that if I spend some time picking up, hey, for example, you know, today at work, I was trying to figure out why this API wasn't working and somebody's like, well, why don't you just put the stuff into Postman and make it work? Well, postman to get auth credentials, right? An auth key. I haven't actually used it to actually hit an API, which is what it's designed for. And so, you know, that might be something on my radar. It's not new technology. It's not something that I have to stay up on, but it's something that's going to pay off, right? And so I usually spend two or three of my days every week where I learn something new, learning something that I need to know, you know, now or soon. And then the rest of it is other stuff, right? But that stuff that you're trying to stay current on, what I do in Feedly is I just have a board or a list and I just star stuff and put it on the list. And then the next day when I'm going to learn something, I'll go read the blog post or I'll go watch the video or whatever. And that really does put me in a position where a lot of this stuff pays off. So I can subscribe on GitHub to releases on the Rails repo. or a new beta or whatever, or an alpha version, and that's something that I wanna go play with, it'll notify me. And so I can just work through that list and see what's going on. But a lot of times the other thing is, is that some of the things that I need to learn are not gonna be those kind of technical skills where I can go read a blog post or whatever. And so the other thing that I've done is, like if it's leadership skills or interpersonal skills or things like that, there are a lot of books and courses and things like that that you can go pick up on. And so a lot of times it's well established stuff. I'm not staying current. I'm learning skills that I need to learn in order to become, rather than learn how to do the things, the person that I need to be to qualify for whatever it is. Because when you're hiring a senior dev, you're not just hiring somebody that has tech skills. You're hiring somebody that has tech skills that can work together with the people on the team, can take the lead when they need to, And so, you know, if you're hiring a dev evangelist, right, they need to be able to speak, they need to be able to teach, they need to be able to write. And so depending on where you want to end up, you know, some of these other skills are probably going to play in as well. And so that that's the approach that I use. And yeah, I use Feedly. And then if I run into something that I can't really, you know, consistently pull into Feedly, then a lot of times I'll just set up a Trello board and I'll just stick it in. to an RSS feed that gave it to me in the first place. But that gives me the the result I want. And then the other piece of this, because it's not just learning, but a lot of times it's how you learn it, I benefit a lot from having people explain stuff to me. That's why I love podcasts. And so I have people start a blog or a podcast or YouTube channel or something so that put this stuff out, but then the flip side is is that you know if If I want to learn a thing and I want you know I want somebody to explain to me how to do it then a lot of times. I'll invite them on a podcast right Or you can invite them to do kind of a text-based Interview I've seen those on blogs right or invite them to your YouTube channel And then you can just ask them all your questions and you get kind of get that free mentorship And and that's another means to doing that the other thing is is it? that you are involved in the community, you've got relationships with people that matter, and that you know the things that people need to know so that if the opportunity that I need isn't where I'm at, the people who have that opportunity are the people that I'm either meeting through my content or they're gonna be able to see my content and know that I'm the right person. And a lot of times that just short circuits a whole bunch of things and opens a whole bunch of doors. Thanks for watching! Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Feedly also does Reddit. It does

 

Yeah,

 

Reddit,

 

I was

 

Twitter,

 

going to save

 

newsletters,

 

mine for

 

and

 

picks, but

 

RSS feeds.

 

since we're on the topic of learning, I mean, there are so many great free communities out there, specifically for Ruby and Rails and Joe Masolotti, who runs Rails devs. And if you're not familiar with Rails devs, it's a great site to get, you know, recruiters to look at you and kind of build your credibility in the, you know, recruitment process. But he has a great list of open Discord servers and Slack servers that are out there and mailing lists that are all very inviting to the Ruby and Rails community and just great resources. And that is a great way to even, aside from going to conferences, which is I would say yourself out there and meet other, you know, even just to see what other companies

 

Hmm.

 

are out there that might be worth looking at, right? Because a lot of times it's very hard to know what is a good company and what's not. And you know, you could tell a lot by the presence of some of these conferences very easily what companies stand out. Because, very hard to hire right now, specifically in our industry and our, you know, sect of Ruby. And, you know, going to any of these conferences, you know, whoever's there hiring the most people is probably, you know, a good tell at the quality of the company if they're able to retain the people that are so valuable right now, right. But just side note, you know, to really just diving onto your learning through what other people are sharing their other processes. You know, I'm I'm in a Ruby on Rails link Slack channel often and just exploring around and seeing what people are posting and you know, people post their problems and every, you know, people contribute and say, Oh, I've had that problem where, you know, they might post to some obscure Rails issue that's been out for five come across it by searching because it would never come up in a search because how do you search for a specific bug that has like a weird chain of dependencies right so I mean joining these communities you can just learn so much without having to pick something even right you could just be like oh like somebody posted this issue they're having what is that right like you know it might not even be an issue that you're having but like seeing what other can sometimes just unfurl a whole section of learning that you didn't even know that you would be interested in.

 

Yeah, I just want to pile onto that. And I've told this story before, but I'm going to tell it again. And by the way, meetups are another great way, right? If you can't travel, or, you know, the online conferences are just not at a good time. You can go watch the talks, but the magics in talking to people. So the very first conference I went to, brand new Rails developer. In fact, about to be hired for my first full-time developer job. I was working QA at another company. I went to the conference because I wanted to meet people and see what was going on there. So, I walk in and I sit down and there's this huge, huge guy sitting in the seat, just kind of on the other side of the aisle. White hair, big white beard. I just look at him and I start talking to him. And at the time, you know, I'd been exploring testing rails and testing Ruby. And so I just looked at him and I said, you know, and so we got talking and you know, it's like, so I have a question, right? People keep talking about mocking in tests, right? And, you know, I just don't understand the difference between stubs and mocks and how they're used and all that stuff. And so he explained it to me, right? He just And, you know, we talked for like 45 minutes because I was really early for the conference. It was a single track conference, it was Mountain West Ruby Conference. And then when it got, oh, you know, when it started, somebody sat down next to him and I figured out that this guy was kind of a big deal. And it was the late Jim Wyrick that I was sitting next to, right? And you know, just explained the whole thing to me. And I had no idea. who he was, no idea that people really looked up to him. I had no idea he had written FlexMock, which was a Mocking, Lime, and Stubbing library. But it's that kind of thing. It's those kinds of interactions. And Jim and I got to be pretty good friends at all the Ruby events. I'd wind up going to lunch or dinner with him at least once or twice. And if I ever had questions, I could just through him and there's just so much good that comes out of that, right? Or you might wind up going to the meetups and meeting some senior folks there that maybe aren't well known, but still can offer you kind of that understanding of what's next in your career path. The other thing though is that, and this is fun to do at a bunch of these conferences and stuff is just talk to people about what they're using, right? It's like, hey, I'm building a side project and I want to try something different for auth. What are you using? Right. And so you may find out that, yeah, 90% of them are using devise and the other handful of people are using Auth0 or OmniAuth or, you know, whatever. Right. And so, um, you know, it's like, oh, well, how does that work? And what are the trade-offs and do you like it? And, you know, stuff like that. There's just so much power to it. but just talking to people. And I'd love to, I've talked to a bunch of people that, I used to talk to people and be like, well, there's no Meetup near me. And so we'd get on meetup.com and we'd put in their zip code. And if they were in the US at least, or most of Europe, there was one within a half hour of them, right? Even if they weren't in a major city. And nowadays after COVID, a lot of those aren't running anymore. So I'm not seeing that as much. love to get an online meetup set up like that. And what I've been looking at doing is setting it up so that they're like basically open virtual tables. So you can sit down at the virtual table and turn your camera on and talk to people. But yeah, there's there's so much that comes out of those conversations that happen more naturally than they do over Slack. The other thing is is... What was that? Uh huh. Yeah. Yep. But the other thing is that I found is that having those relationships opens doors too, right? It's not just the ideas you get from people. It's also the, hey, you seem like a person I'd like to work with, or my friend's company's hiring and they really need somebody and you seem like the kind of person that they could use, right? And so, you know, when it is time to move, I got a bunch of contracts too as a freelancer from relationships like that that I got from meetups and conferences. So. Anyway, so those are kind of the biggies, right? Is doing all those things. And there are approaches to each of those, right? To watching videos or working through courses or listening to podcasts to make sure that you're getting the most out of them. And that's what I intend to cover in the course. I just don't have time to cover it right here, right now. But so just walk you through, OK, what do you want? All right, what's the short-term goal? And then, yeah. places to make the difference. Right? And if you spend a half hour to an hour a day on this, you know, and then, you know, make it out to a meetup or a conference on a periodic basis, you're doing pretty good and you should be able to stay up on things and be able to put yourself in a position, the position you want to be. And then yeah, don't be afraid to venture into some of the other content out there for like business people and influencers and stuff. doors up for you if you want to go in a different way other than climbing the ladder within a company or within multiple companies. That's the gist of what I've been telling people and coaching people on for the last few months is just those kinds of things. I had one guy that I coached and he started a Flutter podcast. days now. And so you can find these opportunities. I've coached other people that just wound up getting basically a promotion and a raise at work because they did a handful of things that demonstrated that they were overqualified for what they were being paid and the position they were in, and at the same time helped whoever it was that was making these decisions, who was probably just busy. Right? Most of the time people aren't trying to hold you down, they're just busy. opportunity to demonstrate to the people that made these decisions to give them the promotions. I've talked to other people through, you know, coach them through going freelance or finding more clients as a freelancer. These things work for all of those scenarios, right? I've coached people through, you know, kind of making the connections so they could write a book, right? Because a lot of times, it's part of it's about your writing ability and part of it's whatever series, whatever publisher. And so, you know, a lot of this just breaks down to, you know, who do I need to know, what do I need to know, and how do I show people that I've got it. And so that's what I'm pushing for. So anyway, I'll put a link to the course in the show notes, but if not, I mean, I hope this helped people just kind of get inspired to, you know, go out and blaze your own trail. Or if you're gonna stay on the same general trail that people stay on, that you're not stuck where you are, that you can climb out of wherever you're at if you take the initiative and go own it. All right, anything else we want to hit before picks?

 

We've got quite a few

 

Alright, let's do

 

that

 

picks. Valentino,

 

just sparked from

 

you have some picks?

 

our conversations here. The first one, and it's probably the most relevant, is Brandon Weaver over at Gusto. He started a brand new Ruby Learning Center. It's basically a Discord server that walks through a bunch of known, published Ruby and Rails, Ruby-related books. that are out there. It seems to be a fantastic resource. So if you are interested in specifically Ruby diving in to some more, you know, more content that's out there, it's a great place to check out. The second one is Rails Devs that I mentioned, the reverse, it's called the reverse job board for Ruby. Definitely worth checking out if you are interested. And the last one I have is a product that Oximity makes here called Rounsey. And it's a great way to just set up a link and it rotates a video chat. So if you have a group that you wanna just quickly make a rotating group of people that randomly get put together, it's a great way to do that. off sites all the time to help just meet new people. I use it at conferences all the time, virtually. And it's a great way to just hang out with new people and kind of get a limited time with them.

 

Looks like we lost Dave. I'll throw out some pics and then. Hopefully he'll come back. Did I pick Irish

 

I don't

 

Gage

 

think so.

 

last time? It doesn't sound familiar, all right. All right, so, oh, Dave's back. Dave, do you wanna do your picks? looks like he's still frozen or something. All right, I'll throw out my picks and then hopefully we get things ironed out with him. So I was playing games with some friends of mine the other day and we played a game called Iron Gauge or Irish Gauge and Irish Gauge is a train game. So if you played like ticket to ride and you build train lines and you get bonuses for connecting cities, Irish Gauge is the same thing as in Ireland. The difference is, You get points for like Finishing train lines and you know the length of your train lines in Irish Gage you are trying to effectively make the most money and so you can own stock in the different train lines and Then when anybody calls for dividends you get paid out according to the the number of cities the train line connects to I plays in as well. No, it doesn't. It's just the cities. And so you're trying to connect to as many cities as possible. And so you can either build trains, you can auction stock, but if you auction stock, you have to be able to buy the stock at its face value in order to auction it. Somebody may still outbid you, but you have to be able to buy it if nobody else wants it. I'm trying to remember you can build trains, you can call for dividends, you can auction stock, Or you can upgrade cities. And then when you call for dividends, what happens is you have a bag full of little cubes, and you pull out three cubes, and the colors of the cubes determine which cities pay out. And so, anyway, it's pretty cool. It's pretty simple. The instructions for it are one page front and back, right? It doesn't have a bigfic manual. 26 on board game geek out of five for weight most casual games hit about two so you know it and And most the complexity is is do I want to call for dividends or do I want to build my train line into the next? city Right and you know When we played I wound up buying the same train stock as another guy, right? And so we built that one train line and then we built up the other train line together, right? I took my turn and built, right? So we got to a lot of cities that way. Doesn't always work out that way, you know, and when we were done, then I owned a different train stock than he did. So then I was focused on that one and he was focused on the other one. You know, do I call for dividends if it's gonna give so-and-so more money than me because I'm competing with them over this other train line stock, right? Cause you get paid out proportional to the number of stocks you own versus everybody else. So anyway, it was really fun, really, really fun. And so I'm going to pick it. They have a couple of other games that are kind of spin-offs and I guess more complex than that. I haven't played them. So my buddy had them. I don't remember what they were called. But yeah, you can go check out Irish Gage. That's where I'd start. And then if you like it, you can go pick up the other ones. But it's pretty fun. The friend of mine that I played it with, he's part owner in a game store. And so he had played it at work at the store and then bought it and came home with it. So then what else am I going to pick? I've been reading a book series, a new book series, or listening to it on audible. It's called the first books. I am not a serial killer by Dan Wells. And yeah, the main character has sociopathic. I guess, for lack of a way, but he's a sociopath. But you know, and so you see him kind of battling his nature to, you know, want to commit murders and stuff. And honestly, I'm not a psychologist. So you know, if you know a whole lot more about psychopathy than I do, and it bothers you, I'm sorry, but I am not an expert there. I just I found it interesting, you know, kind of reading through the struggles that he went Um I don't want to give it away. Anyway, it starts out somebody's murdering people in his town. And so he starts checking out what's going on and trying to figure out who's doing it. And once he figures out who's doing it, there's a twist. And the twist happens probably a third of the way into the book. And then the rest of it is him trying to figure out how to stop the killings. But anyway, so, anyway, really, really, I really enjoyed it. And it was a short listen on Audible. I've already picked up the next one. Anyway, so I'm going to pick that. I did want to shout out about the course. Just go to topendevs.com, click courses, it'll be listed there. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm updating the coaching offerings. We'll have weekly calls and I'll walk you through advancing your career if you want more one-on-one focused stuff. A whole lot of people sign up for the course, the weekly calls. I'm going to try and prioritize the things that I can, and then answer everybody else in the course setting. But if you want one-on-one where I'm talking to you, or one-on-like 10, where I'm covering things for everybody, both of those options are going to be available. And then finally, the last thing is I'm going to start a book club for developers. I think I'm probably either going Martin and see if we want to cover one of their books for the first book. And yeah, we'll do a weekly call as we go through those books. And then I'm going to set up a discourse forum for the book club so that if you want to join in, you can. And yeah. So if you're interested in any of that, let, you know, just jump on top end devs.com and it should be available. to January. So if you were looking forward to that, look forward to it a little further in the future. And yeah, that's pretty much what I've got. Dave says in the chat

 

We should

 

that

 

pick

 

he doesn't

 

Drifting

 

have any picks.

 

Ruby for him.

 

So unless he wants to unmute

 

It is

 

and

 

a

 

change

 

great

 

his

 

resource.

 

mind, we will go ahead and wrap

 

I actually

 

up.

 

watch his videos all the

 

We

 

time

 

should.

 

and I highly recommend

 

Dave picks

 

it for

 

drifting

 

anybody

 

Ruby,

 

interested

 

it's

 

in learning

 

awesome.

 

some great stuff.

 

Yeah, they're exceptionally well done. And the thing that I like, cause some of the, some of the videos that I've watched that are kind of in this arena, they kind of ramble through and, um, you know, it's like, oh, well, this didn't really, and his, his are really well put together and really well thought out and they flow really well. And at the same time, they also explain well what you're trying to learn. So you kind of get the best of all worlds where it's not this rambling But it is complete so Anyway Yeah, definitely go check it out. It's not that expensive either. That's the other great thing so

 

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And

 

All right, well,

 

I mean,

 

let's go ahead and wrap

 

just keep

 

it up.

 

learning.

 

This was a

 

Experimenting.

 

great conversation, enjoyed it. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is it's not rocket science. Um, if you set that long-term plan and then it's like, you know what? I've been working toward being a technical co-founder and I just figured out that that is not the path for me. You probably still learned a ton of stuff that you can use somewhere else. And so just be consistent, just keep

 

early.

 

moving. Um, and you know, you'll, you'll find your place. All right, until next time, folks, Max out.