from long nights at the er to software developer

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me, old fashioned email, social media at T D S and T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. All right, y'all. So let's dive in and say, Emmett, give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go ahead. So Emmett, I'm a software developer at an early stage startup and got my start by just building and networking.

And that's shooting my shot, I guess, as often as I can. I love it. So we're going to talk about that. So one thing that I want, and again, to Bill, Ken, it's great to see you, Ken just super jacked up for this conversation today. Gailin, it's great to see you. Thanks. Thank you. So let's, there's a lot of places to start here. Right. So, I mean, I just want to hear your story first. Right. Where did you start? I know you started in the ER. How long did it take you to find a dev job? Can you just kind of walk people through your story in the next like five minutes?

Yeah, so basically I had my first kid in 2016 and I was working at the local Shindelier factory. Every town has one, I'm sure. And I got a job as a janitor at the hospital, paid a lot more, better benefits, like, you know, that slow move up. And, um, well, you know, mop and floors, cleaning up patient rooms and being like, I have a background in electronics. I'm scrubbing toilets. I got a, got to figure something out. Yeah. And like, you know, busy working full time, actually over time, got a young kid and then hours a week were you working? Um, close to 50. Um, and my, my wife worked too.

So it was like, I was a lot. I worked evenings. I worked through 11 30, came home midnight up 7 a.m. Got her to work and I was home with the kid. Um, and then, yeah, and then I discovered podcasts. podcasts. So I, they let you listen to podcasts while you work in, yeah. So discovered code newbies podcasts. They interviewed Quincy Larson, a free code camp. I was like free, free. I'm in. Yeah. I mean, it's not great. And, and I needed, you know, you needed, you need laptop and internet to start and so I started crushing free code camp and then you know while working bringing my laptop for lunch you know half hour half hour unpaid lunch crunch out as many free code camp stuff as you can Yeah, and then Twitter became people were posting.

What got you on Twitter, right? Because that's how you and I got connected. Yeah, so again, it was like the podcast of like Code Newbies was like, follow us on Twitter. And I was like, I have a Twitter account, but like, who, you know, who's going to listen to me or interact with me on this platform and then, and it became a way for me to interact with the podcast that I listen to. Okay. So what would happen is I would start, you know, listen to a podcast at work. Okay. Overcast has the share, share button, share via Twitter, tag the podcast and say, this is an awesome episode and then like a quote.

Really? So like a quote from what you're listening to because there's a lot of people that will just like sweet, great episode. But it's like, did you actually listen to it or did you just like, you know, put in out there for clout? So you would listen. So just to reiterate this, because this is brewing, because I've actually been talking about this, how I think if you want the best way to network, I think creating content, summarizing somebody else's content is like literally the best way to do it. So you're saying that you went on Twitter every day and basically reposted the episode with like a summary of the episode essentially, like one or two sentences.

Not even, even like, sometimes not even that, just like, you know, or like if they mention a resource or they have like a really funny tagline or like something that gets set in the episode, you know, this could be like an hour in, right? Like, there's, you know, just tweeting out that way, like, and then the podcast hosts see the tweet, and then they start interacting. And then that's, and then you find that like their personal account, right? And then they start feeling that way. Yeah. And then you start interacting with them directly. And I mean, given this was five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It's a slog.

It's not a, it's not a, you're not gonna send that one tweet and with no experience and nobody knows who you are and land something. Yeah. Talk about, so all right, so you started your journey, you heard about obviously, you know, Code Newbies, started listening to the podcast, started tweeting about it. What got you into Code Your Dads? Like, cause again, like the two things I preach and that you have been doing before you've been met is building community and leveraging social media. Right? So what made you start Coder dads? So this was actually me and Will, our buddy Will from, he's at Auth0 now.

Oh yeah, we'll go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not now we'll go and sorry. Johnson, yeah. Yeah, so it was like we were griping about, I think we both drank the bootcamp Kool-Aid. Yeah. know, the learn to code in six months, make $150,000 a year set for set for life, you know, you're living on boats and but is busy parents like I can't take six months off as the sole provider for my family. There's no way. Yeah, like I can't take that time off work. Like I've been the sole provider for my family since, you know, forever really. And people are like, Oh, just take the six months.

It's like, you know how much like that's such a big risk. Like I can't, you know, and Will and I were talking and he was like, there's got to be others. Other dads out there that are struggling. Yeah. And like right now, I think we've got like 230 dads in the Slack channel. And that's awesome. And we've seen people transition into tech. We've seen people start companies. We've seen like quit their day job and go freelance. So again, I want to give you props, right? Emmet didn't wait around for someone else to start something. Right. And because I think that's what's holding back a lot of people.

I think is they're scared to get started and you got started. And that's huge. And it's literally just around a topic. Right. So literally just around topic, you were passionate about other dads and kind of the situation. Absolutely. Cause there was nothing out there. It's all of the content, all of the content out there was learned to code in six months, make a hundred thousand plus a year. But you have to use us. You have to use this platform or boot camp or whatever. It's like, and then, oh, and this was all in person too. Right? Like in person boot camps. It wasn't in location wise.

Some of the worst advice I got, oh, just go to a conference. Okay. Like I can't do that. Like, like, okay, I got first, I got to get time for my non-tech job. And we had to ask for a vacation six months in advance. Yeah, it's like, you know, so you can go to conferences, can't go to meetups, like. So you knew you had to be smart in leveraging your time remotely. Absolutely. Yeah, which is, again, I wanna say this, you can build community remotely. Emma's done it. He did it. You can do it. I've met one other coder dad and he's local. That's the only way.

It's all 248 others. Right, yeah, and they're just, and it's also time too. It's the you're sitting at home on the couch. Send that tweet. Yeah. Send that message, send that email that you've been dreading. I love it. Just like, and don't even, you don't even have to start with an ask or anything. Just like, hey man, saw your tweet. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, you don't even have to like ask them, just literally just engage with them. And I guess that's what I'm saying. So it was interesting. Gary Vaynerchuk, obviously big fan, He posted something the other day. He was like after a conference in the back of his car.

And he was kind of ranting about like your current life situation and how he goes, it's not as bad as you think it is. And he was actually talking about taking jobs where you can be on your phone, right? Where you can send a tweet, where you can put out, where you can engage with people online, right? Hey, speak of the devil, William Johnson, what's up? What's up, buddy? We're just talking about you, right? So again, and that's what you did, right? you realized that you couldn't go to a conference, you couldn't take off six months of work, so you knew that you had to leverage community and the tools out there to network virtually.

Right, and I think the actual benefit for me before I started working in the emergency room, because when I started working in the emergency room, I already sort of had a Twitter following And we had Coder Dad sort of starting in. But I was working three to 11.30 PM. People are done work then. And I was able to fire off those tweets and get those engagements while I was at work. And I mean, did I get pulled into the manager's office and talked to about being on my phone at work? Absolutely. like, you know, they're like, Hey, you're on your phone a lot. Like, yeah, yeah, I got in this place.

Yeah. And then it's like, so is everybody else. Yeah, that was my other, that was my argument. Well, and I think too, I think another thing to give you props with is you leveraged every bit of time you could. To further yourself in your career, right? So a lot of people, and again, I, again, I want to give them at props. Emmett literally is the poster child of what I preach, right? So I talk all the time about how people are like, well, I don't have enough time. I have a family, right? Emmett's got kids three kids, right? Emmett? Yep, right three kids young young young very young, right?

I've three and one five. Yes, exactly. And so for me and so for me What I would say is is what I tell people is leverage the spare time you have the downtime Right like what are you doing and I say this like what are you doing you go to the bathroom? And you sit on the pot are you on TikTok? Scrolling or are you actually on LinkedIn or Twitter trying to network? Right and I give props to Emmet because Emmet it sounds like that was your strategy Yeah, and it's In the biggest thing is like I think just send it to send that tweet get that tweet out there and Or your LinkedIn post, you know, I think I stayed away from LinkedIn just because it's...

I didn't feel comfortable yet. Twitter was much more like hanging out with your buddies, right? Much more forgiving as I like to say. Like, I'm kind of just spout off stuff. And it's... Well, I think also because I wasn't established in the field I wanted to be in. like who's gonna like, you know, I'm much more likely to build community and support through Twitter where it feels like you're friends, we're linked in where it's professionals being like, who's this guy? That makes sense. So I want to pivot the conversation to, since we're already halfway through, I knew this would happen, but I want to kind of talk specifically about your job search, right?

So obviously you ended up, you know, your first job, not obviously, but you ended up first job with our BFF Kelly Vaughn. And that obviously didn't work out layoffs. And then, you know, so talk about how you, how you ended up. What was her company's name again? I forgot. It was Gavalo. That's it. Shopsi app. And yeah, I mean, shout out to Kelly and that whole squad over there for being like, you know, making that bet of giving me a shot because that's all it takes. You get your foot in the door. You get somebody to say, here's a job offer, you're in. Yeah, I believe in you, you're in.

Right. And regardless of your experience there, you're in. Like, um, but how did you get connected? Like did you get con, what was, was, did you get, did you find the opportunity to go ball because of Twitter? Yes. And Kelly and other community groups, um, in the e-commerce space. It was like, and it's, it's really funny because I was getting frustrated and upset about it. Yeah. I think I was doing, I was doing interviews. on my days off, I was doing interviews on my lunch break. Yeah. Like, I was doing, I've done phone screenings on my drive home from work. And it was like, what are the, these people are looking for, not me.

I think that's in, I actually wrote a, like a blog post, like I posted it like two days before. Kelly asked me to interview and it's like I'm going to switch to customer support, remote customer support. I'm going to do it. I'm going to give up dev for right now, work on it later and get, to get my foot into the door and detect because I was like this is, you know, working in emergency room. I can do email customer support later. So, I mean, again, I want to reiterate this for you all watching. Evan, you said this journey was what, five years? Five years.

And consistently of messaging and DMing and you have to get your chops too, right? Yeah. You have to have, you have to learn the skills that these jobs are hiring for. It's not, but having a network, probably, if I didn't have coder dads or a Twitter account, I would still be at the hospital. And I did not pay and I did not pay him at the same time. It's the truth. I mean, it really, really is the truth. And so, um, so talk, talk to me then. So obviously you were laid off. Yep. Cause the market's weird, um, in, you know, no hard feelings. That's like, sure.

I joined an early stage startup. What do you, yeah, there's not much you can, you know, you could be the best engineer that never writes a bug in your life and the money's not there or whatever. Yeah. You're gonna, when layoffs happen and what I did is I took, basically I got, it was the news Friday. You tweeted it. No, I actually waited a week. Oh, so I did some stealth mode. No big announcement because like, still pretty upset. Like I have kids I was worried about insurance and like mortgage and all of this stuff being like where, you know, cause it took me so long to get the first one.

I was like, if it takes that long again, like I'm done for, I'm back to the hospital. I'm back making minimum wait or whatever. So yeah, and then I tweeted out like a week later, after doing some initial interviews, calls, and code tests. I tweeted out. And I was doing four interviews a day for two weeks. Also, talk to me about, because that you texted me about the amount of DMs you got, how drastic it was after just getting some experience. Oh, I think I texted you like, like my phone's about to blow up. Like, and I thought it was, how many months of weeks, like five months?

Four, four. And yeah, it was like, and startups like doing crazy stuff. like, like that's a job, that's a company, you know. And then because I was listening to the podcast for the five years that was the host of the podcast, like we're hiring, do you want to interview? That's where I am now. So. So you heard about this hiring from a podcast? Well, it's the podcast that I was listening to back when I was a janitor that I was interacting with on Twitter. Yeah. And that's how the founder knew about me. Saw my tweet, reached out and said, hey. It's crazy, man. It's crazy how this stuff works.

Yeah, and without a network, you're, I don't know. I don't think. Okay, so what's your biggest advice? I mean, so it lasts like seven or eight minutes here. What's your biggest advice for people who go to code school that are starting the job search. What's some practical pieces of advice that you would give them? So biggest practical is, shout out other people, cheer other people on. There was some frustrating times where I saw people with less experience than they get their dream job. They'd got it in a year and a half and I'm still slogging away and is like, no, good on them. They won.

They punch their ticket. That's awesome. And I think sharing other people's work and being like, this is good. This is quality stuff. This is what I want to be doing. And just being really honest of like, this is good. I wanna see people win and drop your projects. You're like, I'm looking for work. And the other thing is take every call you can. Why? Cause you never know that that one call that you take. Hey, we're not hiring right now, but I got a buddy at this startup who's looking to, you know, if we can get along and I can get along with, you know, the hiring manager over there, like, yeah, you're a fit.

Would, would you get to you farther in the, you may skip that code challenge. Yeah. Because you have that soft skill or like you have that connection to that school or like location, like. Did you specifically go after the referrals? Like, did you specifically, because that's one thing I'm getting passionate about right now is telling people, hey, ask for the connection. Hey, Emmet, it was great chatting with you. Is there anybody else in your network that I can talk to? Right? And get those more from a hiring manager perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, did you try to focus on that? Or are you just saying that you took every call and it just kind of happened?

I took every call. And it was like, you know, 30-minute lunch break, 20-minute drive home. Like, hey, how's it going? What are you working on? You know, and I've made those referrals. Like, when they straight up said, like, you're too junior or like, we're not hiring for that specific role. It's like, well, I got the buddy that is. Then I'd send them a coder dad or somebody on Twitter that I saw got laid off. Or. So you would try to make a conscious effort to actually send people? Yeah, absolutely. That company's way that you were rejected for? Yeah. Hiring's hard, man. Like in, Yeah, so I got, so that tweet came out after I got reject, the tweet of looking for my next role happened after I got a rejection that I thought went really well.

Yeah. But that company's still doing awesome stuff. In tech smaller than you think it is. So you, and you never know, like I live in a small, small city. never know that that boss or that hiring manager that you pissed off. Guess what? He's the new manager at that dream job that you're applying for. He doesn't care how good your skills are. He knows that you were a jerk to him once. Yeah. I mean, that's it. I mean, could not say any better. And again, I think one thing I admire about Emmet is it's a constant give back, right? Emmet is is always wanting to prop people up.

Emmett's always wanting to send other candidates that could be a fit for a role that he didn't get qualified for. Listen, it took Emmett five years, but Emmett also went back to back in regards to finding jobs after getting laid off, right? Two weeks. It was two weeks from lay off to job offer. Two weeks. Damn, that's crazy. Two weeks with four months of experience. Right. Huge. Huge. And it also has, so the biggest, my biggest advice for the people that have gotten laid off recently, I got a letter from the CEO as a reference that I attached to my resume. Yep. So these layoffs happened.

Can I get a reason why? You know, it wasn't my experience. It wasn't my, I didn't do anything bad. it was because of X. Funds, yeah. Funds, startup decisions, you know, business decisions. So it's like, and to have that letter attached to a resume of a CEO from a company. And it could be your engineering manager, it could be whoever, just like, we loved working with you. We think you'd be an awesome addition to your team. Yeah, that's important too. And that's kind of what my guest yesterday said. He's a director of engineering. He kind of said the same thing. He leveraged the referral kind of internally and leveraged that.

Again, the job search is about, when I say gaming, I don't mean it a bad way, but you have to do so many things. And so again, I love that advice in regards to the letter of recommendation. I always talk about recommendations need to be on LinkedIn. So I love that. Emmet, as we wrap up here again, first off, thank you for coming on. Time flies when we're having fun. I do want to end with his last question with you today. Obviously because this show is called Guidance Council 2.0, because we had Guidance Councils in middle school and high school, but now they're just called therapists.

So what is your biggest piece of advice that you would tell your younger self. Career advice. Good things take time. I love it. Man, I got goosebumps. I love that. But it's hard, right? And you're about to give up multiple times. Oh, all right. Every four months, every rejection, everything. Every single time that you're about to give up. Yeah, and it's like, it's hard, man. It's, dog's bark and you're good. But yeah, so biggest thing is it takes time in, like it took me five years. And my wife was like, even if it takes till you're, you know, you're 30, I got laid off the day before my third birthday.

So I made it. I was in four months before my birthday. And then, yeah, be patient, raise people up, A lot of it. Don't burn any bridges unless it's, you know, real bad. Sure. Yeah. There is a time to protect yourself emotionally, but that's a whole nother conversation for another day. Yeah. Join us next time. Yeah. Join us next time on therapy talks. Well, Emmet, thank you again, man. I really appreciate it. Everybody thanks for hanging out with us today. Emmet, just keep crushing it, man. I think you're a positive force in the dev community. And I think you're doing great things. For those of you, I would highly connect with Emmet.

If you want to get involved with Coder Dads, shoot Emmet a DM, he'll send you an invite. He's built a really special community there. I wish I had more time to be engaged with that community, but I'm very thankful to be at least on the Slack channel. But Emmet, I hope you have a great rest of your week, man. I hope everybody has a great rest of week as well. Tomorrow morning, I am going live with data or XDATA. It's Tejas on Twitter. It's the company he works for. They just secured a Series A of 30 million evaluation. And so we're going live tomorrow. Basically, it's, I've been told it's like Versailles, but for databases.

So you won't want to miss that episode tomorrow. So Emmet, thank you so much, man. Stay on real quick. Y'all have a great one. We'll see you all tomorrow. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful, because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others, and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it.

Please, like, right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So, thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, tailor at vaco.com or at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.