networking and the restaurant industry w/ head of eng, seth alexander

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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 for 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, social media at tdesinted ESSEIN. 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. What up? What's going on everybody? I got an arrow. I got like a pushback say There we go we're live all right. What's going everybody good morning morning. Happy Tuesday August 1st for more months till Christmas. That's crazy And I'm excited to hang out with set today. It's it's been a minute set I think you were you were one of the og's on the show.

I think like I think like set came on in two I had about say 2000, 2020. And I haven't had him back. And after Seth went through his recent job search, I was like, man, we gotta get Seth back on the show. So Seth, thanks for joining me, buddy. Appreciate it. Yeah, happy to be here, man. Love everything you're doing. Congrats on, you know, moving over to Gonaia. Yeah, yeah, both Seth and I, new job. So we're gonna talk about today. For those of you who are tuning in, say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. I know Seth will too. Also, the reason why I tell people to say, Hey, it's not like some engagement hacked by any means.

I mean, it obviously helps. I'm not gonna lie, but also you get to see who's watching because at the end of the day, like literally, this is a networking platform, right? Like this is a meetup. I just realized that it is a meetup once a day for 30 minutes where you can show up in your pajamas, at your computer, drink a cup of coffee, say hey and network with others, right? So again, and shout out to y'all, Seth shot me a screenshot yesterday. was like, whatever I come on the show, y'all send him a bunch of, uh, of invite. So I appreciate that. Again, if you are watching, if I were you, I would really connect with every single person in the chat.

If you watch this in the future, I would still comment because there are a ton of people who network in the chat here, um, and it moved over to LinkedIn DMS. So again, kind of, kind of like what my steps would be. If I were you, if I'd be a part of this journey with y'all, I would network with every single buddy, every single person who comments on the show and the guest, Seth, message them, see if you can try to hang out with them for a minute or two virtually, then like keep up with them over social media, right? It's that whole networking thing.

So, so do that. So keep saying, Hey, again, because we're not in the metaverse yet, except guidance comes from 2.0 in the metaverse with Apple Vision, goggles would be pretty tight. Second thing is ask questions. So Seth is a wealth of knowledge. He's come from a great we're gonna talk about his background. So ask questions. And then finally, I want to give a shout out to that conference, the official coffee sponsor of guidance counselor 2.0. I'm drinking it right now. True story. If you want a few bucks off your coffee beans, go use GC two. Also, they, Clark sale and that conference announced the January Austin conference.

The keynotes are Danny Thompson, Kelly Vaughn, and Shonday Pearson. You probably would recognize all three of them because they've all been on the show before. So again, shout out to those three for keynoting that conference in Austin. Want to give a shout out to people who are tuning in this morning because there's a lot of y'all. John took off this morning just for this one. Man, I appreciate you buddy. We're clapping. I went to camp together. Oh, did you really? That's awesome. I love that. I love that. Congrats Seth. Mark, it's good to see you buddy from Minnesota. Fun fact, I got to see market that conference in person.

It was so awesome to meet him in person after He's on the show so much. Alex, Matt, Kate, let's good to see you. LinkedIn user, hey Seth, yo, Taylor, what's going on, LinkedIn user? Dominic, it's good to see y'all. Nate, look at this. Congrats on the new role. Chris, John, Janika's good to see you. Brett, Roberto, my guy. Good morning from the land of dirty diapers. Jordan's got a newborn, so congratulations. Jordan, I'm glad you're surviving. Also, James has a newborn as well. So y'all are just crushing it as dads. Let's see here, Stephen, it's good to see you. Hunter, we were just talking about you backstage.

on the stage. Let's see here. Who else? That conference is the best it absolutely is. Hey, Hunter, can't wait to be an awesome James saying here brother all the tacos and all the friendships. I loved all the presentations. Yeah, it was a really, really good conference. Let's see here Laura. It's great to see you. It's been a minute. I hope you're doing well. And then James, thank you for the kind words, my friends. Why does it my name show up? I think that's like a setting. It's a privacy thing because I remember I commented on your stream once and you. and I was LinkedIn user and I was like, oh, I mean, leave in comments.

I gotta go change my setting. The private setting. Yeah, it's something to don't, I don't really know how to change it off the fly. So, all right, well, let's go ahead and dive in here. So, Seth, I wanna ask you, right? You know, you and I were chatting backstage. And one of the things I'm trying to do is trying to get a little bit more like works, like get away from work stuff at the beginning of this show. So talk to me about, we talked about a podcast backstage. So can you talk about that podcast why other people should check it out? Yeah, yeah. And I love that you're doing more of a little bit like none.

Yeah. A little bit more like the life outside of the job. I firmly believe that knowing more about people and who they are builds empathy. And I love doing it with teams I work with as well. But we're talking about this podcast named Health Further and it's by Vic Gatter. I'm saying his name right. And Marcus Whitney, out of Jumpstart Foundry here in Nashville. And I've just started listening to it. I think they're on their 11th or 12th episodes. It's only been around a few months. It's new this year. Is that right? Health further? I think there's a colon between health and further. Okay, I had to be fancy, didn't I?

Yeah. And I'm loving it because they're talking about, listen to about three episodes, but they're talking about the macroeconomic market And they're specifically in healthcare, so in how it's affecting VC-backed companies and the healthcare markets. So really, some of it is very, very healthcare specific. So I'm learning a lot there. I'm in health tech now, I've been in before. But a lot of it is also very just useful to people who are working for venture-backed startups. Like, you know, when you learn, hey, because of the way that the Fed has raised the rates, money is more expensive, which means that VCs are lending out money differently and valuations are different.

So if your company raised money two years ago, you could have done everything perfect and your valuation has gone down. And it's just the math of how the money works. And understanding that, coming out of a layoff and a reduction in force, it's like, oh, this company is trying to maximize shareholder value and has an equity holder, I had options that I purchased. And exercise, this is something like, oh, this is not just like, oh, we're cutting costs because the company's going down the flames, but because, oh, the entire market is different now. We don't want to do a huge down round. Maybe we can store up our books and in our next valuation, we'll still be an increase.

So, yeah, it's super interesting. And I think it's valuable for anyone, anyone, period, but especially if you're in VC-Bac companies and especially so if you're in VC-Bac health tech companies. I love that. So another thing too, so Seth, what would be your biggest piece of data advice? I know there's a lot of new dads on the show commenting and Seth has, Seth how many kids you got again? I have five children. Five. Five. Five. The oldest turns is not, oh sorry, turns 11 in September. That's awesome. That's so awesome. That's awesome. Any big dad advice for us new dads on the show? Go with your gut.

They're all gonna be different. You're gonna fail a lot. Have a lot of grace for yourself. We all, I think we all want to be better than our parents. Yeah. We're all going to fail too and make some, a lot of the same mistakes. So just be easy on yourself. It's hard. What about hail? Hail still. I know. It's good to see you. Now I totally agree with that from, I have a three year old. So I can totally, yeah, give yourself grace for sure. All right. What's going dive in, man? You have a fascinating background. So I do want to start with the restaurant industry.

So can you talk about your career going from restaurant to software dev, the tools, the restaurant industry equipped you with, let's start getting into tech and then let's jump really far forward to your latest job search. Cool, yeah. So it's not anywhere on my resume now, but it should be. I'm talking to Taylor behind the scenes, or on my LinkedIn, but I did spend a decade in restaurant management, freestanding and hotel attached. And with that, picked up a ton of soft skills. You really learn how to talk to people when the most common person you speak to as a restaurant manager is an angry, hungry person.

Like, yeah. When you really think about it, when you've sat down in restaurants, how often are you like, can I speak to a manager? It's typically not when like things are going well. Right, right. But with that also like, for those in the national area who have visited, I was part of the opening manager team at Finewood Social or at the time would now. and with that, managing, I realize, like transferring over, like it's project management. Like, you know, I'm filling tables. I've got food going everywhere. I've got to manage four different areas. I've got things going on. I've got to plan out the next week.

It's like, we're planning week by week, you know, it's something I gel sprints every day. So, but with that, learned a lot about myself and really made the idea to, or made the transition to tech specifically for quality of life. You know, like working nights, weekends, restaurants hard. It is such a grind. If anybody is on the chat listening that has been the restaurant industry, like I have a mad respect for anybody who spent any significant amount of time in that. Yeah, the standard management week is 60 plus hours. Like that's the salary manager. You're working every holiday. Like it's an hospitality even more. I was looking to get into hotels, 24, 7, 365.

Like, so, yeah. Literally. So, you know, at 24, 25, it can be fun, but, you know, when I was pushing 30 and wiping the first few kids. Yeah, first few kids. Yeah, it's not a tenable. So, yeah, made the transition into tech and have loved it and been here ever since. That's awesome. So, talk about, I mean, one thing that I give props to you is your ability to network. You seem very networked into the Nashville community. I think a lot of that has to do with your time and evidence care with the crew, the engineering crew that we all know and love. Many of them have already commented on here.

Talk about the importance of networking, right? I mean, I talk about it all the time, and I'm sure people are like, I'm so sick and tired of hearing Taylor talk about networking. So I always like when other people talk about networking. So can you talk about that? Yeah, so networking and really, I think, long-term networking, I can tell you that for the first time in my career, like my networking helped me get this job that I currently have. Whereas prior, I was going to a meet-up a week before I started in tech. I was running a technical meet-up before I started in tech. I know, I know.

So it is a long game and really I believe that networking should not be necessarily about, you know, serving yourself. I know I've connected more people to jobs than I've received back. But just really caring about people and taking good care of friends and former co-workers. So I know something that I was mentioning. Taylor was, I can't remember who started it, but a bunch of us evidence care people, former evidence care people have a signal check going that we've had going since for two plus years now. That's awesome. And we stay in contact, and we're keeping up with what the company was doing. A lot of us have equity with it.

Commenting, lamenting. And as time passes, we're just keeping up with each other, talking about tech, sharing things, cool things we're finding. And it's been in a great spot to also be very honest and open with each other. Hey, I just got this role. And it's paying this much. And what are you guys paying over there? How much did you link? I love that. I really open an honest salary discussions around what we're seeing. And it's a trusted group. And most recently, I was at Bambi and was laid off. And we have a similar thing going. Though at this point, it's been just a, yeah, connected to the tail.

It's been a therapeutic thing to have a group of people that were all laid off at the same time, and being able to talk and really connect and empathize. I know a couple of people have said, hey, I really need this. Thanks for setting it up. I wasn't the one who thought of it. It was something I've been done prior. And they have an it's care group didn't go through a layoff situation, but just having that trusted group of people. Sometimes people I've worked with for two plus years, to be on these. So it's not like their acquaintances. So I want to go back, Cause all y'all are comments crazy.

I'm trying to keep up with all the comments on the screen. So like for example, I'm curious, a lot of people on this chat run the restaurant industry, like a lot. So like what is your advice for somebody? So like this right here Sarah, right? Currently doing about 60 hours a week in the kitchen while looking for my next role. I have the same story currently running tech meetup in Denver before I got my first full time tech position, black tech Denver. I love that so much, Jadika. Talk about what people can do that are trying to get an attack. Like can you talk about the importance of like just showing up and doing meetups, even if you're not in tech and how important that is?

Yeah. One thing that I learned early on is people notice they might not be saying it. You might not even realize it, but they notice. I remember there was a sat down with a guy here in Nashville. I'm just saying names because I have a nice picture of the story, But we're sitting there, I'm getting some advice. I'm still in the boot camp. I did a boot camp to change careers. And with that, I wasn't on the job hunt yet. And we sit down just to talk tech. I was buying a beer too, and you're hanging out. And he was like, hey, your name came up today in conversation with this other guy from this other company.

And they're both like senior engineers, been in industry close to 10 years. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, just because of how you're discussing things on Mash Day. Yeah. And then what's Nastav for the people who don't know that? Nastav.com is how you get to it, but it's a local Slack network, specifically targeting people in the Nashville area, though now with remote work, people who have been in Nashville or thinking about Nashville are in there. So it's probably broader now, that's specifically targeted in the Nashville, Metro area, Middle Tennessee. And yeah, it's an awesome tech-focused Slack network. And there's a bunch of them all over the place.

So it's interesting. So so my guy Clark, Sal just bounced in, he runs that conference. That conference has their own Slack channel. And, and you can just be involved. And I mean, there's, there's one channel that I'm a part of. It's health health tech. Like people just talking about how to live healthy, which is great. So again, just be involved. And this is another one, Stephen comes in here. Yes, I got to come out of happy hour the other month. You're always at these things, which I thought, yes, that is, that is the purpose. A hundred percent. Yeah. pick a few and consistently show up to those.

So, you know, I think- Because you were showing up at the JavaScript meetup in Nashville too, right? Yeah. I was going to Nash.js and Nash.rb because I was learning Ruby and JavaScript. Yeah. And Nash react at the time. So like those are the three. And every month I was there. Yeah. And then I was in the Slack network. And, you know, it's easy to get overwhelmed and spread yourself in. So find a few, commit and go deep on those. Like I'm sure the people who show up every time, every day to guidance counselor 2.0 make an impact and there's literally if actually I mean honestly if anybody on this caught on this chat messaged me today for something I would I would I would do it for them because they constantly show up um talk about uh so this right here Nicholas is a great point I haven't been to meetups in years um talk about how how can people leverage you know I guess the online world right like like the networking stuff because I do feel so Clark and I had a conversation about this.

Also shout out to James Quick who's on here as well. He's got a great meetup. Hey James, if you don't mind dropping your link to your discord, he's doing some great stuff. Danny Thompson on Twitter has obviously a great discord as well. I have my own discord. So all that being said, talk about how people can maybe lean into discord's a little bit or slacks because I feel like meetups have vanished a little bit since COVID. Yeah, there's definitely been a, uh, a, a, a fitting effect of the meetups. I think a lot of it has been just being nurtured of getting it going again and meeting space change.

Like literally places that people were meeting and having their meetups are no longer there or not as friendly to it. So that, I know it's definitely been a challenge in getting going again. Yep. But I think the big thing with virtual is to like that extra step of showing up, like you said something to start, or you said, reach out and get a virtual meeting with people. Yeah. Like nobody does that. I mean, I don't know how many times I've posted my calendar link, like just book something. And you know what? People don't. And the people who do make a huge impact, because they're different.

Yeah, like people are like, well, I don't, I don't want to take somebody's time. Listen, if you want to talk to me for five minutes. Like ask me a question. Like let's just maybe text about it, right? Like all of that plays into the whole networking thing which is where I want to get to. So you said your most recent gig, congratulations for those of you who are just now tuning in Seth just recently into the gig as a head of engineering. You made a comment that that was because of networking a while ago. Can you talk about how that worked? Yeah, so through a thread of, you know, continuing in contact with people.

Someone I work with at EvidenceCare, Ryan Macy, he's been on podcasts. No, he's not with Gratia, but he's with his head of engineering for 25 medicine health now. And I got laid off and I did pretty standard. I was like, I think a Wednesday, so when Monday came, I was like, okay, good job, start trying Monday. Just decompress and soak this up for a minute. And I just started messaging, I messaged that group among other people. And I was like, I think I was going to message you, but then you were like, I'm no longer working at Vaco. So I was like, OK. I messaged Hunter.

I believe who's in here. Some of my contacts was like, hey, I'm on the job hunt. This is what I've been doing prior. This is what I'd love to look for. And just got a message that said, hey, I'm going to call you. What's your number? And the long-term relationships and network is where it looks like, hey, here's a role think you'd be great for and was, let me make the introduction. And the Gracious Team is not directly, Ryan wasn't directly part of the hiring process. He was in one interview, so it wasn't like friends. It wasn't just like a rubber stamp, but it was like, hey, let me introduce you to the people on this team and start the conversation for you.

So creating those long-term relationships and having those people who you trust, who you can straight up say, like, I'm in a hard spot right now. This is how much my severance is for. This is when money runs out. This is my timeline. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean, and again, I mean, shout out Hunter Mitchell again, I mean, and Hunter, IOU dinner, I know that. But like, Hunter got me connected with the folks at gun.io. Like, I'm forever grateful for Hunter. And Hunter was a competitor. I mean, like, I've talked about this. Like, Hunter and I went head to head against a lot of people. And Hunter was still willing to take the coffee with me and hang out and here I am.

So I think I talked about that a lot. It's just that you, one conversation can change your career. And I think if you can have that tenacity to do that and just know that one random text or conversation could change your trajectory of your career, I think you're gonna be a little bit more tenacious on your conversations. Yeah, I also think that we should remember to try not to have a scarcity mindset. Like, you and Hunter are fighting against each other, but how many roles were there still that you were trying to fill? Plenty, yeah. Like, the demand is going up. You know, we have, you know, AI and things that may change the landscape somewhat, but it's not known anywhere, you know, anytime soon, and just helping each other out.

Like, if I can get somebody else, I can get, I don't know, I guess, CEO, I can be my boss. I could like help somebody become a boss somehow. Like good. I love that. Well, and it was interesting who said it in the chat again. Y'all are fantastic. The chat is absolutely on fire today. Um, so somebody said about being a facilitator and I'm really big on that. And I've talked about it in the past few podcasts like even just saying like, Oh, Emmet, Emmet, I don't, Emmet, I don't know if you're still here, but Emmet, like he's been on the show twice. Um, and he's talked about like he's not, he's not really the guy that's going to go up to you or message you, but he's the guy that goes, hey, you should, you should get connected with Taylor or you should get connected with Seth.

And that's his way of networking, which is, which is another way of networking. So can you talk about just being a facilitator? Cause I think, I think you're a wonderful facilitator as well. Yeah, I think, still heading can be super important and it can read dividends as well. If you're not that person who wants to go talk to everybody, you can just connect people. Um, I guess you still kind of have to talk to people so that you know, what good connections are, but being just connecting people is I think also super helpful because if you're making good connections people remember that too. People remember, you know, I think people like John was saying, I'm the one who connected him to you and it's like I don't necessarily remember that.

But you know that's the thing to do and it's just helping helping people out. So you know getting to know them a little bit, know a little bit of their story, know what can be most useful to them and make them those connections. I had it happen at the beginning of my career. I got, was thinking Nash said, I was like, Hey, I'm in a boot camp. I just want to talk to people by coffee. I'm not in a job hunt yet. And I think I talked to seven or eight different people. And each one was like after the coffee. Hey, is there anyone you think I should talk to?

You got to ask the question. Hey, is there anyone else I can talk to just like we did right now? I was going broke by an expensive latte, but being in a boot camp, not working, but I had some great conversations. And yeah. I love that. I want to get to, as we kind of start wrapping up here again, Tom Flaz me having fun with friends, talk about taking on a head of engineering, right? So this is your first role in kind of a true leadership, would you say or not? Or is this like, I'm kind of like, where is this your first, Like, I'd say it's my first true leadership role in tech.

I've been lead, so it's a different context of what my lead engineer roles were, where I did have teams that I was over. So it's not my first time leading a team in tech. Did spend, you know, spend a decade in hospitality, leading teams, managing teams, looking at P&Ls, like doing all the back office things, the business things. I do have also, you know, batches of business from Belmont and such. So, but it's always where I wanted to get back to. I love growing people. I love enabling them to do things they never thought they could do. I love inspiring them and seeing them succeed.

And that's something that I've really been driving towards. I was hopeful in my career transition to leverage my prior professional experience to kind of skip a step or two, maybe in my timeline in tech. And I think that's coming to fruition now. And so don't negate anything that you do if you are a career changer. Think about it and how you can leverage it and what it could mean. And so I was part of what I asked the question, like, should I put it back on my LinkedIn? It's like, I was in the interview process. So, very honestly, I was being told, like, hey, you're cool that like, you have this time, like as an IC, but like, what about leading people?

And I was like, oh, so let me tell you about this time before where I was leading people. And again, so for those of you who don't know the conversation, he and I were messaging backstage and Seth and talk backstage and he was like, should I put my non-IT experience with the restaurant and show my LinkedIn? I said no, because when I look through a resume, I look at just tech stuff. But again, I mean, this is, I don't know. Like I don't know. Do what you wanna do, Seth. Just do what you wanna do. I don't know. This is why it's fun, right? People are like, people are like, oh, you're wrong.

I was like, yeah, yeah, I know I'm wrong. Like literally like we, everyone's just making shit up when it comes to LinkedIn and resume etiquette. So you do. Just like so hard. People ask me questions all the time. I was like, not to be a cop out, but there's no cookie cutter answer. Sorry, but it all depends. What should I do to get my first step? It depends. What should I do to get a raise? It depends. Like, I think that's the correct. Absolutely. I do want to go, John, you know, so I do have a discord, you know, John, I'd love to have you're part of it again.

James Quays got a discord. that Congress has a discord. For those of you who are in the middle of nowhere and there's definitely a few people that are commenting. James, good to see you buddy. Just get involved with some sort of discord or slack right now. I'd say just start there. Just be a part of one and double down efforts on there, especially if you live more in a rural city area. I would definitely do that. So I just wanted to address that. Seth, I wanted to ask you, imposter syndrome, like how are you feeling, kind of going into this role? I know you've started, but like, I mean, talk about just maybe nerves, your maybe a little transparency minute real fast.

Oh yeah, definitely nervous and excited at the same time. You know, it's a mixture of the two excited to do things that I've never done before in tech. I'm excited to, but also nervous at the same time, to do things I've never done before. But a lot of that, I think, has to come down to discussions with the team, who you're working for, who you're working with, being open and transparent and honest about things that you know you're not great at and where you need to grow, how you plan to do that. And setting a plan, I think we talked in my interview process about what is, what, more of the cultural aspect of like, okay, it's okay to say it.

We're gonna take risks, we're gonna do things that we're not great at, but we're also loving the growth. we want to grow together. And we're all going to grow in this, you know, we're in a startup that's less than a year old, like, you know, there's lots of things we're just going to try that won't work, you know, some of them will be in code, some of them will be in process, some of them will be in culture in many different ways. But, you know, I think also leveraging lots of the past experiences that I've had with great theaters, you know, when I announce my role of tag a bunch of people I've learned from restaurants to tech.

And with that, taking the bits and pieces that I think I saw work best. And I'm not trying to reinvent that wheel. I'm going to try and do the things that I saw that worked well and adjust along the way. Having some grace when we fail and just iterating towards the ideal, knowing that ideal will never actually be achieved. and just taking out of the AWS leadership principles of bias towards action. So try not to be scared to do things. And transparency, I think, is the biggest thing. Transparency on the scene, trust. And it'll go a long way. That's awesome. Again, congratulations, man. As we wrap up here, last two questions, I ask one, actually, actually, I'm gonna do three.

I'm gonna do three questions real quick. One, because we're in kind of the middle of summer right now. What's your favorite summer activity with the family? With the family. I really enjoy just going on walks around the neighborhood. Got a puppy, I'm fostering a guide dog for the blind puppy. Just a whole nother topic. But, so going on walks, the kids love to do it just to get outside if we're not doing that. The zoo is awesome. Got a zoom membership so we can go there unlimited times. It can be difficult at times, but it's a nice one. So I'd say, yeah, between those two.

I love that. I love that. Second thing is when it comes to tools, tech, trends, anything like that, is there anything that you're looking at right now frameworks tooling tech trends that you want to share? Yeah, so in the past few years, I've been mainly in the back end and concentrating on DevOps. I'm thinking more about the infrastructure space and how we architect things. And that is going to be also more of my current role as we continue to grow in the future. But something that I think is debatable, but I think for most smaller companies, and I've only primarily worked in startups since I moved into tech over the past six years, is single instance architecture.

So like monoliths. I think every time I've seen, every company I've worked at that has split apart into microservices, hasn't been large enough to warrant it. And it's going too soon. So I talked to a bootstrap in the interview process, a bootstrap $100 million AR company, private company. And they are a single instance. They're 10 plus years old, single instance multi-tenant, but single instance running on AWS ECS just with like auto scaling. That's it. Damn. And they were like, love that you have like all this Kubernetes experience and can do like Terraform modules for days, but they're like, our stuff works. And that's all that we need.

Like we don't need like an extensive depth of like upgrading EKS clusters and things, you know, like just, We keep it simple and it's all there. It's in, you know, for the most part one code base. So, you know, the way DHH put it in a blog posts the majestic monolith with outposts, he calls it. You know, when you really find that one thing that needs that special code, you're like, you split that off real time chat, maybe. You know, something that is very, very specific, that doesn't fit into your current thing. You can split that off, make it, make it, you know, it's unique snowflake, but the rest just keep it together.

And yeah, I've seen multiple times. That's awesome. That's part, try and put it back together. And I heard her put it back together. Listen, I've been recruiting long enough. We're going back to monoliths. Monoliths are hot. You heard it here first. We are back. Microservices are gone. Monoliths are back. And also jQuery. Last question. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to a younger Seth Alexander? Oh. Man, hit me with that one. It's not everybody but to me. Be patient. I think there's definitely been impatience. Maybe I'm actually, I think, maybe more patient. I'd say, I don't know everything. Because yeah, I definitely think there was many times where I was thinking that I knew more than I did, making assumptions on limited information.

So just take a deep breath, relax, and even side of career play. Meditate. Yeah. Big fan of meditation. It does like, it doesn't have to be like religious meditation or something. It's just like mindfulness. Like there's science that backs it and that makes you better. Do you use an app or do you use headspace for that? Or do you just do it on your own? Typically, so a long time ago through, uh, grossed, is it sumo? No, Not gross, sumo, gross, sumo is a marketing thing. Sumo, sumo. I think I've heard that. The marketplace. Yeah. And they have lots of startups that do lifetime deals to just get cash in the bank.

Yeah. I got a fan. I got brain.fm is an app that I bought a lifetime to. So they have a meditation thing. And it's all about doing neural brainwave things. So I'll listen to that and then do meditate. So they have guided ones and non-guided ones and stuff a few in there. Yeah. No, I highly recommend that. It's something that I've tried to do in the morning as well, just quiet time. And it's helped kind of slow things down a little bit. So I highly recommend it. Well, cool. All right, y'all. Well, thanks again for hanging out. Seth, thank you, man. Stay on real quick so I can see about you off stage.

Y'all, I hope you enjoyed this. Judging by the chat, I think y'all did. So I got one last thing I wanted to say. You said connect everybody, like connect in the chat. Send me messages, connect to whatever. When you connect to people, just put one line in there, one sentence. Yes. Tell them, hey, like you're the one that told me that like a few weeks ago. I'm assuming like my watch has been going off because I get notifications for email. So I'm assuming that's people sending me that like link in requests and like I'm just making an assumption today, this morning is from this. But like if you're connecting with people in the chat, Hey, I saw him in the chat and like look at their LinkedIn for one minute.

Be like a recruiter. Tell them a reason why you want to connect with them. Um, and that will pay big dividends to. Yep. Yeah. Senate note, please send it up. Please send it out. All right. Y'all, you guys have a good one tomorrow. Um, I, it's the first mini episode, the first mini series I'm doing, um, with my team from gun.io. So tomorrow we have Victoria on the show, not 30 am sent to Victoria's in charge. Uh, basically the developer journey onto our platform. So like when you sign up to our platform, you get in our platform, you have an onboarding call with her, then you have a tech out call.

So we're going to go over the developer journey and what you should expect when you sign up for gun.io tomorrow. So two and a tomorrow, nine, three, M central Victoria's fantastic. I can't wait to catch up with her. Y'all have a good one. Seth, thank you my friend today was awesome. Y'all have a great day and 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 at T.S. and on all social media handles. and I hope you have a fantastic day.