decentralization, interviewing w/ angie jones, vp of developer relations at block

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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 T D S and T D E 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. Hello. Hello. Hello. Good morning, everybody. I'm excited. I'm excited for many reasons. I'm excited because I'm heading to Italy tomorrow. Yeah. Second off, I'm hanging out with Angie. I'm not going to lie. I may be more excited to hang out with Angie than drinking alcohol spritz in Italy.

So really excited today to hang out with the great Angie Jones. For those of you who are tuning in or eventually tuning in, say, hey, would love to hear from you. you know, again, if you are tuning in and especially with with Angie's crew and you're like, what is this thing? I'll give you a quick background. So guidance comes with 2.0 stemmed out of COVID March 2020. I was recruiting engineers day in day out. I was working 14 14 hour days when everybody was getting laid off before the market. I was like, there's got to be a better way to share this information that I was that I was sharing to every single developer day in day out.

And so I started this podcast where I just rambled for eight minutes a day, how to build a resume, how to write a link in. And It's slowly, it definitely turned into something. And so three years later, I'm interviewing wonderful individuals like Angie on the show. But the one thing I've realized is that this is a networking platform. And so I've actually had a lot of people message me. I've had hiring managers find interns off the show. I've had people find mentor mentees off the show. And so if you are watching, please say, hey, don't lurk. Just even if you don't know what to say, just throw up your favorite emoji.

But again, we'd love to hear from you. If you watch this in the future, please say, hey, I'm telling you, there are people that like comb through the comments. And that's what my goal is. I wanna be basically a tool for you to network off of. So if you go through a network with all of my guests on my show, all the people in the comments, hop on over to Unicorn Finders, my other podcast, and network with every founder I've had on, you're gonna have a pretty vast network, and that's what I want for you. So please say, hey, second of all, ask questions. Angie obviously comes with a lot of experience, if you don't know her already.

And she's gonna be able to answer a lot of questions for you. And so please ask questions today. I wanna give a shout out to that conference. That conference is the official coffee sponsor of Guidance Councilor 2.0. So it's like one of the few conferences that actually have their own coffee beans. So check that out, use the code GC2 if you want some coffee beans. And then I obviously have to give a shout out to gun.io where I work. If you need, if you have any problems hiring engineers, Angie, give me a call. You know. So enough of me running my mouth. I want to give a shout to people tuning in this morning.

Alex, good to see you. Ezra, Chris, Mark, Michael, Adia, Victor, Brady, Sophia, John, Lisa, Matt, we got the crew here today. Dominic, Trey, it's so wonderful. Khadija, it's great to see you. LinkedIn user Lawrence, my guy, what's going on? Let's see here, Dominic, it's good to see you again. And Zach, my guy Zach Wentz is coming on the show here soon as well. that Amazon is good to see is that. All right, Angie, enough of me running my mouth. Who are you? What do you do? We'll go from there. Thank you so much, Taylor. I'm actually a big fan of yours as well. So honored to be here today.

Yeah, I'm head of developer relations at TBD. That is actually the name. I was going to ask you. Because I was like TBD. I was like, what are we TBDing? No, that's actually the name of our business unit. It's relatively new about two years. And we do a lot of serious cutting edge tech. So we kind of try to keep it as playful as we can. So that, you know, we're not taking ourselves too seriously. But yeah, that's the name kind of fun, kind of cutesy or whatever. Yeah, I worked on lots of different things known in the space for Java, I'm a Java champion.

automation is my jam and now I'm working in the decentralization space. I love it. That's awesome. So let's dive in. That's a great segue. It's like you've done these before. So decentralization, I don't know what it is. People talk about it. I think a lot of people talk about and they don't know what it is either. So talk about decentralization at a high level and then, you know, as much as you can share about what you are doing kind in that space? Yeah, so the web was like invented to be decentralized. That was always the vision and convenience prevailed as always. So they try to like hold your own things or like set up your own email server or any of these things.

They're technically possible today but you wouldn't do do that right you go to Google you log in it's really simple to do but with this simplicity and this convenience like things have become pretty centralized the meaning like everything that we do on the web is hosted or controlled by like some third-party entity so correct if I give you like a basic example of just like let's say log in it oh we could just take the twitter example twitter always gives us examples so twitter is a real-life example of a lot of things. No life example I mean they right half of my talks you know um but uh so for example like with the rebranding of twitter and we saw like at least two users one with the handle x and one with the handle music had their user names basically confiscated or whatever and you know it brought to the realization that you know what I don't own this like this tech girl 1 908 that I have up here that I've used to brand myself I put it on all my slides might have got merch printed you know I'm saying like went all oh I need some Angie I need some Angie I have Angie merch but I should I think it's a little bit yeah but I might um but yeah I could go all in like branding myself with this which I'm sure whoever owned like the music handle you had that for 16 years and you know the X handle how cool is it to have X is your hands all right and to have that like taken away from you um brings us to the realization you never owned it to begin with like There was no compensation.

It was no like, oh, okay, I'll have my lawyer, call your lawyer and maybe I can purchase it from you. It's like, this mine anyway, you know, this is what the company is saying. So our handle, which is basically our identity across the web. Really? Our content is all locked into these spaces, right? So if I decide to leave Twitter, like pretty much like all of the thought leadership I've done there over the past 10 years is like locked in there. So anyway, what we're focusing on is kind of getting back to the roots of what the web was always supposed to be and giving us basically control over our identities over our identities and over our data across the web.

But also let's not be silly. Like the centralization that has come about has been pretty nice. I mean, let's admit it. So how can we have the best of both worlds? And that's what I'm currently working on at TBD. That's exciting. That's so exciting. So I wanna, we have a lot of topics to cover today. And I'm gonna try to get as much knowledge out of Angie as I feasibly can. So the one thing that she brought up is that she just finished a round of hiring. And one of the things that I admire about Angie is just who you are as a person and what you stand for.

And I can tell I've never been through your interview process, but I'll tell you what, I bet it's great. So I want to talk about it. You just hired for a staff role, correct? Yeah. So talk about that experience. Talk about maybe some things that some engineers are doing well, aren't doing well, just kind of break down the whole process with your thoughts. All right, Taylor, anytime I get into these things, like people get mad at me, but I like I don't care. I like to shoot it straight. I don't want to lie to anyone. And I feel like social media is a big facade and people talk about tech in the industry, the way they think it should be, not the way that it actually is.

And this is misleading to a lot of people, right? So it's like, oh, shoot your shot, girl. Just go ahead apply. You don't check all the boxes, but go ahead, you know. All right, that's cute. I mean, that's like cute advice. And I'm not saying not to do it, but I'm saying be realistic as well, right? So right now, this is like a company's market. So a couple of years ago, you know what I'm saying? Like a couple of years ago, it was the employees marketing. You know, you had your choice, your pick of where you wanted to go. You could sneeze and get five offers.

You know what I mean? Like a little light tweet, hmm, I'm thinking about looking. You know what I'm saying? This is not that game anymore. like this is not, I tweeted right before all this stuff blew up and I said, a lot of people remember this. I said like, yo, if you're out looking for a job right now, make like musical chairs and like find a seat quickly and sit down for a hot minute cause stuff is about to get a little rough. And it actually did, it did. And so right now we had, this is before all the layoffs. So now we have like all of these layoffs And it's not just your small mom and pop shops.

It's like big thing companies. So the market is saturated right now with amazing talent. So from a perspective of like a recruiter or a hiring manager, you have a buffet of talent that is applying to your role. If you are applying and you don't meet like most of the criteria, you're not likely to get interviewed, right? because there's like at least 100 people who how many people do every box? How many applicants, I'm curious, you know, I don't deal, I don't interview a ton of folks on like the the the bang, bang space. How many applications did you get for that staff role? For the developer advocate, maybe like a thousand.

Maybe, maybe a thousand. And that's a specialty area, you know, like so our engineering roles, that's gonna be like a couple of thousand people applying for that, right? Like if you're just doing like straight up fronting and backing and full-stack engineering but developer advocacy is a specialty and we got like a thousand people apply. And I mean, top talent folks, I literally tailor like at one point I joked, like I could put five of these people's name in a hat and pick, and I would be thrilled with whoever I pick, No, somebody goes, holy shit, I found an application. I'm telling y'all, it's crazy out there right now.

That is light and that's light. Like for other roles, like project management or stuff like that, I mean, it's like 5,000 applicants where we gotta like study them. Yeah, so I mean, the odds are not in your favor, no matter who you are. Even if you're like top talent, the odds are not in your favor. So if you think about this, a thousand applications, is the hiring manager really gonna look thoroughly at a thousand things? No, they're not, right? Let's be real. So one, you gotta figure out like how to stand out to even get noticed. I always tell people, if you know somebody at that company, please try to get a referral because that'll put like some sort of sticker by your name and we'll let me- bump fat, I hit up Angie.

When I was looking, I hit up Angie. I was like, hey girl, you got a referral code? Exactly. So like, that little sticker by your name says you were referral. That doesn't mean you get the job, but that means at least somebody's gone to look at your application. Right? So, Kevin jumped in. How many of those 1000 Proxima had referrals? Let's say maybe about two or three, not many. Two or three hundred or two or three? No, two or three on one hand, two or three. So that's what I'm saying. Like a lot of people aren't using their networks. There's no way I would have, I used to do this.

Like I used to be like, oh, I want to get it on my own. You know, I don't want to like. There's like some ride about it. Like no, no, no, no, no. And so that's not smart. Now that I'm sitting on the other side of that, That's really not a good strategy at all. So if you can find a way to get some sort of referral or introduction or something like that, definitely take it. Of course, you don't know somebody at every single company. So it's fine. Five other ways to stand out, whether that be. I used to laugh at cover letters, but that's one way to stand out a cute little cover letter.

Why are you interested in this job? Or what are you bringing to the table? or something like that, right? I don't know, little things that you can do to like show that you're like a serious candidate. To real quick, Angie, I'm kind of curious because listen, I talk about doing this a lot and I don't know if I'm crazy, but I've talked to some higher managers, they like it. Like if somebody reached out to you, listen, you're super busy, right? Traveling the world, you're busy, I get it. How could somebody stand out to you that maybe isn't a referral. Okay, so fortunately, I work on open source stuff.

So it's really easy to slide in, like people hopping our Discord to just like, get involved with the community or, you know, contribute to the project. You don't have to be a big four request. Fix a typo in the docs. So you know what I'm saying? Like do something so that your name, I'm gonna see your name again. I'm gonna say, that that person that apply and then I'm gonna go look at, oh, that is. And then I'm gonna look at your resume again. None of this is a guarantee you're about to get the job, but you wanna find a way to kind of stand out.

I love that. I love that. Let's go back to cover letters real quick. So I interrupted you with that. Cause I am kind of curious your thoughts on cover letters. What? Was the question? Did the cover letters, like what are your thoughts on cover? Cause like, I mean, that's the whole time. I'm like, I don't know, because I always usually ask at the cover letter. Okay, I don't do cover letters, personally. I used to think it was like really old school in Coney. Now that I am looking through a thousand applications, the cover letters kind of, they do stand out. They like, you know, if you bought a house before, or you like, you send like a little letter what you're offering and you talk about like how you can see your kids growing up.

You put it down with us, me and my wife. Somebody bought baked goods. They showed up on our doorstep, Angie. We were reviewing contracts. They made baked goods. They were runner up, but I still hate to make goods. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's not a guarantee, but at least, you know, you know, it increases your eyes. But yeah, people write a little cover letters. I had one really funny one, Taylor. that on this last round, and it basically like, yo, I'm real high right now. And like, they were like, I don't meet any of the requirements, but yo, here's why you should consider me. And I'm not gonna lie, I read the whole thing because I was intrigued, like, you know what I mean?

They didn't get the job or whatever. But still, I was like, they make my day or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, looking at them, and it doesn't have to be this big, lengthy thing, please don't be fake, please don't have like, chat GPT, write it or whatever. Well, wait, that's happening a lot at on gun.io side. People are using GPT to do a lot of things. Stop it, stop, knock it off. Especially like in the space I'm in. So I'm in developer advocacy where authenticity is a skill in a, you know. That I'm asking for, right? And I'm not meant to let me not be a gone record as like a chat GPT hater, because I use it for things, you know, to help me with things, but something like a cover letter, I would not.

I wouldn't, I would make that as personal as I possibly could. Talk about, so Scott comes in here, How focused are hiring majors on open source? Are you just sensitive to it because of your role DevRel or is it something that's trending up? Yeah, open source, for me specifically like my business is open source, my business unit. So the tools we're building is open source. So I really love that. But even when I was like the job before this, when I was hiring before that, what open source tells me like you being involved with it, It tells me like one, you know, you have other interests besides like your nine to five.

And I know that's like a sticky subject or whatever. But like also you give back, you give back to the community in some way. And then there are unfortunately, again, I like to speak the truth. Unfortunately, there are people that are going to look for those green squares and how much do you code how regularly do you code and open source can give you those metrics. Now I'm not saying that's a good metric. I think it's silly but also I live in the real world. You know everybody is not living in Twitter lane. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I'm gonna see here. Good in the comments here.

Eugene, it's great to see you man and everybody who's tuned in. It's so wonderful to see you. Yeah, Eric, I mean, so how do you know Chad GPT? I'll tell you this. It puts in a lot of jumbo mumbo stuff. A lot of jumbo mumbo stuff. No, you can just tell. Can't you? I can. Yeah, you can really tell. I don't know. It's just not written like in a normal human. It's not in conversational speak. That's my thing. It's like very structured English. And I feel like if we're trying to cut through applications of a thousand people, like Angie just said, some guy wrote he was high, but said, here's why you should read it.

Angie wrote it. Angie read it. She's not going to be reading a chat GPT one. So I'm really not. So when we talked about the resume, talked about the referrals, the cover letters, talk about the actual interviewing. Where do people really shoot themselves in a foot when it comes to interviewing? Okay. This is not going to be popular to you. I love it. Let's hot the hot takes. Give me all the hot takes this morning, Andy. I love it. Bring it. Okay, let's say I got a thousand applicants. Let's say I interview, let's say 15 of a thousand. We'll say I interviewed 15 people. At 15's a lot.

You're tired after 15. I still a lot. You see what I'm saying? That's a lot that I got to narrow down to one. It becomes like an elimination process. So I always am puzzled when I see like somebody are going to their head, oh, I totally messed my interview up. And then somebody else say, oh, that's OK. They should call you back anyway. Why would I call anybody back if I'm trying to get from 15 to 1? So if you make like big mistakes, you're likely to be eliminated. Like people are literally looking for some reason to eliminate you because they have to narrow this down to one.

And that's not saying that you were a great fit for the role. Thank you for saying that. Thank you. You might have just had an off date and I am so sorry that that happens to you on the day of your day. We ain't got time. Somebody else did not have an off date. They performed better. So if I'm looking at this, why would I prolong my whole process by saying maybe they had an update. I have 10 other people who did amazingly. And then why would I say, oh, you wanna have a second shot at it? No, I'm like looking for a reason to eliminate people.

And it's nothing personal, but I got one slide here. And people don't seem to realize that people seem, this sounds silly. But from the takes that I see, I don't think people actually internalize that they're not the only person that's going up for the job. Like they're like, why, why, why are they giving me another chance? Why am I not getting like this thorough feedback? First of all, you can't handle the feedback. Let's be real. I agree with that by the way. A lot of people want feedback. I don't think you all know. They really don't. They don't. Like people will ask me for feedback.

I'll give it to them. And then they get really mad at me about it. you know, like salty, take it to social media, salty at me, for the feedback that you asked me for. I didn't, I didn't just throw this in your face. Everybody's at Nangi about her feedback. It's like, you asked me for it. And I do not, I do not BS people. So, and I'm not really great at sugar coating either. So if you ask me for feedback, I give you like the real deal, you know? Not trying to hurt your feelings at all. and I'm not mean about it, but it's really direct.

I'll never forget a story. We, when I was recruiting a few years ago, we had a candidate get rejected. He's like, can you tell me? Can you tell me why? So we went back to the CTO and the CTO goes, well, the team just didn't think he was kind. Like he got defensive really, really quickly. We went back to the candidate, and he goes, I don't know what you're talking about. This is stupid feedback. It's like, you're an idiot. So again, hot takes only. So feedback for sure. Are people like, what do you like in a candidate during the interview? Obviously attentive asking questions, being inquisitive.

Is there anything else that you really, really like that a candidate does in an interview? I really appreciate authenticity. Like do not like make things up. What you know, you know what you don't. don't. There's ways I'm sure Taylor has lots of resources on how to answer questions that you don't know the answers to without like trying to make something up. You know how many of y'all get at CHAGGPT when they make something up? Same thing, same thing. Don't do that. So you know, just say like you don't know, fix it up, I can learn or whatever. You know, I had a candidate, that they didn't know the answer to something.

And it was like, I don't know that. And it was fine, I moved on. And then at the end, when I asked, did they have questions, they were like, yeah, I want to know that thing that I didn't know, can you tell me the answer? I just really appreciated that. They didn't sit or dwell in it and beat themselves up about it, but they were like, no, I really am hungry for that info. What was the answer? I love it. Yes, I really like authenticity. That really like spans out to me. You know, Angie, you've mentioned authenticity now a few times in this conversation. And I really do feel like people in today's world, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I'm so drawn to you.

And I can just tell you're so real, even through online stuff. And I feel like people just get into interviews and they just become a shell of themselves. And there's no authenticity. And I just want to encourage everybody who's watching today to be authentic. It's incredibly important. Now with that, with that, because I've had to like pull a couple of coattails to some people a little too authentic. Like it's first date vibes is what I say first date. You don't want to go first date. I don't know. Some of my first dates are pretty bad. We won't get into that, but like, thank God met my wife, but first date vibes, right?

First date, like, yeah, like be yourself. don't be fake, but also like don't dance on the table or you know what I mean? Like that's sort of I don't think on table. Rizelle. It's good to see you girl. Rizelle was just on the show a few weeks ago. So yeah, don't dance on the table. If you get anything out of this conversation today, don't dance on tables. On the first date. Exactly. So let's so again, I mean, we have, you know, eight to 10 minutes left. I want to respect for Angie's time. I know Angie and I could probably I'll talk for like nine hours, but also shop Magnolia.

Angina are gonna be hanging out at Magnolia. JS, I'm really excited. So if you are interested in attending a conference in Mississippi, it's a great time. Kayla and Richard doing an amazing job with that conference. So Angia see there. But let's talk about friends online and meeting them in person, right? Obviously, you had an amazing travel recently over to Africa. You are obviously very active on social media. One of the things I'm incredibly passionate about is networking and building community online. Can you just talk about, again, just the importance to drive it home to people today? Yeah, networking is extremely important. I promise I wouldn't be where I am without investing time into that.

You know, like the job is more than just the job. Like if this is going to be a career that you're in, it really helps to network. like anybody, you know, that I consider for a role. I know people who know you, right? When I'm looking for a role, like, I'm tapping into my network and things like that. So it's just really important to kind of feel that out before you even need it. And then friends online, yes, there's so many people that I've met online who have become, like, really dear friends. of my Sarah Drasner is one of my best friends. I met her on Twitter and now I'll go hang at her house.

We'll do slumber parties and stuff. I love that. And then Lynn's I had never met a lot of them in real life and then going there, it was just like all of this love. It was definitely a moment in my life, like when it was life moments there. But yeah, as much as you can, try to network with folks online, offline conferences, meetups, all of that. How many times have people like hear you up? Like, oh, I think this would be a good opportunity for you. Does it have to always be a job either? It could be like one off things, you know, that are like beneficial to you.

Talk, I'm kind of curious, how did you get your job at TBD? Was it a contact or did you just do it on your own? I'm just kind of curious, is random question. Oh, so network, I mean, speaking of network. Magnet. Guess who was in my network that I think Jack Dorsey himself. So, oh. Okay. Oh, flex. Not a big deal. I'm gonna go now. I work with Jack at Twitter and, you know, I was always like doing these like kind of public speaking things internally as well as externally. And for a lot of like those things, he would also be speaking there. We actually have like, we have dynamic duo.

Like we have one coming up actually like, it's all that. He's not as like Angie and Jack. No, but like, it reminds me of our Twitter days. But yeah, we would like do these things together. And so I knew him from the Twitter days. And so when TBD spun up, I was just kind of like asking him about it and stuff like that. And then it's like developer facing tools and they need education and stuff. And we just thought it was a little perfect. I love that. Let me ask you this real quick. Why do you think companies, you know, I think right now there's a lot of budget cuts going on.

A lot of sponsorships are pulling back at conferences. What is your words to companies right now, especially being a leader in DevRel like you are, why it's important to keep showing up and being present in the tech community. Yeah. Especially in the company side. Exactly. I'll take a great example. So look at Stack Overflow. And we basically had all counted them out. Like we were like, oh, you are down. And we are like counting, right? Like are they gonna be able to get back up? And I just went to we are developers in Germany, this big huge developer conference. I would wild. I'm going to go there next year.

All over that conference, right? They sponsored a Tech Leaders Dinner. Their CEO was present on stage giving talks and announcing like, yo, we still in the fight, and they announced a couple of new AI driven features and products that they're working on. So that's why it's important. You want your name, your brand, you know in the minds of you know the talent right so I think that's I think that's why it's important to still be there and if you are an IC person you know you definitely want to be in the mix the networking is like second to none when you go to something like that especially on steroids where you got to go like kind of go in a room for a couple of days after you just Which was a whole other conversation on how to pace yourself with that stuff.

All right, Angie, as we wrap up here, last three questions. First off, I want to know what brings Angie Jones' joy outside of work. You're going to love this together. So you live in Nashville, right? I do. What brings me joy outside of work is what's called soul line dancing. So I'm a big line dancer. So thanks to Country Line Dancing, but to hip hop and R&B music, right? I know that was a thing. It's a whole underground movement. Like they do traveling, like we do traveling for tech stuff and like go to parties. It was like yeah I was just in like Alabama last weekend for this whole weekend.

So picture like a Friday Saturday Sunday with like non-stop dance. So that's my It's my joy outside. Oh, that's amazing. It sounds absolutely exhausting, but it sounds amazing though Second question, obviously, you know, you're you tinker. I'm sure with a lot of crazy tech Is there anything that you're really curious or? Let me find out you line That's amazing. No, it's also good to see you brother What what are you tinkering with right now technology wise that you're pretty stoked about? Yeah, so we have a new SDK called Web 5GS that basically lets you build the centralized web apps and it abstracts away a lot of complexity.

So I'm all up in that and learning that and y'all gonna hear more about it as I learn more. There you go, I love that. Last question, so the show is called Guidance Councilor 2.0 for a reason. We had Guidance Councilor's a middle school high school in college and really as adults. Now we don't really necessarily have somebody to go to just to talk career stuff. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to younger Angie Jones? Imposter syndrome is a liar. And I wanna share that with people of all stages. So I've actually gotten to a point that I don't listen to anything that it says.

And so it's kind of stopped talking to me because I ignore it, right? And that could be a whole talking in of itself. But yeah, take that with you. If you take nothing else, imposter syndrome is a liar. I love that. I love that. Well, y'all. Thank you again for hanging out with us this morning. I appreciate Angie stay on real quick. So I can say bye to you off air, but y'all y'all have a wonderful one. Please connect with Angie. She's obviously a wealth of knowledge and again, I'm off for two weeks. We'll see y'all next on Friday, August or September 1st is the next show.

And I have my boy Brandon. He I met him at render. He is a designer. He was at Twitter. And now Uber. So I'll see y'all. and you'll have a good one. Peace. Bye. 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 Tdaston on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.