the power of being present w/ teja yenamandra, ceo of gun.io

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

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. 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 tdesintes 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, what's going on everybody? Good morning. Oops, I forgot to finish out. I forgot to finish out my text message. Hold on real quick. We gotta do this real fast. What's going on everybody? Good morning. I wanna say everybody, no one's here yet because it takes a hot second for hip and webs.

So if you are tuning in, welcome. Hope you have a good weekend. I had to go to the doctors. I had to go to the ER for the second time in three weeks. My daughter fell off of a horse gate and she didn't brace herself this weekend and she braced herself with her head as it hit the ground. So everything's fine. She just looks a little jacked up right now. Um, I'm, but I am tired of going to the yard with kids. I need to put a bubble around at this point. She swallowed a magnet two weeks ago. As this happened often. No, she's been a hell of the last three weeks, man.

She, she swallowed a magnet three weeks ago to make sure our dog didn't swallow it. So props to her for like just being kind, I guess. And then she was playing with friends and she tried to climb the gate and she fell. So she's like a hockey player right now. Her forehand is all big. That shreds. Anyways, good morning, y'all. It's great to see all people tuning in. Joe, Christina, Joseph, it's good to see you. Yeah, Richie, we need to hang when I'm in Atlanta on Wednesday. Let's do it. Karen, it's good to see you. Jordan, I love it. Christina, it's good to see you as well.

So a few things. One, this is my boss, so y'all be nice. Second off, we are going to have a lot to talk about today. So we're gonna hit it really hard. We got four or five things talk about it's gonna be great Second third thing is comment say hey less than we tune in from Again, the reason why I tell people this is a networking platform is a networking show But one thing I realized is that people just need something hang out and learn at learn every day And so if you don't comment people don't know you're watching and then you don't have the opportunity to network with people There's a lot of people on the show that I found internships.

I found jobs have found mentor mentees on the show So if you don't comment, I don't know if you're watching. Even if you're commenting and you're lurking, if you're not commenting, you're lurking, just don't be favorite emoji, do something. Second off, ask questions. Tasia is a wealth of knowledge, that's why I joined Gunn. And so we're gonna, so ask questions. This is the one time where he doesn't bill you for it, right? So ask questions. And then final thing, we want to give a shout out to that conference, the official coffee sponsor of the show. So I'm drinking the coffee beans right now. They're a great conference too.

We're gonna be at it in full force next year, of my favorite conferences. So check them out. Also to tasias here. I do this anyways. I want to let you know, man, I do this anyways, but shout out gun IO for taking a chance on me and hiring me. We're doing some pretty cool shit in the hiring industry. So you should check us out. I'm not doing that because Tages here. All right. What else? What do we got here? See here, Alex. Good morning. Eugene, it's good to see you. Taylor supporting that healthcare system. Yeah, my daughter is doing a great job. Jason, it's good to see you Daniel from Jacksonville.

Jordan, our little one in the hospital last night. Jordan, hope everything's going okay buddy. Nigeria, I love it. We're international today. Nick, it's good to see a big dog. Alright, cool. Let's dive in. Tays you good to people what they want, man. Who are you? What do you do? I'm gonna go from there. Dude, this is sick. What's up? Yeah, hope you guys are having a good one day. I'm sorry to hear about your kid Jordan. Okay, so what do I do? So I do some degree of executive management of the company called gun.io. And what we do is we connect developers with companies, we help developers get paid, we help companies grow by hiring the best engineers.

I think, yeah, I mean, as far as like my day-to-day, I love being involved in marketing and sales and strategy around data, things like that. Yeah, today's a big day to nerd. Taking classes on data just because he likes it, which I think is real weird. Math, right? What are you taking right now for fun again? Just working on some classes and applied math just for the heck of it. I don't know. Sometimes, honestly, I feel like challenging your mind creates momentum. You know what I mean? And it's an challenge reminded in ways that aren't so heavy. Like everything at work is a big decision.

It's heavy. This impact of people's careers to the company, to the like, to our customers. So sometimes it's nice to solve a problem. That's just like academic and like, you know, think about it if you get it wrong. It's fine. So you think applied math is not heavy. You and I are two different people. I took pre-algebra in college. Yeah. How about that? Nothing bad happens if you make a mistake. That's true. That's true. right. Okay. So you brought up some grace. I want to dive into this wasn't even on this wasn't even on the things to talk about, but you brought that up. I feel so I was I was raised in a household where it wasn't accepted to make mistakes.

Yeah, right. Very, very much of a non mistake household. As somebody who is who is, you know, scale to startup, talk about mistakes, right? Because because I feel like a lot of people, especially watching this I'll probably walk around with fear in terms of interviewing, maybe getting a new job and being scared. You and I have had those conversations about me too. So I think a lot of people have this scared mentality. So what would you tell those folks who have that mentality? Because you're very much of a sense of like, go, go, let's break shit, let's fix it, and let's figure it out as we go.

So I'm curious your thoughts on that. Yeah, totally. I mean, so I think maybe zooming out to like big picture and then coming into the context of a company might be a good way to answer it. So I think, yeah, I mean, same here, like my upbringing was pretty strict. And if you made a mistake, there was definitely hell to pay. But like, I don't know, maybe like, it's good because you learned from that, probably if I had a point of view, it's like turn the punishment dial a little bit like lower. Yeah. To increase like a culture of experimentation. I think it's fine though.

Like I feel like as long as we're aware of that, I'm like we're aware of like that aspect of ourselves that you can't direct forward over time. So I don't know, you know? I think in the context of a company, like especially one that's our size, like 30 people, it seems like the biggest mistake that we can make is like not going after like an opportunity aggressively. Right? There are like small mistakes you can make in terms of like, okay, and maybe you could have ate or like we just threw an event, right? Maybe there's like two things we could have done differently, or maybe we could have collected information more efficiently.

Like, I don't know, maybe we could have done it at a different place. So some number of like small mistakes, but the bigger mistake could have been not doing it because we were afraid to make tiny ones, right? especially for a company of our size. I think probably like, if you're a huge company, then you start worrying about like, okay, actually, like we have a big machine that's worrying, we shouldn't worry about like taking a big risk, fucking up our existing business. Right. I think maybe the dynamic changes, but yeah, for our company, I feel like the biggest thing is not taking action, like the biggest mistake.

So that's just the way that I think about it. What would you tell folks that are currently maybe just in engineering jobs right now, who maybe are new at their jobs, maybe just started in the last six months and they're scared to make a mistake? What would you tell those folks? Yeah, I would say trust in the fact that you've done your diligence, hopefully, through the interview process and that you have a good relationship with your manager and with of like key senior people in the org, and if not, like build that, you know? Like spend five, 10, 15, 20 minutes on Zoom, just like shooting the shit, catching up, right?

Like in the book, right? Like learn about their family, build a relationship. And I think like when you have good relationships, you build like relationship capital, you build trust, and like that creates the space like for taking a risk and for making mistakes. I mean, it's hard to grow unless you make mistakes. Right. It's going to make sure that your environment professionally, I think, is conducive to making mistakes. And I don't know. Our parents, if you make a mistake, there's hell to pay. But that's not normal human interaction. Yeah. That's not... Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's like, yeah. So I wouldn't worry about that. And if that is a symptom of your workplace, then maybe there's something deeper going on in the union.

Right. you can use gun Iow to help you find another position. So Alex comes another day I was out found out there's a stack overflow for math problems. Whoa. Yeah. No big nerd right there. Jason goes good site to solve math problems for fun. Again, y'all are weird out here trying to solve math problems for fun. All right. So, um, it's going to be all right. Engineers get it. They get it because it's like, I mean, I don't know, especially like when you're working like a collaborative environment and like the stakes of like solving this problem were high. Sometimes it is chill just to like worry about some shit.

That's for fun. I get it. I get it. Okay, it's good to see you man I got a lot of folks tuning in. It's wonderful to see y'all this morning. So Tasia. I want to talk Let's talk about gun IO. I know you mentioned well, obviously what we do the folks who've been following me I've been obviously shouting it from the rooftops since I've been here what Can you give me the OG story like what motivated you? to kind of start this company and And what's your vision for the company right because because again, there's a lot of There's a lot of hiring companies out there, right?

So what did you want to do that made this different? Yeah, I like the statement by Barrett. He said, I hate Matt. Very mean. Me too, Matt. I put that. Yeah, so it's interesting. I don't know. I feel like most founding stories are quite airbrushed. like parts of it that are like omitted to get like a clean narrative like our narrative is not that clean. I mean I think it's fun I think it's awesome but it's not a fact so how much time do I have? Dude listen I mean we have as much time I don't have a hard stop so we can run over if you want.

Yeah so okay so a buddy of mine at college his name his name is Rich Jones he's not currently living in Norway, but this girlfriend, maybe fiance, maybe white at this point honestly. Sorry if I get that wrong. And so, and so Rich and I, like we were just good friends at college. She was like a wild man though, like honest, like a wild man. And we graduated college, we're still kept in touch, and I moved to China just after college. Did you really? I didn't know that. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and originally I wanted to live in China just to like just like train Martial arts and like just have fun because I like worked throughout every summer in college I like did work studying college was like pretty demanding I fit a sport like it was just like a demanding experience I wanted like a year to just like relax honestly and I get there and like you need money like this is the thing about Right like you just said like you need money.

Yes, you can't travel the world Asia and not Money doesn't really like a math man that math really coming in handy Like you know you like have like the college paying for the meals. Yeah, you have like an ecosystem at college There's like you're this protective bubble. Yes, totally and so I'm like, okay, damn. I need a job. So So at the time I was thinking about going to graduate school, and I had just made some friends with alumni of my school and other schools. And I was just kind of exploring like, hey, maybe going back to the US, just going back to school. And I met these guys and they were working on a technology startup in China.

It was basically like a group on competitor. I had never envisioned working in technology. I grew up, obviously, tinkering with computers, and I played a lot of computer games. So I took a job at a software startup. I was basically one of the data analysts. I put a pipeline for all their businesses and made sure that the executive team got their daily reporting. You know what I mean? Like the basic stuff. And so it was sick, man. Like it was an environment where I felt like it was really meritocratic and I didn't have to wear like a suit. Like that was one thing that I was super into because all my friends had to wear like really, I don't know, stuff be closed to show up.

And I was like, dude, I get to wear like a t-shirt. I have to work a lot, but like people are really smart. And they ended up like scaling and selling that company. in like two years for like a ridiculous sum of money. And I was like, dude, this is kind of crazy. Like, this is like a cool environment. People are really smart. We're all working really hard. We're super motivated. And I was like, man, maybe there's something like to just working in this environment versus like going back and working at like Proctor and Gamble or like a huge company and like, you know, following a traditional path of like, I don't know, like developing your skills and then like doing your thing.

Right, right. So I came back to the US after they sold that company and I was honestly just like chilling like at home. And my buddy from college, he's like, hey, I have this website called Gondadio. And at the time, it's actually just like a bounty site to basically pinpoint problems in open source software and assign a bounty so other open source developers can work on these problems. In choice. Yeah, because it's a classic public goods problem, right? It's like a problem is like, okay, there's a there's a park, there's no park, you know, cleaning service, let's say, because it's like somebody just made this park, right?

But like somebody needs to clean it and like maintain it, like weed it, you know, keep it pristine so everyone can use it, right? And like get enjoyment from it or get productive use from it. But there's no incentive to work on it beyond this, like I feel compelled to do it. And so what Rich was trying to do is basically create economic support structures for the open source community to incentivize a working on open source software. The problem that we ran into was that the price of work for software labor wasn't yet approaching market rates such that the monetary incentive could properly incentivize to open-source work.

Yeah. So it'd be like $100 bounty for maybe 20 hours worth of work. It's just like, I don't know, somebody was told me this. They were like, I either work for free or for a lot of money. Like working for a little bit of money is just laying. Right, you don't work? Sure. So, we were just thinking about it. Like how do we get, how do we fulfill the initial vision of helping really good devs make money so they can do what they love? Sure. And so then I recruited a friend of mine that I had met in China, and we just started pounding the phones like and cold calling AngelList company.

Like companies on AngelList, like that's how we got started. So we had a site, we kind of like, I mean, we kind of reoriented it around as jobs. So devs can get jobs, get paid, freelance jobs mainly, and then they can work on open source software like on their free time. And we just, I mean, me and JP, we just spent like eight hours a day, like literally cold calling companies on AngelList. Yeah. And just being like, what problems do you have? We can get software engineers to pick up the Slack basically? Yeah, totally. And like we were one of the first sites, I think, to like have like a GitHub link in their profile.

really adamant about like you have to look at people's like open source contribution. That's awesome. They're open source project history. Also, shout out. I need to get you connected with him. Brian Douglas. Brian Douglas is the founder CEO of OpenSauced. OpenSauced is putting much more emphasis on being able to find jobs, not find jobs necessarily, but basically evaluating an engineer on their GitHub and their open source contributions. Yeah, perfect. I'm sure they're doing it in a sick way. Like there's so many more tools available today to do that. And so, yeah, that's what we did, man. And then obviously, you get customers, they're like, hey, can you do this?

We don't want you just to introduce us, but we want you to make sure that the thing goes well and the business grew from there. But honestly, the first iteration of the company was like, hell, Packers get paid. That was the initial tagline. That was the vision that we were driving to. It was like, how do we help Packers get paid? I don't know, I think hacker is a term that has a lot of meetings, depending on who you speak to. Obviously, if you write open throat software, you know the sort of etymology of that word. And I fear if you're developing the etymology of that word, it's both like good, bad.

Right. Right. So, you know, recently you guys took on funding and we, not you, we. Yeah, we actually. So, you know, I know people watching, it's like, this sounds like a little unicorn finders. I promise we're going to get into some other tactical stuff for you. But I wanted everybody who's tuned in to get an idea of who we are. Again, I'm new. I've only been here for three months and just having the guy that I actually started this damn thing is the best thing that I could have on the show. So again, we're almost out of this whole history lesson. If you guys are all good board.

So venture back, talk about why you you did it. Talk about maybe the process a little bit, because there's a lot of people watching that may be founders or potential founders that may, you know, obviously want to look into this in the future. I think there's a lot of people out there that say don't, I think it's very split. It's don't take on funding. There's some people who are like, take on funding. So Yeah, totally. So I tend to think like the like, don't raise financing versus like take financing is like a low, it's like a, it's like a low resolution debate, you know, because like it depends on the business, it depends on your goals for the business, it depends on what the opportunity is for the, for like you to grow the business and it depends on like how the business is architected, like you know, if you have like a coaching business, that's like you and you're like mentoring people.

Like this is an example, like how to be better software engineers. Like there's probably ways you could take like 2 million bucks and then like orient that business to like be a bigger business. Like you could like have a legion of people like writing books, you could have a small team setting you up on like 60 events, you know? Like maybe you could do that, but like, you have to eventually return some degree of return for the people who invested, like, in your business. I don't know. So could you pay a percentage of profits? I don't know. So there's like, for that business, it may not make sense.

But for us, it was like, okay, so, like IT staffing recruiting is like, like a huge industry, right? There's like so many big players, right? Tell me about it. Yeah, yeah. And like, dude, like, I mean, I don't want to insult any, like, yeah. Dude, Hot Take Monday, man. Let's throw some insults out there. Let's get spicy. No, no, it's just like, it's crazy to me in some ways that you can have like, like, one thing that I really admire about you, Taylor, is that you have so much empathy for who you're serving. Like you have so much empathy for developers and so much empathy for companies.

And you're able to get there just by observing the work, like somehow, you're able to watch a person who's hiring their team and feel their pain and deliver, like, in part of it. Same thing for developers. And I think that's like a one in a, I don't know, eight billion type of gift. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know if a lot of people can do that. So sometimes it really perplexes me when you have a $20 billion company, that's like doing IT staffing, and they treat the talent based like shit. Right, like commodities, and companies are stuck in these incredibly onerous contracts, same with the talent.

It just like it boggles the mind. And so when we actually didn't like anticipate taking financing, and I don't know, honestly, the fund that we raised from, they're just really cool. Like, I don't know if we were to raise the money if it wasn't for them. But there's a big truth in that, right? I mean, I think you gotta be, if you're gonna take on investing, you kinda have to be in sync with that firm. Yeah. Like you gotta buy. Yeah, relationship. Super important, yeah. No, it's like, it's like, it's such a critical relationship. Yeah. And like every time we talk to the fun, like you need to feel like the right mix of like, like challenged and supported.

Like you need to feel like, okay, like we need to still go, but like, I feel good, comfortable with these folks. Yeah, you gotta jump off a cliff, but we're gonna give you parachutes. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, hell, we'll give you a frickin' plane, you know what I mean? Yeah, like hit that high altitude jump. Yeah, I don't know. So I mean, practically like, we got a couple acquisition offers, I don't know, a couple years ago. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were like, well, we like running the business. There's still more opportunity to go after. Like let's keep doing that. And we were like, we could probably do a lot of cool shit with like more dry powder.

So that's, that's like, that's sort of like the practical reason. And then maybe the more philosophical reason. That's cool. I want to get to it. And y'all, y'all giving me a shout out. appreciate it making me emotional on this Monday morning. I do want to get to, I want to get to Barrett's comment. Isn't, isn't that almost like every staffing company? So, Tasia just commented about a lot of staffing companies treating developers poor or just treating their people, especially consultants poorly. I mean, here's the deal. And I don't want to go into too much negative, negatively about staffing company. There are individuals within staffing companies that do it well.

And I will tell you this, and Tasia, you and I can maybe dive into this for a second. How hard is to scale community? how hard is it to scale intentionality? And, you know, if we've had David G on the show, we've had Victoria on the show, we've had Ben on the show. But can you talk a little about just the type of intentionality and care that we were trying to execute, we're not perfect, we're never gonna be perfect. We're gonna have people slip through the cracks, we're gonna have people get mad at us. But can you talk about what we're trying to do, which is why I love working here, because we do try to lead with empathy at gun.

Yeah, totally. I mean, like practically, I think the experience feels really different. Like when you sign up as a dev, you actually get a call like with a human being. That's like how to see you. You got a call with Victoria, you know what I mean? Like she's like, hey, here's what you need to do to make a lot of money on the platform. Here's what you need to do to expand your skill set, like get into projects where you want to grow, that sort of thing. And like if you're stoked about that, then you talk to a TTA, which is like a technical talent advocate, that's gonna be like the person That's reviewing your past project history, making sure like, hey, okay, you've set your skills accurately, these are the things you can work on.

And then when you're on a project, you have our full platform support. There's gonna be somebody from the business checking in with you on the engagement, if you're contract. I think that feels really different than working on Upward and working through another staffing company. just feels different right on the talent side. I think on the company side is the same thing. So every non-technical person we have in the company is encouraged to do the Odin project. At least complete a few modules and learn a little bit about programming. Install some packages, work with Git. OK, you're using the GUI, but fine. And create a project.

And I think that actually, cause I don't know, not everybody's as empathetic as you. Like sometimes you gotta like actually do the shit, like understand like, okay, this is the life of a pro. So, you know what I mean? So I think that's like really fucking cool. Like, you know, when you're like a CTO or a VP engineering or a lead and you're talking to people that are like, heck, I'm not an engineer, but like I get how like hard this is and how vital this is to your company to grow. Like we're gonna, I think that just, it feels different. I think you build better relationships like that's the that's the space where like good deals have Oh, Taysha.

Luzia come back Come back come back Can y'all see him? Yeah back you back. Yeah. All right. I think I was you Warren dude. What's going on man? It's good to see you We need to we need to hang soon Warren. We need to hang soon I had the opportunity interview worn one on one on my podcast in person. It was a great episode You all should go check that out. It's wonderful, but what love you big dog Ever I want to get to your comic can can you? I'm confused about the specialist Ben. I have no idea what what what specialized in on good.

Can you Reframe that question. I would I would love to answer that for you. I want to ask you this Tasia Because, so I get this from a lot of people, right? So I'm going to go and ask you in person and we can talk about it to the public. Why just senior developers? Yeah, that's interesting. It just honestly, like I'm a guy that fought like, I try to give the people what they want. And this is what, this is what companies in some ways want. Also, it was the easiest for us and a bootstrapped company to work exclusively with one vertical, like one type, one echelon of time.

Sure. Right? Like, if you're small, you got to go narrow. Like, you can't be broad, make money. Especially on it. Well, it totally like you can't deliver on like a wide variety of commitments. You got to keep the commitment space like super narrow, so you can build around it and make it super repeatable and like consistent, right? But I think now that we have like a little bit of an expense finding this weekend, I'm just thinking about like, okay, how do we get like juniors like apprentice on existing projects? Yeah, it's interesting. I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine who works at McKinsey and I think, you know, I probably can't like disclose exactly what we want to do, you know, but like there is something around like getting juniors to a practice on projects to get real sort of production like experience.

And I think that's just fun. Like that's something that I would want to look, I would personally want to apprentice on a project or like where we're building like a data warehouse. Or I don't even know the difference because like a data warehouse and a data lake and I want to go find the difference, right? Like so yeah, anyway. So. So so all that being said, I want to reiterate to you, you heard it here. It we're worth thinking about it. Tays just thinking about it. Like it's not something that is not on our radar. But I do have to say the nature of incredibly for wrong tays, what I've been saying is the nature of free so 60 around 65 per band, by the way, then Ben told me his debts.

65% of our job opportunities are more geared on the freelancing and part time side. Naturally, you cannot throw somebody more junior in their career into a freelance high pressure situation. And we're not going to do that to you to set you up for failure. And so that's just kind of the nature of what we're doing. But as we continue to grow, and one of the things that I was brought in to do, is to build out community outside. So again, if you are not in the Discord, the public gun Discord, we have one. We have our 600 developers in it now. It's very, very active.

We'd love to have you're part of that. And we do all these events. We're having a pizza party this Thursday, Tasia. with a guy who's a content creator and public speaker, national speaker, James Quake, he's coming in, right? So we're gonna do a pizza party. So stuff like that. Let's see, our Ava comes back here. Okay, I have a lot of skills in my toolbox, but we covered that generals don't do well on gun, but I'm not sure how to whittle down my skills into a specialty. Tasia thoughts on this? I mean, maybe like defining what we mean by generalist and by, by, uh, speciality.

Correct. Are you cutting it by like front end, back end, full stack, mobile, dev ops, like, I don't know, solutions architect, like, like, like, role specialization or like skill specialization, like as a particular stack, um, I would, I would want clarity on that. But I mean, I think generalists do well. Yeah. I would say, I mean, Evan, to be honest with you, a lot of our roles need these polyglot engineers that can come in and touch a bunch of different languages. So I think maybe too, if you need help on your profile, shoot me a message, I can get you connected with Victoria. We actually do an open office session for all of the Gun I.O.

engineers on our platform to review their profiles and make sure it's obviously refines for the job. So have a shoot me DM and we can talk more because I would love to obviously make sure you're happy within our ecosystem, for sure. Yeah, totally. And like, you know, this funny, there's like an interesting intellectual problem around this where like, so we match on the basis of skills, right? Like all the matches, like to get a job connected with a dev, biased based on skills. And it's skills in your profile. I wanna reiterate, right? I tell people like, you need to sit down and fucking after it for like an hour or so.

Totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah. But there is like an interesting thing where like, you know, if you're, if you're like a capable engineer, you know, like a particular stack like onto back, like you can spend, you know, like a little bit of time, maybe do like a quick project and like get some level of working familiarity with like a different stack. Like, Like for example, if you're a Ruby dev and you want to flex in the Python or there's a company you really want to work with, that's not challenging to go and learn that stack with some dedicated effort. And we're working on how to solve that problem.

Because again, the whole matching is biased on skills. But what we're trying to hire for is the cognitive flexibility to go and expand the skill set based on the business need and the customer need, right? So it's just, it's an interesting intellectual problem. I think like generalists are actually like doing quite well on the platform. Yeah, I would agree. Right. And you can apply to the most opportunities, yeah, stick with the company as the company, maybe pivots, maybe does a new product. Like all that stuff is true. Yeah, I would honestly say, Eva, if you're still watching, I would say we prefer generalists because we have a lot of stuff come in.

Like we need 10 hours doing React. We need 20 hours doing PHP. We need 10 hours doing back in AWS. I mean, you could literally get three jobs within an ecosystem like tomorrow within those skillsets. So again, I think generals do do well, Eva. So that's what I'm saying. Message me and I can help you kind of answer some questions. Definitely a lot more comments from our junior crew that's here at Alex. That would be such a great way to get some experience to junior entry level dev. So critical to find ways to help junior entry peeps develop their skills. Alex, I've got the gun I hear newsletter subscribed and I'm watching it like a hot for when that part of the program is ready.

I love it. I love the idea for juniors at junior. I love the opportunity to develop these skills in a real world scenario for me. Absolutely 100%. Also too, I think, Tasia, I want to get you connected to Brian because I think there could be some synergy with us partnering with open sauce. Yeah. Maybe kind of help with this program. For juniors could to contribute. Yeah, there could be something there. I'm just kind of taking out loud on the show. Let's see here, tailing. My resume to be React specialist, even though I have a wide variety of skills, help people who wanted React skills to find me without sifting through everything.

Yeah, so I think this goes onto a bigger thing with the job search. I think you should have specifics towards resumes on your skills, but then also have generalists. Cause I think you need to pivot, right? I think you need to pivot. But in this, in this instance, I can see how that makes sense. I do want to get into kind of the last two topics here. And again, Tasia and I, whenever he and I are together, we talk for hours. So we don't really have the time to talk for hours today. One thing, Tejas, so two things that we talked about, I know I subscribed to your newsletter, I love what you write.

Also, I wanna give a shout out to straight bars is what I said. So Tejas wrote this last week, "'In the world of tech, innovation isn't limited "'to lines of code in brilliant algorithms. "'It's also about the connections we build, "'the trust we foster, and the fun we have along. the way. That is straight gas. Probably, literally, the header to my Twitter is so good and I think it's who we stand for. Can you talk about the power of events? I know you're pretty stoked about it right now. What maybe you've learned even from our last event and kind of what the future looks like for us getting involved in the engineering community.

Yeah, totally. I mean, so like, I'm an extrovert, but I get a lot of energy from like sitting at my desk and just grinding. Like I like being around people but I get so much energy from just like sitting and like working on a problem and just thinking through a problem and like I used to have a disposition where like a lot of interaction like in my workday like felt unproductive you know and I'm so happy it's like when I'm getting into bed I had a good-ass workout you know like eight well I drink yeah I mean you vote and I like solved some big-ass problems like I go to sleep be in like, ah, like, um, this is good.

Yeah. Like I'm dead. Like this is good. And so I was always resistant to like, man, I gotta go to this event. I got it, you know, I don't, you know, and so I don't know, in some ways, I was like, you know, good. Like we're stuck inside with COVID. Like, excellent. I get the same. You work out in your house, like you're chilling. Just go to work. You go to bed. Everything's kind of right there. It's great. You can eat well because you're not not eating out, everything's dialed in. 100% you sleep it on top yup. And so anyways, that was my disposition, but man, we threw an event on Wednesday.

I mean, what, you threw an event. No, we had a team on the whole week. I don't know. And so it was so fun. And it's fun to meet. It's just fun to talk in person, man. And it's hard to even just sort of quote, it's fun to talk in person. Yeah, like it's such a trite observation. I mean, I know. I'm like so many people have like said the same shit, but I'm not saying anything new, but it's like, man, like, okay, if it takes like three 30 minute meetings, like end zoom to like get to know somebody, like honestly, 10 minutes plus one drink, like the formula is probably like, like, time in person times drinks equals like, like 10 times the meeting duration virtually, you know what I mean?

In terms of like trust building. And so it was awesome and we wanna do more of that. And it's just something that like, I personally I guess lost sight of like in the pandemic and post-war. I like to like balance, you know, the fun that we work with. Like they're credit, they were like, like you guys need to like do some dope events. I was like, fuck man, I just wanna work. Like how is that working? But they were right, you know what I mean? It's like, it's fun, it's valuable. And we've met so many cool people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's so funny. Like I said, so Ryan comes in here.

Sounds like Tasia is the ambi-aver. I'm also one. I think I am too. So Ken and I are very similar. Like, a lot of similarities. I'm kind of the same way. So without super long story, when I was recruiting heads down, like when I was an agency recruiter, I was very good at the mechanics. Nobody could beat me at the mechanics. I was in first thing, recruiting very exes and o's, right? But there was just one girl I recruited with for a long time. She's actually an internal recruiter at Data Dog now. And she was a badass. Her name was Alathea Thompson. For those of you who know Alathea, she and I basically own the entire Nashville engineering market.

And Alathea would never do the exes and o's, but you know what she did? She always had lunches and always had happy hours. So like I was over here grinding my ass off day in day out. She was out here not grinding her ass off in the office, but throwing all these lunches and these meetups and these happy hours and all this. And we were both doing the same amount of sales. Yep, yep. Dude, yeah, no dude, like it's funny. Like it's almost like weightlifting. Like, you know, I'm like a guy that like tracks like on a log, like my sets, my reps, my reps.

Do you have a good log system? I need to, I don't have a good log system. I need to figure one out. Yeah, mine's good. I like, yeah, I'll tell you about that later. I'll tell you about it. But like, I have funds for like, bro, I just get in the gym and just fucking go hard. Like, that's all I do. I just go hard. And I'm like, these guys are Jack. Like, they just, and to me, just like, you know, I'll let you sound like somebody who just like, I don't know, this goes hard meets people. Like, I would be like tracking against the metrics, all this stuff, like how many touch points, I mean, that's me.

Yeah, totally. So yeah, it's just funny. It's like funny how different approaches like map to people's personality types and then also, you know. Well, and that's why I'm appreciative of you supporting kind of what we're doing because, because I think it's important to start building community outside of the four walls of work because of COVID, right? And so again, for those of you in Atlanta, we are gonna throw a vent at Connect Tech here in October. I'm gonna be working on that this week, but it's gonna be a really, really cool event. And so if you're going to connect Tekken Atlanta, be on the lookout because we're gonna throw a really dope event in Atlanta.

What else? Oh, scaling teams. So we're hiring a lot. So we'll finish out with this. We'll finish out with this. Scaling teams, you've run your newsletter a few times. What have you learned hiring over the last few months? Not only myself, but obviously some amazing other individuals that you brought on. just some observations, maybe some lessons to others. Dude, okay, when you're building like for full time and you're trying to like scale a company dramatically, okay, like, and like, I can't believe what I'm saying, but I will. It's like resume, skill set, like goals, like that shit is like important, like that's like, but it's basic, like you should be, you should be baseline.

Yeah, you should be hiring the skills, you should be like, they should know the thing that they're gonna do, they should have some experience, they should be competent, they should be, you know, all this stuff, but like most important, like the most important thing is vibe. Like there needs to be a good- I like that. Yeah. That's not real. Like good energy about the person. And like the energy between, it's not so stupid, but it's like the energy between like the people on the team, because somebody like you can be friends with somebody and you can have a friend group and you invite them to the friend group and it Fucks the odds off totally and you're like I have friends like that and I've tried to mix friends It's like no, and it's like they're all independently cool But like why is this not like a good vibe with them there and like building a company is like building a really productive friend group like that.

And so like, dude, like energy, like how they make you feel, how they feel, how the team feels around them, especially for senior people. That's like so key. And then like also like, you know, like, if somebody wants to grow in a career and they're like, okay, how do I get like more money or more responsibility, more impact? It's like one, like one level of analysis is like, all right, You gotta hit these goals, company's gonna do ex-emonesy, you gotta like, that's how you make more money. But it's also like, what they're not saying is like, you have to bring a level of energy to the company that's accretive and makes the company better.

And like everybody sees that and that influences, I think in some ways, like your managers and even like the management's ability to give you more money. Like they have to be like, holy fuck, If this person is bringing like a level of energy to this company, that is just profound and like, move, right? And so for me, like that's what I look for when we hire people is like, I want to, I think this person is going to bring awesome vibes to the company. Obviously, they don't their shit, but like they're going to energy, not like drain energy, you know, not send into meeting like this sucks.

I don't like this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I've talked a lot about that in the interview process about energy and people have like what does that mean? And you kind of described it like, managers, like people, people want, people are gonna want to work with you to hire you. I mean, like, you can't just be a funny guy and expect to be hired. And so that's why I'm saying, like I've been talking a lot about bringing energy in the interviews lately on my social media content. So you just kind of affirmed it right there. Like you have to have the energy. Yeah. And to move the deal, especially right now in this market.

Totally. And I mean, like I would say in terms of like a proportion of interviews conducted, like 80% to 90% of all interviews done, the managers want to hire the person that they're speaking to. Like they want to go into that meeting and be like, blown away, here's your offer, I don't want to take any more interviews, like let's go, right? They want to be put in that space, that's why they're there. And like if people show up and the energy level is not there, like the vibe is not there, like people are interviewing like disappointed, like super disappointed, right? Like you want to find somebody who's like, holy, yeah, this person's amazing.

And so, yeah, I don't know, it's like so important. And but it's again, it's like, it's hard to pin down. Yeah, it's a feel and you got to, you got to have experience hiring. Yeah, because it's definitely, it's definitely a refined skill set that you've got to to pick up. It's not something you can just figure out. Not, yeah. Like you have to, I don't know, like, it's like, you talk to them, like, do that light up when they talk about their family, that light up on the top. Obviously, like all that stuff was like subtle, but yeah, but you, but you know what I'm talking about, like, when you meet somebody and then I was complaining about some shit, like, it's kind of like, yeah, I also talk about be careful that you put online and talk about the interview process too, because it could, it could come back and bite you.

All right, we've run long, but I hope you all enjoyed it. I know I've enjoyed it. So I tell you, I end with three questions. All right, three questions. Again, thank y'all for tuning in. I appreciate it. This is the last one of the week. Tomorrow we have a huge marketing meeting tomorrow. So no live tomorrow. And then Wednesday I'm headed down to Atlanta. And then Thursday I'll be coming back from Atlanta. And then Friday I will not be able to go live. So so, Tasia, you're the only live of the week, big dog. So congratulations. So three questions. The first thing, what do you do outside of work that brings you joy right now?

All right. So, okay. So I recently tore my ACL training Jiu Jitsu. So I haven't been training Jiu Jitsu, but I've been looking a little small. I got a minute. I know, I know, but I've been, but I've been hitting the gym and like, like, you know, yeah, hitting the gym, hitting the weights and like really dialing in like my nutrition. And so that's been super fun. It's just motivating, you know what I mean? Like, hit the way it's go hard. It's a fundamental thing. Maybe you found out about nutrition, just any observations right now. Okay, and rank order. This is what's most important about it.

When I look at progress, number one, making sure that I'm eating the right amount of food, like not too little, not too much. then eating like really to the extent possible healthy then eating enough protein then hydration hydration is actually not that important I find but that's all I drink is coffee pretty much up until Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I feel good. Uh, say well, maybe I can sleep better, but that's fine Yeah, and Having predictable times around when you eat. Like you talked a little prepping yesterday when we were texting, that's super important. What I like to do is I'll make a bunch of steaks or chicken or something on Sunday, and rice, and then the time of the place.

And then you can just layer in your vegetables or eat another meal out or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So that's been cool. And honestly, not training Jiu Jitsu in some ways, It's nice. It opens up my schedule. So I have some evenings like often, which is nice. It's it's that's why you're big on events. So you have your evenings free. That's why. Until now, dude. Yeah. It's cool. It's cool. Yeah. I love training. I mean, I love like fitness culture. I love, you know, like hiking, biking. I love it. Second question. What tools, technologies, frameworks, trends, books, topics are you reading right now? So the first question was a little bit more like, you know, high level, this is a little bit more like educational.

What are you kind of tinkering with reading right now? Yeah, totally. I mean, I would say I'm okay. So I got really fascinated by like, predictive modeling techniques, although a couple of months. So we have a problem in our company, right? Where like the key problem we're trying to solve is like, we're trying to have every job eventually get a developer paid, right? Like if we can get every job that comes through connected with a dev, like everybody's super happy and like, you know, like, yeah, people get paid. And so the thing about predicting whether or not a job gets filled is like data scientists would say, it's a highly dimensioned problem.

Because there's so many different features of a company, and so many different features of a depth, their location, their level of seniority. This is the skills they have, the rate that they have, same on the company side. Their budget level of financing, where they're located, blah, blah, blah, blah, product. So many different things. And so, how do you actually make an analysis that predicts based on features of the job, features of the company, features of the dev, like that are interested, like that this job can get built? So, yeah, I've been just like, you know, playing with like decision tree models, different predictive models to try to like really fine-tune understand and drive.

You're trying to math up our industry. Good luck with that dude. Yeah, no, it's interesting because it's people. But like, this is the space where like math is really fun, like for me personally, and obviously maybe it's not fun for everybody, but it's like, okay, you have theory, you get to apply it in the practice. If you do it well, you create value for a bunch of people. So, yeah, just studying that and like code interpreter is pretty sick. Like, you have to feed it synthetic data, but like chat GPT is awesome. For that saves you like hours and hours of modeling, there's some data security risks, but whatever, as long as you're using synthetic data, it's okay.

So yeah, I would say that's what I'm messing with like from like, I don't know, like a technical standpoint and then like from a non-technical standpoint, dude, I'm like hooked on this dude. Mike Isritel's videos, he's like a bodybuilder with the Renaissance periodization on YouTube. He's got the best science based content on the two. So I've been like diving into that. That's like what I watch at night. Like, you know, when I'm just like, or trying to go to sleep is like, like, you know, like optimal sets per session are 10 to 15. Like, you know what I mean? I'm like, oh, okay, that's such a nerd, man.

I love it. I love it. Last question as we wrap up here. What would be your biggest piece of career? So it shows called guidance counselor 2.0 because guidance counselor is middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have anybody to turn to and ask for career advice. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to younger Tasia? I would say like take more risk. I think like that's probably true at every stage of your career is like, Take a lot of risk. Take so much risk that you feel like if you fuck this up, you can't come back from.

Like that's probably the right level of risk. Because I think like it's, unless there's something wrong with you, you're probably not like, that's probably still under risking. So I would say like, when I look back and the best decisions of my career have probably been the ones where I'm like, like let's go for it. Yeah. You know what I mean? For sure. I mean, like, this is an example, like if we had sold the company a couple of years ago, we would never be having this conversation. Right? Yeah. And it's a risk to go, like when you have like a money sitting there, right? You get people paid, everybody in the team's happy, like that's cool, but then you keep going.

That's a risk, right? So like, but it's a good risk. Like you're happier, right? Yeah. Yeah. You'll scare it. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, I would say take risk. Like, well, and there's somebody who's, we had some people comment, by the way, look up Eugene Tio too. I bet you'll love him. Oh, yeah. I love that dude. He's on like YouTube shorts. I've seen him. He's swole. I love that. I love that. You know, for me as somebody who worked the same company for 12 years, I mean, you know, part of probably what kept me there for probably the last four or five years was I didn't want to take risks.

Yeah. Right. And I will tell you, listen, I'm not about jumping to a new job just because it, just because you know, you had one bad day. But I will tell you this, I think, I think fear held me back. Now, I think everything happens for a reason. There was a time and place for everything. And there was a, I came across, you know, you guys at a perfect time. But at the end of the day, I wish I probably would have taken more risks and maybe would have done something a little different. But that's just my two sense. That's so I mean, you know, I kind of believe that like everybody ends up at the right idea for themselves at the right time.

You know what I mean? Like, it's a it's it's kind of a complicated point of view, but it's like, had you not stayed at that company company for 12 years, you would not have been as convicted, probably about taking risk. Yeah, yeah, I think it's probably like in the end. It's like good. It's like for a good reason Yeah, a hundred percent cool. All right. Well, Tasia stay on real quick so I can say bye to you off air But y'all thank you again for hanging out to say again knows a long one is almost an hour I love it. I don't think I've ever gone an hour with anybody on the show But obviously you can see we have a good vibe.

So connect with Tasia I'm trying to encourage him to do more post on LinkedIn. He hasn't done it yet Hopefully you all can keep him accountable And then yeah, I get network with everybody on the show If if you like this show repost it Especially if you want others to learn about what we're doing at gun would love your support Otherwise you'll have a great week. I want to see you all next Monday. Peace. See y'all Hey, you did it you listen 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.