the benefits of changing companies w/ james q quick, content creator

full transcript

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All right, James. Yeah, we're a little rant. Little rant. James, James, go rant. Go ahead, buddy. Yeah, so I've got this thing, right? Like I do, I do a lot of panels. I do a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of talks with like boot camps and I've gone back and done stuff at Vandy where I went to school. And everyone who's in my position always is like, if you have any questions, reach out, right? Like everybody does that partially to be polite and some people mean it more than others. And I sincerely mean it. And what's really interesting is you could say, like, reach out to me all day and you could try to be inclusive about that.

And I understand people are nervous about reaching out to strangers and stuff. But the reality is like 2% of people actually reach out when they have the opportunity to reach out. So when people close like a session with Taylor and they're like, if you have any questions or if I can help you reach out, people don't do it. And it's such an easy missed opportunity. And you talked about like one person followed up to a hiring manager and asked some questions, blah, blah, blah, and they got hired. Like that's how that happens. is just being part of the conversation and trying to ask questions and trying to show that you care.

So when people will give you the opportunity to like, to reach out to them, do that. Now, I do want to caveat like, I get lots of DMs and stuff. So I may not be able to answer everyone and I may not be able to give you what you want. But I'm going to try and I work really hard to do that because those are the things that get me most excited. Like people that participate that ask questions that comment that follow up, those are the people that get me really excited and I want to do the most I can for them. But you have to do that first little bit of effort to reach out after.

So So when people say, reach out to me if you have questions or I can help all blah, blah, like if you're not doing it, that's on you. And it's an easy thing to fix. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, please, yeah. I mean, you know, people always ask like, what does networking look like? How do you network? And it's like, it's just a bunch of small micro conversations. Right? It's somebody who goes, Hey, I want to connect. We'll reach out to them. Right? Now listen, 99% of those conversations aren't going to go anywhere. And that's okay. But it's that 1% that's going to land you a job.

And I think people, I think we live in a culture where people want it now. And that's, I mean, I understand that, but man, networking is just chipping away. I mean, literally like, so James, I mean, I'm gonna give you a shout out, right? Like, I signed to James's DM like two years ago. I was like, I was like, I was like, so intimidated. I was like, James, all these fucking followers. He's never gonna want to come. He went intimidated. Don't let him fall. And he was not at all. I was nervous. And James like, absolutely. And then now like James is like, like my BFF is introduced to me to Clark.

He's the reason why I key noted at that conference. Like, like again, the one, the one conversation I had with James has opened so many doors in my career. So James, thank you for that. But also too, like that's what I'm saying. Like get, get connected to people. It helps tremendously. All right. Let's let a few more people tune in. Joyce, Christina, Colton. Just to bring some Colton. I like your explain name with a K. I have not seen that like that. Um, that's cool. All right. So layoffs, it's crazy, it's still crazy. People kind of, people being a little mad at me in the DM, I was like, hey, I thought you said it was gonna get better.

I said, first off I said, end of Q1. That's what I said, it's an end of Q1. I said, I said, but also too, I don't know. I don't know. So, let's talk, I know layoffs is kind of a broad thing. Let's talk about when you're checked out and you want to go and you're just staying. Let's start there. So you're just like, you're checked out. Do I need to leave? Should I just stay put? The market's hard? look for a job. What are your thoughts on all that? Yeah. Oh, real quick. I opened the LinkedIn tab, but I can't see the comments from other people in the LinkedIn tab.

So I can't respond there. So I'm paying attention to people's comments and I wish I respond, but I can't. Don't know why. Anyway. It's gonna do both. I do this. This is what I do. So let's backtrack a little bit and go back to networking. And we only have a short amount of time. So I'm gonna talk really fast. Networking starts before you need it. You don't build your network. When you need a network, you build your network for when you, when you This is actually a quote that I've like somewhat got from you at least. So I'm sure you said this million times. Networking for me, I don't like the word networking.

I like investing in your community. That's just showing up. That's being on LinkedIn live streams. That's being on Twitter. That's being a discord. That's going to meetups in person in Nashville when they do a render meetup. That's going to conferences like that conference in render. It's literally just being there and being a part of it. And that's what you did. And the hack that you have is you just reach out to random people and say, Hey, do you want to come tell me about yourself and people like talking about themselves. So you've got to network your ass off over the past, like however many years that you've been doing this.

And it's not just me, like so many more connections and opportunities you will have in your career because of the connections that you've made. Similar reason why we do podcasts. And then I also just enjoy being around people. I'm a social person. You get burned out with that. I get burned out, but I have a higher tolerance for it than you do. But we both get so much out of being around people in person. So when I was at FedEx, people around me every day talked about, like, I was like, I was how they don't like the job, they don't like management, they're just waiting until they retire, they wish they could do something else, they think they deserve more money, they think they should be doing something, like all these things, I'm like, why don't you freakin' do that?

Like you're literally just staying here, how much can I curse? Can I be like completely? Yeah, you can be like a little bit. People just sit there bitching every day about how the job sucks and how they deserve more money. And like, why the fuck are you still here? Like go do something about that. And I want to caveat, I always caveat this, taking control of your career doesn't mean things just change overnight. It doesn't mean you go make $50,000 more overnight. It means you start investing energy into getting to that point and start doing your research of what you need to get there. And then you start taking those steps.

It doesn't mean it happens overnight. Like I can be on my soapbox and I can tell you you go make a change, but I understand also it doesn't change overnight. So what do you do? Well, one, you start networking in the way that again, I go back to investing in your community, just showing up, seeing what's out there, seeing what hiring managers Taylor has on here, seeing who's at the local meetups, et cetera. But the biggest, one of the biggest pieces of advice I have is just doing your research. Research what job opportunities are out there. Research what the salary ranges are. Research what types of jobs you're interested in.

And then backtrack from there. What are the skill sets that they're looking for? What are the number of years of experience they're looking for? What portfolio projects are they looking for? And then start to fill those gaps. Like if you know JavaScript, but you don't know TypeScript and TypeScript's on requirements for all the jobs that you're interested in, that's your cue to go spend some extra time learning TypeScript. And I also, I think there's also a conversation for people that are also not, for people that are relatively happy with their job, you never know what the next opportunity is gonna be. So always be open.

There's really, there's almost no reason not to have a conversation with someone that reaches out with a job that potentially could be interesting. I wanna get Thomas here, just a good reminder to me, had an interview on Monday through a referral that is inherent at the moment, recruiter wanted to reach out and connect. I would definitely be hitting up that recruiter today. Yes, absolutely. You never know. And yeah, you may not be ready to leave now, but that may be a connection with a recruiter where you make a good impression and they reach out to you six months later or a year later. I've interviewed with Google, this is like the stereotypical eight hour day whiteboarding final interviews with Google.

I've done that twice. I never got the job, but what happens is I did well enough in that interview where Google reached out to me every year for like five years until I was like, hey, I'm actually not interested anymore. But they knew that I was a candidate they wanted to consider in the future. And recruiters, Taylor will tell you, they do their job of keeping a bank of people that they can reach out to. And they reach out to those people when I was available. I created an email newsletter. It was like a janky email newsletter, but it was an email newsletter at my last company to where I had 600 of my best and favorite engineers that I've worked with over 12 years.

And every time I sent that email out once a quarter, like if I got an email back, I say, now I was looking, I always place that person. So again, like we are told to stay in touch. I love this from Christina right here, network, trust the process to make the first step to research to come, I love this. Marie came in here, I shared this last week, my new role was not posted. I got it because I helped a friend in the past and karma came back. Right. I'll give you a couple of my experiences when I was looking to get back into DevRel and I applied it all zero.

I had been creating content at that point. So I'm a huge advocate of like content is a hack. If you want to know if I know how to do something in JavaScript, go watch one of my 500 videos on the topic, right? Like that's my, it's not just words on a resume. It's like tangible things that you can see that I know what I'm doing. And then you go to like, I was applying for this job because I had been doing that, because I had relationships in the community. I had three or four people reach out to the hiring manager for the job that I was applying for to say like, Hey, at the very least, James is someone you should consider.

Now it's up to me to go and perform in interviews and do the whatever like outside of the interview work like homework assignment I had to do, et cetera. But I had people that could vouch for me and that's from investing in the community. I like a couple of people who commented on that live by that and I swear it will change your life. If you just show up. So Elliot brings up I think this is a great segue to devil's advocate case in point from Taylor's resume. He went throughout a promotion from within their pros and cons staying with the company moving up. Can you speak to that James and Taylor?

So this is the, yeah, this is a great segue. Yeah. Do you, I'll join in. I'm fired at that name. No, no, no. There are almost always limitations with staying at a company. And I want to be clear. Like I'm not, I'm not telling you you should jump companies every two years. I think that opens up opportunities and has potential to do more for you in your career. But I'm not just saying to do it for the sake of doing it. There are almost limitations at a company. Now limitations come in the form of maybe you've plateaued at the level. They only offer up to the level that you're at if you're pretty experienced which often comes with a cap of salary There's also the limitation of your junior or your senior senior and you feel like you deserve a promotion And you're not getting it and these are conversations that you have with your manager.

You say manager I think I'm ready for the next level. Here's why What do you think and then what are the gaps that I can work on to prove to you in your mind that I'm ready? And if you're not getting that reciprocal that reciprocal help, that reciprocal like we're invested in you to get to that next step. That's your cue that maybe you need to look elsewhere. There's also the reality that companies pay different amounts of money. When I was at FedEx, I went for making $110,000 in New York City to making 70 in Memphis, which cost a living made sense. Then I ended at like 90, but the next job I got, I jumped up to 120 plus stock options, plus unlimited vacation, all these things just from going to a more modern culture to a tech company.

And so there's like, you could just cap out it. Like, that's just how much the company can pay you because they're not used to paying developers or other roles, this type of money. So I think you should always be open. You should always consider if you enjoy where you are, that's great. The one thing I will say is however much you enjoy your job right now, there's almost certainly another job and another company that you would enjoy as much and make more money, like do with that what you want. But there's almost always the ability to make more money, enjoying the thing that you do as much as you do right now, almost always.

Yeah, 100%. And man, I mean, we could, I could talk about this for the rest of the minutes we have left. I think for me, Elliot and anybody who's watching, I think you have to figure out what's important to you, right? Like, like I've had a very clear defining like, I need this, this, this, and this out in my last company, right? And I want this, this, this out of my new company, right? And for me, it got to the point after 12 years where the ABC and Ds that I wanted and needed were no longer there anymore, right? And that can change. Yeah, it was time.

It could change from day to day. Yeah, I didn't want to go. Yeah, I didn't want to go. I did. I didn't want to leave, but things changed. And so I had to make change, right? Now, I will tell you this is that the last three years is I want it out, right? And we're talking about that here. I will tell you this, if you told me, now everybody can say everything works out for a reason. There's a reason why you didn't leave three years ago. You're out where you're at, blah, blah, blah. But I will tell you this, if you would have told me the job I'm doing now would have existed three years ago, I would have left.

You would have done it. I'm so much happier. It's incredible right now. I'm doing exactly what I wanna do. I'm investing in the dev community. creating content. I mean, I'm having specific impact on the business. No. So I will tell you this, I want to encourage you today, if you are sitting at your desk right now watching this live stream, or you are listening to this in the future on a podcast form, and you are unhappy with where you're at, start looking. And unhappy is not as obvious as you think it is. Like you I was probably I was torn. I was torn. Well, you probably realize looking back how unhappy you were.

you probably didn't realize how unhappy you were, even if you realized some, right? Right. Like you, it's just hard to have that perspective. And so you really have to be intentional, I think about checking in about thinking about what am I trying to get out of this job? A B C D whatever it is. Are those things really feasible for now? And then on a day to day basis, how do you talk about your job and how do you feel come Monday morning? When I wake up Monday morning right now, I'm fucking excited to do it. I can barely see it's right now. If If you're not excited to go to work Monday morning, that's at least an opportunity to question why.

I'm not saying that everything is rainbows and butterflies and everything that I do is amazing and I love every second of every day, that's not the case. But I am excited to go to work and get to doing things Monday morning because I love what I do. If you don't have that feeling when you wake up, at least start to think about why. And then you can go from there. I love that, I love that. I love this quote, if you're not networking pretty soon, you will not be working. There you go. Timmy, it's good to see you. Kody, I'm teaching videos for a skill a company is hiring.

It can showcase your experience 100%. I do think, so my talk is content community and careers. At that time, it's great to talk. I might as well just have you come on stage with me. Let's see here. What are your thoughts on changing hiring dynamic for remote roles? I mean, this is a whole other conversation in and of itself. I mean, I think hiring in a remote setting it needs to be done differently, but that's a whole nother life in another cell. No. Oh, there's an interesting question. I'm gonna do your job. It's funny when you're both like podcast hosts and then you go on somebody else.

Yeah, yeah, I know. And now we're gonna transition you're like, this isn't my show, but I'm gonna do it. What did you get out of, yeah, yeah. What did you get a promotion from within that you might not have gotten from job hopping? A couple of things to think about, job hopping is a risk. No matter how much you think that thing is gonna be worth what you're doing, it's a risk. I job hopped, I followed a former manager basically, made a lot more money at PlanetScale, and then I got let go. I would not have been let go, I don't think, up until this point at all zero.

And it actually worked out because now I do content full time, but that was a risk. I joined a more risky startup that was younger, smaller, et cetera, and I got let go, which worked out for me, but it's not necessarily a case. There's also the ability to leverage your expertise at a company to work towards a promotion, which I'm always a little bit iffy of, like if you're getting promoted because you're an expert in that particular business, that doesn't necessarily translate to other companies. So I think you should find a balance of why am I getting promoted? So that there are skills that can translate to other companies as well, but you have the ability potentially to have more impact quicker because you already have expertise at that company and that product, whatever it is, you could take that into that next role and be able to leverage that.

There's the familiarity, right? Like it's easier to stay at a company you get everything you want out of it. And again, I'm not saying social equity and social equity in general, right? Like I've left money on the table from leaving all zero and I didn't get to my year cliff of shares at PlanetScale. I missed out on those things. So that's another thing as well. And that's that's also negotiating power too is like, Hey, if I get an offer for someone else for more money, can you match that money? Could you make up for it in shares? Could you expedite the like, what's it called?

The vesting of some of my shaded, et cetera, all of things to consider. And again, the point is not me saying leave your job, just leave your job. The point is to be open to what your next opportunity is and to make sure whatever that thing is, you're getting out of it what you want. Yeah, for me specifically, Elliot, I had the opportunity to take something from zero to something I created a team from scratch. That is something I've always got there at the very end. The reason why I did not leave is because I was given the opportunity because of content and the business I brought I was able to start a micro division within my last company that allowed me to grow and pick my own people And and and that was something I really wanted to do so that is why also yes mark I understand watching true detective.

It's so good. It's so good. Let's see here Todjos boy frog yeah Yeah, we all blow on frogs on this Monday So I have a friend who started her day one of her job search after a layoff today. Any tips? First off, breathe. Yeah. Yeah. And take the day. Yeah. Take the day. Yeah. Any more thoughts on this? I think there's a very strong mental aspect of this, which is similar to what you're saying is give yourself some grace and understand getting let go at this point in any economy is not necessarily a reflection on you. Companies are having to make really hard decisions, which is really shitty for everyone involved and it's happening every day and if you look across the board, you see more and more people getting let go.

So understand that's not a direct relation or a direct correlation to you and your skill sets and what you bring to the table. It could be, but like the economy is setting the table for it's not you. And so give yourself some grace, give yourself a day, take some chance to take some opportunity to breathe and then just prioritize. Like this is my big thing for people is do your research for the types of jobs that you want. What do they look like and what are the skill sets that you don't have or that you could make stronger to be more of an advocate or more of, um, hot, more hireable for that job.

Do your research and then backfill from there, get involved, investing in your community, wherever that is and whatever is the most relevant, whatever is top mine for you, whatever is available, go and be a part of the conversation and do your research and backtrack from there to find out what are the things you're missing that you can work on. Yeah, a lot of y'all just angry interview them because you're still mad at the company before so don't do that. Take some time. Do you all see companies promoting their employees less? No, I don't. I don't have any comparison of now versus day. I know it's a very common story of people feeling capped out.

Like if you if you look at people who bitch about their jobs, a lot of people say I think I deserve I should be a higher title. I think I should make more money. I should have more responsibility, etc. That's one of the most common things that people complain about. Yeah, 100% Tim comes in here and get in a job and get in a job. Is it true referral? It is true referrals are the best way to. Yes, 100%. I tweeted this morning that do not confuse activity with productivity when it comes to the job. Yeah, absolutely. I came up with that too. I'm very impressed with myself.

Is there a is there so future for June does it? I take I don't have it. We don't have data points on this. AI is going to change the way we do our jobs. It's not like it's so. Think about this. We have been through shifts throughout the entirety of humankind of major inventions that change the way we do things, right? Like electricity meant that people didn't have to go around lighting candles throughout a building. I do like the candles are nice. Like every invention that we've had though has changed that way that we fundamentally do something. AI is going to change the way that we write code that doesn't mean that jobs go away.

I've got a whole talk on this that I've done several times. I could go more into this. It should not be a fear at this point. It should be paying attention to what's changing and what's evolving and what are the tools that people are using and onboard yourself to that gradually. So you're aware, but don't think that your jobs just go away because of AI. This is another shift in how we do things. Just like all the other shifts and inventions and things that we've had in the past. It's a tool for devs, not to replace them. Yeah, that's so much. Any last, we're already at time, time flies, and we're having fun.

I need like three hours on the benefits. I say what? like three hours. Like not. I've thought about doing an eight hour stream before because there's a few folks I could go long. You're one of them drum harder ways and other way I go. I've never really gotten to talk to him that much. I know it's good to do. He's also a Nashville right or was a Nashville. He was Nashville now Atlanta. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. that's code in Microsoft. So let's see here, slightly unrelated. How do you combat LinkedIn do-marism? I mean, you just have to, you have to try to ignore, I mean, social media doesn't really, like what other people in person doesn't really affect me, but I know it affects other people, right?

I mean, my wife's one of them, right? Like if she, if there's a lot of negativity, my wife kind of starts to feel it, I'm just not that way. I think you got to protect your heart somehow. And if LinkedIn's starting to bother you, just post and get off. I don't really scroll through LinkedIn, like I do Twitter. I post on LinkedIn, I don't really consume on LinkedIn. So just be aware of that. Yeah. I think if part of the doom and gloom is like seeing people comment about being laid off, the reality is it could be any of us at any day. And I think you have to keep that in the back of your mind and you should keep opportunities open, you should keep investing in your community, you should keep building your skillsets because you just never know.

And that is very scary and it's very shitty and it's terrible, but that is the reality of the economy that we're in right now. And I do want to tell y'all this too. I saw somebody post this, his name's Connor on Twitter. He's a recruiter. I follow a few recruiters who I really, really like, what they say, Connor's one of them. And here, I'm gonna see if I can't find his username so y'all can follow him, he's really good. It's Connor. No, it's not popping up quickly. Anyways, basically he made a really cool comment and I thought it was brilliant. He goes right now, I would interview for hybrid roles.

And he was like, I would interview for hybrid roles. I would get in there. And he was like, and after I built enough trust for six to nine months, I would ask to go fully remote. And I actually agree with that. Especially if you're a junior developer, a mid level dev that's really trying to find a job and you're having a hard time. Those hybrid and onsite roles aren't being a ton applied to right now. So you can definitely stand out. And if you build enough goodwill and work hard and there already is a remote policy, there will be more of a chance to go more remote.

I just want to say that. I like that. What he said. I like it. Uh, anything else about the benefits of changing companies that we didn't get to? When, yeah, one thing that's interesting is just getting a new skill set. So I went to an authentication company. I didn't know anything about authentication, but leaving all zero, I know more about authentication than most people. I then went to a database company. I didn't know anything particularly about databases at a deep level. I know more than the average non-DB admin person. So that's something that you can use in your career is looking at strategic segments of products or things that you can learn as learning opportunities that you can build up complimentary skill sets to take forward in your career.

Yeah, yeah, love to have those opportunities at the same company. Great, great job of Colton here. Yeah, it's all algorithm based. So don't engage. Don't like don't comment. Don't do long on do me. I mean, it is. I mean, it's all fuel the algorithm. That's funny. Yeah. So all right. Last four questions that I asked folks, James, I don't think I've asked them since you've been on the show. First off, if money were the same, what would you do for your career outside of tech? be some of the sports related. I think you have asked me that like I think so maybe but because you made fun of me for saying like super generic sports related.

So like working working for like the Memphis Grizzlies a basketball or like an NBA basketball team or something like that. You do Jackson South Carolina grad he put up some points the other night. Yeah, they've been I don't actually know much about him but people have been talking about him a lot. So I need to our season season is basically screwed now. So I haven't been paying much attention but yeah there's lots going on. I love it. Second thing what brings you joy outside of work? Family like I sound cliche and I'm usually I usually give just more shit than appreciation publicly because that's my personality but love hanging out with my wife.

I have a daughter now which is a ton of fun and we travel a lot a little bit less now with daughter but we love to travel two years ago we got to take like three or four trips a year which is super fun maybe we'll get to go back this year. I go into conferences and being in person, not cliche, but with people like Taylor and so many other people in person is some of the most fun that I have. And then lastly, a sports going back to the sports team, I play any and every sport that I can get my hands on or if you play that.

There you go. Love that. Third question. Any tools, technologies, trends, frameworks that you're reading up on or messing with that you want to share? Yeah, Astro is a JavaScript framework that I created a full course on. It's one that I've I paid a lot of attention to, I'll be given to talk about that later this week actually, and really love Astro. I'm also building out a platform called Deals for Devs at DealsForDevs.com. It was originally meant to just be Black Friday Deals for developers, courses, hardware, desktop accessories, et cetera. I wanted it to be an ongoing year-round thing where people announce products with coupons, maybe giveaways, et cetera.

And so there's a few different technologies I'm going to use for that. I'm using Next.js as a framework. I'm using Zeta as my database. I'm doing some collaborative work with them. Century for air tracking again, a collaboration partner on building this. And there's also a few more I'm looking into. One is recent for sending emails with JavaScript by Zeno, who's a creator that built this in the last couple of years. The product's amazing, it's doing really well. And then also there's one I came across called trigger.dev, which allows you to have trigger something on a cron job, which is like once a week, I want to send an email to people that are interested about, here's the deals of the week that you might be interested in.

So combining all that stuff into this platform that I will hopefully leverage year-round and then have affiliate links for stuff As I get people using it maybe make some money off that as well. So yeah, I love it final question Because there shows called guidance comes with 2.0. We had guns comes from the middle school high school college But now as adults we don't really have them What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young games? Just that you're in control I spent a lot of time, like a lot of people like, oh, it'd be really cool if I did blah, blah, but I never did anything about it, right?

I think a lot of us do that. And I try to stop wasting my time with those conversations. Like if I'm not actually ready to invest energy into it, why waste my time thinking about what I could be doing. So you're in control. I talk a lot about research, and that's because that's the thing that you control. Go figure out what the gaps are in your career. Go figure out where you want to be next. Go figure out what successful people do in those positions and how they got there and the skill sets that they have blah, blah, blah. Go do all that research. and then use that as a checklist of like, I need to do these things and then go and do it.

Like it's not easy. It doesn't happen overnight. I want to acknowledge all of that. But if you don't, if you're not working towards that, then what are you doing? Yep, absolutely, absolutely. Awesome. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us. Hey, James, stay home so I can stay behind you backstage. But y'all have a great one. Go connect with James. James, work with people. Find you at JamesQquick on most things, Twitter being a big one, YouTube channel, JamesQquick. And then personal website is JamesQquick.com. I have a newsletter. If you scroll to the bottom, you can subscribe for all the stuff that I'm working on.

Hello. Cool. We all have a great one tomorrow. You're all have a tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow I have my dear friend, Chris John, on the show. He and I both worked together with the last company and he started his own thing. So we're going to dive into again, kind of same thing, going out on your own, starting something being fearless. So you all have a great one. Thank you again, y'all. Y'all have a great one. We'll see you all tomorrow. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there.

There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me at Tdaston on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.