the possibility of leaving tech all together w/ sr dev advocate chris demars

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I'm so excited for this episode. I'm excited for this episode. One, excuse hanging out with Chris. Those are you. No one's here yet. So I don't want to brag on Chris yet. I want people to hear about it. But it's always a good time to hang with Chris. But also, too, I'm really excited for this talk because I think I don't think I know Chris's story about what we're going to dive into today is is very applicable. I think to a lot of people right now in this market. And so, you know, I think a lot of times people look at senior devs, especially to juniors, and they're like, they got it made, they don't have any issues, they're good, right?

And, you know, I think Chris's story is just going to show, you know, that listen, like, everybody has been affected by this economy, whether you're junior or senior, and it is rough, no matter what seniority you are. So we're talking about today, there are people tuning in. And so I do want to brag on Chris. So Chris is really, so I would say Chris and Kyle Welch, but Chris, really Chris is like the guy to really introduce me. I would say tech Twitter is like a bad way to say it, but like introducing me to basically like that developers are cool and not really weird.

And like you can like do conferences and like all this stuff. So like that's Chris. Like the reason why I do what I do now is because of Chris. So Chris, you the man, very influential in my career. So thank you my friend. So excited to hang out with Chris today. A few housekeeping things. First and foremost, say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Again, the reason why I say this is the networking platform. We all don't have our Apple Vision Pro goggles on yet. But so I don't know if you're watching, right? So you got to comment. I've had people on the show, you know, find jobs, find mentor mentees on the show.

So please comment, say, hey, I also love to know like where people are tuning in from to be totally honest with you because like it's really cool. We had like South Africa and Spain yesterday or the day before. So I love to hear it. So even if you're just on the south side of Nashville, it's very far away from me. So please comment. I'd love to hear from you. Second off, ask Chris questions. Is it time to really pick Chris's brain? Chris is a wealth of knowledge. He has a lot of experience in this last search, which we're we're going to get into. We're going to talk about it.

And finally, I want to go over my partners for the show, that conference. Thank you so much for sponsoring. Also, Render, again, thank you so much for sponsoring as well. Check out both those conferences. Also, too, I want to go shout out, I am the Render Lead here in Nashville. We're going to do a open space coffee. Hang, that's it. It's just a meetup. Come and co-work with me and some other devs at a big coffee shop South of Nashville. It'll be a lot of fun. I want to get to a few folks. Brady's good to see you. Taya Todd, our guy, Mr. Lobster himself.

What's up, buddy? Janet's good to see you, Chris, Becky Michael Janet, Danny. It's one of these see you as well. Cool. Chris, today's a special day. What is the day? It is a special day. I just want to give a shout out to everybody in the chat too. I can't post any comments. So, Holler at everybody in the chat. Today is a special day. And it's a special day for me. I know it's a special day for you. This country, for this country, it's a special day for this country. It's basically Independence Day. It is Independence Day for a connoisseur of this type. Tate, Tate, do you know what it is?

I told you what it is, but I'm going to talk to you. You told me what it is. But I want you to do the honors of what's today is. Today, everybody is national pizza day. There you go. Pizza day. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Make sure you get that pizza. Okay. Where you get it from? Everybody. The pizza. The pizza. Chris, I always ask you every time you're on the show where where's your go. Okay. Give me one staple. If I'm coming to Troy, give me the staple I have to go to and maybe give me like a new spot. Oh, let's see.

Let's see. Well, it's a toss up. It's a toss up because the same family that created the first spot also created the second second spot. So it would have to be a toss between buddies and cloverleaf. Both of those are the original buddies is the original Detroit style. Okay. And then cloverleaf was created from the same people that made buddies back way back in the day. So that would be like number one both of those are never one. So buddies are cloverleaf same shit. Second, if you're if you want Detroit styles are, I would say Michigan and Trumbull is a good spot for Detroit style.

Yes sir. Fantastic. Sweet. A few comments here Michael it's good to to see a buddy so glad to see my man succeed. I know it was a process but glad you finished about absolutely. And Chris had the whole fucking room from him. telling you man. Yeah. I thought goes to New York style pizzas the best gotcha. Top top. Can you boot out of your boot child out of this? I'm not going to be too violent. She was in violence on this Friday. All right. This guy this this by Todd. He puts he puts coffee milk in his coffee. All right. Let me coffee milk. Yeah, I saw coffee milk on TikTok the other by the way.

I was like, what? That's a thing. So Chris, let's give a quick background about you, man. Who are you? Just at a super high level. And then let's obviously dive into why people are here. Yes, sir. Krista Mars, born and raised in Michigan. Let's see senior developer advocate currently in digital ocean, but a friend and developer for 27 years and a DA in some capacity for 10 of those years. That's what I do. That's what I am. I also believe in UFOs, big foot and and ghosts. So let's rock and roll. Yeah. Yeah. Chris now will never be able to hang out because I'm terrified of everything and Chris loves everything scary.

All right. Michael brings a very hard hitting question this morning. What's what's your pizza? All right. So here's my okay. Tell me hot honey pepperoni, jalapeno, onion and banana pepper. See, I can't I can't do all that spicy shit. Pepperoni mushroom. Okay. I like that. I like that. That works too. Um, all right. So, uh, Chris, I would say the last six months has been absolutely brutal for you. Can you talk about just at a high level of really the last little bit of your career and then we can obviously start diving into some specifics? Yeah, no. So like after my first layoff last year, I was laid off for three months and you and I streamed during that process.

And that was super gnarly because I've never been in a situation like that. You know what I mean? I've had always had a job in tech Never have been like stagnant and that was like a trip for me big trip and you know I don't blame the company that did it. I actually that company's great You know I definitely go back and work for that company But I was laid off for three months and then ended up at another company Unfortunately that didn't work out because they what we can get into why later, but that just didn't work out and Since that was November and I just recently got I picked up my digital ocean.

I start next week and I'm super stoked for that. But man, it was getting bad. For one, I didn't get severance from the company that just laid me off last year, the last one, which is fine and dandy. I might have not met the requirements whenever. I don't care. But money got super tight, dude. It was to the point of becoming homeless. If something wouldn't have broke, I was done. I was given up on everything. This is a joke. This industry is a joke. Hiring is a joke. Everything's just broken. But I mean, I kept hustling, kept trying, and one thing led to another, and here we are.

Yeah, and listen, I mean, like I said, I mean, you know, you texted, I think you texted me or DM me or something about it. And obviously, like, I just, I was like, I was like, fuck yeah. My wife was like, what? I was like, don't worry about it. But like, you know, for me, you know, you were very public about interviewing and failing and winning and moving on. And so, you know, for me, I want it. There's so many ways to tackle this, but let's go over just observations. Let's start with the observations. Good bad, normally, of the job search. Oh, well, seeing as that I got laid off at the end of last year and, you know, people have taken time off, you know, you got Thanksgiving, you got Christmas.

Hiring goes down, budgets are going down, like it was extremely hard. I applied to over 100 jobs. Again, within the two and a two and a half month time frame, I applied to 100 jobs and that included front end jobs. It just felt like nobody was hiring DAs for anybody that's tuning in developer, DAs developer advocate. I was talking to some people who would run like DevRel as a service programs and I'm actually on an advisory board for one of those programs or companies and they were saying, you know, I've talked to so many DAs from one of these companies that's looking for somebody, and they're looking for someone that checks every single box, and I can't believe that, like I can't find anybody out there.

There might be two people in the entire world that check these boxes. So like hiring, it just seemed like people are looking for unicorns, like super high level unicorns out there. And like that shit just doesn't exist. You know what I mean? You gotta be able to give and take here, and like it was extremely difficult. But then as the new year kicked off, you started seeing a lot more job openings opening up. Right, I was watching one of your vlogs the other day and you were talking about, you know, you personally are seeing more recruiters getting hired. Well, what does that mean? When more recruiters get hired, that means more jobs are opening up, right?

Cause they need people to bring those devs and those D-ons in. But like you saw that towards the end of the year where like these jobs were opening up. Like there was a lot more D-A roles opening up at the end of the year opposed to when I got laid off the summer from the other company. And I was having interviews every single week, but just nothing broke. But then everybody is opening up these hiring positions, but nobody was hiring for them because it was getting to the end of the year. So that shit sucked. And then the beginning of the year, you see all these companies hiring even more, but then with three weeks into the new year, everybody's getting laid off again.

It's like, wait a minute. I thought everybody got budgets and got approvals for things like this at the beginning of the year, right? Q1 or however your fiscal year works, and then I'm seeing my friends getting laid off and we just started the new year What kind of shit is that? I know so I mean it it's extremely broken and there are companies that are doing it properly and doing it well and I Because I've interviewed with them and I have friends going through the process But man, I'm telling you like some when it comes to developer relations in general There are companies out there that just don't understand and they might not ever understand and what developer advocacy is, what DevRel is.

They see one company has the shiny and new and they want it. It's six months later, they realize, oh, we didn't actually need this. We have no value. Boom, bottom line, cut, cut, cut. And that's just, it's fucked up. Yeah, no, 100%. Why don't you go shout out to Dan. Dan tweeted something the other, yesterday he had a million views on his YouTube. That's huge, that's fucking huge. So Dan, thanks for tuning in, man. And congratulations to you, man. You're killing it. Um, yeah, no, I mean, obviously we could do an entire show just around the interview. But I want to talk about kind of your search.

I, you know, I think, I think I'm always fascinated with people's day to day and blocking and tackling and, and how they interviewed and how they set up their day. How did you do it? Did, did, do you feel like you have a secret sauce at all? Like, what are your thoughts on that? Just how do you structure your day? Oh, as far as like what? Like, like, I'm not even interviewing like like like did you try to only interview on certain days? How did you break up like did you just sit in your room all day and call and apply like what did that look like?

Oh dude I was applying 10-15 jobs every day. I just there's there's a couple slack channels that I'm in, dev rel channels and then you know there's like a recruiting channel or whatever jobs channel and then there's like automated jobs that get posted every single day so I'd go through and see what which ones I wanted and then and open up the links and apply it. And if it was through like LinkedIn, I would try maybe not to apply through LinkedIn and go directly to their website, apply or do an easy apply if there was an option. But I just shot and got applying to everything and anything I could.

Even if I didn't have the experience, I would just shot and then applying because I can write and talk about anything. You know what I mean? I can, that's just the way I am. I'm involved in so many different communities in tech that I can talk and write about whatever it is. But like as far as interviews go, I was scheduling them every day. Like I would try and schedule in the day of a party. Like if I hear about, we're talking now. Like yeah, like if I got a call from a senior recruiter, like what's your availability? I'm like, no, no, like put me to the hydrogen manager right now.

I'm open all day long or I can fit you in. I was sometimes I was doing two, three interviews at a time. I was doing interviews at 5.30 in the morning because the company is like overseas. Like it was the crime and the struggle was legit and real. And when you don't have a job, like I'm from Michigan, you know, half of my childhood I grew up in the city of Detroit You know, we have a bad reputation in Michigan. We have a bad reputation Detroit is a bad reputation It is what it is, but you have to have a grind mindset, you know I mean you have to hit Detroit There's a reason there's the saying in the clothing line Detroit hustles harder, you know I mean we have to to prove a point and to make shit happen nobody's gonna do it for you You're gonna make it happen on your own, but I had the grinding hustle I had to because when you don't have a job your job is finding a job You know I see a lot of cats out there, you know, they get laid off from a company And I'm not saying any names or anything like that But a lot of cats I see like oh, yeah, I'm gonna take some time off and just you know relax who has time to do that It might be a different situation but like for me I didn't have time to do this because I didn't get I didn't get severance Only he money I had was it was in the bank.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Yeah Yeah. So like I had to hustle and find a job quickly. Well, and like I hate to say this, this isn't going to make people feel good, but like I don't think anybody's more networked into the tech community than Chris is. I appreciate you bro. And if Chris is having problems, I mean it's rough and again I don't want to discourage anybody because it's all timing too. Let me ask you this Chris. I mean, how did you keep up with all this? Right? Like so much did you have an Excel doc? Did you have, I don't know, Carlo board, what did you use?

I'll show you right now. I use Notion and I had Notion also. Okay, awesome. Yeah. I had Notion set up. I've had this for a little while now. And literally jobs, if it scrolls jobs that I've applied to. And it blurred out because I got my screen blurred. But yeah, that's just all jobs. And I was tracking them based on the company. I had like a drop down of like applied pre like pre limb interview first interview second interview third interview, take home volunteer turn down decline accepted all that stuff. And the date I applied yourself like an own ATS. I had to I had to keep track of stuff dude because I was just applying to so many roles.

I did that last time. I did that the year before when I was when I was applying for roles even though when I had a job and it was applying to go somewhere else. I did that when the first layoff I did that the second off I did that. So yeah, like I just had to just keep tracking it just so I could keep track of what was going on. Talk about we got a few questions here. You know, obviously a lot of comments, you know, Alex is a recruiter. I met him last night at a meetup just had a conversation about this yesterday. It's bad enough that the layoffs are happening so frequently, but the way Org's are doing is so bad.

Yeah, I know it just I mean, here's the deal. Like, listen, I've been I got a sneeze to. It's one of those. Bless you. Yeah. Not quite there yet. Getting there though. Here's the problem. I don't like I have been in management at the last company where I knew layoffs were coming and I could not tell anybody. Ooh, that's rough. I have an issue with it, but I also understand the other side. So I, yeah, I just think man, I don't think there's a silver bullet, but I just think transparency is key. I mean, I just think as much transparency as possible. Thomas comes in here, I guess I'm realizing this, but there's a shift happening in tech spaces taking longer than we would like for it to equalize.

Yeah, I mean, 100%. 100%. Let's see here, I had a few more. Dominic comes in, I have a friend that's demoralized by his jobs, hun. He has come to conclusion, it's all him. It's not all him. No. I would say 99% not him. Yeah, I thought 100%. Yeah, I mean, I got, I felt the same way. I'm like, how can a front-end developer with 27 years and 10 years of developer advocacy experience where I've been an IC on a team and have built and launched a DevRel program from the ground up where I did all the admin work and I did all the DA work?

I did all of these things. I have a track record of community work. I have recognitions in the community for the work I've done. Yet I can't get hired. If it's not them, it's me. Right? There's something wrong with me, apparently. And that has to go with friends of ours right now that are still unemployed. It's like these people have amazing track records in the developer relations space and the tech space in general. And they can't get hired? How was that possible? How? That is impossible for that to be happening. But it is and it's a problem. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Jana has an interesting question.

Did you take any more self time to do self education and just completely job hunting? I feel like as a junior, I have to split my time with learning too. Yeah, no, so no education. Like there's nothing I need to do and develop relations to educate me further. Right? Except read some books, read some, you know, read some great articles. Sure. You know, by Tessa and Kim Meida and just anybody that's out there writing stuff specifically on DevRel, I've read it, right? I consume that information. But as far as like self-education, I mean, if I'm working on projects here and there, but like I have a life, you know what I mean?

Like back in the day, it would have been a different story. I would have rolled up my free time. I would have been writing code. I would use the Stanford two, three in the morning writing code and working on projects. Yeah. I'm going to be 38 next month. Like I have a life. I travel around the country. I play paintball. I bass fish on a tournament level. with the other shit I'm into, I go to paranormal conventions, like I'm not trying to spend all my time writing code. If I'm looking at the computer, I don't want to keep looking at the computer all day long.

Now if you're in a junior role, it's a different story. Like I'm all about hustling and doing that, but like I'm also a big proponent of work-life balance. What, I mean, your mileage might vary. So let's talk about this too, and I think this can be back on jazz question. How did you stay sane during this, ma'am? I didn't, yeah, you did. I didn't, I didn't. Well, I mean, a big, if I'm a beach completely transparent, it's drinking. Okay. Drinking. But I've been sober now for two months. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's tough. It's very, very tough. And I think it's important, Janet, going back to your question, I think, you know, when I was on the job search in June, July, you know, you can kind of do one of these things where you feel like you gotta do it all, but sometimes less is more in the job search because you gotta stay fresh.

If you're burning it on all lands, even before you get on the call for an interview, you're gonna have nothing left to give and an interview and you gotta be more locked than anything else. That's why Chris, I'm shocked that you did like three interviews and dicks. I did that a few times and it wore me the fuck out. So like I said, I was waking up 536 30 in the morning to do presentations to do presentations. Do you interviews it's funny I don't know if I think I did tell you this I told a bunch of people this I was didn't I did a presentation it was 630 in the morning I did a presentation for a company I had to put a light and talk together and I killed it I killed it they said they loved it blah blah blah I got a email a week later saying that my slides were too stylish and that's why they passed on me I bullshit you not I'm not gonna name it I'm not saying anything but yeah Yeah, my slides were too stylish.

Yeah, and listen to me. I'm yeah, and I'm seeing on my end companies are. Yeah, we're in this weird limbo right now. It's like waiting through quick, quick stance, incredibly frustrating. Um, Todd in here, how many recruits and have a clue about the position? Um, so I mean, I only talked to a guy last night. Um, Alan Hendricks, he was interviewing for, um, Figma. And he went all the way through a six round technical round, six hours. only to be told that the role is going on whole because of the transaction not going through with Adobe. Wow. Yep. That's a joke. And then this guy's a stud too.

This guy's a JavaScript, staff, engineering leader, architect. I mean, he's incredible. So as Sarah Brady comes in here, glad you're in a position, Chris. Hope works out for you. My bro is a huge bass fisher who puts you in touch with some hogs here. I love that. I love that. that. That's good. Right. Let's do it. I'm ready. So I talked. So anything, so any practical tips or tricks that you would give to people from your job search? Oh, definitely create something in a spreadsheet or notion. Like keep track of who you're applying to, what the role you're applying to. Even if it's different, like in my notion, like I'll have, I'll have multiple roles and like you might just put like DA, right, developer advocate.

Well, there might be developer advocate. There might be senior developer advocate. There might be developer experience engineer. There might be developer relations engineer, community manager, like have a list so you know what you're getting into. Cause you don't want to look like a moron going the interview for the role and you forgot what you're saying, you forgot what you interviewed for. Like that's a huge one. Definitely doing some research on the company. That's a big one, trying to get put in touch with people that work with the company or if you know people that have worked at the company, that's a good one because they might know somebody that they can talk to.

I mean, the big thing too, like you gotta remember, it takes time in this community to build trust with the community. Like I didn't get to where I am, day one. You know, if Krista Mars when I came on a scene and said, hey, you need to hire me, people be looking like, who the fuck are you? You know what I mean? But I have established myself in the reputation that I have, or people will trust me, and people will trust, you know, going into the dev rel position, people will trust the company that I'm working for. But like, you gotta be able to have that trust with people.

So I think really networking, getting in there, as much as you can, talking to people is a good thing. And then just crafting your resume. You know, like, I've always been, I have a background as a writer, so like I have a really nice resume. And I know you reviewed my resume and you've given it top marks. You know, I've always just crafted it a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, and having a really nice resume, not too overly over the top, but being able to, you know, communicate what you do, fight off the rip with your resume is good.

Like don't put a bunch of fluff in there, you just send another thing, like that shit's old, that's old hat, get to the point. So. Well, I think this goes on with the Anton's question, if you're asking the new role, how can you stand out in this current market, especially when you have to compete with folks who have more experience, I think you kind of answered that, I think. They feel like being able to rattle that stuff off very quickly and directly, I think is, is, is he. Yes. Yeah, don't be around the bush. Like be very upfront and blunt when you're having these conversations.

Like that's what I was doing in all my interviews. Like I wasn't, I wasn't being around the bush with shit. Like I was to the point in saying like, this is how this is done. This is what I do. And this is how you are going to benefit. Let them know that shit right off the top because that's what's going to set you apart from everybody else. And if you have a brand, like that even helps you even more. Like I have a specific brand. Everybody knows me for the tall tattooed bearded, you know, flat brim doesn't wear text shirts with half cap socks and vans.

Like that's how people know me through the community. And that's what they expect for me. And they come to Mike Talks to see me in my brand. I had somebody and Todd was sitting right next to me. This happened at a conference last year. He and I were at, and they came up to me. And it was like during lunch or something. They came up and they said, Chris, they said, I don't care what you talk about. I just want to hear you talk. Like that was a huge, I do it for me. I do have to say I'm gonna give Chris credit. I learned about playing music before I talk from Chris.

So I do that now because of Chris because it's awkward as fuck just sitting in. A lot of people do. A lot of people do that. It's really awkward. And I would say, I would say, I mean, I've lately seen some good speakers, but Chris is like one of the first guys that I saw speaking. I was like, ah, this guy's not normal. Like this is good. Like, so again, props to you. But I mean, you're brand. I mean, you got a brand like like with people when people, you know, talk about Chris Demars to me. I'm like, Oh yeah, Chris, tattooed, flat bill, bra, vans, Detroit style pizza.

Scary shit. Like that's it. Right. So, you know, but, but like people know what they're getting with you. And I think that's incredibly important. Um, I also want to go to, you know, Thomas brings up and Thomas, we, um, you know, did you work any freelance job, side husters, part time jobs, things outside of tech to get you by? I didn't want to so I didn't you were just not you at all in just yeah yeah yeah I mean I've written I've written for some companies Just because you know they wanted me to write for them. So that was cool I mean I have a couple different so I have a side hustle But I put it on the back burner, but as far as like tech shit getting out there like I'm sorry Like I'm sorry, but I'm not going to McDonald's to work like to get by.

If I'm not doing this, what I love and with a passion, then I'm not gonna do anything. I'm not gonna do anything. That's how hard headed and frustrating and bitter. I'm not knocking anybody that works at McDonald's or anything like that. Get that money. You know what I mean? But that's what you want to do. And listen, I've had times in my life where I could have gone to play and beat and I only want to do play and I was just gonna grind it. So I knew it and I knew something was gonna break. I just had I just had to know. So something was going to break.

Let me just say, so I was talking about God last night who got rejected by Figma and I was talking to a few other people that are meeting up last night. For those of you who are in Nashville, you missed a hell of a meetup. We were about 30 kind of people out there was great. It does seem like there are positions hiring right now, but it just seems like a mess. Yes. Yes. Is that accurate? Yes. 100%. 100%. Like I said, but the companies that know how to do it, you know what I'm saying? Like do, I am extremely excited to be working for DigitalOcean.

I am a digital ocean is a company I've wanted to work for since way back in the day, way way back in the day before they even ever had a dove around. What do they do again? I want to do it. So like droplets, Kubernetes, okay, come to stuff like that. They own CSS tricks. Yeah. It's been one of those companies I've always just wanted to work for ever since Unicravitz worked for it. And this is, if you know who Una is, back in the day, Una used to work for DO and I'm pretty sure she worked for DO. Yeah. And it was just a company I've always wanted to work for.

And then having friends that have worked there in the past and it's like, oh, DO would be an awesome company to work for. So I am extremely stoked to be working on the dev role team for DigitalOcean, but they also know how to do it right when it comes to hiring. They know the people to talk to, how to get through the process quickly and not beat around the bush, right? And the same when I was the last company, not the last one, but the one I got hired in two years ago, like boom, boom, boom, interview after interview, they knew exactly what they wanted.

And they just capitalized. Like, you know, like, you know, it's so refreshing. That's the same way I was with gun. It was like bang, bang, bang, bang. So real quick, before you wrap up with my rapid fire questions, when you're having fun with friends. Talk about timing, right? We mentioned that backstage, how you interview with Digital Ocean, because I want to give people hope that it really is all about timing. So talk about that real quick, about how it kind of came full circle. Timing is, it's gnarly. You might buy the thing with DO, and it's a great story. But before, so I was interviewing with Split Software, who I was with last year after the first layoff.

Split's a great company, Feature Flag and Experimentation Company. I love it. But I was interviewed with them and Dio at the same time. And literally in the same time frame, but split, move quick. Within a week I was interviewed and within two weeks ahead of job. Dio finally got back to me for the second interview already after I accepted my offer with Split. So it took Dio two weeks, I think close to two weeks to get back to me in the time frame that split interviewed me and I had an offer sign. So I took my job at Split. Fast forward to 2023. I get hit up on LinkedIn by somebody that's running the program at DO.

I was like, yes, let's talk about this. Had interview with the hiring manager right off the rip. Moved right on to the recruiter, who was my recruiter from the last time. And he remembered me, he knew I was great, it was workout. And he knew that the reason I passed on DO because they didn't move fast enough. And he said, all right, we're going to move fast with this. So moved quick enough, had a couple more interviews. And then, I mean, it took about a month from the time I talked to the first person to job offer. But I mean, that could be it. That's still good, right?

But I mean, like, with split, it was within a week, two weeks. That's impressive. That's impressive. So I mean, it really is all about timing and not just timing. Right, not burning bridge. But not timing just in like the literal sense of timing as far as like the date you apply and then the second you hear some Like a callback it really boils down to what's happening Right what holidays are going on how the fiscal year is looking if there's any really really big events that that company is taking part in Right all of that stuff is going to push back or move forward that time.

Yep. Yeah me last year I got laid off in November. Well, I had Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's So like yeah, people have posted all these jobs, but they were going to start hiring till the morning. So I was just sitting in limbo the whole time. And then once you know that first thing you're picked up, then you start seeing budgets go up and companies getting approvals for things. So it really, really, it's timing yes. And when you apply, you get that first call, but it's also timing on the organization of what they have going on in their calendar. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, again, y'all, thank you for hanging out with us.

Chris, rapid fire four questions real quick. What outside work brings you joy? What outside work brings me joy outside work like shoveling snow and mowing lawns. Yeah, just just I just meant outside of work. Sorry, like like like your favorite. Oh, okay. Favorite. Yeah, I'll be in Vegas next month for a payfall tournament. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. What if if money was the same and money wasn't a. issue, what would you do outside of tech? Oh, what would I do outside of tech? Shoo. I always wanted to be a paleontologist. What's that? What is that? Is that dinosaurs? Yeah. I love dinosaurs. I got I can see you be just like, like the rogue paleontologist that everybody loves.

Um, third question, what tools, frameworks, tech trends, libraries, are you tinkering with that you're loving or interested right now? So I'm currently building a mobile app in Ionic. Shout out to Ionic, Mike Hardington, Cecilia, Jess Sacks, the whole team over there, building an app with Ionic, the React flavor of Ionic and Strapi, which is a headless CMS. Now I've used Ionic in small pieces here and there, never used Strapi. So I'm doing that right now, I'm building mobile app for a local, or not a local, I guess it's local, it's Michigan, but a convention here in Michigan and the owners of the convention don't know I'm doing it.

doing it for fun. So I'm going to present it to them once it's done. But yeah, it's pretty super stoked. Learning tons of new shit about ionic learning should about strappy learning about Android and iOS platforms. And yeah, it's been fun. That's cool. Last question. Biggest piece of career advice you would give young Chris. Get started earlier. Like, don't just look for that quick money, especially if you have a passion, you want to do something. You know, when I was younger, when I got started web development a long time ago, many, many, many, many, many moons ago. I didn't even have an allowance and I never job wasn't in high school.

I didn't think you'd get a job in web development. I thought you had to have a college degree and you had to go to a fortune 500. So I got out of high school, went into college up to the college, but I still didn't think you'd get a job without a degree. So I needed to find that fast money. And I spent a long, long time job to job, to job trying to find that fast, fast money. Don't, don't do that. Like if you, if you do have a passion for something and you want to stick with it, stick with it. like don't hop around because time is short and time does not stop for anybody.

You know what I mean? And the longer you wait, the harder it is. So stick with it if you're passionate. I love it. Well, Chris, thank you, my friend. Again, congratulations on my job, buddy. Um, I'm going to see you at the next conference. Everybody tuned in today. Thank you so much. It means a lot. Um, go connect with Chris on Twitter and go connect with digital ocean and again, shout out digital ocean for finding a good one. And we'll be back next week. You all a good weekend? Let's get it. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful because you know why?

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