job search q&a w/ dev advocate lawrence lockhart

full transcript

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

So how so yeah Finland Finland how did that look? Yeah, look cold as hell like just Finland brothers in Finland. Yeah That should have been your old vlog game brothers in Finland And there weren't many of us even That was wild such a blessing first of all Taylor. I'm 51. I've never done any transatlantic flight trip or anything of that nature. Never been to Europe or anywhere else. I mean like NASA and a trip to Mexico. That's it. I'm a US planet guy. So first of all, amazing that our company brings the thought there a couple of times a year for basically all hands. And so for those who are just joining, I work for Biden.

We finished base. Yeah, I finished base. I finished base company that I've been working as a dev role for since mid August. And so twice the year we do a thing called and connected with us in all hands. We have a globally spread out team so we everybody flies in or as many as can. And we work together, we collaborate together, have some fun, there's things like that. So this was my first. So all it's been paid trip to Europe, no problem. It was just crazy. It was funny, just last year I was telling my wife, when do I want to take a train ride?

Just a couple of hours just off on the countryside, not to go anywhere, just to sight see, just to take in the beauty of nature and all that goofy stuff. Well, it just so turns out a flight from, so I went from Atlanta to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Helsinki, Finland, Helsinki is the capital. Well, our office is in Perkou, Finland, which is about a two hour drive away. And the most convenient way to get there for out of towner is the train. So that took care of that. I love trains, man. I've gone to train, it was so easy. Just put the app in there, had a car.

I think my car had like three people. I didn't, I didn't, Trump, I don't know, whoever's watching. Like let's like let's let's get the train game of the train game. If I can go on a train ride to like, people are tuning in right now. But like what the hell are they talking about? But this is my friend. You only feel love. If, uh, I mean, if I could take a train to like, like, you know, we're going to Austin for South by, dude, if I got to the Austin, that'd be sick. Let me say I could work. It would be way more efficient. Exactly.

And we had good wife on the train. So that was always have been Wi-fi on trains, which is great. We passed through some towns, but it was mostly finished country side. And let me tell you, the entire two hour trip, it felt like I was, it felt like I was inside like a snow globe or like I was at a Christmas card. It was just one big Christmassy, constant snow, beautiful trees. You'd see like a sparse little cabin with a little lights on. Amazing. And in the North Pole, Santa's gonna pop out at any second. Like it was just beautiful. So the trip there was awesome.

People were very nice, come to support of those. Nice to meet people in person, because one of the things about remote sometimes, we lose that human contact and there's value there, right? And I'm not advocating for back to office or anything crazy, but there's value for in person, let's be honest. And so being in the room together, meeting everybody in for instance, my dev real team, we roll up to product in my company. And so being there with the other product folks, our head of product, doing some collaborations together in a small room, coming up with some slides, this is my ideas for the future, that was cool.

Yeah, of course, you know the dinners and all that kind of stuff that was cool too. So Tripped to Europe and who would have thought that's awesome. I love that Welcome good morning Like Lawrence and I hopped on so again I hop on with every guest 15 minutes beforehand We I never have a set schedule and I was like Lawrence. We want to talk about you guys man Let's just let's just do some Q&A. Let's just hang out I was like that sounds great. We want to hang it went live For those of you tuning in you like what the heck was that all about?

Lawrence went on an amazing trip to Finland. It's company so we were catching up on that. But for those of you tuning in, good morning. Welcome to guidance counselor 2.0 on this Friday, Friday the 16th Lawrence, you are basically like the last guest for next two weeks. So next week I'm going to get hip surgery. So I'm heading back home to two hour surgery, which is really quick. It's crazy. I think that that thing was like all day. It's two hours. So I'm coming home just helping my mom support. So I'll be MIA live all next week. Um, and then the following week, I got a bunch of stuff in the morning.

So I'm only going to be live with the whiskey web not boys next in two Wednesdays. That's it. So I'm only having one stream in the next two weeks to be really weird for me. Um, life happens to Lawrence Lawrence's Lawrence's last one. So y'all, uh, y'all, y'all drink it in, as they say. I got two things for you. I got two things for you before you do your things. Yeah. So first of all, this is a huge day for me. Cause this is my second time appearing on the Taylor show. Yeah. I don't know how I pulled it off, but you're a big deal.

So be sure to hang out and chat with you. This is cool. And I'm not just like pumping you up. Like I think you've demonstrated your value consistently enough where you're a rare breed, like die before your company, but not hated by engineers. That's rare for recruiters. Yeah. That's pretty rare to be both valuable on both sides, almost in an advocate type role. So I appreciate that in you. And that's a rare thing. And I learned for you and watch because that's how I do mentorship. I'm necessarily after Google. I sit down with one of ones every 32 today. know, I just watch people who are successful and try to glean what are they doing that's different from other people, like, you know, the fake plastic plant, whatever it is.

And just you just copy you emulate, right? And so I appreciate that. And use that's one big thing. And the second thing, oh my gosh, what was the second thing? I forgot, let's keep moving. Sounds good. Yeah, if you think about a second thing. So those you say, Hey, please say, Hey, I'd love to hear from you. Let's now return in from last week we had folks in South Africa, Spain, UK. So it was really, really cool. Sometimes we get some India, Nigeria. So please let us know, we're tuning in from even if you're tuning into the South side of Nashville, that is a very far way away from me.

So I would love to hear from you. Second off, ask questions. This is going to be mainly Q and A. I have some topics I want to ask Lawrence on, but primarily it's just Q and A. So if you're having problems with interviewing, job searching, and I know it's tough right now, how to really, really vulnerable conversation with David Neal on Wednesday of this week or Tuesday. I would highly recommend checking out. So incredibly vulnerable. David really opened up about his struggles over the last year or two. So listen, the job search is, is, is terrible for everybody right now. So definitely want to answer any of your questions.

Well, yeah, go ahead. I remember what it was. What was that? I never knew why you named your show. Guy's counselor 2.0. Right. Guidance counselors in middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have them. See there. See there. Also, also the subtext, the subtext is I want to kick the guidance counselors in the shin who've been telling everybody to write one page resumes. So I want to be the guidance counselor to the first response is the more meaningful heartfelt one the second one is just choosing violence. Yeah. Yeah. Everything on the time of the place. to my partners this morning.

First off that conference again, Clark Sill and that group call for presenters is open right now. I think it's closing March 1st, I believe. So go check that out. Again, the official coffee sponsor of the show. Clark's latest batch of beans are really good. And then of course, Platinum Premier Diamond sponsor, everyone call it render ATL. You're going? Yeah, yeah. I'm going. I don't know how I'm going, but I'm going. Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Yeah. I submit it. I submit it on CFP thing for a speaker. I haven't heard back yet. So if they close that, I have a treated recently that he just now closed it.

So I don't think there's going to be a lot of prep around that. So I can't imagine how many responses he got. But if I don't go that way, the cool thing, another cool thing about bot in this, I can use my personal learning development budget for conferences. That's great. I think it's great. I love it. Yeah, I would recommend going to grow. I'd recommend going to the And Lawrence, do you have any stories for people who may watch this a while that should go to Render? Oh my gosh. I mean, it's kind of like they're, I told my wife, it's like the Grammys of tech.

You get all the tech you want. Deep technical diet, which I've heard, I actually has a complaint that some other conferences in the last year. This is everybody's tech. Everybody's never really nerd out here. It's real deal tech all day long. It's all your faves, not just popular people, but people who are making a difference in industry. They're all there. They're accessible. There's no big eyes and little use. You can just walk up and talk to people and then they party hard all night long. So it's worked hard. I go to bed for Yeah, you will guys. But anyway, this day after day hardcore real deal tech by day and learning and growing and networking And then having a blast of your night even if it's just a nice dinner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah Super invaluable my my greatest number of the connections that concentration always happens during your render. Yeah And the people you run to even by accident Unmatched. Yeah, 100% want to get to people tuning in Kevin I need a job man. It will we'll we'll talk about we'll talk about what to do I know no one's giving out jobs right now But we'll do our best to kind of give give some feedback again Jason It's good to see you love the Finland fish out of water 100% John Christian John The trains of my son Brian Ryan. It's good to see you buddy Barrett's great to see you, former guest of the show, Alex, great to see you too, my guy.

Tay, that's good to see you. Valerie's good to see you back in the Taylorverse. Ooh, I like that, the Taylorverse. The Tayverse, the Tayverse. Tayverse. I have a sound. I'm trying to think about a cool, fun saying about life. Come up here. Yeah, yeah, you know, like, do you ever see Jason Kelsey and Travis Kelsey's podcast? They call themselves like, they call, they do not. They call their community 92%ers. I don't know exactly why. Trying to figure out like something to call the community, like the two dot Oers, I don't know. Oh, yeah, we're gonna have that one on that. That's true, too. Fuck that.

Chris, it's good to see you. Quality, I love it. And then Jason Stok to meet you at Lorn's, Render Lorn's. Yes, sir. I will be there one way or two. All right, so let's start first, man. I mean, right now, you know, we talked about your story last time on the pod. Let's just talk about some thoughts about the job search, what you're seeing, how people can level up, just kind of some general thoughts until we get started. Get some questions again. You have questions. TikTok, I'm streaming on TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, just ask questions if you got them. But let's go ahead and give some initial thoughts to the job search right now.

When they have a pro-streamer like you, seven channels at once, minimum. I'm not even going to ask them to text every morning. It's just, it's just a lot. I actually forgot to do something. I realized that whatever it's fine. Keep going. That's a true thing. I started doing one-on-one coaching on top-mate last year at Chris Sean's suggestion after I did the podcast with him You know, we spoke offline about something that he's doing and I should check it out And the biggest benefit has not been like getting rich or anything like that Like I don't charge any ridiculous rates But I have so much data from talking to people all around the country and a few internationally about what they're Experiencing at different levels junior mid and senior levels what they're experiencing on the design side of things like what is it like?

Because we all say, oh, the market's brutal. And this is like we kind of make platitudes, but in real life, things are different. Conditions are different. And it demands that any candidate getting to the job market at whatever level you are, you have to operate in a different way than maybe some of the people you used to watch on YouTube, like me or Christian, and how we got into tech five or six years ago. Things are different. In fact, I told young men last night, I'm fairly certain the portfolio that I used to get my certain the portfolio that I use to get my first job, absolutely what I get in my first job right now.

Why? It's too competitive. Well, for one thing, you have a flood of entrance into the candidate job pool that normally would be employed. And there's so many that many people are even down leveling. You have senior people taking mid-level roles, mid-level people taking the equivalent of junior roles, tons of full-stack people being hired for just front end. So I came in just as a front end person, in web developer essentially. Those roles being hired by full stack people. So what I started the year with, talking about, is this year is anybody getting into the job market at any level, it's about quality and strategy. The quality of your work and the strategy, how you put the numbers in your favor, right?

And so I modified that just recently based on just the conversations this year. I actually wrote it down so I don't mess it up. This year you have to be as close as you can be top of your game and be able to extend that brand to other people and we'll go into that in a minute. Or get a referral, one other two. Both of those involved here involvement with other people. And so for the engineers who like I was, when I first started learning the code, it was just heads down, me and my loft, I'm not going out, I'm not, it's just locked in.

And the introverted me really liked that too, like if I can just stay alone like forever, that won't work. You're gonna have to figure out one or two, one of two ways to leverage people. A through your network and getting a referral to bump that application up in the stack of hundreds of thousand applications, right? I posted one the other day and it was leaked and so you know it's not accurate, but it had like a hundred applicants for a job in four hours, but the total company only employed like 50 people. I think there's just a bunch of people applying for everything. So that referral is important.

It gets you seeing bump your application up or get your gain, your quality of work, whatever you can produce as great as you can to be sure you're extending that brand. idea of building a public is so much more than just, well, I'll take a tutorial and I'll, you know, treat 100 days of code every day. That's an example. But you have to figure out how do I get as many people as possible to know. Here are the things I know how to do. Here's how to, here's the things I know how to execute on. And they should be able to compare that to who they have and who they're looking at and be able to make assessments and they'll speak on your behalf.

100% you know Jason and I were texting this morning about at bats right I think you know one of the things that when I was when I was at my last company and training recruiters and we you know we weren't quite getting through and getting the starts and the offers I said honestly you can't even really control a start and an offer in our industry because there's so much that comes into play I said the only thing you can control really is getting that person and offer right or or or getting to a final round, right? And so for me, like I was telling Jason, like it's important as job seekers to get at bats because at bats showed that you're heading in the right direction.

What are your thoughts on that? Because I'm not a baseball guy, but I mean, even some of the Hall of Fame baseball players are hitting the ball once just every four times are out of the plate. Yeah. You know, I had a person that was on one of the, the Hutt Twitter spaces just a couple of weeks ago. And they were just struck. They were totally distraught. They're putting in all that applications. They're not hearing from anyone. They're thinking about just leaving tech altogether. They don't know what they're doing wrong. They went on and on. And we listened, right? We listened, we had that heart for them.

We had that for them. So I answered first, I said, I just asked you a couple of clarifying questions. Can I ask exactly how many applications have you put out and in what time period? And they said, oh God, I've easily put out 30 in the last three months. I said, okay, thank you for that data. By comparison, I put out a hundred before I got my first call back. This is back when things were good. I was over 200 before I got my first actual job intake. And so put the numbers in your favorite means, you're gonna have to apply. You're gonna have to apply a lot.

You might have to expand your search to not only the specific role that you're interested in, which there's a value in reaching down, but maybe even in some cases, particularly at the junior level, Just search for your skills. What do you know how to do? What languages do you have under your control and command? In some cases, companies will have job title that you don't know about, but they rely on the technologies you know how to do and employ. And so add those kinds, non-traditional companies, startups, non-profits, expand your numbers. That's one of the ways you go to a bet. John goes 30s to slow week for a lot of us.

Yeah, yeah. Not a base off-air about except my bad and average. Yeah, I mean, listen, yeah, I mean, It sucks. Let me ask you this. What are your so I've been really big on like trying to get into and Jason and I talk about this too. About trying to get into opportunities that are adjacent to tech, right? So like if Oracle has a customer support manager role open or an account manager role or you know, even at gun, right? If you always want to be a developer, but you have a sales background, you could already come in as a count executive and then you can start learning from our engineering team at Gun.io.

Absolutely. I feel like I feel like people really got to consider that right now. Oh, 100%. That's that's part of strategy. When I talk about quality and strategy, that's one of the strategies for numbers in your favorite. So let's just say, for instance, this isn't true. I was going to say it as an example. Let's say everybody in their mama right now who's a self-taught developer is trying to become a front in death period. I know that Mary's that going to be a front in death. There's a very many in that pool. Why aren't some of them saying, hey, let me become an Android developer?

I promise you, Android, as it is no more difficult to learn than front end with React, Angular, or you. I promise you isn't. And there's minimally number of people going in that direction, or iOS, or cross platform, or support engineer. Support engineer is a great way, or QA. She always a great step to become a programmer later. For every job you can mention, there is an auxiliary job that would be a good next step. I actually did this research live last night, a young lady, I won't name her, because she didn't say I can, but she tried to become a self-taught product manager, my project, the product manager.

And she's trying, she's doing all the things, she's doing the networking, she's a nice person, she has the experience, customer facing, but it's just not working. While we were on the Twitter space, I did a little experiment I'll link in. And I told everybody after I finished, I looked up 10 product managers and just, I was just being nosy, just read their entire background. What they did with their experience was, I found two things in common. A, none of them had a PNP, because that came up with this conversation. The majority of them had a safe agile or schematic certification. And the majority of them over half, which is like, think of seven, all had business analysts as the job they had before becoming a PM.

but nobody's like, I want to be a business analyst. But that could be the very thing that puts you in a smaller pool of candidates. You get that, you rock it out for three minutes. You rock it out for three years. You're right there with the PMs. You know they're trying to hit you, not trying to be a BA for life. So you're gleaming the success of characteristics from the PM who's right in front of you. Then you apply with domain knowledge at the job where you are. Rocked that for three to four years. Now you just write your own ticket. As opposed to trying to go from A to Z and missing all these intermediary letters that could lead you there.

Domain knowledge is important. I don't talk about it a lot, and I used to kind of roll my eyes when managers would tell me they need domain knowledge. But like now that I went to a talent marketplace instead of just a staffing, like I had some ramp up, right? But like even going back to, so like to answer that, try to get in with the domain knowledge that you need to get, because sometimes that may be the only thing holding you back. But talking about going into a role and then like changing as you go, like when I went into gun, it was one thing.

What I'm doing now is a completely different thing in seven months. Like, really? Right? Oh, yeah. I mean, let me just not, let me just say, not completely different, but like a lot of my skills are starting to become like tapped in that we didn't even talk about the interview process. So, like, so what I'm saying is, is like, even me and my career, I'm getting to the point where I mean I'm still experiencing like you start a company and once you solidify yourself and People start leveraging you more for your talents like your roles gonna change your roles gonna change Interesting. So I'm gonna throw out one more that just hit me.

I read the chat great stuff in the chat here Yeah, this is a role. I literally probably out of 20 people that I mentor, maybe one is going for this role. And it can lead to so many beautiful directions and take. And that is the good old fashioned sys admin, particularly if you go ahead and get that red hat cert, red hat certified system administrator, our HCS say, you get that cert, get that first job, which is not horribly hard to get, because again, there's not a ton of applicants for it. Rocket well and learn, learn, learn, learn. You can literally go into cloud, network engineering, DevOps, DevSecOps, potentially cyber, maybe if you have like a SecPlus and then the RHCSA, we're off the job for three years, you can go into various cyber, you can go in so many directions.

Just starting with a good old fashioned sys admin, they're still hiring them every day. Good ones are great to find. You can be competitive there. It's not just making websites because a lot of people start like, I want to get a tech when I met websites. Web sites is not tech. Sites are literally just one tiny little aspect. There are so many other things you can do that are not saturated fields when it comes to the candidate pool, which means it's easier to stand out. You still need to produce quality work. You can't be, you know, you can't be bad. You have to be good.

But see, right now in web development, particularly you can be great and still not ever get seen. There's just so many freaking people. So the differentiation factor is the key. I mean, I think that's so smart. The SIS admin side is another brilliant type of position because what I'm noticing is, is so a few things I'm noticing my end back in engineering is hot. I think you and I even talked about that. I think you've seen me tweet about it. Everybody in the bomb. And listen, I get the money was there when I started recruiting when React came out, when React was in Vogue. When I was recruiting, everybody wanted to react.

They were throwing a bunch of money at react developers. You could like spell react and probably still get a job. Those days are gone now, folks. Now, I'm not. And you know what? I'm gonna let you go right back. The boot camps have not responded to this. I know they're all still cranking out 50 billion merned of devs. And there's just not that many opportunities in that space. Which means they still have to learn something on their own when they finish the camp. Exactly. Like I'm like. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, this is your show. So I mean, where's this?

You're here to guess. So like, you got to learn back in. Like everybody wants back ends right now. Like whenever we get a back end roll at gun, like we're like. And so Python, Java, Java is hot, you know, especially for the data, you know, data, whatever processing. I don't really know how all that shit works, but like data, Python, cloud, but sysadmin. So what I'm getting at is back end programming to make your really good back-end programmer, you have to have knowledge of systems and like how everything works from a systems design perspective and like architecture. And I feel like you really can understand that starting out as a sys admin.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the infrastructure side of things, yeah. Not a programmatic side so much, but with infrastructure side. Great advice, I need to remind myself to work into it. It's not a shameful fail. Yeah, yeah, not at all. Not only is it not a shame, it's a strategy. Yeah, it's a strident. See, I could always say, they chestnut checkers. Sometimes you might lose a piece because you can see two moves down the road. I'm winning the whole game. There's nothing wrong with taking a brief step down, left, right. If you can see, hey, but this step will lead to other things. I talk to him all the time.

My first job in tech, I took a drop in salary. That wasn't cool, like in the household, right? I'm not a single man. There's a wife, there's kids, there's concerns, with mortgages, like, why are you going down about to supposed to be the level up? But I had to make that out of step. I have to. Two steps later, I came to tell you more than double where I was. Right. So you had to figure out what is my strategy. It's not just apply and hope. What is my strategy? That is one strategy. There are many. There are many. If you don't have one results in the house, shut up.

Look, girl. It's a strategy. That's it. Yeah, 100%. Um, man, what else? What else on your mind? This is good. Anybody have any questions? Start up in the chat. What else is out there we can talk about? Anything else? Um, I definitely want to share my company. Hey, if I have two minutes and I'm a dev rel. So and the cool thing is this. So, bottom, we are a amazing startup sized company to stay lean in mean for 20 plus years. We are built for job developers. So if you are like a pipeline guy or you like not going to say it in the visual, but your company is focused on Python or some other stack, we're probably not the best solution for you.

However, if you have Java backends, you definitely want to give botting a look, botting is a platform. And we make web development solutions, full stack web development solutions for Java shop specifically. We're very narrow in our focus of our customer base. Our two main frameworks are called flow and Hilla. Both of them are open source. You can look up botting and flow or botting Hilla right now. You can go to the Get Started guide, clone the repo, you can get started making stuff right now. Interestingly, so Java is always said, like don't start with Java if you're beginning stuff on the bill, because you don't get enough visual representation, right, start with HTML so you can see it.

Cool thing about bot and flow in particular, with a rudimentary knowledge of Java, like the equivalent of less than a freshman course in college, you can come over to flow and have full stack application, just writing one language, literally no JavaScript. So think like swing, but with support or think GWT, but the company's actually supporting it still and still has new advancements that are really amazing. If that's your goal, you get the visual aspect. Well, there's no way the raw, I would ever program full-site job. We actually have React on the front end, no problem. That's where the Hill comes into play. Hill is a framework that we have that combines a TypeScript front end that can be built out in React with a Spring Boot back end and a single project.

A lot of cool stuff's being the backend going on in the backend to facilitate routing. Security to facilitate backend calls with TypeScript functions is a really, really neat thing to check out. It's something where if you have a very small team, they pretty much just know Java, they get ramped up very quickly with Hilla and have full stack web allocations that are fast, that are performant. And again, on top of those two things, we also have a variety of web components that can be used in any scenario. So I just wanted people to check that out. I'm a dev role for them. So I'm literally paid to talk about it.

I say that upfront. So there's nothing weird. However, you can try all this stuff for free. This open source and those who are needing to make contributions. If you're learning Java, check out our repos. There are already open issues there that you might be able to address. Always of course, clone things down and see how it works first. Read the conversation, you read through the issues and the discussions. See how we flow, but we would love to have you there contributing in an open source way. We have a Discord group that will be going to this course soon as well. And you can just ask like all kinds of questions there.

Like, okay, I want to help here, but I don't know how to do this. There will be people there, all four of the Devrails, including our VP, are in and out of our Discord channel all the time. That's awesome. We love to have you. And even time being here, even by being here is part of strategy. I'm not sure if I ever said that. What happened? No, no, keep going. Keep going. I'm just giving you a number of that. Yeah, yeah. I'm a better than that. I thought you was like, stop. But we were talking about strategy earlier, just my being here was part of strategy because before I got here, I actually tried to get three other dev roles and other companies and none of them worked out for a variety of reasons.

Won't be able to show with that maybe that's another show. But this one was the one where I was able to parlay a the content creation that I've done, be the recent conference talks that I had done because I did render and Microsoft build both last year. then pair that with four years in a Java and scream with environment at FedEx. And put that together and say, here's my package, here's my brand. I'm a teacher, I'm a community guy. I'm a person who already advocates for developers in terms of their own personal growth. I teach, I've done TA work with a bootcamp. This is who I am.

Now, where can I find a place that focuses on the Java that I know and needs somebody to do that? There were literally two oracle in here. But Oracle didn't have any openings at the time. did, I got it, it was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So that's positioning myself to be the best candidate that they've seen. And I think everybody can do that if you think hard enough about it. And it might be, as we said earlier, a non-traditional role. 100%. 100%. Brian comes here, what type of projects do you recommend for web developers on the resume? Is Brian, are you talking about getting started?

I guess, this was, I guess, tells us, yeah, maybe getting started? If it's getting started, great question. Two factors only. One, the summation of your projects should show your personal level of technical depth that is important. I advocate from a strategic perspective, don't make all three the same thing. So if all three aesthetic websites are all three at the same type of mobile lab, I don't get that feeling of growth or like I've seen something new. So, and this is what I did in my case, I think it still works. If you had one static website, one where you consumed or wrote your own API, consumed it from API or wrote an API, and one that's full stack, I don't care what type of developer you call yourself.

If it's going to be in the web, you have to have at least one full stack project with persistent data on the back end. Some kind of little back end logic query in the database, SQL, whatever, that is important. That three is a nice mix in terms of text step. So that's quality number one to your question. Quality number two is it should, at least one of them should be personal. When I see clones, I get like this dropping billion in my chest for calculators or calendars or to do this. I get this heavy feeling in my chest because I know you haven't thought about it that much.

And it's quite, if I was an employer looking at that, which I'm not employing anybody, but if I was in a toilet looking at that, I'm like, what care will you put into your work that you do for us if you don't go harder for yourself? How would I think you're going to go harder for the company than you go for yourself? You have to go hard for yourself. It's kind of like the question everybody claims to hate. I hate when they ask. Tell me about yourself. I'm like, why do you hate that question? That's the one time in the entire interview that you're guaranteed you know what the question is in advance between the bear and you're you're literally be being asked to brag on yourself, to put yourself in the best possible life.

If all the rest of the interview goes prepped, that's got to be the one question you nail because you get to make you look good. The same thing is true for your personal projects, for your portfolio. It should be something personal, something you've thought about. It doesn't have to be rocket science or like a new display for the new Tesla coming out. It can be my wife and I are always buying the same grocery because we don't check each other. little reeky dink mobile responsive app where we just track our groceries and when she buys something she checks it off or if I buy something I check it off or if you're the last one to use something to the cabinet or the fridge you can mark hey this is gone.

I made a little mobile app. I love the one that James made a few years ago. His wife was a soccer coach. She needed to balance out the time to make sure all the kids had the same plan time. She's trying to write it down and coach and all that. He made her a little app. Like just look around don't look for code, don't look for code, you're not going to find code, look something that code can make better. I love that. I have 50 gazillion hardcover books. I want to start giving them away, but I want to be able to track it somehow. Make an app for it.

Just make an app for anything in your life. So you have something that doesn't look like everybody else's project that they got from the last Udemy Chorus, from the last Bootcamp. You have something that you can talk passionately about because it means something to you. That's when I give you as an example that I absolutely love. One of my favorite bootcamp students back when we taught the cohort out of Northwest Arkansas, Bittinville, where Walmart is, young man was into botting. For whatever reason, he was into botting. He loved trees and flowers. And he was not satisfied with the state's indexing of their trees. Like if you went camping and saw some tree, he wasn't satisfied with pictures or descriptions.

So he just made his own. the list of trees, but you could access it and all had a picture, you can compare the picture. So if you're out in the woods, you might kind of haven't seen this before. Oh, that's poisonous. Stand back, whatever. He made an app of trees. And when he talked about it, he just lit up and glowed and you could tell he loved the process of creating. That's what you're showing me as a recruiter as a interviewer, that you love the process of creating. It's believable for me that that you might love creating here as well. But if you're just humdrum about it, right?

There's no energy, there's no passion, there's no enthusiasm, the apps meet nothing to you at all. It's a hard sell for me to believe you're gonna get all pumped up about. Cause we want you to be pumped up. We want you to be a company man or a company woman when we hire you. So show me, just like Jayce said, I'm not a business man, I'm a business man. Show me that you're serious about your business for you. And we may believe that you'll be serious about that business for us. I love it. I love it. Man, I love talking to you. Anything else? Any last word, I'm gonna hit you with four questions.

Are we at the end? Is that it? I asked you last time, but I forgot what they were that went, how you answered them. So they'll be new for me. I'll make that new stuff. Yeah. Any last words of wisdom for folks watching right now? Yes. People are gonna make the difference in your journey. No matter how much you like reaching them, people are gonna make the difference in your journey. Even years ago, when I was again, locked away in my loft, coding away free code, camp, Udacity, Udemy, Solo learned everything. The thing that made the difference is what I got out of my loft, went to a local meetup group, met James quick and a few other people who took me in and said, hey, let me get the portfolio.

Hey, let me look at that resume. Matter of fact, James's wife actually redid my resume for free, shout out to her. And they took me in and then connected me with job opportunities and then the next job opportunity. And so the only job I've gotten on my three tape job that was not from networking is my most recent one. That was like all me and the other two, plus a few interviews are all through networking, the people I can make with. Get out of your head, even if you're an introvert, then take people in small chunks. Introvert doesn't mean I can't talk to people, it means you need people in like chunks.

Yeah, yeah. You can do it in chunks. Meet one or two, cut it off. You go to the conference, do the session, cut it off. Back and forth, I even do that. I'll run to that hotel in a minute in conference because I need to come down. All right, I'm gonna go back out I can take y'all again. Love it. I love it. All right, last four questions to get thanks. Y'all for hanging out with us today on this wonderful Friday. Guy Dins comes to 2.0 with Lawrence Lockhart. Obviously Lawrence's at handle is in his name bio. So go follow him. Lawrence, last four questions.

If money was not the issue and you could do anything outside of tech, what would you do? I'd open up a bookstore focused on African and African American history industry coffee We talked to people who came through all day. That's awesome. I love that. I love that. That'd be cool. I don't read. The old gray beard guy in the back. Yeah. The little dusty little. There's no sort of man's just in my room. I'm like opening up bookstores and coffee shops, I think, in our generation. I think we're just tired of the grind. And we just want to like. I have a heart-fed, zero, almost filling with physical books, paper.

I like the smell of paper. Especially if I get like an obscure book from India cause their paper smells differently. Oh really? There you go. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. I'm back when I was getting my supply chain certification in Apex, I got a book that was from there and I opened it up. It was like, ooh, Smells. Saffron. Saffron. You just something. Something. Something. Yeah, what do you, okay. I know you love your family. So I have to practice this. Like any dude or gal who I speak to as a family, like outside of your family, I know you love your family, of your family.

What do you like to do outside of tech? That brings you joy. Outside of tech. See these days I've been gaming on my Quest 2. I love that thing. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I love that thing. I do work on it. I play game fun. I just bought a table to this game. And it's so awesome because I put it in pastor mode like XR mode or AR not VR mode. So I see the table literally floating in here. And then the other person I could see them standing over there and we just play all day and night. Like I could do that forever. But beyond that, you said not family, but I promise you, cooking for family is therapeutic.

You cook a lot, you're vlog. I hate to cook for myself. I hate it because there's no feedback. But when I throw down and I give them that and they eat it and I hear, or they finish it and they just go. That brings me the most joy out of all things in the world to seeing a happily fed family. about absolutely. And then third question is any any tech you're tinkering with right now that you're about it 100% about it, because particularly next week, I'll be in Dallas on Wednesday, every 22nd is, and I'll be speaking at a meet at the Danny, Mr. Meetup for together together, put together a job at night.

So I'll be flying into Dallas. So all brings one. Everything about that. I love that. I love that. If I wasn't home, hell, I probably pop on a quick fly. It's gonna be fun. He made it like a mini conference. There's like four or five speakers at night. It's just a whole job at night. It's just back to back to back to back and I'm the like, I'm the conclusion. Danny moving to Dallas from Memphis is like LeBron going from like. I feel like he's like, he's like, I feel like. Here I'm this guy, which he actually is. I think he was actually in New York before here, but I look with him as a Memphis guy because we have some good times in person.

Yeah, yeah. I think what I asked you, it by us to a suite of the grizzly's gay men. We're up there on this company now and just drinking and having a good time in the NBA. I love that. Grizz, Grizz has got a Game Caught guy. He's he's balling out right now. Our guy, Gigi Jackson. Yeah, we just need more of that. Yeah, Gigi Jackson. Yeah, yeah. Last night on. How did you do that last night? Go ahead. All right. Last question. So we have guidance counselors in middle school, high school, college, but now as adults, we don't really have them. Or be your biggest piece of career advice to young Lawrence.

Oh, man. Um, keep your head on straight. So that's for the young Lawrence. You didn't say you're getting anybody else. Keep your head on straight because I'm one of those. Now, are we joking about people who peaked in high school? Well, I was one of them. Like I was like this. And after high school, it was like this for 30 years. Uh, so part of the part of the Cinderella story of me is that I've and like down for a very long time, just cause I lost my head man. Just go on, keep your head on straight, go hard while you're young, single and childless on the things that are important for you.

Make money, make a freaking, all the money you can get anybody to give you, make it while you're young and energetic. You're not gonna get more energy when you get older. You're not gonna get smarter when you get older in terms of your processing ability. You'll be aware of more things through exposure, but none of those things are gonna get better older. get it while you're young for now, whatever. There's so much fun to be had when you have a ton of money and no responsibilities later or minimal responsibilities. Right now get your head straight, get money at all costs. I love that. I love that.

All right, y'all. Well, thanks for hanging with us this morning. Appreciate it Lawrence. You the man appreciate you big dog. That was a blast. Thank you for the second inviting one so fast as always. I know it goes so fast. Stay on so I can see about you backstage. You all have a good one again. No stream next week, one stream the following week with the whiskey web and whatnot boys. And that would be Wednesday the 28th would be the next time I'm streaming. So you all have a good one. We'll see you in a few weeks. Bye. 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 finished 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 Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.