what to do when you are laid off w/ eng leader, colin lord

full transcript

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

So I made a post yesterday, so you're a Chick-fil-A lover Atlanta Braves aficionado Triathlon freak weather person Fanatic I'm trying to find all these adjectives English is not my first language Is that is that covered you also have a wife which is which is great? I was gonna say like you know You're starting with the not good things dude likes fast food likes baseball like So how the so how when is baseball season start? Well, depends on what you define start pictures and catchers report to spring training on Valentine's day So two weeks, but there's not games until April. Okay, so we're getting close We're getting close.

We're getting there tired of winter once we get past the Super Bowl It's baseball season as far as i'm concerned. Yeah, yeah, so are the Braves So you you're not talking about the Braves last time when we when we got dinner together Uh basically bad draw for them. Do you, I mean, are they gonna be back this year? What are you, what are you're kind of, this is not a land of Braves podcast. People tune in, they're like, what are they talking about? I'm, some of my friends gave me crap because I'm always optimistic and think like, this is the year we're gonna win the World Series.

I'm not a Gamecock fan, Colin. That's true. Like, you know, it's showing the answer. I think the Braves will make the playoffs and once you get in, see what happens. I mean, I am planning to go to the World Series this October until proven otherwise. I love that. I love that mindset. That's fantastic. So there's your tune in. Welcome. Good morning. Happy Monday. Welcome to guidance counselor 2.0. Please say, Hey, we'd love to hear from you. You know, we talk about this all the time. So I've been doing this thing for almost five years, Colin. Next month would be five years with guidance counselor 2.0.

And so, you know, again, for those of you, Jean in and really have no idea, because I might on TikTok right now. For those of you who don't know, the Guidance Catch with 2.0 was really an idea that came about during COVID because I was a traditional recruiter, that recruited locally just to Nashville. And then when COVID hit, I saw really the whole entire engineering landscape kind of change. And that like I would be now recruiting on a national scale. And I was like, well, there's no, how am I gonna reach people nationally if I'm just making phone calls day in, day out, right? And so I was like, well, I'm just gonna go ahead and get linked in live.

I got on LinkedIn live, talked to me myself, and my mom who tuned in every now and then for like six months. And then finally, after about six months and people were like, hey, I would love to tell my story. I would love to come on. And then here we are five years later, have had some amazing guests from senior leadership from the Fang side of things all the way down to bootcamp grads who had success finding a job at a bootcamp. Really this goal of this stream is just to tell people stories and hopefully you can get something in this quick 30 minutes to really take it throughout your career.

And it's my main goal, to give you one thing that's very applicable to take throughout your career. So I'm excited for this conversation today with Colin, Colin's a dear friend. And Colin's one of those guys as a moderator, is really easy, because you kind of just asked Colin a question, he just goes with it, which is great. So we have a great conversation today. But again, please say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. You want to give a shout out to Torque. Obviously, listen, we're doing some cool stuff. I'm really torque at a high level. We help people get jobs, you know, like every other talent solutions company out there.

We're a little bit different. Wonk into the nuances, but if you want a job, join the platform. If you are a hiring manager, we hire both on, you know, onshore, like US talent, but we are, we do a lot of LAD-AM, which is really interesting. Kind of being the LAD-AM world. And I've had a lot of, it says how to call with the founder last week and he was like, I love what you guys are doing. I love kind of the nearshore versus offshore model and kind of how you guys provide. We don't really push resumes. We you create a profile within our database. We present that.

So really cool stuff. Also want to give a shot to AppRight as well. They are they are I am an app right hero, you know, again. So if you want to get started, do us back in as a service type stuff, which I don't even know what that is, please choose AppRight. They're great. But again, Chris, it's good to see you. So so we got we got two Atlanta folks in this morning. So call enough of me running my mouth, man. Let's give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. I'm Colin, I grew up in Atlanta.

My background is full of Atlanta stuff, but don't be confused by that. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and for the last year I've been, well, what's my title? It's senior engineering, or no, engineering, or, I should know this. Senior manager e-commerce engineering, which is a lot of words just to say that I oversee the website for Carter's, the Baby Close Company. I love it, yeah, Vinnie Baby Close. I should know my title, that's embarrassing. It is a little embarrassing con. So when people go to Carters.com and buy off Carters, you manage that whole experience. Is that with that P accurate? Anything with the website would go through my team.

Nice. So if it sucks, mess up. Well said. Yeah. If there's a problem, it's probably going to go through my team too. I love it. So we're going to get some people tuning in. Good morning, y'all. My colleague and dear friend, Brianna Holmes, is also live right now. We're doing all these live streams as a team. So it's really fun. If people jump in and out, it's great. You've got competitors. Yeah, yeah. No, not competitors. I always tell people go watch Briana. So, all right, you had a pretty, when I say incredible job search journey, I just think you had a lot of cards stacked up against you a year ago.

For those of you who follow, Colin came on a while ago and talked about it, but it's been a bit, so I really wanna bring Colin back on and talk about the story because he got laid off in the holidays and he got laid off, I would argue pretty much during the peak downturn of the market. And so again, I think, and I'm really excited for this live today because I think if you are either got recently got laid off or you feel like your bouts get laid off, I think this is going to be the live stream that you should bookmark as well as our buddy Brian Walter.

It's his birthday. Happy birthday, Brian. I need to mess it up. I need to mess it up. Brian Walter had a fantastic one too. So I think if you can watch Brian Walter's live on my YouTube and then this one I think is gonna be great. So Colin, must I've been kind of paint the picture, where you were at before Carter's and obviously we'll just kind of progress through that story. Okay, so background before Carter's starting in 2018, I was hired at Smile Direct Club, just standard senior engineer at that point. And from 2018 until the end of 2023, that's where I worked. And 2019, 2020, I can't remember exactly when because it sort of was unofficial and then became official.

I became the engineering manager of the website, kind of basically the same thing that I do for Carter's now. I had a team that oversaw the site. Smile Direct, if you followed them, if you live in Nashville, they were kind of a big deal for a while. IPO'd in 2019 went bankrupt in 2003. So quite the roller coaster from where we were when we started. I was the first front end engineer that they hired and I had the privilege of shutting off the website when Smile went bankrupt in December. of 2020. Like literally flip the switch. As I was clicking to do it, one, I was like, wow, this is easier than it probably should be because it didn't take me very long.

And it was, I knew I was in the midst of one of those career moments where I would be telling that story for a while. And I've told it many times. It's like, I got to shut down what was a publicly traded NASDAQ company. I don't want to do it again, but put it on the resume. I don't care. But you know when I talk about that public summary or the professional summary that should be a bullet point was responsible for turning off The company website for a for a publicly traded NASDAQ company when they went with the day they announced it I found out an hour before most of the company because they needed me to shut down the sites Before they sent out the message saying hey the company is ending today It was a day So you and this was in December right mid December.

Yeah, it was it before Christmas or after Christmas. It's a week before Christmas nice the best Let me ask you that severance or no, I mean I would imagine there was nothing right because they went The only severance I got was I got to keep my laptop my health insurance ended that day laptop low-key It was nice. I again shout out vaco. They let me keep my laptop, which I eventually spilled chai on on this blog. So I have my own laptop now. But all right, so no severance really got the laptop, got laid off a week before Christmas. I mean, where were you? I mean, I would argue that maybe this shitty is time to get my watch.

It wasn't it wasn't a fun day. I I I can tend to be annoying optimistic guy where I'm like always struggling to try to find the good on every day. And I know what a noise is because like, would you just be angry about it? And I mean, I was I was upset about it. But if there was a plus to it, it's that I got to tell my team personally because I was shutting down the site and I knew they would notice that the site went offline. So you would think hopefully. Yeah, they would have known. But for everyone else that worked at Smile, they just got an email.

And that was like, how it ended was you just you popped in, there was an email and you were locked out. I got to call everyone on my team and tell them personally. And it's not that this was a shock that it happened. It's a shock the way it happened. We had been in bankruptcy for a few months. I had told everyone on my team, I was like, look, if you don't want to stay, I completely understand, respect it. I will support you. I will be a reference for you. I will write you a letter of recommendation. I hope you stay, but please don't if you don't feel comfortable with it.

So it was nice to be able to sort of like, tell them personally, because for whatever reason, I thank them. Nobody left during the chapter 11 days. The remainder of my team all stayed intact. So it was nice to be able to tell them personally. And if there's one plus, it was that we got to have sort of a goodbye rather than just a brutal email that just says, companies over, you're getting nothing if you have a laptop. Keep it. But see you. Yeah, that's not good. That's not good. Also, birthday boys here. Brian, happy birthday, buddy. Happy birthday, Brian. All right, so laid off, not good vibes.

Tell me kind of what was your first step, man? I mean, walk me through again, if people watch it, like I know literally Jeff on TikTok, he literally just commented on TikTok, it literally just caught myself at a layoff this morning. So literally, there are people watching that are acting like getting laid off right now. So, you know, if you could talk to Jeff or talk to anybody on this chat right now, Talk about the steps, the fundamental building blocks that you did. Well, I've watched and listened to your podcast for a while. And you've always talked about what to do when you get laid off, how to do job search type stuff.

And for the entire duration of your podcast, I had been at one company. I hadn't been looking for anything. I think at the entire time I was at Smile, I took one interview. And I mean, I hadn't job searched in a long time. And I mean, maybe I should have been that last year but everyone on my team, I had personally hired and I wasn't gonna bail on them. Like I was gonna go down with the ship unless everybody else left before me. So it, like I said, it wasn't a shock that Smile went bankrupt. It was the manner of like a week earlier, they were saying like, we think we've got financing.

We think we're gonna be great. And then a week later, bam, it's gone. So it wasn't a shock that it happened. It was a shock how it happened. So that day I found out around lunchtime, I was sitting down, it was the week after I'd finished a triathlon, so I was eating junk food all week. I had raising cane sitting right in front of me, and the phone rang from somebody who doesn't normally call me and I'm like, oh man, and that turned into all that madness. So the rest of the afternoon was like shutting the website down, talking to people, and around like five or five 30, I drove up to publics and I was like, I'm getting a beer, because it has been a day.

And driving back, driving home, coming into our neighborhood, It's mid December, we had Christmas lights up. And as I was pulling into the driveway, I had this moment where I just sort of stopped, literally took a photo of the house. And it was like, okay, this sucks. This is gonna be a pain. There's probably gonna be some weird, uncomfortable days where you feel shitty, but this does not define who you are. Like Katie, my wife has had some health stuff, and she's healthy now. And I was like, okay, you need to keep your priorities in order here. This goes, you lost your job. Doesn't mean that all these other things aren't real.

And the entire time I was unemployed, it's fighting the demons that say you suck more than you think you actually are, and to focus on the things that matter. And for me, it was going back to the fact that Katie's healthy, I'm healthy, and as long as those two things are true, I can deal with anything else. I love that, I love that. So got to the computer, what was first? Resume link, Dan, I'm assuming. So something you've said on this podcast is you need to take time to grieve. And that feels intuitively wrong. Correct. Because, and even in the moment, I was like, I know he's talked about this so much.

I wanna take, I wanna go and just guns blazing, like fire out as many resumes as I can. It's the fight or flight, like it's like, I wanna go. It was made a little easier to me because this was something like December 14th. Like it's made December. There's nobody hiring anyway. So it was kind of just like, okay, like, I'm gonna have to take this moment to grieve. And that's something you gotta do, especially, I mean, for me, I'd been a smile for more than five years. Everybody on the team, I personally hired, it was a bummer. And I was sad about it. The one thing I would say in terms of grieving is, you need to go and do a couple things right away.

And I'm glad I went and did these things, figure out unemployment, because it takes some time for that to process at least in Tennessee. And then what's your health insurance? situation. It's a qualifying event. So did I want to get on Decady's plan? Then I want to go on to the healthcare.gov marketplace. That's what I ended up doing. And I got I forget the exact day, but it was like December 13th 14th, I had to sign up for healthcare.gov by the 15th to have coverage in January. So take time to grieve, you absolutely need to do that. But the things that take a lot of like days to process so unemployment health insurance, knock those out, and then take some time.

And for me, it was basically the rest of the year, not quite sure because people started hitting me up on LinkedIn, because I put a post up that said here's what happened. But I intended to spend the rest of December sort of just taking a chance to catch my breath. But I'm glad I didn't just totally bail like because I would have been without health insurance or having to sign up on Katie's. They got their wear. So and at least in Tennessee, unemployment takes a while to process and we can talk about that too, because that was kind of a pain. But getting those two things done first, then grieving.

That's what I would say to do the day that this happens. Three days you take off, we started searching. Two. Two. Yeah. But only because people were reaching out to me saying, Hey, let's have a conversation. How I wasn't actively like going on job boards. But if somebody's like, Hey, let's chat. Like, obviously, I'm gonna take it. How were people finding your would did you make a post on LinkedIn? Okay. Smile blowing up was a big enough deal that it was a push alert. There on all the local news stations and CNN and the New York Times. So what I posted on, I don't think it was on LinkedIn, I think it was Instagram and my like Twitter and whatnot.

It was a screenshot of my phone saying the company blew up. And I was like, this is a new one. Yes, this affects me. I'm looking for work. But all it was was just a screenshot of like channel five here in Nashville, New York Times, CNN. You found those bankrupt. It was mainstream media like I realized like I need to call my mom because she's gonna find out on the news. And like my mother-in-law like she's gonna hear that like it's not one of those things you can figure out how you want to announce it. I was like okay it has been announced and now it's like how do I want to address the message that is already there.

It was a weird day tailor. How did you, all right, did you go job board, when you, when you got back online, where we mass applying, where we, what were we doing? I didn't really do a whole lot of mass applying, to be honest. It was all networking, people that I knew and going through LinkedIn and seeing who worked at what companies who had openings and reaching out to them. I reached out to you, a couple of the recruiters I know, and that was, I really never got to a point where I was just scrolling job boards and clicking apply, at least not until mid-January because I figured anything there wasn't really a real job at that point because it was about to be Christmas and New Year's and everybody's drinking eggnog.

What? Talk to me about, like did you start opening up your DMs and start messaging people your phone book? Like talk to me about what your outreach looked like because you didn't mass apply your resume right? No. It was, I mean, I guess it was a lot of DMing, either be it LinkedIn or just texting and whatnot. And I mean, sort of the good thing about this being a national news story was I'd been at Smile Long and everyone kind of knew that's where I worked. And people were reaching out to me saying, Hey, what do you need? How can I help? So that was really the first few weeks was figuring out, okay, who do I know?

What do they have? Because that's always going to lead to more success than just cold applying scrolling job boards. That was really where I started. I love that. So how did you, all right, so got laid off took two days to grieve, filed for unemployment, and kind of got started again, did not mass apply for job postings. Talk Talk to me about riding your resume, riding LinkedIn. Was it already written or did you spend a day riding your resume and LinkedIn at one time? Like what did I sort of updated it a little bit. I kind of had a feeling I might be needing to look for a job sooner than later.

But like I said, in my mind, the worst case scenario was the company shutting down, but we're going to do a 60 day wind down or something. I didn't think it was going to be, oh, I got to do this right now. So it was kind of already there, but I kind of touched it up. At least for me whenever I apply for jobs or talk to people about jobs. I've got like a base template like this is my resume It's what I would send to you But I'll try to target the resume a little bit to the position like if they're looking for something with Salesforce, I'll find a way to highlight sales force or change a bullet point But there's like there's the base column template and then I've got you know I'll copy paste and change a couple things and send that PDF out.

Yeah 100% um so So conversations that you were having, right? I mean, I think a lot of people don't know where to begin, how to even message. I think a lot of people feel weird about messaging for a job when they got laid off. Like what was kind of your cadence around messaging and then also the messages that you were sending out? Like what did they say? Like, hey, I need a job. Can you help? I mean, it's sort of funny because, I mean, not funny in a weird way. Like I couldn't hide from this. Like most people, like every interview that I had, They like, you'd have that first five minutes like, so hey, why'd you leave your last job?

And they already knew the answer. Like, oh, they're like, so why'd you leave the last job? It'd be an inter-foxer. Yeah, I'm like, just check the news. It's like, you know, it's not the one, the problem with the website. So, you know, I've never been laid off before and I guess the fact that it was so out there, I don't think I would have felt like embarrassment or shame from it. I can get to see how you would, but I couldn't even run from it. Because, I mean, my resume says, Smiled Direct Club five and a half years, and I had no every interview that I had, not once did I have to say why I was looking for a role everybody already knew.

So for me, I guess I couldn't really hide from it. That said, on the other side of the coin, if I'm a hiring manager and somebody's talking to me, I'm not gonna think less of you if you got laid off. Like, if anything, it helps paint the picture. So I wouldn't try to hide from it. I think in this market, I think some encouragement to people. If you got laid off, I think it's like, it's way less of a scarlet letter than it was 10 years ago. Right. It's like now it's not even like to me, it's not even a thing. Like I don't even think about it.

Like, if you said to me, I got laid off and I'm looking for a new job versus well, things just kind of didn't work out. Yeah. Don't hide from it. Like just say this is what happened. I mean, especially if you can kind of like say more details behind the layoff in my case, It was the entire company. But if it was just you, if it was your team, like what are the circumstances behind it? If nothing else, it's a conversation starter. And it helps me learn more about your background, what you were doing. And I can use that to spend and asking what you're looking for next.

So you were in the DMs, were you trying to have like one conversation a day, two conversations a day? Were you hopping on Zooms? Was it just a lot of DMs and text back and forth? Like what did that look like for you? So I know you've always said, I forget the number, like X amount of intentional conversations a day. I try to do three a day. That's a little aggressive. I mean, that's like traditional recruiting numbers is three conversations a day, but that's kind of the golden standard. For me, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but it was, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to spend the day letting this make me sad.

I love that. I mean, no, if there's days where I'm feeling shitty. Okay. Like I don't need to drag myself up and like force out a couple emails or whatnot, they're probably not going to be good anyway. It was more of just taking stock of how I feel day to day. Yeah. Because in my mind, you mentioned it briefly. I compete in triathlons on weekends, so I do a whole lot of swimming, biking, and running. Those can get very hard and challenging. There are some days where you just don't feel great. You're tired, whatnot. And you say, OK, I'm going to. You're really low, like.

Right. I'm going to, I'm supposed to run 10 miles. I'm only going to run five. Did I fail today? No. because I was already feeling sore. I tried to take that approach to job searching. Like if I only have the energy to do one of these because I'm feeling down about something or I got rejected from a role, I'm not gonna force it. And I mean, I went into this job search feeling like I was probably a pretty decent candidate. That said, I knew the job market was kind of meh. Well, in two months. I mean, I mean, highlighting, you were a engineering leader and those roles are even harder to come by.

So not only were you laid off at the holidays, not only were you laid off in their severance, not only was it the downturn a year ago of the market and you were an engineer leader. I mean, you had a lot of cards stacked against you, just being honest. I did. And I had, I found companies that I interviewed with where I was like, oh, this is an awesome role. And I got rejected immediately after that first interview for a stupid reason. And I'm like, I cannot believe that you took this interview that I thought went really well. And you're just like, ah, I'm moving on.

And that was something that I've kind of learned through applying, not that I've applied for jobs recently, but like previously in my career, or like looking for roles, like it's that don't, you can't let yourself get too emotionally invested in the role until way at the end. And like, this is a column of 10 years ago, back when my beard wasn't gray and my hair wasn't falling out. But I would get like two rounds into an interview and tell like eight friends. Like this is awesome, look out like this is good. And then. One all over you. And their, any friend is like, well, that's cool.

Tell me how it's going. And then you end up getting rejected or it doesn't work out in the last round or so. And now you've got this extra burden of wow, I got emotionally invested in it. Now I've got to tell my friends I got rejected from this job, which just sucks that much more. So one thing I decided to do really early on was, unless it was somebody like sort of helping me, like in your role, like we talked recruiter stuff, but it was Katie and my two triathlon teammates. Those are the only people that I like vented about job stuff with. And everybody else, it was just, hey, it's going.

Let me know if there's anything you need to chat about. So if it didn't work out, I just telling them, so you've got somebody to talk about. But like, man, if there's one thing that I'm glad I didn't do in this process, it's that even for the job I'm at now, like I was very excited about it and it felt good early on, but I did not let myself get emotionally invested in that thing, like until even after the verbal offer, like I was like, I need to see the document design. Give me the docu-sign link. Cause otherwise you're setting yourself up for more harm than good.

Even if it feels like you want to get excited about a role. Yep, absolutely. So how did this role, how did this role come about at Carter's? I'm kind of curious with this. LinkedIn. Like how? Somebody reached out to me. Okay. And it was in response to my message saying, hey, I'm looking for work. So you message, who did you message at Carter's? Their recruiter saw I was looking for work and messaged me. Okay. And we started talking. So I'm very lucky in that this in essence came to me rather than me seeking it out. So I haven't said this in a while. Again, it's really fun.

This is a whole other conversation of itself. Like I've spent four years doing job search content now. I'm kind of like in dev marketing and community building. So like my engagement, it's like a all time low. But like one of the things I used to say is you can kind of use LinkedIn three different ways and the more of the three ways you use it the more successfully be you can actually put out content document your job search. You can just leverage the DMs and then you can like and comment on people's post. I don't, you weren't putting out stuff on LinkedIn. You weren't because I do, because I think people get tired like all Taylor's out here talking again about freaking content creator and posting shit on the internet.

You didn't do that, but I felt like you used the inner workings, the DMs, the liking, the comments, all that stuff, right? Yeah, I don't think there's a one size fits all the way to do this. Like if you go and look at my LinkedIn, like I do not post all that much just because I don't know, that just doesn't feel like my platform. And that's okay. That said, I do think I have a pretty decent network from people that I've I've worked with people that I've met, people in the chat, people have met at conferences. So my DM's in LinkedIn, which I try to move it to, I message your texting because I hate LinkedIn's DM feature, but I was sending a lot of messages out, not necessarily posting about it.

And that worked for me, other people that put out content, I'm like, oh, this is awful. It's more just finding how you wanna represent yourself and do your job search. What worked for me, and I can tell you everything I did, it might not work for somebody else, and that's not to say my way is right or wrong. It's just this is who I am and how I approached it. Yeah, so it is funny. The job you got was actually from somebody not in your network. Yes, yeah, that's true. It was somebody who found me. Kind of crazy. From my post on LinkedIn, which blew up because of all the news, because it was trending because I said Smile Direct Club.

So like it's still the most viewed thing I've ever posted which was, hey, I lost my job, Smile Went Out of Business. which is sort of sad, because I put some cool stuff out there and it's like no views. But this thing, like I still get emails now in 2025 where it's like your best performing post was I got laid off from Smile Direct Club in 2023. And I'm like, the algorithm I swear it's just. Well, it's even changed. Like that's another conversation. But it's interesting, because this is why I try to interview different people, right? So Colin, you know, did a lot of things I talked about.

Take some time, edit your resume, LinkedIn. Did you pay anybody for that? Now, is this me? Yep. Filed for unemployment was in the DMs networking, making calls, having calls. Got the job. Brian Walter, prime example. Brian, none of that worked for him. Brian's job most recently at Republic is because of somebody he knew who said, hey, you'd probably, I forgot the intricacies of it. But that job was because, so that's like I try to have all these calls or different people because what works for Colin isn't gonna work for somebody else but the framework is there and I think what I really want to reiterate and Colin as we wrap up here I get I want you to have you know a few moments to kind of leave with words wisdom but the activity is the biggest thing if you go back and listen to Brian Walters livestream I have on my YouTube if you talk if you talk to Colin even outside of this on a one-on-one like in college a great resource highly recommended for any my guidance counselor, two pointer listeners.

It's activity. Colin just didn't sit on the couch waiting for something. He was acting, you have to have a lot going. And then for some random reason, the thing that was just right out of the blue was the one that worked for him. Thoughts on that? What worked for me with this job hunt? I mean, I hope to be a cardist for a long time. I don't plan to be job hunting anytime soon. But this may not, I mean, I know I got very lucky and that something came to me. that's not really a reflection of anything that I did right. There's a, there's a huge element of luck to this.

And the thing that I've tried to keep in mind, like for myself going to the job hunt or any of my friends who I know who have gone through it and unfortunately like a lot of people are getting laid off, it's that there's a luck is unfair. This is an unfair process. Like it depends on who sees what, but like it could be something that you say, a timing, something that you say that is good or bad that gets you the job or doesn't get you the job. And it's not a reflection on who you are as a person, an engineer from being an engineering manager.

If I got rejected from a role, like it stunk and it didn't feel great, but it didn't mean I suck as a person. And it's so easy to feel that way. And that was the biggest thing that I think I focused on through the whole job search or what I would tell anybody else who's in this spot, is it's not a reflection on you. If for me it took two and a half months for Brian, I know it took longer. It doesn't mean I'm a better manager than Brian. If anything, Brian is who I try to emulate as a manager, because I fell into being a manager at Smilon until I figured out my own style.

I was just, well, what would Brian do in this situation? So for me, it's like, well, how would you not hire Brian? That's just a nature of this is this unlucky thing. And sometimes you have a full house, sometimes you have a two and a seven. It doesn't mean you're a good or a bad person. It's just the process of looking for a job in this market. And that's why, again, I think activity, the more plates you have spinning, kind of the way I run my team and bless my team's heart, they kind of get tired of it. I try to have 50,000 plates spinning at one time, very well knowing that I have 48,000 plates that are gonna come crashing down or not execute, but that's still 2,000 plates that are still spinning when most people just try to have 50 plate spinning.

Right. I wouldn't use the phrase crashing down. It's just- Well, I just meant more out of self-deprecation with my team. Okay, fair. But like I just mean more like the more activity you have going on, the more something is going to happen. Yeah, I mean it sounds cliche and obvious and easy but like having a good network helps. Like I know it certainly helped me. It got me in the door of a lot of roles that I might not have if I applied blind and cold. But that's like a, I mean that's just like, again, Brian and I both do this. It's a triathlon reference.

You know, you don't become a triathlete on race day. It's every day you've got to do that. Every day you've got a network a little bit, so when you need it, it's there. It's not just waking up one day and having a network. It's people in the chat like you always say. Anybody that wants to chat with me, you know where to find me. There's only one at Colin Lord on the Internet. So any platform I'm probably there with that handle. If you want to vent or talk about layoff stuff, feel free. That's plus one for expanding your network and mine. Well, I tell people on this live show, my goal for this is for you to network up back of me.

If you've networked with every single guest I've had on the show and every single person that are in the DM for the last five years, your network would be insane, insane. And I feel like there's maybe only 10 people that have done that, maybe in five years, maybe, maybe. So, and Seth, obviously, you know, Seth, another engineering leader here in the Nashville market. I never post content that long term networking is activity. 100 percent. Yeah, I'm not saying you got post content, right? But what Seth is, Seth's in the Nash Dev Slack channel. He's going to meetups. He keeps up with people, which is obviously a huge part of your career.

Calling anything else? Even if you're laid off, and that's just something that went through my mind, was don't let that sense of desperation kind of take over how you do your job search. There's a longer story behind this goofy background that we won't get into because I never run it out of time. but I did every interview with this nonsense behind me, full of Atlanta Braves, Bobbleheads, and Coca-Cola bottles. And I'm convinced, at least in one interview, they rejected me because they're like, this guy isn't serious. Fair, okay fine, we probably wouldn't have gotten along anyway. Like, so don't change who you are as a person just because you're laid off versus if I have a job and I'm looking for something else.

Because I honestly, I tried to think of like, Do I want to have this ridiculously unprofessional background with the only thing that's respectable as this photo of Katie? Yes, I did every interview with this and it people either laughed found it weird or whatever But I still was me even though I was you know, I guess desperate to find a job because I was Don't let that desperation creep into your mind still be you and Don't change because of your circumstances. Totally great. Totally great Collins, we wrap up obviously we do a little rapid fire here and again for those of you tuning in please connect with Colin Literally Colin is is a great friend.

He is one that he is he is a salt of the earth gem of a human being So please go message with him. I don't handle compliments. Well Taylor Okay, and nod your head. Um, so first first question I always ask when it comes to Well, actually I just I just drew blank All right, if I were to tell you tomorrow that you wake up, you can do anything in tech, what would you do? You know the answer. I know I'm the answer people. It's something in triathlon sports or weather. Those are my other interests. I have a lot of 4k. A, B or C.

Yeah, but if I had to pick though, honestly, which one would be like your dream? Would you really want to do triathlons for your job? Probably not. Flutter sweat. Would it be working in the Braves office? Would that be pretty cool? I mean, if money was no object, let me run the Braves Instagram and Twitter handles. And I'll just tweet nonsense at the... I'll tweet nonsense about the Mets all day long and be happy. I love it. I love it. When it comes to anything from a technology, things you're reading, things you're maybe using on the team, is there anything that you're tinkering with right now that's kind of interesting that you want to let people know about?

I'm going through this process of re-evaluating everything about social media, because there's the exodus from Twitter to threads to blue sky. And I have all this content spread across all these different places. And it's making me realize I probably need to have a website like Colin Lord dot com. I own it, but it's a very outdated photo of me. If you go look at it, my beard is not this color and it's the background of a company. I worked at two years or two jobs ago before smile. So it's very out of date and I'm starting to realize rather than just exclusively posting like here's what I did at this conference or that conference or this triathlon.

I should also be posting it on my own website. So I own the content. So if we have another exodus from some platform to some other platform, it's not just vanishing with it. You know, I guess it's sort of a cop-out answer, but I'm kind of just thinking about like, where do I want my stuff to live? So I've actually thought about this, and I think, we may talk about this. I know there's such thing called like RSS feeds where you can actually like that's like the old school. I don't know much about it. It's not old school. I use them all the time. Okay.

So it's like, I wonder like for me, it's like, Hey, you don't have to go to, because you can just integrate RSS feed like with an app or something, right? Okay. I mean, it's not so much that it's more like I wrote a race report about a triathlon that I did. But if I decide like I want to delete my Twitter slash X account because reasons, that's where all that content was and that was just gone. Right. The problem about this is how can you almost create your own social media page where people can follow you and you can still post everything? I don't know the answer because I know most platforms don't like you linking out to somewhere else.

I know my website. I know I understand that but it's more social media in less website-e which is going to be more like a stream. It's like a Twitter stream. It's just an RSS feed. Maybe that is website, I don't know, but it's like, it's almost more for me. Like if my ex account, Twitter, whatever, just vanished, there's a lot of content on there that I personally would wanna have that isn't there. I mean, like my space went away. Like it's stuff, not that I hadn't anything of value on my space, but like, I don't own a lot of my own content nor do I even really have a backup.

Yeah, Seth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't really know. I don't really know what to ask it, but like, yeah, like it would be interesting. Like I'll go to tailedessin.com. I wanna subscribe to him in every, because I would chose everything, right? Because I just started like an Instagram, I don't know if you saw, I started like an Instagram, like sub-channel where I can like specifically message people. There's only like 13 people and I don't care. I think it's kind of cool where it's more direct communication. But it's, it's again, it's just one more thing. It's like everybody in the media is leaving legacy jobs to start their own sub-stack.

But that doesn't, it's not a reflection of sub-stack. Like a sub-stack still gonna be sub-stack in five years, Or is it just another platform? Yeah, because like for me, for me this is an interesting conversation. I did not expect it to go this way. But like prime example, I have a creator I love. His name's Mark. Colin Lordy. Yeah, no. Mark is the Lordy. He's in the run community, mince in New York. The fashion brand, the men's fashion brand. I love everything he does. He could post that he's eating egg white because he's really in the running. So he's real clean like the egg whites and the graph turquoise.

No, I don't. I like I love you. I could, if Marcus had a constant stream of thought somewhere, that's not dispersed over fucking seven platforms, I would follow it, because it's just following Marcus. Yeah. Well, it would need to have the ability to do short-form video, long-form video, text. Maybe we're creating an app right now, man. I didn't mean to take your rapid-fire question and do 10 minutes on it. That's where my mind is. But I've actually been thinking about this, though, which is crazy, which is we both been thinking about. I would let the follow along with your training stuff, and brave stuff, I mean, for real.

Like, I mean, the one MLB game ever went to back in the 90s was the Braves. I saw Chipper Jones and all that stuff. Like, I'm like, it's Bob, that's back there. It's great, man. Also because of WGN growing up, I'm a low-key Chicago Cubs fan, too. But like, all that being said, it would be cool just to follow you on one place for everything. Right. And that doesn't exist. That doesn't exist. All right, anything you've watched read lately, any just general content suggestions? I've been watching succession and that is a, it's such a good and such a creepy show. It comes out Friday nights, so I watch it Saturday when I'm doing my bike rides, indoors, not riding outside with my iPad.

But that's like, it is such a good show. It's on Apple TV, so like I feel like not everybody gets it. I'll check that out. Obviously the last question, Oh, give us, do you have anybody or any person, they don't have to be public, they can even just be private. Anybody wanna give a shout out to you who's doing some cool stuff in the community, whether it's fitness or tech or anything. The same way he's doing cool. We've mentioned him a couple times, I'll just say happy birthday, Brian Walter. Yeah. The watches podcast with you and I wouldn't be the engineering manager that I am and I wouldn't have this job at Carter's if I didn't work under him and then try to emulate him.

So shout out to Brian and thanks man. Yeah, yeah, again, Sean Bryan and I would highly recommend checking out that episode too on my YouTube final question column. I always ask this guidance counselor 2.0 biggest piece of career advice. Well, if you go back and tell column something earlier in his career, what would it be? You know, I've been on your show multiple times and you ask for this question every time. I interview so many people. I was pretty sure I've given the same answer, but I'm just gonna give it again because it's what immediately pops into my mind. It's that we all need to be kind to ourselves.

It is so easy, especially in the job hunt to tell yourself that you suck and that I got rejected from this job and I'm an idiot and it's just not true. The job hunt is not reflective of who you are as a human being. And everyone I know who's gone through the job hunt, that's the first thing I tell them and if they ever come to me and say I got rejected and I feel shitty, I usually regurgitate the exact same answer. If you're unemployed, if you're looking for a job or even if you're just employed and looking for a job. get rejected from something that's not a reflection on you.

It might even be something that you couldn't even control. Yeah, please be kind to yourself. Yeah, I love that. I love that. All right, y'all. That was great. Colin, stay on real quick. So say about you backstage. But y'all have a great one. Appreciate it tomorrow. We are off because tomorrow I have a monthly all hands with my team. So cannot go live tomorrow. Wednesday, we have the great Andy Wong on the show. Andy's former block engineer, Facebook engineer, Google engineer. He's got a quite a following is up in boss success can be a great show. And then Thursday I have my dear friend Jeremy Barger on he's another engineering leader.

Great guy so a lot of great to two more great guests this week so again off tomorrow but then we'll see y'all 9 30 a.m. Central on Wednesday you all have a good one. Hey you did it you listen to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why there's a lot of podcasts out there there's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely 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 T. Estin on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.