generalists vs. specialists where do we go from here w/ pat clarke, dir of eng

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Alrighty, we're live. We're live. We're live. What's going on everybody? Good morning. Good morning. Happy hump day. We made it halfway through the week and I'm here with my guy Pat Clark. Hails from wonderful. Now Pat, do you live in Where do you live in Raleigh? I live in Durham. I live in Durham. You're in Durham. Okay. Oh yeah. Now you're not is literally city limits. I can get to Raleigh in like two minutes, five minutes, but no, I live in Durham proper. That's awesome. I love it. I love it. Um well, for those of you tuning in, welcome. Say, "Hey, we love to hear from you." I know we are actively going live, so it's going to be a minute.

Excited that for this conversation with Pat. Um you know, uh Pat Pat's a fellow torch torque torqueer. We haven't quite figured out our like saying, but one one day it'll just Pat Pat's a part of the family at Torque. Uh so grateful for him and kind of his involvement. Also um you know this little dad's in tech group I have Pat kind of leads up the Raleigh chapter uh if that's what you want to call it. So grateful for Pat to be here and and um you know we we were chitchatting backstage. We're like where where did this like where did this topic come from?

And we both agreed I probably posted something and he responded and I was like we should talk about it. So um today it's going to be an interesting conversation around generalist versus specialist. I mean, this is this is a topic that I've been kind of seeing a trend with and and I'm excited to have Pat on because, you know, I I I did confirm it with Pat before we went live. I said, "Just make sure we're seeing the same thing and and Pat obviously agreed." Um, so we're going to talk about today, but first off, uh, again, please say, "Hey, we'd love to hear from you." This is this is this is just a networking hang, right?

I mean, what you know, what we do at Torque and and um, you know, what uh, you know, what we try to do is cultivate these online kind of lives where you can connect with others. And so, um, you know, please, please drop in, say, "Hey, let us know where you're tuning in from." Um, also, again, like I tell folks, connect with Pat. Shoot Pat a DM after this. Hey, it was great seeing guidance counselor 2.0. Pat will respond. He's wonderful. Um, so again, just it's like I tell people, if you've been networking off the back of me for about 5 years now, you'd have a pretty expansive network.

And that's what I want to continue to do. And that's really what our goal is at Torque is just to open up our network to everybody uh for you to connect with. Um, but before we dive in, we got some people tuning in. Michael, it's good to see. Buenos Diaz, I know what that means. That means good morning. Um, I really need to learn some Spanish between going to Guadalajara and then obviously in Spain last week. Um, Jeff, it's good to see you. Jordan, um, John, it's good to see you as well. Kelly Von tuning in. What up, Kelly? Kelly, what are you doing where you have time to do this?

Uh, dads in Tech. There we go. Virginia, I love it. Uh, it's a good little group. We got um some meetups happening next month. Um, so if you're if you're a dad or soon to be dad in tech, we'd love to have you. Um, let's see here. What else? Brett, it's good to see you from East Nashville. Um Brett runs a Nashjs meetup here in Nashville. I will be speaking actually next month. Um so super pumped about that. Um turkeys equal to Yeah, you know what? That's sick. I like that. We'll call ourselves the turkeys. That's great. A bunch of a bunch of turkeys. Bunch of turkeys.

Brett, I don't know what that means. Um so stop that. Um uh Jason, it's good to see you as well as always. First and foremost, um you know, I'm a member of the Appite Heroes team again. uh probably the n only non-technical hero on a technical program. Uh check out Jason. Jason's going live today. I think it's I think it's 1 pm Eastern, I believe. Jason, you can confirm it. He's going live with uh uh AdT who's on the um Devril team at uh AppRight doing some stuff with Appite. Um I don't know what it is, but you should check it out. Um also, we're doing we do a lot of like cool stuff in Torque.

Would love to have you check out our community, Torque. Community. So, check that out. Also, if you want to go if you want to be updated when I go live with guests, shoot me a text. It's actually my number. It's not AI. Uh let's see here. What else we got? Uh yeah, LinkedIn user, please reveal yourself. I love it. All right, so Pat, let's give the people what they want, man. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. So like we answered before, my name is Pat Clark. I live in Durham, North Carolina. I have been working in webdev tech since 2007.

Yeah. So I've been around the block a little bit, but only worked at three different companies in that time. I'm kind of a a unicorn in that space. Yeah, for real. For real. Right. Right now, I work as a director of engineering for Lumen Learning. I'm going to pause for the comments. It's my favorite. Yeah. Yeah. Any severance fans, it's great. I feel like I I I told this with Pat. We we are at Dads in Tech uh breakfast at All Things Open AI in Raleigh or Durham. And I told Pat, I said, "If I was in charge of Lumen's marketing, I would have leaned in heavy to, uh, Severance because the fact that Pat works at Lumen, uh, is fantastic." So, um, that's awesome.

I love it. The worst part is I haven't started the show. I'm waiting till hockey plays. You haven't started the show? No. Oh, dude, you got to. It's so good. My parents So, my parents messaged me the other day and they were like, you know, I can't get into Severance. And I was like I was like, you got to give it like a few episodes. I was like the first like three episodes I was like what am I watching? Um and they were like well we're about on episode three. And I said I said okay keep watching. But my parents aren't on Twitter and I said I I said the the fun part of Severance is all the conspiracy theories like on Tik Tok and Severance.

I mean um on Twitter and Tik Tok. So I was like I was like you know you will lose out a little bit um since if you're not caught up in all the theories. So um but yeah Pat you got to watch dude. It's it's great. I know. But I can answer Jordan's question in the chat. I am definitely innie right now. I love it. I love it. I love it. That's great. That's great. If you didn't watch it, you don't know what he's talking about. And that sounds weird. Um, all right. So, Pat, first let's talk about it, man. General versus specialists. I mean, there's a lot to break down here.

You know, I feel like what I've seen when I was recruiting in like 2021, 2022, companies were just on a mass rush for hiring. If you could spell a few languages, you can get hired. Um, now I feel like it's it's it's gone back to we need a specific person for a specific problem. Just want to confirm with you that that's what you're seeing and just kind of some initial thoughts uh you know on your end. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. And I think specializing in something, not a not a tool, not a framework, but like a language or a set of skills to do something like ops is, I'm sure, in high demand still, no matter how many abstraction services are out there.

Having a good ops person saves you money. Yes. So, people love to carry those, but having a specific specialty will get you in the door. Yeah. Full stop. What what what do you think like for folks who are watching this you know I know a lot of people ask me they're like well what roles are hot like what tech is hot you know I'm I'm kind of curious what I mean again you only one that's what I always tell people I'm one slice of the pie right one piece of the puzzle and that's the same for you but like what are you seeing right now that's hot what are you seeing what people are wanting maybe it's internal with you guys or just in general so I I'll speak to ourselves like we're not in a position to hire we're probably like many companies but if we do we're going to be flooded and honestly older tech.

How many companies are going to be able to upgrade things? So, can you jump into old So, we're a Ruby shop. Yeah. Uh, can you jump into Ruby? Can you jump into old Python apps? Can you deal withNnet? Yeah. Basically, being able to jump into old infrastructure will probably benefit you a lot in the coming. Do you think people should like be going out here and learn? Because because that's I think it's I think it's a conundrum, right? Because you have all these boot camps. They're like pushing all these front-end developers and that's like we've reached max capacity for front-end folks. Um I feel like unfortunately but it's like would you recommend somebody opening up like a old like a book for old Java or Python?

I mean like what does that look like and to to prepare yourself for the job search? All right. So let let me give you a personal backstory. So I started out as a front-end developer. Okay. Like I was doing everything by hand. There was no frameworks. There was you're just going onto a server and you're editing files directly. Sure. Sure. Now I can jump into backend code. I can jump in jump into databases. I help architect code. How the heck did I even get there? I was just curious and tinkered with things. So jumping into a book, if that's the way you learn best, do it.

If you just need to find an open source project that dabbles with certain tech, do it. Just find your learning style and dive into anything that lots of people are are pointing towards. Use systems like apprite maybe to help you learn how to actually put stuff out there on the web. I think they're these little things that you don't always get to do when you're at a larger company. Yeah. But there are plenty of smaller companies that need you to be able to figure out in a moment's notice. What do you what do you think like from uh just let's let's talk a little bit from the junior side.

Um especially somebody who's in hiring like you. Um and really kind of junior mid, right? Let's let let's say I know all the latest greatest and listen I'm not saying to like drop everything you're doing from a front-end perspective, but I just feel like there is a demand for more back-end code right now. Um especially with the wave of AI um and and just the amount heavy amounts of data that are out there. Um c I mean can you talk about how somebody can best set themsel up for success if they just went all in on front-end code uh for like boot camps or that's all they've been doing?

Yeah, if you're in a position talk to your managers, get them to give you some small backend tasks. Get you comfortable doing some of the easier stuff so you ramp yourself into that. So, everyone on my team has done a little bit of backend, whether it's, you know, just pulling a piece of data from a database or updating a piece of data, but they're slowly getting the ball rolling just in case. Hey, we have a huge need. We need to jump into a complex problem. Yeah. Can you help us out? Or here's the real key. Can you help work moving while the other backenders are busy?

Like if there is something stopping you from doing your job, can you get past that roadblock yourself? How does somebody work on that? I feel like that's like not really. It's there is no direct answer. I I probably tried two or three different things with different individuals and we're still figuring it out ourselves. Gotcha. From from a um one one thing you said when we kind of jumped into this um was like don't learn a framework, learn a language. Yeah, can you expound on that a little bit? All right, so let let's stay within the front end realm. Sure. React was the hot thing that everyone wanted and everyone boot camps taught React.

React is a tool. It is a library. It's it's basically something that's supposed to save you from writing extra code like rolling everything yourself, doing everything from scratch. And it's great, but this is where my conundrum with the idea of specialist versus generalist comes into play. If all I know is React and I don't know JavaScript or TypeScript, when I'm shown something that's not in my wheelhouse, can I do anything? Interesting. So, I feel like frameworks have been hot, right? Like everybody wants, you know, I always I I call it resumed driven architecture, RDA, where it's like you have these where you have these all these engineering leaders that just want to like they they basically want to put all the latest greatest frameworks on their resume that they help manage or whatever and and implement.

But like but I feel like I I I I I've seen what you say, right? Is like, hey, I only know React, but then it but then if I just if if you get into an interview and they just ask you some basic JavaScript stuff, I I have seen in the past people flounder a little bit. Yeah. Or you start overengineering something the way you know how to do it and it could become harder for other people on the team. So then question marks and red flags get raised and it's hard like there's no direct solution. So, like me as a manager, I've got to figure out how I can help each of my individual, you know, team members because, yeah, here's the true story, Taylor.

Four or five years ago, I was I was barely using any of this stuff. And I felt like I didn't know what I was doing, but I just had to get in there and kind of figure things out. I had a background of understanding how a lot of this stuff worked and I had a long runway to learn some basic fundamentals that helped me. And a lot of people that go through boot camps just aren't afforded that courtesy, which really sucks if we're being honest. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I I think I think I I I do think what has been hot is the framework side.

Yeah. And I feel like now there's more of an emphasis on like, hey, we just need a Java developer or we just need a Python developer or we just need a, you know, a a JavaScript developer. Can you talk about um kind of in your experience where people should go to to be able to learn these things? I mean because like for me it's like like you know we talk about reading a book. A lot of people I see are getting certifications. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. I know open source projects something we've talked about on the show. You know I feel like that's probably a good thing.

I mean when you're hiring people I mean do you look at open source projects that they've contributed to and stuff when it comes to hiring? So, I'm not I it's been about two and a half years since I've actually had an interview with anyone. We're looking to fill a position. So, what I'm doing is the other thing I'm starting to scout if something were to pop open tomorrow. Yeah. Who would I look to and sort of like, you know, this is a global networking? This is kind of piggybacking off of you. Yeah. Yeah. If you know of a good developer that resonates and a content creator like some of your past guests like I'm I'm just going to throw Aaron Francis's name because I know I'm personally taking some of his courses.

Okay. Why? Because all right I may be a manager but there's still a path of things I need to learn. You just have to find the right people and start to learn from them and then I love that make friends with their audiences. So just like Torque is for job seekers. Yeah. smaller audiences for people that learn things like you've been on with the syntax folks. I've learned tons from them when I'm too busy in meetings to actually know how to code anymore. Sure. But they keep me up to date in knowing what I need to know. So it's you got to find a secondary community that kind of matches your learning style.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You seem to be really big on learning styles. Can can you talk about why that's so important for folks because one day your company's going to ask you to do X, the next day they're going to ask you to do Y. And to do the best thing for yourself, for your family, is just be prepared to roll with the punches. Yeah. So, you know, we had a larger front-end team and I had to let some people go, not because they weren't good, it was just a financial decision company decided to make. Sure. So, then you run into questions of, okay, I'm going to have all this work coming down the pipeline.

who can do it all or who is best suited to work with the people and they're really crappy conversations I have to have with people but it all kind of plays and matters. So if you're a curious individual, if you like to know how things work and you can just poke around at things and break things, I mean this legitimately like being a good programmer, even being a good PM is just knowing what you know and then trying to break everything around you. see what sticks, see what works, but then get a a feel for, oh, I didn't realize if I did this, it's going to cause, you know, to happen.

So, being curious, like people who can naturally jump or context switch between languages are going to be the most desirable people right now because we can throw something at you and you'll deliver. I agree. How do you get to that point? Yeah, I was about to say like how do you like how does how does one work on context switching on their own time? I was multiple projects. Multiple projects you think sometimes multiple projects sometime like I was in 10 meetings yesterday with 10 different contacts and this is why people don't like want to go into management and sure that I say yeah I get you.

Yeah. But as long as you're curious about things, you want to move things forward. And here's the other thing. Don't feel like you have to know everything. You don't know have to know exactly how every line of code works. If you've got the general idea of what a language is, how to read it, and a a good concept of what a application does, what you can do is you can leverage AI to tell you, hey, what is this thing doing? Yeah. So, you're not spending hours and hours and hours and maybe you can get an answer in maybe 15 minutes instead. Sure. So, it's like saving yourself some time and not feel like you need to know everything.

That's probably the biggest thing I see is people just want to know every context. They want to be able to do everything a senior is doing without going through all the times a senior has made a mistake, introduced a bug, got burned by something. They have a little bit of an advantage now where they can get to an answer a little quicker with a lot more help. That makes sense. That makes sense. I want to get to Jordan's question here. I often jump between ops tasks like setting up and maintaining VMs and full stack development for my job. Is it easier to market myself as a DevOps or full stack or even backend right now?

Yes. If Jordan, if you can do all those things, you're all those things. That's that's kind of why I hate marketing yourself as one type of individual. Am I a front end? Am I a backend, Jordan? Honestly, if you can do those things, you are like a gold star. You You are a person I would love to hire because ops tasks get very difficult. being able to maintain a VM, that means you're going to help other people do their jobs. That just makes you more and more valuable. So, yeah, maybe when you're applying for something, you you market yourself as a specific role, but you say, "But I can also do X, Y, and Z in a pinch." Yep.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh let me see here. Uh kind of going through just look at the comments here. Um, uh, I could listen to Pat all day long. Great voice, friend. Um, thank you. Uh, let's see here. But all jokes aside, learning another language outside your native uh, is Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 100% 100%. So, let let me one thing I want to kind of, uh, focus on, you know, you talked about breaking stuff, right? And tinkering with stuff. Um, like like would you recommend folks to get comfortable on their spare time like breaking things and figuring out why things are broken? Cuz I feel like there's just this there's this discourse of like everything's got to be great.

I got to know everything. Kind of like what you said. But in reality, I feel like you're going to learn from your mistakes more than just trying to be this like overly polished engineer. Yeah. I mean, getting in the door, everyone expects you to be polished and have your stuff together. But the reality is once you get past that barrier, we're all just making things up as we go along. We're just trying to get things to work today. Yeah. And make sure they're good to put in front of a customer or an internal client or whatever it is. So, yeah, be comfortable breaking things and not exactly knowing how to put them back together.

Yeah. Like in the world of source control, you can undo all your mistakes with one button, start from scratch, and start the process over. It's like Yeah. I know how to cook. Am I a chef? No. Am I a baker? No. But I know some fundamentals. But if I wanted to, I'm going to have to burn a lot of bread or make some terrible meals before I get Yeah. Right. Which is why dinners in my house are kind of lackluster. It's just chaos. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. It's just what can we get done in 30 minutes or less? Sure. Without doing a lot of prep work on the weekends.

Sure. Yeah. I love that. How is that any different than being an engineer or really any trade? Yeah, you got to try some stuff before you can, you know, from a marketing perspective or even a product perspective. You can only gather so much information before you can make a decision and just try something. Yeah, absolutely. Let me um I I'm I kind of asked this question at the end about like what would you go back and tell yourself, but I'm I'm going to frame it a little bit differently. Like if if let's say you woke up tomorrow and you were like, you know, had to start all over again in tech, right?

like based off what you know now and and we could kind of get off the general specialist conversation a little bit just talk about more networking and just general career stuff what what what would you do right because I mean I think I think a lot of people uh view engineering leaders is they have it all together they don't deal with issues yada yada yada um they have it all figured out I am kind of curious if you were to do over your career again. How would you get involved into tech at this point knowing what you know now? Don't stop going to networking events.

I love I'm not paying him to say that for the record. No, no, I'm not paying Pat to say that. So, true story. My first proper job in tech I got off of Twitter. I was your first proper job in tech you got off. My first proper job I was playing around with um for any of the old PHP developers, I was using this content management system called Expression Engine. It still exists today, but it's in tech. You just don't hear people talking about that sort of stuff anymore. It's it's all you use a service or you're stuck on WordPress and your company never wants to move off that.

I was just talking about it and someone locally, you know, just DM'd me and say, "Hey, we're looking for someone that's doing this stuff and you're learning it. Would you like a job?" And we had a we had a conversation. Oh, yeah. Colin, I I was in there deep and then I wasn't because Well, we could talk about that some other time. Sure. Sure. Um, but then my next job, you know, I lost that. This was around 2009 when every It was kind of like a situation now where people were struggling to find jobs. It took me 10 months to find a new gig. Really?

It was because I knew someone from a meetup and they had an open position in hiring and I was hired over probably more skilled developer at the time really uh because I knew kind of who the finalists were but it was because there was a comfortability with me they knew me and I ended up working at that company for 12 years and I love those guys to this day. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean again I mean I think I mean you know want to give want to give you your flowers for sure. I mean, you are definitely very active and, you know, I appreciate everything that, you know, you've you've helped kind of create with Dads and Tech in Raleigh, but but I do feel like a lot of engineering leaders kind of get to their point in their career and they stop networking.

Yeah, I did. Yeah. And I was still in a position and this is when, you know, I was starting my family, had two kids, could barely form sentences like full stop. I could barely speak and now I'm on 10 calls a day and now I'm chatting with you, Taylor. So, it's it's wild. But no, just don't do it always to learn something. Just meet people and connect. Like you have a m you're going to a meetup because you have some sort of mutual connection. Find the other connections because then you find tighter bonds. You and I before this, we're chatting about hockey. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

and we both worked in tech and we both lived in the same area and and and so now we've got a real good relationship and you know god forbid I needed anything I could probably reach out to you 100% or or if you needed something from me and I'd be right there for you and it formed pretty quickly too. That's the other thing. It doesn't take much. Do you have any strategies? I mean know I know Render's coming up here at React Miami. Um do you do you have any of your kind of own networking tips? you know, because I know you're big on meetups and and like I said, I mean, you know, you're you're you're you're hosting Daz and Tech Breakfast and you know, you're active in the Torque Discord and I mean, do do you have any networking tips to share with others um that you have found that kind of works for you in your career?

Just just be yourself, honestly. I mean, I once upon a time I used to go by Patrick all the time because I thought it sounded more professional. I was just like, you know what, Pat's easier to type for people. Let me make it easy. Patrick, I'm going to start calling you Patrick. You and my wife. You, my wife, and my mother. Um, just just just be yourself and just be curious about things like you keep saying being curious. Here's why. Everyone in the world, including yourself, you could probably teach me something about tech being the non- tech person that I don't know. You know something that I don't, right?

And that really interests me. And being curious about things just keeps your mind engaged. Um I heard something yesterday. I think it was from like Gary Vanderchuk. People people who get burnt out or because you're always doing something that you don't want to do. Yeah. And that is very relatable. But when you're curious about something and interesting, you get excited. Yeah. And it gives you a little burst of energy. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, for me, like I think so, we were hanging out with um some friends uh two days ago um on Memorial Day and uh the uh the the the wife is a teacher and and I think one of the things that really has helped me in my entire career is being curious, right?

And literally she was like kind of like working on something on her computer. I was like, "What are you working on?" She like started to talk to me about all school stuff and I was like, "That's awesome." I was like I was like so like and and I know she speaks at conferences like educational conference. I was like you know are you speaking anytime soon? She goes no but like I'm I'm actually going to get uh a a paper published in some education thing. I was like oh that's awesome. Like tell me about it. Right. And she started to kind of you know you know yap on you know what the paper was.

What was it for? And I was like is this your first time having this done? Do you have So to 30 minutes later like we're still talking about education. I don't know Jack diddly about education stuff, right? But because I was curious, we had a meaningful conversation about what she does, right? And and and and I think when it comes to networking and I think I mean obviously you did it very well too, but if you can you don't have to know anything about anything. And that's why like people are like, "Oh, like I'm terrible at networking." And I'm like, well, if you're terrible at networking, that means you're just bad at asking questions and want to be curious with other people.

Yeah, everybody wants Everybody wants to hear themselves talk. Speak for yourself. Especially Especially tech notes. Oh, no. I So, true story. I had to start a podcast with some friends because I never talked. I've never felt comfortable talking. So, I had to force myself to kind of learn it. And it was a skill for me. Yeah. But I eventually got better. But I love asking questions because I don't care. We could be talking about hockey. You could be, you just saw your first hockey game for the first time. I've been playing, coaching, refing, watching since I was a little kid. But man, you know something that I don't and I'm just te tell me what you're loving.

I because I you can feed off of other people's excitement and energy and that's why I love, you know, some of the community aspects. It's not about necessarily learning finding my next job, but eventually you're going to fall into that just because you can make some genuine connections with people. Well, man, you said it you said it so great when it comes to like hiring and and why you were hired is that there's a comfortability. Like I think people I know you haven't hired in a minute at Lumen, but um uh but I think like what I have heard and I'm sure you've heard online too is that companies like companies don't have the affordability with these big budgets to take chances anymore.

No. And so like if if they know you, they know of you. I mean, like I said, Kelly, um I actually um Kelly and I had a conversation. Well, she came on with me live and she was saying how like she would actually rather read LinkedIn posts about technology that she's hiring for more than your portfolio because it would get her familiar with you more. And it's like I feel like just people want to work with people that they feel comfortable with. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but that's just it is what it is. Just is what it is. It is. that if you're a good company and have good hiring practices, you know, you can filter out the am I just hiring a friend or am I finding someone who's a good fit.

It doesn't have to be a perfect fit. I think we need to get that concept out of our out of our minds. Say one more time. That was good. There is no perfect fit for any job. Just like any relationship, is it good? Can we work together? Can we be engaged? Can we, you know, at the end of the day, can we, you know, keep the lights on? keep the paychecks coming and take care of whatever we need to take care of in our life. I mean, Roxy says it here. Listen, I mean, there there listen I mean, you can't be bad at your job and still get hired right now, but there is a um there is definitely a little bit of a person.

I mean, Kelly Kelly's still here. Kelly, it's good to see you, girl. Um we need to get you back on the live. Um but yeah, like I like I want to know you. Like I want to know that person, right? And again, like like when we went live together, like she that's what she said. She goes, "I'd rather look at your body of work." We were talking about kind of posting out, you know, building in public, blah blah blah blah blah. She was like, "I'd rather look at that because that's from you instead of just your resume, right?" Um, and I just like there's there's again there's there needs to be a little bit of a paper trail of kind of who you are and and what you've done right now.

And it's it's it's like I talked about in my talk last week. Um, the the the moment the moment you can turn the interview into a conversation is huge. Prime example when I was interviewing at Torque, the final round was with the CEO, Mike Morris, and I knew that Mike played hockey. So, I got on I got Dude, most most of the guys most of the leadership at uh at Torque, they're all from Boston. So, like I was about to say I know they're all from Mass. They like literally one of our sales guys, he plays A in Boston and he was like he's like, "You should come and like sub for us when you're up here." I was like, "I'm not playing A level in Boston.

That's a whole another level. But um but like but like me and the CEO Mike Morris, we just hit it off. We we only talked about his kids ice hockey. His kids played at Centennial, which is where I play in Nashville. And then like by the end of the conversation, he was like, "All right, do you have any questions from do you have any questions for me?" And I was like, "No, we're good." And like we we didn't really talk about anything like from the job. So now not every interview can be like that, but I think the more that you can make the interviewer conversation, the better.

Yeah, for sure. Fully agree. It's a two-way It's a two-way street. And if you don't feel comfortable talking with people, it's probably not a good fit for you. Yes. Oh, I like that. I like that 100%. I I think having the awareness to basically be like, "Hey, this isn't a fit for me." Here's the deal. Here's here here's what I say. If you can be in a spot, now I understand finances are hard. Not everybody can be in this in this mindset, but if you can play the game of like, hey, I don't need this job and approach it from that perspective, obviously being engaged.

I'm not saying about being a dick, but like but like approaching the interview and being like and really like approaching it with like a realistic uh framework, I think you'll have a better interview because you won't be too high and you won't be too low. I feel like a lot of times in interviews it's like, "Oh my gosh, the greatest thing ever." And then sometimes it's like, well, that that really wasn't good conversation, but I just need a job. And so then you're trying to like battle upstream most of the time. Yeah. And you're you're trying to figure out, well, what am I motivated by?

And look, sometimes you just have to take a job because you need to. We've all done it. Facts. Yeah. And you know, I'm never going to discourage anyone from doing that, but when you're in a position of of strength, you're comfortable, but you're dipping your toes back into the market. Yep. just see, hey, I'm I'm just out here checking stuff out. I'm just browsing. Yeah. But if I get a connection, if I if I'm finding not necessarily a rapport, but this feels like someone I could talk again and maybe talk with on a regular basis, well, you might have something there. Exactly. I agree. And it comes out in the interview.

For sure. It does. For sure. For sure. And what does that have to do with generalist or specialist? You're kind of both. It's just can you do what we're asking you in this moment? Yep. But more importantly, then can you make your impact either with an individual or with the quality of your work? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So, we're uh about at time. So, Dave David comes in and goes, "I've had interviews like a friendly engaging conversation and had good vibes afterwards." Yeah. Yeah. That Listen, I'm not saying that if you vibe with everybody, you're going to get a job. I'm not saying that.

But what I'm saying is is I bet it was a more enga it was a more fun interview than it was the opposite way. Yeah. And hopefully you stay on a short list for a company. Like good people that we've interviewed. One of the last people we hired still on my team today, she went through a round with my boss and then we had an open position. I was like, hey, we're not posting this quite yet, but would you like to rein with me? And they were like, yes. And it's been a fantastic relationship. Yep. There you go. Yeah. Again, I always tell people always be kind and grateful.

I'm not saying Dave wasn't that, but like always be kind. Always be grateful. Thank you. All good, you know, and and move on because if you were their second or third and the first their first choice got another job, they're going to go with their second or third like like so you will be on the short list. But yes, I totally um I totally get that. Kelly comes in here. Ending on a good note does mean something. A high competition interview process. I remember those interviews when I vied with someone who didn't make the them. Again, Kelly's done a bunch of hiring um at a previous spot uh previous spot called Spot.

Um uh so yeah, absolutely. And again, Pat's great if you want to talk hiring. Kelly's great, too. Um so, um I love it. Kelly, thanks for thanks for tuning in today. Um all right, Pat, uh last round robin here, as we always do. Um first off, I always ask, are we a coffee or tea drinker? Neither. I'm still a soda drinker. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, this completely went off the rails. I saw I saw a whole argument on TikTok yesterday about hot coffee versus cold coffee and that was great. So, that's always what I asked, but you completely What? Okay. Well, then let me ask you this then.

What's your favorite soda? Like, what what's uh I'm I'm a Pepsi kid. I always have been. Family worked for the company and now I live in North Carolina. Yeah. Oh, for real? Yeah. So, so we'd go on vacation like once a year and there would always be Pepsi there and that'd be the one time I get to have it and it's just sweeter and has more caffeine. There you go. I love it. It's a dangerous combo. But no, the answer is how many how many Pepsis do you have a day? Be honest. Uh, one at most. I'm trying to be responsible. What? Uh, uh, blasphemy.

Uninvited. How did you Oh, someone must be from Georgia. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, understood, Kelly. No, no, no. Awfully deeply uninvited. Pepsi. Now, Pepsi, Pepsi is like licking a sugar cube to me. Okay. Like, just it's brutal. All right, next question. Um, since that completely went off the rails, I've never I've never asked somebody coffee or tea and they go Pepsi. That was completely on binge. But everyone's going to remember that about me now and hold it against me. So, I love it, man. Build build the brand. Build a brand. Build a brand. Gotta be Pepsi. Um, everybody goes bey. People are losing their minds in the chat.

Um, that was crazy. Um, all right. Next question. I know you mentioned Aaron Francis. Do you want to give a shout out to anybody else in the tech community who you're following, who's doing cool stuff, who you're whose content you're consuming. I mean, obviously Aaron's putting out just banger after banger right now. Yeah. I I'm going to go in the other direction. Uh, Richard Choy, I love the way he is making connections with everyone. Torqueer. Richard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just he is meeting someone different every day while he's hunting. He's doing the thing. He's doing the thing. He's doing exactly what I say. Meet Me meet somebody, have a chat with them for 10 minutes, take a picture with them, post it, tag them.

It's crazy. Uhhuh. So, yeah, I love it. Yeah, Richard, shout out to you. You're crushing it. Uh, people are still going on in the chat, by the way, about Pepsi. Um, love this RC cola. Tab. Tab over RC. Tab. I don't even know what tab is. I saw a tab in a grocery store once upon a time like 15 years ago at the branding on that looks awful. Oh, yeah. It's why you can never find it anymore. Oh, really? I love it. Um, all right. Next question. Um, any really anything you're um any tech I know you're in management, but is there anything you're tinkering with on the side that you're pretty pumped about right now?

um internally trying to figure out if a MCP server is a fit. Okay. Like dabbling into AI trying to figure out does it work for specific use case. So I'm one of those I wait AI has been all it's just been a buzzword for the last two years. Right. Yeah. But things have settled to the point where there's actually some concrete stuff that you can work with a little better unless it's your full-time gig. I'm working at a company that's trying to figure out, can we integrate this into a product without raising our prices for customers? I'm starting to look into things like, you know, MCP servers and seeing, oh, is this a fit?

Is this something that we could use for some internal use? And then our customers get some benefit. So, that's what I'm tinkering with right now. I love it. I love it. Um, uh, and then final question. Um, obviously the show is called Guidance Counselor 2.0 know guiding counselors in middle school, high school, and college yada yada yada. Now, as adults, we don't really have them. What would be your biggest piece of career advice um for young Pat? I I know you said networking, but is there anything else or you just want to double down on networking? No, let's let's say uh draw on past job experience.

If you've worked in food service, you're going to use those schools those skills in tech. You talking about context switching, that's context switching. Go work in the restaurant. Go work in retail. being able to work retail. I did restaurant and retail. I have sales people that want to bring me on sales calls and I think in the back of my head, what are these people talking about? But it's just because I can just have a conversation and just kind of lay things out for you. Like, you know, I saw on TikTok that like millennials don't have world wars. They have retail, restaurant, and tourism. Oh, yeah.

So, some people go, I served in two of the three wars. That's really Um, I served two. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, if we're talking about context switching, I think I think that's great. I will I always ask um uh I did not ask the people I hired, but I have asked people when I was at Veco when I hired my teams if they've worked any service industry job. They always have a different motor about them when it comes to sales than people who have not. Yeah. Like I look for people who have played sports competitively and people who've HRTM. It just works. It works.

So, um Alrighty. Well, the chat just went berserk. So, uh again, uh Pat, thanks for coming on, buddy. I appreciate everybody. Go connect with Pat. Um he's on Twitter. He's on LinkedIn. He's obviously drops into the Discord sometimes. So, definitely connect with him. Um, and uh, again, appreciate y'all hanging out tomorrow. Um, I have Jacob Evans on the show. Jacob got his most recent job because of Twitter. Um, he actually made a post. I just slid in his DMs. I kind of know of him and he was like, I was cold applying. I wasn't getting anywhere. Then I just started going for the ask on Twitter and he just landed at a company named who uh, WHOP who's actually like blowing up right now because of their YouTube videos.

They just the YouTube channel just hit 100,000 subs. but their but their business model is around helping entrepreneurs kind of scale their businesses. So, um so I'm hanging out with Jacob tomorrow. So, if you want to know how to use Twitter better for your job search, we're gonna we're going to dive into that tomorrow. So, um Pat, appreciate you, my guy. Stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. But you have a great one. Thank you. We'll see you on