community always wins w/ chris demars, sr. dev advocate @ tuxcare

full transcript

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All right. Then we got this. Sweet. Good morning, everybody. The power technology, I tell you this, man, the fact I could just press like go and we were syncing to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven profiles at one time. It's pretty slick. Technology is great. Technology's great. Good morning, everybody. We are back. I am back from my LATAM tour. You know, basically, I say this all the time, building community, as Chris knows, is like being in a band. And we were on our LATAM leg, LATAM tour. We headlined Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. I'm just kidding. But it was great. Your boy's working on a Spanish.

It's a little rusty, but I do know how to order two cold brews in Spanish, two large cold brews. So we're working on it. I got good morning, good afternoon. good evening so i got that too so we're heading there my man my man um but uh good morning folks welcome say hey we'd love to hear from you um this uh excited for this episode you know chris chris is one of those guys and it's not an excuse but I'm gonna say it anyways a lot of people that I view as like really good friends I never asked to come on the show uh because I just view them as friends and I always forget to ask and Chris is one of those guys um and so uh I I I think I think you finally texted me um and you were like yo we should do this I was like oh Every time I'm like, yo, Chris is great.

Why don't I just ask? So I'm glad Chris was on me, and we made this happen. This is a reschedule of a reschedule, but we're a little bit – because, Chris, how long are you going to be at Tucks Care for now? Oh, let's see. Going on ten months. I'll be. It's almost a year in June. Yeah. So we're about ten months late. Yeah. To be totally right. Yeah. We're going to retro kind of call Jeff. It's not nine thirty. I understand. But listen, listen, Chris. Chris is great. We're going to yap it up a little bit. Not a big deal. Yeah, boy. Chris, we were – was that actually you messaged me last night on threads?

Yes, yes, yes. It was. It was. That was me. So, Chris, you're a hockey fan, right? I am, buddy. Yes, sir. Detroit Red Wings, right? Yes, sir. I'm sorry for the fact you're not in playoffs this year. What can you do? What can you do? I know what you can do. I know what they can do. They don't take bricks. Yeah, Chris and I. Yeah, explain the Detroit conundrum of sports. All right. If everybody's tuned in. So this is how it works. We do great. Lions, Tigers, Red Wings. Pistons are still doing good. Lions, Tigers, Red Wings. We're destroying the season. We take a break.

Let's say this year we had the Olympics. So the Red Wings went on the Olympic break. Come back. We shit the bed. Last year, the Lions were doing great. They had a week or two off. Come back from that, they shit the bed, we don't make the playoffs. Same thing with the Tigers. Tigers do great. They have the all-star game, all-star week. Come back from that, shit the bed, and don't make any of the playoffs. We just can't take breaks. That's just the fact of the matter. No breaks. No breaks. If anybody from any sports teams watch this or listen to this podcast in the future, stop taking breaks.

Perfect. Well, that's why I suck at hockey, and you're a hockey player. I'm a hockey player. I've taken a long break, and every time I get back on the ice, I suck. That's awful. Yeah, I actually – and again, we started early, so we can just yip-yap here for a second. Again, if you are tuning in, please say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. We would love to hear from you. I always said when my ice hockey team, we played tournaments – i always hated getting by games in playoffs right usually kind of these small ice hockey beer league tournaments if you place first you usually have a buy typically most times those we got beat because we took a break Because you're coming in cold at ten a.m.

in the morning or eleven a.m. And the other team has already skated at eight a.m. And they're ready to go. So, yeah, it is hard. I will also say this. And again, this is what I was excited to talk with Chris about because of the hockey side of things. I don't get to talk about hockey that much because there's a lot. I mean, I love y'all, but there's not a lot of nerds that play ice hockey. I think another thing, too, is like I've thought about the NHL a lot. People don't understand how grueling that is. I've played in a few high, high competitive weekend tournaments for ice hockey, and I play...

you know six games in a weekend and these guys have already played eighty two regular season games then have to go in and playoff hockey is a whole nother level whole different game and you know same thing I put with tournaments it's a whole different level to like people don't understand how physically grueling is but then also mentally yeah by the way did did Pittsburgh win last night or no so funny story funny story about that i was at b-dubs because i really wanted a chicken sandwich and they lost power oh they lost power no they no b-dubs lost power yeah all the games were wrong right baseball was on basketball Hockey, all those games were on, and they lost power, and people are just sitting at the bar on their phones watching games.

And I'm sitting there. I'm like, I hope this power turns back on because I really want a chicken sandwich. I really want a chicken sandwich. I walked out with two beers on my tab, and that was that. They never got power back. So I don't know if Pittsburgh won, but if you say they won, cool. So, again, prime example, Philadelphia Flyers up three-oh. And now Pittsburgh is one of the last. It's just it's so it's so difficult. People just don't understand. So anyways, all right. We're about nine thirty. So we'll go ahead and get official now. But good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to Guidance Counselor two point.

Oh, again, excited to have Chris DeMars on the show again. Like I tell folks, listen, this is a this is a this is a networking session, right? This is a online meetup. You know, I've been doing this thing for years. We've kind of cut back on the episodes. Partially because I just don't have time to, A, schedule as many people as I want to, or B, even have time to go live. I'm in meetings for the rest of the day. So I'm excited to hang out with Chris today. It's the only one of the week. And to be totally frank with you, this is the last one I have scheduled right now.

have to figure out uh to get more people on the show but uh before Chris introduces himself uh I want to kind of go through some announcements uh first and foremost um if you want to know when I go live with guests like Chris and when I book guests that is moving forward text me this is my number also If you want just any job search questions, text me too. If you want immediate response, I check this obviously more than anything else. So please text me if you need me. Jump into the Torque Discord. We got a lot going on. We got resume reviews tomorrow with the legend Will Klein.

So we're doing that. Also, the unofficial coffee sponsor. I forgot to grab my coffee, but I'm drinking it right now. Seek to Live. A founder here in Nashville developed a coffee company that is free of mold. I did not know this, but supposedly a lot of coffee has trace amounts of mold in it. um so you know chris it's a very nashville thing right um and so basically i got a discount but but i'm having a talk with caleb today the founder we are working on a pretty hefty discount for the torque community um um and so i i want seek coffee to be the coffee that powers torque community just like torque is the talent that powers ronstadt digital see what i did there you should you should make your own branded coffee with them and call it like guidance counselor two point oh or dork just have your own brand under that label bro yeah yeah i love that i love that see you see I'm just not tattooed.

I got good ideas. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, let's see. Is there anything else? Anything else? Announcements? Torque.dev. Jump into the Discord. Hang out. Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. Sweet. But again, good morning, everybody. David, it's good to see you. Erica, it's good to see you. Chris, you got to stop scheduling these things during stand-up. And just good to see you. Jeff, it's good to see you. Ricardo, it's good to see you as well. Amelia. We got the crew in here this morning. Y'all continue to comment. Lucas is here as well. I read that as Seeked Olive. Close, close. Very good. Mark, my guy.

Good morning. Good morning. All right. So, Chris, let's introduce yourself. Give the people what they want. Who are you and what do you do? Oh, so who I am, it depends on who you talk to. But the name is Chris. I'm from the Metro Detroit area, senior developer advocate at TuxCare. In my spare time, I'm a competitive bass angler, competitive paintball player, and I like searching for UFOs, ghosts, and Bigfoot. Should we talk conspiracy theories? We should do like an after hours one night. We just go live and just talk. I will talk conspiracy theories. If you ever need somebody to talk conspiracy theories with, I love all of them.

I love all of them. So we should do that. All right. So Chris, so Chris, you, so, so kind of the framework for this conversation this morning is, is your last job search it was grueling right how many months were you kind of on the search oh the last time because every time every time there's a job search that i'm in we do it like a guidance counselor well i think it's so good right i mean i think i think your story resonates with everybody This time around, it was almost six months. Close to six months, I think. That wasn't your longest one, right? Or was that your longest one?

Oh, let's see. Yeah, I think so. Is that your longest? Yeah. Yep. So walk me through it, man. I mean, let's kind of start high level. What worked? What didn't? Let's start there. Oh, I... it's so hard man because like you wake up and you get that you know that meeting or that email like because we've had friends that have been canned over an email which is some bs yeah uh but it's hard man like me being the grinder that i am like there's a lot of people out there that you know they get the news or whatever and they're like oh i'm gonna take a few weeks to to process and decompress like who's got the time to do that yeah Who's got the time to just take the time?

Time is money. You know what I mean? Your job is to find a job, not to take two or three weeks to yourself. You're running out of money, especially if you have single income. It's a different story if you have a dual income and you have savings and stuff. Every situation is different. But you got to be on that hustle. So the second I got laid off from that gig at D.O., I uh I just started applying just started applying applying applying telling everybody I knew across various slack channels blue sky LinkedIn anything I could do like hey I need a gig if you know anybody you know somebody that's looking let me know let me know let me know and then you just you just start and you just hit the ground running yeah what You know, I'm curious, what were the kind of the conversations like?

How did they shift over time? Because what I'm trying to get at is like, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people probably said, oh, great. Thanks for letting me know, but not now. Yeah. Yeah. yeah i mean a lot of like it's it devrel specifically it it goes up and down right and any any of my developer advocate friends or devrel people uh in the chat or that are tuned in understand that fully like there's there's always like ebbs and flows with it and last year when i was interviewing it seemed like everybody and their brother and sister were hiring But a lot of these companies didn't have a clue what DevRel was.

But they saw company A had a DevRel team. I don't like calling it a team, but for this, we'll call it a team. So they needed a team, right? And they needed developer advocates because company A had them. Or like a competitor, oh, our competitor has a developer, a DevRel team, so we need one too. Then you start breaking down those conversations with people on the team, leadership. Like, OK, well, where does this investment come from? Whose idea was this to have a DevRel team? Why do you need a DevRel team? Do you even understand what developer advocacy is? Do you understand the meaning of developer relations?

And it's like, it's like a deer in headlights. Like, Oh, we're going to figure it out. It's like, no, no, no. You can't just figure it out. Like someone that needs to have full investment in this mission, which is what I call it. I call it a mission to understand the value of it. You just can't throw shit at the wall and expect it to stick. Like that's just not, that's how you, you're going to fail at this because you just think everything in, you know, throw everything in the bucket and here we go. Yeah. There needs to be a strategic investment from the top.

Not just like a team lead, right? Like a CEC level or a founder level has to fully invest in it or has had to have worked in DevRel and understands the true value of it. So those conversations go this way. And I've had conversation with people last year when I was interviewing where they wanted to hire someone to build out a whole entire program and pay them peanuts. It's like, what? You were expecting me or someone else to be the VP, director, team lead, and the DA of the DevRel team? Yeah. And you're going to pay me this much money? No, no, no, no. And that's where a complete disconnect comes in.

And if you were to look at the state of DevRel report from last year, it shows that. Some of the numbers I was getting weren't even median levels. They were junior levels. You can't bring me in at a junior level to build out your whole entire program. And a lot of those conversations were like that. So you really got to understand the landscape and know how to navigate those conversations. So what do you think is like the best advice for that? Because I feel like, so I have this hot take and I'm interested to hear your thoughts. You can absolutely disagree with me. That's why I love you.

Also, I do want to give a shout out to Chris. I'm going to say this. Chris, I got a little sentimental last night. I was thinking about you and our relationship. You are the first speaker I had ever been blown away by that I saw because I was at VACO at the time. And me, you, and Kyle Welch had lunch at Peg Leg Porker. Yep. And you've just been such a good friend to me. And so I just want to say thank you. I appreciate you. I got my feels. I was like, man, Chris and I – We got way back. Yeah, we've we've we've run, you know, across, you know, we've obviously crossed paths at conferences.

And I still think you're one of the better speakers I've ever seen. So I just want to give you your flowers here. I appreciate you. All right. Going back. Also, Danny T in the chat. I love it. How my hot take is, I think people should try to talk themselves out of jobs. in the sense of they should disqualify the job and really nitpick it as much as they feasibly can. What are your thoughts on that statement? i agree i agree with that um i mean it depends on the job but like definitely doing the research as much research as you can like reading the like read the jd the job description uh check out linkedin try to figure out everything that you can and then all of the stuff that you think like hmm i don't know if that's gonna work just break it down because i've done that like There's a specific, like, for example, there's a specific cadence of conferences that I speak at every year.

You know that. Everybody in the chat knows that. I go all over the world. My superpower is speaking to an audience and being with the community to teach and to learn and to mentor, right? That is what I do. that is where i shine and i'm not saying like i'm a writer or video person like i do all my own videos i write blogs i love doing all that i have a background in writing but if an organization hasn't like if you're going through a job description an organization doesn't have anything about conferences or like minimal conferences start picking that apart and then if you do have that interview Tell like, in my opinion, like what I've done just to weed things.

I was like, well, if you can't match this and you know, this isn't a good fit because A, that's going to come back, probably bite you in the ass for one. And B, you're not going to get the full potential out of me as a developer advocate if you're not doing like A, B, and C according to like what your job description is. So I do agree with you on that. Danny, shut up, man. I still think Danny's top tier. Danny's S tier. Chris's S tier. Danny's S tier. Stop, Danny. Shout out to Danny. Shout out to Danny. shout out to commit your code way back yeah danny i i i saw this random guy talking about how we used to fried chicken at gas stations and he wants to do linkedin reviews and who's available and i slid into his dms and i still get messages from that linkedin i did with danny six years later it's got like damn thousands of views anyways dan i appreciate you stop that i love you all right um Have you had to learn to disqualify?

How have you learned in your job experience to ask good questions and to disqualify the job? Because I feel like a lot of people just want to jump into the next thing. Because I know it's hard, right? Money is important, especially in today's economy. It's a whole other conversation. How have you gotten comfortable with that? Do you have any advice at all? So I'm going to shout out another homie that is the GOAT, Jeremy Meese. I'm going to shout him out. I've always relied, and even Jeremy, Mike Hardington, people that have been doing the DevRel game at really high levels. Mike and Jeremy have both been managers and directors and have built and led DevRel teams.

I sort of did that too in different roles, but managing a group of people under an organization, I've always kind of leaned on them to formulate questions that i could ask and i have a huge set of questions that i got from jeremy a couple years ago that are team specific so every time i'm having like either an interview or i'm like or i do get hired and i'm having conversations with uh like various team members like i'll have a set of questions for a sales team i have a set of questions for marketing i have a set of questions for leadership i'm sending questions for engineering And even if you're interviewing with those people, getting different takes on everybody's questions at a high level really can tell you about how much an organization understands and knows DevRel or any role for that matter and where that investment comes from.

So definitely lean on other people who have been in that role at high levels or have been in that role for like years. Yeah. Like if you're going to get into DevRel, don't ask a friend of yours that's been doing it for six months. like interview questions. You know what I mean? Like they're new. Like I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Like it's not going to work that way. But if you know a friend of yours that's been doing DevRel for ten years, they're the ones to ask, hey, I got this job interview coming up. What are some great questions I can ask? And they've been there.

They've done that. They've interviewed probably hundreds of times. I've probably done over five hundred interviews for DevRel in my career over the past three or four years. they're the ones to rely on so ask your friends chris chris what's that what does that sound like i think that sounds like community i think that it is i think that sounds like community it is and you have to have a community like networking community are huge like literally like people like sleep on it like it's it's it's it's weird to me that people sleep that are in community sleep on community Like that bothers me. And another thing that bothers me, I'm gonna go on a rant, is that nobody uses social media the way it should be used anymore.

Back in the day, back in the day, ten, fifteen years ago, you'd be at a conference, everybody in that audience would be taking pictures, tweeting, putting on LinkedIn, quote tweeting, putting quotes of what you're saying, everything. Now it's a struggle to get anybody that isn't just a friend, like, for instance, Roxy, Nick, anybody that's in the chat that's like friends of you and me, they'll come to the talk, They'll tweet about it. They'll post on LinkedIn. But nobody else in that audience is privy to how this stuff works. And that bothers me. That really, really bothers me. And I think that's another reason why I kind of stopped doing it during conference talks.

I'm not taking pictures and remembering what the person said and putting it in quotes and tweeting it and tagging them. Nobody's using it anymore. for what it was made to be used for. And you can say what you want, blah, blah, blah. I always say it'll always be Twitter, it'll never be X. I'm trying to still preserve what it is. it's just it's just not anymore and that bothers me especially when you come from like old school community like i've been doing this a long time and you know i've been i've gone to conferences for well over a decade and people will just tweet and tweet and tweet in every session they're in and post pictures and nobody does that anymore unless it's like a big event like a huge huge huge event but like these smaller developer community focused events like Our friends are posting of us and we're posting of our friends like randos and strangers from the community that are in the room.

Nobody's doing that anymore. It's like the phone doesn't even exist. I think I tweeted this yesterday. I still call it tweeting. I tweeted this yesterday. I said, I think one of the biggest unlocks to build community is taking selfies. I used to do that all the time back in the day. I know. And I just, everybody just seemed like, oh, well, this, this whole situation is shit to bed. We're not going to do it anymore. I'm like, all right, well, I guess it kind of snowballed to me and I don't even do it anymore. Like I'm there to do my, my thing. And then that's that.

Because it just seems like nobody cares. And it's, it's hard to, when nobody else it's hard to like you okay you can lead a horse to water but you can't make a drink it's extremely hard to like talk about community and like hey listen if you're doing anything tweeting linkedin use the hashtag developer community and like this is a good way for the community to track the engagement across events and what people are learning you know nobody wants to do that and it's it bothers me it really yeah jason comes in people sleep on until it needs to be monetized not how it works Yeah.

Agreed. Agreed. So let's go back to the interview side of things. Love your rants. That's why I love interviewing you. So I'm really big on follow up in the job search. I feel like a lot of people like talk to people and like day one and then just like leave them alone. Did you have any sort of follow-up strategy? Did follow-up land you the job you're at now? Or give me some thoughts on just your thoughts on follow-up. Um, if the, if I feel like it was a good conversation, like the first initial conversations that I would definitely follow up, like try to find an email, even if it's like through LinkedIn, like hit that person up, tell them, thank you.

Send an email, tell them, thank you. Give them as much information about yourself as needed. Like if they just have a resume, cool. Okay, sweet. They saw your resume. You had the first interview follow up, but then send them all the other shit that you have. Send them a portfolio, a profile, uh, a list of your speaking engagements, a list of certifications and awards that you've won, a list of YouTube videos of you speaking at conferences, blog posts, all this other stuff. Send them all that so they can be like, This is amazing, I can send this off to team leader or hiring manager. One thing that I have, and I learned this from Eric Bouchard, who's a great developer advocate.

He and I are buddies, we've spoken at conferences together. He told me a few years ago, create like a portfolio of sorts. So I did it on dev too. And it's all about my tenure as a senior developer advocate, like a breakdown of who I am, what I love doing the most companies I've worked at. And then I have a section of conference talks. I have a section of blogs. I have a section of streams. I have a section for my, the awards and like accolades I have within the community. There's a section for my speaking schedule and all that stuff. And I just give somebody that link.

And I'm like, here, this isn't everything I've done. Yes. One hundred percent. Yeah. And if you use like Bitly or rebrandly or whatever, you create a short link and send that out. And then you can track the metrics on that to see how many views you've had. I mean, if there's views, that means people are looking at it, right? Maybe if they're not interacting with the links, at least they're seeing what you've done because they're just reading through it. So that's really good. Like a one-stop shop, I guess you could say. yeah i love that um so talk uh we had we had a few comments come in uh let's see here we got we got some people tuned in i love it mark comes in i'm glad to see golly streamers got fixed this chris looks like uh wilson from um tim the tool man taylor right now i'm glad to see conferences are back i worked at a highly recognized and saw the pivot to no longer funding folks to attend events unless with a client yeah i mean i think uh i do think it's back more back than it definitely has been um building community takes forever yep a hundred percent for selfies yeah nick is the nick is the king at selfies uh so is roxy so is roxy um yeah danny comes in people are obsessed with likes and if a tweet won't go viral or potential afraid of between it yeah a hundred percent um what else Chris will talk.

Do you like dots pretzels? Also shocker. Taylor discusses his own tweets. Shut up, Jason. Do you like dots? I love dots pretzels. They're not gluten free though. So it hurts my tummy. i like i like the the honey buster ones yeah yeah same same same if i want to live a little bit and hurt my tummy a little bit i get dots pretzels they're great um let's see here what else uh how many people have you reached out how many people have you reached out to for a role because linkedin has limitations now to send requests or look up people how have you gotten uh i think i had premium at the time like i joined premium thinking it was like cooler or better than normal linkedin which it's not and that just kind of bypassed that so i just reached out to everybody i think the i think the bypass here is always send a note in your request because people don't do that like like if you are not If you are not messaging...

Like, if you don't message... If you are leaving on the table, if you connect with Chris after this and you don't message him and say, hey, I saw you on GC today. Because, like, people want that context. Also, I'm really big on, like, paper trails with... communication and job search. So like if if I let's say I messaged Chris, I wanted a job with Chris in month one, and I sent him a note. And he and I just even chit chatted just for like two or three messages back. And then five months later, he posted a role that chat history was already there. So then he can immediately remember me.

That's why I'm so big on sending messages. See here that the yeah yeah uh if you are always connecting sending messages to stop doesn't matter yeah i agree with that i agree with that you should be maxing out every week in my opinion um dominic it's good to see you we still got people tuning in this one it was great um yeah dominic's go good to see also dominic's coming on uh one of the torque programming thing so excited to have you on dom um so so then let's get to the meat and potatoes of it how did you get this job at tux care talk about it i don't think we've gotten there oh no we haven't so that's a great question and after six months five six months of searching This is where community comes full circle.

You know me, I speak in a lot of different various communities. I've been a front-end developer for thirty plus years. But I speak at Java events. I speak at .NET events. I try to spread myself as much as I can around the community. So I'm friends with people all over the world. In the Python community, the Ruby community, Java, .NET, it doesn't matter. And I think that's a good thing to do, too. Don't pigeonhole yourself just to one community that you're comfortable with. If you're a front-end dev, don't just be a part of the front-end community. There are amazing people all over the place. And because of that, I've made a huge impact.

I mean, huge impact as far as... I don't even know if I want to say huge impact. I don't know the impact I've made in the Java community or any other non... front end community because I'm not a Java developer, right? So I'm not doing talks on Java. But I know enough people in the Java community. And a buddy of mine hit me up last year. He's a developer advocate in the Java community. And he tagged me and somebody else in a DM. And he said, hey, I saw this job posting. You guys just posted this. I think Chris would be an amazing fit. You guys should have a conversation.

Well, okay, great. That's fine. I already knew the hiring manager at the time and he and I have crossed paths and we've talked before. So it was sort of a no brainer. So I have the first interview with like HR person. And then what I did was I hit up friends of mine in the Java community that were very respected. And I said, hey, can you please, and they knew this other person, like everybody, you know, community, everybody knows everybody. It's like, can you please send letters of recommendation to the hiring manager for me? And it was no problem. Letters of recommendation were sent by higher level people in the community space.

It was recognized. I had one other interview with my skip, who was my current skip. And, um, I mean, he didn't hire me for this, but I had a Red Wing shirt on. He's from Michigan. So he was like, you're hired, but we still had an interview. And, uh, that was it. That was it. I sent a resume, send a couple of things. It is what it is, but I landed that role because of the impact I've had in the community on the DevRel side, but also because of the community that I reached out to, to help push that over the line. And that is how I landed my role currently.

That's awesome. There's so much to unpack here. And I see everybody in chat. Chat's very lively. I love when the chat's lively. I think the first thing I want to call out, well, hold on. I want to get into the mental side of things. So obviously, you're in month, what, five at this point, probably? Yeah. I mean, I feel like the job search is just getting off the mat every day, right? Like sometimes you don't want to send a DM. Sometimes you don't want to send an email. Can you just kind of – can you unpack that a little bit, just kind of your thoughts, like where you were at mentally and just kind of shed some light on it?

I was in a messed up, I was in a fucked up situation. When I was at the previous company, and this is my fault, when I was setting up all the direct deposits and all that other stuff, I sent them all the information to deposit so much money into my savings. Unbeknownst to me, none of that was going into my savings. They never set it up in my dumb ass. I didn't check. I didn't check the credit union. I didn't check the savings account. So that's my fault. But after a year and after a year of being employed, there would have been close to twenty five K in my savings.

That would have helped during that layoff. Yeah. Zero dollars. So that's that's number one, if you're setting up anything like that, Always make sure that it's set up. Like I know now I have my savings is set up. Tuck scares, you know, putting the money in or whatever. Yeah. Always make sure your funds are set up properly. That was my, my bad, my mistake. Um, where were we going with this? Uh, just like sending the last, it's like sending, sending another DM getting off. Yeah. so yeah like the depression is is super insane like I almost lost my house my truck my boat everything I owned sounds like I started song to be totally Frank with you but yeah I know right I just don't have a dog that you know died but everything I was about to lose everything and then just just waking up like I didn't even want to get up and like live through through the day Because I know like one more day that doesn't progress means one more day of funds dwindling away.

Yeah. But you have to do it. Yeah. Like I said earlier, your job is to find a job. And if it takes a DM or an email or a phone call, like you have to do it. And you have to be smart. You got to be creative. You got to be intuitive. Like I... i knew that okay i have high game players in this community that value and respect me maybe they can make a push for me with this person right because i know this person respects these people here and will take their word for what it's worth just figuring out it's like a game of chess figure out the next move And it might take you a second to do that, but you got to figure out ways around it.

And if it takes learning about who's friends with who and mapping shit out, do it because it could pay off for you. I love that. I love that. Also, another thing I want to call out too, and Chris, he and I chatted backstage. He said it wasn't planned. But I think know your audience. Now, granted, Chris didn't know this. He rolled in with the Red Wings jersey. But know your audience. It worked out great for him. It's crazy how that small stuff works right now. I'll never forget interviewing at Torque. I interviewed with the CEO, Mike Morris. It was a thirty-minute call. And we talked about playing hockey.

because his kids play hockey, and we found out his kids played at a Nashville tournament, same place I play. And that was twenty minutes of the interview. And then he was like, well, what are your thoughts on community? And I told him, he was like, all right, sounds good. Like that was it. So again, I think like you have to have the tech side. Don't get me wrong. But man, if you can like do research on a person and like, I mean, I'm not saying like go out and buy like a bunch of like hats for colleges people interview at, but maybe you do. I don't know.

I don't know. You got to get sneaky with it. You got to get sneaky. And the best part is, if you're not sneaky with it, it just happens. Like, I didn't know my Skip, you know, was a Michigander, ex-Michigander, and was into, you know, Michigan sports and Detroit sports. I just showed up wearing a Red Wings shirt, and we just started talking about Michigan. Now, every time he and I are at an event together, we just talk about Michigan and sports and Cedar Point. Like, that's what we do. So, and it's cool. Well, because then like, you know, if I'm the guy interviewing Chris, I'm going to leave the conversation and be like, man, I like that guy.

And because you bonded over something that wasn't tech specific. And I think like people get, I haven't heard the word leak code in a while, probably because of AI, but you can get so caught up in leak code and exercises and coding challenges. But man, sometimes at the end of the day, if you just research personal on LinkedIn and know where they went to college, like I always tell people this. And when I was at Vaco and I started basically Torque at Vaco in hindsight, I interviewed this guy. His name was Matt Driggers. Love that guy. And it's made such an impression on me. When I interviewed him, he did a ton of research on me.

He was like, hey, man, seeing you've been at Vaco for like nine years at this point, what's kept you here? I see you went to South Carolina. What brought you from South Carolina to Nashville? um what are your like i mean he went through my background and still to this day it's been i and i've interviewed a lot of people it still is the most inquisitive somebody's been now that's a little bit of a slight because now i just hire from the community like roxy roxy already knew me so like you know that that is what it but taking time to really know the person huge massive yeah if you can if you can no i'm on that note real quick if you can find out what their interest is and if you have that same interest that that lets you know that you're just not a robot you know what i mean like oh wow this is actually a person and if we do hire them i can have conversation with this person because i can't have conversations with anybody else at work about this stuff because nobody else is into this Yeah, good stalking.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen. Essentially, it's not even stalking. It's research. It's homework. It's your job that's on the line. It's your livelihood that's on the line. Do what you got to do to get the fucking job. Yeah, absolutely. And Brianna, it's good to see you, girl. Thanks for thanks for hopping in. So question right here. Listen, this is this is a whole other conversation. Oh, man, we could do a whole other one. So I will say this. Look, so I obviously will plug Torque. That is, we are specifically, well, we have one of our many, our OG focus was hiring LATAM talent for US opportunities.

We've obviously shifted to just all people all over the place. do do research get on chat gbt get on claude look up niche job boards especially try in your country to get in you know u.s opportunities but i think at the end of the day it's going to come down to networking i mean i it's it's it's going to come down to networking also i made a post about this on linkedin this morning get on at listen i know people have issues with x and i know we've already talked about it but there are a lot of jobs being posted on x right now and i don't know if it's my algorithm and what i'm engaging with But that just goes to the fact like, listen, if you don't want to post, that's fine.

But I think I would highly recommend getting on X and see who's hiring because I have seen and I started my own X list. If you want to follow it, I can link it in the show notes after this on my LinkedIn. But you can just go follow it. And I just make a list of all the people who say they're hiring. So that's what I would do. Any other thoughts on that? No, no. I want to go back to a comment you made because I think it's incredibly important. I don't want to start wrapping up without us talking about it. You said something along the lines of taking the time to know who's connected with who.

What do you mean by that? How did you go about doing that? That... It's a long, arduous process. You know me. You and I go way back. I travel all over the place. I'm all over the place. I try to be as connected to everybody I meet as possible because you never know who that next person is going to be. That next person could be a teammate. That next person can be a team lead, a hiring person, a really good friend that knows somebody up the chain. You getting out there like networking community, like LinkedIn can tell you connections, all that cool stuff, right? That's fine and dandy, but it's pretty awkward.

You just connect with somebody you don't know that knows this person over here that's higher up in the chain. So getting out there, doing stuff like this, meetups, conferences, coding coffees. Coding coffees are hard nowadays. And yes, conferences have come back. They're not where they were pre-COVID. They're not. Not in the U.S., at least. Overseas, in the EU, a hundred and ten percent they've come back. Why? Depends on who you talk to. Everybody has different opinions. I have my own opinions as to why, you know, U.S. conferences haven't come back to what they used to be. There's conferences that have gone away entirely that probably will never come back again.

Meetups are the same way. So I own, run, try to run a meetup here in Detroit. Before I got hired at Tufts Care, I did a code and coffee. And I had full RSVPs. It was on a Saturday at a coffee shop downtown Detroit that we only hold our meetups in the city proper. No one showed up for a code and coffee. Two hours, no one showed up at all. I was the only person there. Had a full RSVP list. No one showed up. I don't know how to get people to show up to that stuff. I spoke at another Detroit meetup one night, five people showed up.

Twenty people RSVP'd, five people showed up. But going to those, and that sucks too, because I remember meetups used to be just banging back in the day. We'd have five meetups a week in Detroit and they'd be packed. I used to run meetups and they'd be packed. I was in Raleigh every week, every week. And like, twenty people would show up every week when I was in Raleigh in twenty thirteen. Nuts. It is nuts. But going to conferences, going to meetups, doing stuff like this, having Zoom conversations or Google Meet conversations, coding copies, virtual coding copies. All of that shit matters because you never know who you're going to meet and who you're going to become friends with.

That's going to be connected to somebody else. That's all activity. Yeah. I say this all the time. We as humans confuse activity with productivity. We think submitting your resume five hundred times is productive. That's just activity. You want to be productive. The in-person conversations are where it's at. That's true. That's extremely true because you just don't know where those are going to take you. You've got to put the time in. You've got to put the work in. I didn't build community overnight. Community wasn't built in a day. Like Rome wasn't built in a day. Developer relations isn't built in a day. Like it takes time and you got to want to do it.

You have to want to do it. And if it's not an investment for you, then maybe community isn't your thing. Do your own thing. But don't go yucking my yum because I put the work in and I sacrifice the time and money and the energy and live out of hotels and airplanes and suitcases to build community. I don't even have to give a talk, a technical talk. I'll just go somewhere and just start bullshitting. I do this at the bar. I'll hear somebody talk about front-end shit, and I'll walk over and be like, oh, hey, I heard you talking about this. You just hear those keywords.

I mean, I'm a talker anyways. I'm an extrovert, but I don't suggest walking up to a stranger in a bar and start bullshitting with them. Because people can get pissed off when you do stuff like that. But I'm a different story. Just because I'm a big dude and people tend not to mess with me. So I don't advocate just walking up to strangers. Please don't do that. But having those conversations and being in person and going to events, it can make a world of difference. That's how I got my original first paycheck job with benefits. So I've been building on the web for thirty years.

So I started really, really young. I got like a job with a paycheck without benefits in two thousand eight, like twelve years after I started building writing code. So I got a job. Oh, that was just through I was working at Office Depot one time. I was working at Office Depot as a copy and print specialist. And I was still writing code, like freelancing, doing stuff on the side. Someone came in, they wanted some print work done, and they were asking questions about the newest version of Windows. It might've been Vista. And we were having conversations, come to find out that person ran a DevRel agency.

I was like, well, I'm a developer, not a DevRel agency, a web developer agency, web development agency. I said, well, I'm a web developer and I'm looking for a job. They hired me as a contractor. So I worked with them for a few years. then i went back to college after dropping out four times you've heard this story um but through gdi girl develop it which i don't even know if gdi's around anymore the gdi i was part of gdi detroit i was original member of gdi ann arbor because of the people i met through gdi detroit and gdi ann arbor i got my co-op at dte energy then after my co-op was done two semesters they hired me full-time and i've been on the ground running ever since and that was like two thousand fourteen two thousand fifteen where i got a job with benefits and then just been going forward of that but it all started from community in talking to people i love that man that was a great way to kind of wrap it up that was great uh i do agree You are in the top one.

I talked to Aaron Francis briefly about this on my pod a few weeks ago. Shout out to Aaron. Aaron's good people. Yeah, so good. Basically, at the conferences, it's like, hey, I'm kind of looking what you got. right you can't do that online so again i mean i think i think i think that's where the magic happens i think i think i think you got to go i mean again i always go back to how was i successful as a recruiter and i try to put that in perspective with with normal job seekers we used to have to interview fifteen people a week i'm not saying you need to meet fifteen people a week that was aggressive if you want a really lofty goal if you want to zoom people week you will expand your network and your traction incredibly fast however it's a lot of work trust me uh so i usually tell like five people a week talk to somebody in person lunch coffee zoom whatever go get involved in online community whether it's torque whether it's whoever you know virtual coffee whether it's you know danny's thing with cyc whatever um just get involved show up online and then go to at least one meet up a month in person or conference just get in person once a month so that's kind of my high level playbook uh amongst other things so the goal of people is not aggressive if we were talking pre-COVID.

Right. When everybody had meetups, you could go to a meetup every single night or you could go to one meetup for an hour and bop to the next meetup down the street. Crazy. You could meet thirty people a night or forty people a night. Yeah. But now, like you said, and I remember I used to, you know, I've always sat in your sessions and heckled you and fucked with you. And pre-COVID, you always talked about the importance of meeting that amount of people as much as you can. But like you said, times have changed. That was pre-COVID. Post-COVID, I think five is a good number.

People are lazy. People don't want to go out anymore. And that's part of the reason why conferences aren't what they used to be in the United States. We're lazy. We are lazy Americans. And we don't want to go out. If we can get everything virtually... Why do I need to go down the street to a meetup or go to a conference here when I can see it all online? You don't build community in a camera. Sorry, you don't. That was good. I'm going to use that. You don't build community in a camera. my clipper video editor make sure we put that in uh just fyi that's great all right make some sticker we can make some stickers i love that yeah yeah i love that i love that all right david neal making some stickers okay i'm done there you go i love it all right let's wrap it up here uh can't confirm hey listen m ray the first sign of getting over something is admitting to it i'm proud of you um all right first question as we wrap up here Man, what's one tech tool app, mobile app, software that you can't live without right now?

Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. Twitter. My wife's like, you're always on Twitter. And I was like, yeah, I know. Well, it's part of the job for us, though, too. I know. I always say I always work over forty hours a week because I have to actively be online to see what's going on. If people are talking about the company, if I can reach out to people that are having issues with the product. So this is another conversation I had with the head of creative and community for the DDC company, Freaks of Nature. And he and I had a really good conversation around always being chronically online and like, People are like, Carl, you're always on your phone.

You're always on your phone. He's like, I'm actually responding back to everybody who posts. And every time I DM Carl on Instagram, he always gets back to me. So yeah, like I said, it is a grind. But I agree. X is my thing. I do have to say, I would say Claude. believe it or not, your boy, your boy's trying to, your boy's trying to become a super user in Claude. So I love it. I love it. Good. I mean, I would say like, I love screen studio for one and DaVinci resolve. Cause I do my editing, like all my videos, even like my personal videos I do for my fishing YouTube channel.

I think those are two apps. Like I, I two pieces of software I can't live without. I love it. I love it. Uh, you mentioned it, but I want to know what's the very first job you ever got paid to do? Not in tech, but like you ever like exchange hands of money. McDonald's when I was six. Yeah. No way. That's awesome. Yeah. Sixteen or seventeen. Yeah. I was, I was in high school. I think I was, I was either a junior or a senior in high school. So seventeen, eighteen. But you know how I got that job? How? Community. How? Because the, because the, I mean, it's a funny story, dude.

The hiring manager. He was one of the hiring managers at the local McDonald's that a city I grew up in. And he and I played softball on the same team as kids. So what did I do? I went home and I got the softball picture from when we were kids where we all lined up. I was like, see, hey, man, remember? He's like, oh, yeah, Chrissy, I remember you. You're hired. So I've always started with community. Yeah, dude. But I thought out of the box. I was like, oh, how could I get this guy to hire me to remember me? I drove home and I got the softball picture with the team picture.

I was like, see, look, here we are. You're here and I'm here. His name was Eddie. And he was like, oh, yeah, Chris, I remember. We played on the dance club for the school and community. And I was like, yeah. Jason always says... in the job search you are the product and you have to sell yourself and you have to market yourself and you have to get people's attention so i love it i love it um let me ask you this when uh when chris was young pre-tattooed chris what did you want to be when you grew up paleontologists like every other kid is that like dinosaurs and stuff fossils yeah do we believe dinosaurs are real One hundred percent, bud, dude.

I'm telling you, man, do this. Listen, I got to get to a meeting here soon, but I'm going to tell you this. We, me and my wife have, have a friend who does not believe in dinosaurs. Are they a flat earth or two? No, not flat earth, but like literally she doesn't talk about it. She doesn't want to talk about it. Like gets her angry. She was like, they're, they're all fake. I want to have a conversation with her. Yeah, it's crazy. I egg this person on so much. I'm like, dude, let's talk about dinosaurs. And she just doesn't want to do it. Anyways. Oh, my gosh.

All right. What's a career mistake you're oddly grateful for? I know this is kind of a weird question, but is there anything looking back you're like, probably shouldn't have done that, but it worked out for the better? Oh, talking about tattoos in a corporate business environment interview. I probably should have done that, but the hiring manager loved my tattoos and they hired me and it was a business casual company. Everybody was dressed up for work. I had all my hand tattoos and part of my knuckle tattoos. They loved it. And I explained to them what the stay true meant on my knuckles. And he was in a suit and he was like, I love it, Chris.

I love it. A week later, I got a job offer. That's awesome. Pepsi or Coke? Coke. It depends on how you're serving the Pepsi or the Coke. Okay, you're true. I'm a pop drinker. I'm a pop drinker. So like McDonald's Coke is top tier. Elite. Pepsi in a bottle is better than Coke in a bottle, but Coke in a can is better than Pepsi in a can. But if you're an OG Detroiter like me, Detroit, you're drinking Faygo. Whoop whoop. I don't even know what that is. Anyways, that's great. I love that. Jeff, does that answer your question? All right, last question. If I told you tomorrow I would pay you the same, if not more, but you could not do tech, what would you do?

I think I know the answer to this, but what would you do? Like what would you do? I'd be a professional bass angler. That's my goal. That's my goal right now. Do you know my father-in-law? Yeah, we've had this conversation. It's crazy. He's nuts. He just goes out and catches the entire lake just randomly. I just got my boat detailed yesterday. I put new batteries in it. I got new electronics. The season is happening, man. The bite is on. Hopefully, next couple years, I'll move up. So obviously my father-in-law is an old head and he was kind of like dogging on like the new radar technology where you can like just drop a, lure over do you use that new radar technology supposedly it's like it's supposedly it's like a video game supposedly yeah they they call it playing video games but yeah yeah that's what he said every professional every professional or anybody that's doing it seriously you're in a club they have act it's called active target or live scope and yeah i have it on my boat i just i just got it installed so like you can you can target the fish see where they're at like it's hard to see what you're looking at on the graph but like you can see i mean you can That's out there, fifty, sixty, seventy feet.

And then you can watch your lure in the water column and just just play with them a little bit. And you see them swimming and you zing and just set them up. That's crazy. That's pretty dumb. That's crazy. All right. Biggest piece of career advice. Right. Guidance counselor, two point zero centered around, you know, career stuff. What would be your biggest piece of career advice? You can go back and tell young Chris anything. Your job is to find a job, get up, do it, put the work in. Don't stop the hustle because the hustle won't stop for anybody. You got to do it. So that's my advice.

If you have the means to take some time off, cool, do it. But your job is to find a job and you need to do everything at your expense to do that as long as it's safe. I love that. Sweet. All right, y'all. Well, again, please go connect with Chris. He's a fantastic follow. I will link his socials on the LinkedIn comments. And y'all have a good one. Chris, thank you, my friend. Stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. But y'all have a great rest of your week. Again, Torque Happenings. We got resume reviews tomorrow with Will Klein, one of our ambassadors.

Will's good people. Will's good people. And then we got Yappy Hour, as always, on Friday. So y'all have a good one. We'll see y'all in the Torque Discord. Peace. Peace.