w_jerome hardaway, sr. engineer @ microsoft & founder of vets who code

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So without further ado, Jerome, enough of me running my dang mouth. Give the people what they want and ensure about you. Talk about Vetsu code for a second. Talk about what you do now and then we'll dive into our topic. Roger that. My name is Jerome Hardaway. Basically, if you're seeing me on Twitter running my mouth all the time, we'll talk about everything when it comes to veterans, technology, helping juniors get jobs and tech from underrepresented communities, and training veterans. I am the upper geek at arms because I'm not 35 yet. I'll start using that executive director term when I turn 35 in August. But basically, I'm the executive director for Vets and Code.

I help veterans transition to technology by teaching them service technologies and now some cooler things that we haven't dropped yet that you guys are gonna be really excited when you see. And I'm the senior software engineer at Microsoft that I'm like really doing a bunch of crazy things with Azure and data engineering stuff. And it's been the most insane experience of my life because I am not a data engineer by trade. So it's pretty fun, but that's me in a nutshell. You are muted. Sorry, this is my first time doing this. I've muted. So that's why we're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about that.

We're talking about so many topics. I feel like this thing's gonna go nine hours. Jerome and I think, You know, there's marathons that people do, like on TikTok and stuff where they're just live for nine hours. I think Jerome and I could just do that. So we could, I think people don't see the conversations that you and I have and we could just talk for like, you know what you do? You know what you do? Let's not now, not now. But let's do it maybe like one Saturday or something and let's just get our, let's get our friends. Let's get our friends and let's just have them come on pick times, you know, 30 minutes within a dev community and let's just do like a live stream, just like for nine hours.

Let's do it. Let's do it. We didn't do it for like charity or something. Like, yeah, no, I'm baby. I'm gonna be on the internet for nine hours. I'll talk to you later. It's like, what? She's like, okay, I'm gonna brunch by. Yeah. Hang out with the, hang out with your friends. Well, we'll get to that. I think that's something. So we had a bunch of people kind of chime in here. Jog and morning, shoesturg and morning, Andrew, good morning, Taylor, good morning. Hey, real quick, before we dive in, I keep saying before we dive in, Hey, I'd love to know what screen is. The screen is behind you, Jerome.

Jerome, you wanted to talk about that screen real quick because I was fascinated with it too before we went live. Copy, all right. So this is called a vibe smart board. I've been using it to workshop a lot of ideas so for remote teaching. So essentially I have a keyboard here that when I'm on the internet, I can't see. I just pressed it. So I can literally, if you can't see my mouse, I can move around. So it's essentially like a big, a giant tablet, right? So, like, you know, here, like, if I was teaching, for instance, about trying to talk about, they sure had the right pain pick.

So it's like the difference between bar and left, right? And when a tape comes to variables, and like, you know, bar is for global scope. go while let is for that's cool or block. Yeah. Sure. I know exactly what you're saying, Jerome. Exactly. Well, like, yeah, so when you guys are the people are there at home and here, I'm talking about this, I can, you know, write about this. So I've been workshopping and this is what, you know, this is what I use this work. I love that. Yes. Nerdy now with only like in like workshop income with ideas on how to, you know, being more efficient teacher when it comes to helping veterans where I had a coach and I was going to put like Python and everything on this thing.

I love that. I love that. Great question Matthew. I think the same thing too when we put on the call. So all right. Let's dive in remote work remote remote remote, you know, companies are, you know, now they're talking about that's the that's the bare minimum. are still companies that want people on site like Jerome, let's talk about this. So the first question I want to tee up is, is remote here to stay? And, and, and then the second part of that question is, what do companies need to be mindful of right now moving forward with this kind of, I guess, new era we're in right now?

Um, yes, remote is here to stay. The thing, well, first of all, remote is, how the best way to say this? Remote isn't here to stay because it's always been here. The thing is that it went from just like how the internet went from a nice to have to now a thing you need if you want to really step up in the world. That's where remote is right now. And the remote is a thing that you need. If you wanna cause talent isn't, we're no, we've proven We have a data talent isn't going to move chest for the job because we have there's no evidence that the talent needs to move chest for the job.

And we have a situation right now where the our companies that are deciding that you know what screw the data we're going to just go ahead and leverage our brand and our big name power and we sure will you know lose those that big talent to attrition or whatever because We try to get people move in and we'll have those people who are ready and hungry to come in with us But smaller companies they're seeing this and they're like, you know what? I got a there's an Apple engineer in St. Louis It makes 180k at Apple, but she don't want to move her family to back to Apple So like this is a good move where I can like I'll try to be competitive But one thing you'll never have to worry about is you know change from remote and that's where companies seem to be like Like, you know, they need to screen remote first.

Like you need to be screaming to the top because that, you know, is the most attractive thing, especially for underrepresented people in technology. Remote is, because, you know, coming from my background, my story, remote is what got me here today was because I was the person where I was looking around in my hometown. I was like, y'all have no idea what real technology is because I just left, I just left New York. So I went back to Memphis like, you know, there's a, you know, situations where, hey, people who think they're smart aren't that smart because they're in their silos of their home towns communities.

Right. It would be great to create opportunities, particularly for veterans who usually don't move any further from either their hometown or more 50 miles from their hometown 150 miles from the last base to, you know, bring that Silicon Valley New York style of education directly into their home. I didn't even think about that. I didn't think about that. That was my idea in 2013. All these old dudes looked at me like, you are insane. And then, you know, a year later, I'm shaking the president's hand. So like that's, you know, that's how it worked out. So I'm the biggest proponent of like, of this remote world, because I know that it lowers a barrier on so many things.

It lowers a barrier on what you can do in your free time, how you spend your family. I saw someone try to share data that, the same amount of work is getting done in the course of 24 hours, but it's going from like eight hours to 12 hours, and like, you know, parents and stuff where the ones whose productivity and the short time spent eight hours were losing. I was like, oh, you mean the parents are doing the things that they can do for their children. And like they're doing the things they can do with each other, where they will otherwise have to take things or take stuff off the flight time off, right?

So you're calling, building healthy relationships and taking care of your children productivity loss. Oh, you're a jerk. I'm done with this conversation. Dude, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Hey, real quick. I wanna give Shout-Out to a few people that have come in. Andrew was comment on your white board, dude, that's rad. Shuster called you out and said, wearing jeans dressed up for this. Yes, Jerome has been looking forward to catching up with me, Shuster. Matthew goes, vibe, smart board must have that. Thanks, Jerome. Kathy goes, good stuff. I love remote work. I feel that could be laser focused on a task and help more companies embrace it.

I think they are and they're going to have to and we're going to get into that. Will and Johnson, what's up, big dog? It's so good to see you, Andrew. Yes, whatever Jerome said was fire. Shuster goes remote as a game changer for folks in rural areas to have access to great opportunities, absolutely. And then, Janny, what's going on, girls? Good to see you as well. So let's talk, so with Jerome, what would you say? Because we've been sharing some notes, we got on 15 minutes just to chop it up for this. And I told Jerome, I said, hey, I had this conversation with somebody in Nashville, and they're like, hey, can you give me Nashville rates?

And I said, or no, no, the originally they said, hey, can you give me software engineering rates? And I said, sure, here's what I'm seeing. And they were like, well, they're not gonna pay that Nashville. And I said, it doesn't matter. That like geography doesn't matter anymore. And so like, what are your thoughts on that for companies like what should companies again, like my show, I want to speak to the candidate the job seeker and I want to speak at companies too. Because I think companies, I would argue need more help sometimes than the job seeker. But what would you say right now to companies who are not paying their people and then not allowing remote work or mostly remote fire whoever that top that is trying to do that.

That's what I'm going to say because you don't think you're losing, but you're losing because by the time you decide to evolve and get into that mind space, all the top talent is going to be gone and you're going to be the crap. Um, we left with a, for the scraps. And I'm not calling people scraps. But I'm just saying you're not going to have the best talent ever only looking at it from that point. You need to fire. I mean, CEO, everybody's bored and he's having real tough conversation with the CL. I look, this isn't going away. We have to make a decision and there's only really one decision that's been kind of made for us.

Right? So there's no, there's no way around it. You're not going to get, you know, Schuster is a great example. Schuster is out in Seattle. He works out at Eventbrite in Nashville. He's one of my troops and the dude, he's getting, making great money in Nashville because Eventbrite realized, you know, we have to, you know, we have to be competitive and we're not going to say, oh, you have to move from Seattle to, you know, Nashville just to be here when, you know, we don't have the data to support that you have to do that because they already have teams and multiple places, right? A lot of these, especially a lot of these beer companies, they already have this stuff, right?

So I would, I mean, if you're not going to, if the, now if the CEO doesn't want to get buy it, let's see, oh it needs to be like, all right, so what do we need to do to create a remote community? Not culture, culture is culture kills, right? Because what you're doing when you start doing culture, you start patterning matching for the things that the people up top like that makes them comfortable versus the thing that's going to make the company better. So then you're like, all right, so how do we make our community right? know the thing we have to do like military is like community it's not a culture we all have different walks of life when I'm from in the military but in the end we also we have these things that guide our community towards these like different things right from the milk from our core values of Constitution all these things right so that's where I'm very big I'm anti-culture and I'm always about you know what we got to do community so that's the first thing you have to do.

Yeah, so you know you have to focus on the community and like how do we make our remote community make you know make sense of people or it can be bringing their whole sales to work and so I want to talk about that and a few other things people people coming in again again add us, comment us if you have questions, comments, concerns like that. We could do this all day. Yeah we could do this a bit. So Scott got coming in from Texas I love it's good to see you buddy. Joseph goes remote remote can give life and opportunities back to small towns. Hey, listen listen I've noticed so many engineers drums one of them now granny he moved to Atlanta That's no that's not like moving out of it big down He moved to a bigger town, but people are moving on Nashville like all my friends all my dev friends are like moving And because because again like they don't have to be even my wife and I are thinking about moving to Colombia like an hour outside of town Right because I'm mainly remote now So Pedro goes, what are some negative points?

And I have a thought, we're gonna get back to culture or community in a second. Pedro, what are negative points that a company can state about working remote? And how can a job seeker counter them? I'm sure in an interview. So like, yep. I love this because I've been seeing you because you know what I have answered for everything because I read all day. So basically what I've been seeing in the counterpoint is this is fun, right? And I can, my biggest counterpoint that I've been able to use with companies is what they're been using is that they feel. So what it, what that means is that there is no data to support their decisions.

Somebody makes more money to somebody else that some, they want people here. You saw in the Apple letter today, Apple never said anything about data correlated for like the data correlation of like how innovation works when it's closer or when everybody's in the same room collaborating. They never said that because they don't have the data to support that. So whenever you hear the word feel, no, that has absolutely nothing to do with your work and your abilities. It's somebody that makes more money than the other person and they are pushing that. And so that's what I've been like countering with. All right, so where's the data that corresponds with this, with this?

Because right now it's just a belief. It's not fact, right? And what I am asking you is to go off the same processes that you would make any other business decision in your company, which is you're going to actually, you know, Apple isn't going to, you know, just drop the next eye, whatever, right? They're going to do the data, do the user research. They're going to, you know, they're going to correlate that, that one piece, that one pager, to make sure that everyone knows what's going on, right? This is a Solid bet right so what what companies are supposed to bigger guys right now? Oh, they're trying to do is that they're hoping that their brand will be the thing that is for track come in Yeah, so like that like that's what I would use under my alright Can you show me that all I ask is for you to use the exact same rules that you use for any other Thing that you're bringing to market any other decision that you're bringing a market that requires money, right?

That's what they that's what you said. That's what I've been saying like, you know what if that's like I've been saying that to everybody like show me the data like just show me the day show me where you look at show me the facts Like I just you don't have to I would argue to drum you don't have to go that far Pedro. You can go why why why Like like if a company can't answer why? Like that's it like it like if a lot of times companies are just doing this and Jerome and I talked about this off air for jumped on, companies are stuck in this way of thinking.

This whole Nashville, what does it say in Nashville? Those companies are backwards. It's backwards way of thinking. If I were a job seeker, I would want to be with a four thinking company. This is where the remote thing, if you're a company, you've got to figure it out. Go ahead, sorry. I'm sorry not only that you have to as a It's a worker As the workforce it's a talent for us. We have more leverage right now. No, we're looking at the real issue ever Yes, this is this has what the industrial revolution this is the last time or like and right after World War two Like these are the like since like, you know That's when you know Remote work is the health insurance from light revolution after World War two where they had to use health insurance to attract workers, to attract men to come to work for them during World War II, because everybody was off at war.

So now that's what remote work has become. And we have to make sure they don't do what they've done that health insurance remote work. But so this idea of what's going on, let's use, we're talking about nature. So let's talk about it. where Amazon has a bunch of pilot stuff. And like what pilot is this payment in Lulotaxis, for those of y'all who aren't, who aren't into your local politics stuff, where they're also getting tax stipends for each worker that they're bringing in from underrepresented community that's making a certain amount of money. So basically, by every white collar worker is in a protected class, as well for, they're getting money, they're getting $10,000 as well as they're getting payment with taxes for their building.

But they still have to pay for this building and they need you to come into these buildings or come to these locations. Because guess what? And that taxes, those taxes aren't coming in, aren't staying in Tennessee. That contract is void, right? And the data that the companies have used to get those pilots and those deals from your black states and your city legislator, What the legislature is based off of the data of you being in those buildings and your impact on the local and state economies, right? So that's where a lot of this battling this back and forth is coming from is the companies are in a hard place because it's much easier to sell you on their, you know, cool digs where they're getting all this, you know, these tax benefits for they can write off on their taxes versus A, give you remote work and not have that leverage with your local legislatures.

And B, in the end have to pay you more because that's what it's looking like. Right. If they don't have the cool ping pong tables and the game room and look at all this stuff, that stuff has to get translated into money. Well, you know what? I have my own kitchen. You can give me money. But I get my own food. I get my own food. I get snacks that I want. Right. You know, that's what they're thinking. Absolutely. So Scott, so one thing I hear a lot of from people pushing his collaborations better in person. Yeah, Scott, and this is what we've been talking about, right?

It's like, you know, Jerome's like, where the facts, right? You know, well, why isn't collaboration better remotely? Right? And it's because I think- I'm gonna tell y'all just like I told, like I'm just tell y'all all the time. Whenever you hear someone say that, well, let's tell them, I know a dude who he and his friend built a whole nonprofit from with two different time zones. One was in Memphis, one was in New York, and they ended up being invited to the White House. So I don't, and then they did that in less than eight months. So I don't feel like the evidence is correlating with what you're saying because I'm seeing this, you know, you don't even have to use me, automatic WordPress, right?

Everybody knows WordPress. They all, they all, what, 22% on the internet, right now? Really? 100% remote, they sold their headquarters years ago before the pandemic because nobody is telling me that. Automatic is a really great debate case study when people are trying to say about collaboration. So automatic, rocking the world for what? How long is WordPress almost 10, 15 years old? So yeah, it's older than my tech career at least. So what there has to be, like I said, in the end you have used data because whole collaboration, I bought a board right here. My goal is at the end of the year, be able to buy everyone who's doing instructor and doing a vesico, be able to buy them one of these myrants of towers where they can have their mic right here and their video with a ring right here.

So everybody can just have the exact same tools. I go in two years, it's be able to have everybody that's on instructors to have these type of boards, right? This is how you know, this is how you do it. You don't think about, oh, it's better in person. Is it better in person or is it the way that you feel comfortable? You like being able to look out of your office and seeing conversations. You want to, it's a lot of hard work. I mean, which isn't to just be able to text or slide someone to DM to be like, hey man, how you doing versus turning around and being like going to the coffee, and like, you gotta get up at your seat, go to the water cooler, have conversations, 80% of the conversations that water coolers are fake, particularly if you're dealing with your underrepresented staff, right?

If you have your women, your minorities, your LGBTQIA in there, I'm just gonna let you know, you're only getting 30% of the network. You're getting more of them when they don't have a pattern match for whatever is the predominant culture or gender type or like the culture in the room. Right? I'm a victim of that, right? Well, I'm going to say a victim, but I'm an adaptor of them. I was at CBS. I'm not a sports guy, right? But I'm in a room where majority sports do. So guess what? Now I have to learn about football and, you know, I don't know any about football.

Care about football to learn about it because it helps with the office politics, right? So I'm happy that I was able to learn some stuff about sports gambling and things like that. Yeah, we can't. Yeah, I called it sports ball. What is this garbage? But I learned a lot about big data when it came to sports gambling and stuff like that is, you know, but I didn't care. Then I moved to comic book. I was super happy because I was like, oh, this is a team that speaks, you know, as the world's biggest Captain America fan. This is like what I say that I think I'll think I'm on there's a cap America shield over there I'm not gonna get out the camera, but if it is a giant cap America shield right there There's these two downstairs just cap America stuff all over the place the kids they run around and they steal my stuff So all the time but like that and tools like a great get up They're doing so much stuff to make collaboration Collaboration easy Microsoft they're doing so much stuff to make Collaboration easy.

It's are you is it that you just want to keep the tools that you want to keep or is it? Are you not really are you not really ready to evolve and that's what I said The most efficient way for a company right now is just fire the person the loudest the person in charge is saying no Get go to the board and get that guy fired or dead girl fired like in my in my mind that's right just fired the geezer. I don't know. Yeah, no. We definitely had a lot of comments come in. So yeah, Seth says GitLab 200 set remote for a long time.

Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to this community of our culture in a second. Angel, that's a beautiful explanation of the difference between community and culture. I ran that one to the book. Seth, you already missed the diagramming. Rewind this when we're done and you can watch this kind of cool. cool. Yes, remote allows you to wear hashtag tees and Hawaiian shirts to work. Absolutely. And has flag. They go. I love that. Tyrone, what's up, big dog? It's good to see you. Yeah. So yes, Brandon, wearing the doo and absolutely. So let's talk about community over culture. Yeah. And we can riff on this.

And if this winds us down, we can without popping up another topic. How should companies develop community over culture being fully remote? Because I think what's going on is I think, listen, I've had to let, I've had to lead my team over the last year and a half through remote. And it's hard. It's hard. It is exponentially more work. You have to have yes, you have to have more meetings, you have to check in with people more, you like, like you have to actually care about people more. Like to me, me, on-site is lazy. Remote is actually hard. Yeah, you have to, first things first, you have to automate the processes of social, right?

You have to do that work. It's like, it's a leader. It's like dating, but instead of like dating the person that you want, you're dating everyone, right? So now you have to put in that dating effort, right? like okay you see I'm coming from a you know sister a sister a male background right so I'm like you know I like women I'm not gonna like not do the thing like I saw my wife like when she invited me to like said you want to go to brunch like I'm going to brunch what are you doing I was like oh why didn't you invite me and then she was like oh I didn't know you want to go and we'll come through and I jumped up I put on brand new Converse I had a whole brand new shirt I jumped on one of my favorite good my lucky like black motorcycle jacket.

I didn't all I made sure my hair was cut. I jumped in my car and I drove like 85 going like 85 and 70 all the way to downtown Nashville. Right. That's it because I wanted to make sure that we had that report that culture she knew that I was important to her. Right. Same concept in your leader. Right. You have to automate that was processes for social for you know social cues right I have my emotion that they know that you know what if you want to one-on-one put it on there right so that's one thing and they know that you know D I try one of the things I'm working really hard on doing is I listen something that's private and I'm not gonna be like and I don't want to like go off on people on private for the most part but so I'm trying to have as many conversations out in the open and and B-Doc in our main channel as possible because I don't want to do that unless it's something like your super focus like our education track where we have like working on some stuff of data, we're going on some stuff with mobile IOS.

So unless those two things right there are like not in my own or you know those things they need to be decided because that's a focus conversation but everything else is general put it in general minimize the number of channels, Right. So what you're doing when you do that is you're eradicating the clicks, right? Because and you're leading first, right? They don't see you being click-ish. So they're like, being click-ish is kind of frowned upon, right? So like, don't do that. Like let's all talk as much as we can in, you know, in public to collaborate. That way, you know, you're not, it's not even in collaboration.

It's just us being who we are, right? So, I don't know. That's just how I do it. I don't even know you use motion so I'm gonna check that out. Oh, yeah, it's one of my number one is one of a motion motion motion I don't use can only after I use after I switched to motion. I Motion motion replaces Cali. Oh motion is like Cali Leon like steroids I'm actually just gonna throw it on my I'm gonna throw it on my web browser real quick So don't forget yeah, yeah, I use yes So I use like for me. I use Grammarly. I have all my apps that I use all the time right now Grammarly upsetting in notion and motion tab right here.

So like that's one thing to have a plug-in I don't I see it all the time and just it's right there for me and I use What else do I use? Superhuman right so what's super human super human is like a super like email like things So yeah, I tried to sign up for that they don't support outlooks of Vaco's on the outlook suite. Yeah But that's like then I use slack right so and I and I text right cuz everybody has text mister All right, that's the smartest thing like you know how you be me you'd be amazing how many times like going like Schuster right Schuster is like Choose just like my favorite person right now and all of that cucote because she was just kept went from Chuster like he he proved me wrong Right when he went first went through cohort He was not destroying this programmer, but he was a great leader and he was a great collaborator And he didn't let the fact that he was in Augusta and everybody else.

Oh, please stop him from growing. He got his first job up three days after graduating. Then he had a second job like four or five months after that. Then he did his, he went and did a conference. He taught at a boot camp. Then he went to Amazon. Then he went to a event brighten every time he's gotten better and better. He pushes the entire scope of like a will, like just a good developer. Like he can code, but he He can collaborate. He can't. He's not a robot and that's not, you don't need that in the workplace anymore. You need coders. They can talk to people and Schuster is a coder.

They can talk to people and Schuster has a superpower that other people don't have, right? Yeah. Schuster listens and executes like Schuster is a person like he doesn't try to, he does not try to, he does not try to push the cheat code to fit his wants. If you say, hey, this is what's going to help your career go fast, is, she was going to do it. Right? And, and then she was going to, like, I've literally on two separate occasions with two separate people when the, the only thing was they had in common was, she was there and myself were also involved. And she was there would do the thing that the other person would not do.

And she was there came out on top. And that's happened twice over the set of what three years, like that, Like you know, she was doing is like my favorite person. The shoes to go. He does I say a you should do this for your career He might be resistant to it But he'll like you know what I'm gonna do it because I trust you and then he'll not know the robot That's a compliment. Hey, I want to get I want to get to Brandon's question here I cuz I'm curious cuz drum you've definitely built a following to how does creating community in a company and cultivating a community with your social Media following compare We're all human surely.

They're similar I will say this because I think Jerome just said it. It's about collaboration and engagement, right? To be a good leader within an organization and to build community within your organization, you need to have engagement skills, you need to have collaboration skills, you need to listen, you need to be open to criticism. And I think that's the exact same way on social media. You need to engage. What I do here, everybody, I try to throw up every comment I can, like you have to engage. I know Jerome does an amazing job with that on Twitter with him as well, with his following, you have to engage.

So Jerome, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that. I don't call it following on Twitter. I just call them friends. Like I tell people like networking, like followers, all that stuff is weird. Like I'm just like networking is making friends with people who like to make money the same way you like to make, right? Same way, like on Twitter, it's like, I'm talking to people that have the same, you know, upsides and downsides of trying to make each other better at the same time, right? I don't look at the numbers like that. Now, when it comes to building that same type of communities, like Korean community and company and stuff, you have to, the best way that the old way, which is why it's failing right now, is I give you money, you do what I say.

And all you're doing is you're just creating a place of transaction where the minute you stop giving the person what they want or what they need, then you're inefficient and useless. What you need to be doing, especially when situations like, you know, you're working, you know, a pandemic pops off one day, right? To be a pandemic pops off. Y'all not forget, we were all at work Wednesday, and in Thursday, we were all told to stay home. That's what happened. Like, we were like, why are we going to stay home? What's going on? Do I need my firearm? Someone give me some data. Yeah. So like, what's like, you know what, I'm going to go to the liquor store.

It's not whatever's happening. I don't want to be sober through it. I have my, my engineering manager, the time I said, I drove, I feel bad. I just went to the liquor store, it just started to pay in it because I don't know what's happening. But if we're not going to survive it, I want to be drunk. And I was like, you know, I feel you, man. So you have to add value, add value, add value, and ask, right? So for every ask, it's like, I call it social equity, right? I'm always trying to give double social, I'm trying to put, I'm trying to put double that I'm putting in a savings account, then I'm taking out, because I know that that's a penalty when I take out, right?

It's like, even when I raise like when I raise funds for vets who code, right? One thing I'm doing now, I'm focusing more on GitHub sponsors because I want to grow that so people can see the work and that forces me to be more open source, mind and oriented, right? So I can continue to focus on giving, putting value first, right? Second thing I'm doing is like, we only do it like two, three times a year because I want to focus on getting value, not raising money, right? So that's the process, right? Give value, give value, give value, that's the secret of trying to get a job, right?

Are you giving everybody wants people want people they don't feel like they have to babysit, right? Like they don't care if you have to ask questions or not but they do care about the fact that they have to tell you something, right? So like for instance I tell like these junior engineers, okay you're you learn front end, what did you do about GitHub actions? Oh you didn't build any like you had to look at it from the point of view of a hiring manager. I'm gonna be looking at your front end developer and do I care about you knowing every like every front end framework?

No, I care about you being okay and want able to learn. David, tell me how you learned. I've been able to you know and know that even if you haven't been working with the stuff, you're exposed to the things that are modern, right? For instance, if you're talking about you put GitHub on your resume and I go to your GitHub account and you have not done a REITME profile instant red flag. That's been around for a year. That's an easy way to sell yourself for a job. If you don't have one, I'm going to take it to the YA. You're not keeping up with the platform that you're saying that you're on regularly or you're lazy.

Either way, it's not a good sign. It's not what you want in a bag of the head of a hiring manager, right? So you have to think like, you know, you have to think like that. Everybody's talking about remote work. I'm like, okay, well, what are you doing at Showcase? And then you know what? You the same, you know, you're saying beast with a different animal, right? Right? So like that's how I tell people, right? Like I have a track record of being a rock star in remote environments, right? Or not even being a rock star, just regularly doing a constant output of work, right?

same retailer pandemic hit, you didn't, oh, a total of your thumbs, I forgot what you got to do. You went, oh, I'm gonna start a podcast, I'm gonna start talking to people. I'm gonna, you know, I'm living my best life at home. We gonna party inside. That's what we're gonna do. With lots of coffee. So like, that's the same, that's the same ideal, same concept, right? So people have to think about that. If you've got to think about that as well, right? So that's what you have to do, you have to just keep adding value before you ask. Is there somebody needs help? Don't help them.

Don't look for the thing is out. Like the same way it goes back like just how you build like your Twitter stuff, right? Or your LinkedIn. Me and Brian, Brian Holt, right? We talked more about food and travel than we talked about. JavaScript. Jason and Jay. I think what you're about to say is going to answer a shoestures tip about how built empathy for remote. I think it's being human. So keep going. I think that's how you get up. Yes, it's about being human. My network, I know everybody who's a rock star, who you look up to because of what they do, we're coding. I look up to and I respect them with who they are beyond coding, right?

Like I like how, I like Angie Jones. We could talk about how much she writes her in DevRel. Let's talk about how great of a human being She is and where I need to get Angie on this. Yes, you do make intros because I do her and I'm sure she's overwhelmed She has to get back to me. I love to get Angie on. I'll definitely try to make that happen man Angie, you know Angie air air fryer nation, right? Like if you you gotta come to yeah, you gotta come through with like oh Angie Just a fire Jason Lorde stuff. He does he's always about burgers and he's the poop king, right?

You go to his website He's like 45 million boots. Sarah Dresner. Like I just interviewed Jason Langstorff at Netlify. Langstor, sorry. Yeah. And he loves corgis. He and I were texting because I'm a corgi. And like, you know what I'm saying? Like people sometimes don't care about the latest version of React. You're on people care actually, like maybe what's your favorite food? Or that's how you store it, right? Let's go, you know, let, you know, just like, once again dating with my wife. Yes, my wife was high. So much correlation. I focus on all the other things Then her know that guess what he's actually listening and looking to me and me as a human being He's not talking to me because I'm hot now.

I get to get in a position where I get to just talk about how hot she is Right, so like that is that like that's it right? Do you go into a date with a person that you like and like yo, you're hot. Let's do this like you're hot I don't I like people who are hot. Let's go for it like no you don't do that. It's like yo So tell me your favorite color which I can hear it's you like oh wow you're right outside person Oh, no, I might not be outside. No, I can do that speedo Like no, I'm a son boy.

I like her mission. So like you know, that's how it starts, right? You have to focus on the person before you focus on the thing, right? And that's what a lot of people are missing. I was talking about the job But I'm like do you even know the company culture that you want to be a part of the company community that you want to be a part of Before you even going jobs like that would help you be able Tony Tony I think I can't pronounce name of his last name I don't want to mess it up on here is DI and GH right he is right now I am his biggest fanboy because he builds stuff for Twitter on his own free time as an that's the coolest stuff.

Like you can do you have to find he has his. And he has his. He's an indie hacker in the do you do you know what his username on Twitter is? I'm about to find it for you right now and this is how this is how it's done. We're talking about things that we love and we're like oh what's that dude's name? Why so there we go. It is Tony is TD in age underscore me. He's software engineer Andy Hager. He does he creates a little more time Tony. Yeah, Tony for those of you guys. Let me make sure Tony di so what's so what's his what's his username again?

At TD I'm sorry at TD inh underscore me Great. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm speaking fast because I am one of his biggest fans, right? He builds things for twitter like he has a He has a plugin, he has a platform where you can say how many 20 followers you're trying to get. Really? Yes. And like you go to his outline, I mean go to his home page, right? I mean this ring, it updates as he gets closer to his goal. No way. In real time. Right. Right. This right here is, I'm going to throw everybody. Yeah, you got to do it. You got to do it.

Right here, this special thanks is the last three followers. You follow him, that header will change automatically. He uses the Twitter API to do that. He's built tools that you can do it too. I am his biggest fan because he's doing things in a manner that Twitter isn't doing things or like they're so busy trying to find a way to monetize the most popular people and hopes that they can get like 5% and get more people from like YouTube and Instagram like those influencers on a Twitter that they're not thinking of the innovative stuff that makes the normal person wanna stay on, right? The normal business, right?

And Tony's doing it and he's doing it better than, like he's doing it better. How do you do Twitter, better than Twitter? How do you do Twitter tech, and then Twitter? So, what's your next meeting? Like, I mean, we're 45 minutes in the middle. I know, man, like this is how I can do this. My next meeting is at 11.30. But I don't think he's here. I guess it's kinda weird. But yeah, so. So this is an example too. So the guy, his name's Quinnipig. Yes. Here. He, listen, obviously Jerome and I are talking about Twitter. If you're not on Twitter, I think it's a great tool.

I've actually given a live show before it. Like in the last week, if you go to my YouTube, I'm like, how to kind of start on Twitter. I think it's a great tool. One of the things that he did, which I think is huge, and then I interviewed Joe Carlson at MongoDB Dev Developer I have a, he's like a TikTok famous. I had him on Monday. We talked about this about building stuff and like, like your portfolio should be like building stuff with a product or things that you like, right? So Quitty Pig went over this about, hey, you want to, he had this like long like Twitter thread and it was like, how did you do jobs?

There's not slid into his DMs, he didn't get back to me, it's fine. But like, I was like, hey, like, I love to have you on to talk about this because one of his things was like, You want to interview it, Stripe, prototype, like develop something, prototype with a Stripe tool, and then send it to a engineering manager there and go, hey, did I do this, right? Or what are your thoughts on this? Leverage it for networking, leverage it to slide into the DMs. And so it shows the company that you actually like are interested in their product. Like the lights turned on for me there.

Not only that, it shows that you're doing things. I tell my students, oh, Shuster will tell you, you've heard me say it on Twitter, I have my, my story has not changed. Build a thing that people will use, will get you a job faster than building, just building on this call. Since we've been on this call, I have an idea that I need built for staffing. Like literally I wrote it down, since we've been on the call, like I need a way, whereas in an automated text message that goes out, if you've met with me, I need it sent to you every day. And all you do is let me know that you're still on the market.

It's just yes, yes. It's just all it is. Yeah, like a SMS or like. It's an SMS or something email. And it's just, are you on the market? Yes, yes, yes. And then that way I can continually sell you. And then if you're not, then you say no, and then I'm done. And then I don't sell you anymore. No, no more. Yeah. It's like SMS where like our crawling job that sends an email automatically, right? So like I understand that type of stuff. People love that type of stuff you have to think about and I'm pretty sure you can do that with Twilio as well Like you need to get Corey on here matter of fact I'm gonna connect you with Corey and Corey you got that be something that can be done on Corey's shop with Dot net right you guys be on his twitch and you all do that stuff like He's a Twilio dev evangelist so he always he's looking for this type of stuff all the time right so Yeah, I just think people need to I understand that when it comes to your job search focus on the person not the company focus on the product focus on building products that you love not a portfolio I tell people all the time I built one thing I did it the right way the well way I didn't even do it the right way I built in public did it and I'm not one of those devs and well well you don't have to do it this way yes you're absolutely right you do not have to build in public you don't have to write you don't have to talk so Do beatups do blog instead of doing any other type of stuff.

I don't have to do videos So but guess what you're now you're not rat raised with everyone else you're competing But everybody else is doing the exact same thing you're doing So if you want to compete with the do with everyone else and be in that pool Fine, but don't get mad at the results that you're having by competing that we're doing the exact same thing Everybody else is doing that don't get mad at the people who are doing going above and beyond in our leapfrogging and you feel like you might be better at on paper. I had that happen at Betsuko when I had a troop that's like, am I bad at this?

Like no, you're not bad at this. This person just leaped for you because they were willing to do the work that you didn't want to do, right? So like don't, you know, victory, my favorite saying when it comes to type of stuff is victory is for those willing to pay its price, right? You know, Schuster in three, four years, he's jumped to a senior engineer where a fan game experience, big tech experience, coming from a boot camp is a second career dev and half the time that like, I mean, half the time it took me to do it and half the time it takes most people to go to college to do it because he was willing to do the things that other people weren't willing to do.

Right. Right. Same concept with like your job search. You have to, all right, if you're on your job search, like Scott Hanselman says it best, can't teach hype, right? So if you can't teach hype, what you need to focus on is all the skills around it, right? Like, okay, you can't teach being the tallest basketball player in the game, but you can practice your free throws, get your percentages higher. You can focus on your ball control and get that. You can focus on being more aggressive and more in the paint that you can focus on your hand-eye coordination or your range of your eyesight to make sure that you see the the person who's open and you're not a ball hog and you know the coach knows that you're going to see that open man and you're going to get that ball to that open man and he doesn't have to.

He just says yo get the ball here and be here like or you can be a better team player. You can showcase that collaboration. Let's say for instance easier front end development and still the easiest level for getting into a job right because it's easy to show the work but you're back in developer right. We talked about collaboration. Let's talk about This is how I collaborated with a frontend developer to create this visual data models using D3 as well as the Python script or data sets that I was using to tell the story about this stuff. People don't think that they are frontend, right? Show how you work with a backend developer, or this UX, right?

Talk about, oh, this is how I did this design, when I saw these flaws, accessibility. Oh, this is a report that I did. audit, these are the things that did, this is how I changed and fixed it, right? Cause if you're, if you're talking about accessibility, but you don't know what a skip to main link is, I'm going to be like, um, you don't know how to implement that, like that's basic HTML, right? So that's what I'm saying, use the skill that you want to get high for a built product space on that. And then you're, you're going, you're going to win. And that, and you make it, it's all about front loading and putting all the odds on your side so that the companies may come back with that all we don't do remote.

They can't, you know, there's no argument, right? Like people is very hard to tell me at this phase of my career that you are uncertain about my abilities to work remote when I'm at this point in my, because I have all this stuff that I've done remotely. And your current mission is how do I find the proper motivations get you to do what you did for yourself on your own for me. I've changed the conversation when a person tries to hire me. It's not about remote or not remote. How can I get you to be you, but for me, like how do I get that type of drive, the type of passion, the type of thing that gets you to wake up at zero dark 30 and jump on your computer and build things for other people and write these other people.

How do I get that from me? Right? How do I get? How do I pay you to do that for me without why making you absolutely hate your That's that's what you want to do. That's why you want to do all these proactive things That's why you want to focus on doing things that certain matters on building products and we're saying because they're the companies They're on their heels, right? You have to think it like that. You know, this is a fight This isn't a you know, you can't think like the academia This is a dynamic combat of combat environment and they're on the hill.

They're retreating but they're doing their last stand. So you have to figure out, like, how do I make you lose, make you feel like you want, right? That's all they really wanna do. They don't wanna look like they lost, right? They don't wanna, that's literally 80% of this game is winning without looking like you, winning without them thinking that they lost. And then you have to think about like, a lot of these people, they're reading the same books, you read on com, on military strategy, things in the first move of the first law of business and power is that power does not move. That's why they're trying to come with these things like, oh, hybrid stuff before you even ask and they're not negotiating, right?

So use this stuff as your, you know, use this stuff as your advantage. Like Taylor and I would both grade it, grade examples of people who use doing things at home, build a remote to get the type of life they want it because somebody is like, I'm I'm just gonna pay you to be the rock star. You are for us. Can you do what you do for us? Well, you know, I get to work on my own nonprofit. I get to work at one of the top 10 companies in tech. I get to consult with one of the hottest, well not hottest, one of the best nonprofits that is near and near my heart on top of my other nonprofit.

I get to help youth villages, like with their mission of building technologies and making their technology better to help kids, like buying homes, right? So I get to do all of this because I've showcased, you know, my ability to work remote. So that is like what you have to do when a person says, oh, we'll do remote work. Well, you're stopping me from helping veterans and children. So I kind of an asshole right now. I was like, I can't say that. I think you ended on that. I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I Honestly, we've kept an insane amount of viewers throughout this hour.

So Jerome, I think we're on to something. I'm for real. We should do this. We're off to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So again, y'all, thanks for hanging out this morning, Jerome. You're amazing, man. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you more than you know. Everybody go connect with Jerome on Twitter. If you're not on Twitter, just definitely him on LinkedIn. And clearly it's the easiest, the easiest way to reach me, especially. That's like the lowest, but especially if you're looking for help or advice, that's the lowest term. A barrier of people are always DMing me. It's easier to get me on DM's than it is on phone.

It's point of view. So that's the, following on Twitter, find me if you have questions or you want, even if you want to set up a one-on-one. Like I just had a one-on-one with Becca and I'm really good with finding that problem that you're not talking about. And she even said, he read the room and he gave me the advice I needed. Like that's, you know, I just brought up Jesus in future in a conversation that's for 65% of time. But like I still got my message across and I was able to help her like clear the note, clear something to Dauce in her head.

That's what I do. That's my, I guess that's my superpower. I get to tell you like, yo, like your boss stopped being an idiot and I love that. I love that. I love that. Well again, thanks y'all. Appreciate it Jerome. You have a great rest of your day big dog and we'll talk soon. Roger that. See you later.