relocation and social media

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

Everyone this is Kyle. Kyle is, I'll let him introduce himself, but basically I'm calling out of Nunej for a few years now and I've had the pleasure to work with him and actually help him relocate down here to Nashville. So Kyle if you want to just go ahead and take it away and give the few listeners, which is mainly my mom, just kind of an introduction about yourself, what you do and kind of your story. Yeah, so I'm Kyle, my friend, engineer here at Eventbrite. I've been doing web development for close to 10 years now. Originally grew up north side of Chicago and thanks to Taylor here, was able to make the wonderful move down in Nashville and give him to this awesome community.

And so tell everybody kind of what you're doing right now at Eventbrite. So right now Eventbrite, first couple of months in, so I've finished off my first big project. It's pretty exciting still in beta. So I don't know how many details I can really spill, but it's going to be great for folks that want to go to film festivals or any kind of multi-day events. So that's going to be pretty exciting. Currently working specifically on a team that does the check-in process and with our organizers. So being a conference organizer, I love being on this side of the app. Absolutely. What code or what type of tech are you working with primarily?

Right now I'm mainly doing React. We also have a pretty heavy Python side, which I'm diving into as well. First time I've ever done Python. So awesome learning experience, but mainly the my chops all around React and building out front end web applications. Fantastic. So I know it's really funny. So the guy that interviewed the last podcast, David Green, so he's a dot net guy that's now doing some Python. And I know you're kind of touching some Python too. So it's interesting to feel like it does a little bit of a trend out there. But so basically, and I know you and I were texting, my whole point of this podcast is to basically share people stories that have been recently on the job search.

And so I wanted to have you kind of spell out getting here to Nashville and obviously working to me. But what did that look like getting down here? What, you know, obviously you didn't have much network in Nashville at the time. So what did you do to get down here? And obviously your most recent jump from your previous gig that I placed you at to Eventbrite. What did that look like? So if you can kind of tell your story and kind of give listeners, you know, that a little hope of being able to get to a city from another city and kind of what that looks like in the process behind it.

Yeah, that process was it was definitely an handful at the time just before the jump and before take a look Taylor. I was actually finishing up a six month contract very early beginning of the year around this time 2015 was it? I think so. Time flies. So I had started putting out resume and just kind of different feelers because that contract hadn't been working out and I wasn't really fond of the recruiting agency that got me there. So I started just, you know, slinging resumes all over the place. And we talked as a family. So I've got it with my wife and I've got three boys and we as a family had made a trip down to Tennessee at one point.

Really talking about how much we like the area. I never thought we'd actually move. But of course, when I was slinging out resumes, I just kind of put a little, hey, I'd be willing to relocate if it was Nashville. Well, one fine day I woke up. It was probably a Tuesday and I was like, you know, end up getting a phone call and said, you know, I gotta take this. You know, most recruiter calls, I try to avoid, but I had a few as a recruiter call. I answered it said, hey, you want to move down to Nashville? And I was like, all right, you got my attention.

Let's go. from there. It was it started off a little rocket first. I wasn't sure how we were going to do things and how all that would work out. Taylor was pretty awesome about just making sure everything was on the calendar. I had proper expectations. So it started off pretty simple. It just found interviews and eventually moved on to a remote like coding technical interview session with the Dev Lead and the engineering manager. At that point, I pretty much just open for a little while. Got got a good, got a good, another call that said, hey, they want to fly you down. That's probably one of the craziest experience in my life.

Having a company say, hey, we want to bring you down here for a couple days and actually see you in person before we give you an offer letter. That's when things started to get pretty quick. I had to start letting the last contract agency know that I didn't want to continue the contract. They were trying to bring me out full time. I had to end that contract before I could start fully looking for employment. So I finished that off and I had a week where I had no job. Luckily in that week, I was able to make the trip down to Tennessee. I met with a company for there's probably about 36 hours in total.

It was actually in Tennessee. What comes with an offer letter? Which is a pretty awesome experience. What do you kind of ask you a few questions to what you just said? When you said slinging resumes, what did that look like? From an individual trying to relocate from out of stings. Did you have any strategy or were you, when you say slinging, what did that look like? If you were to do it again, what would you do differently? For me, the start of that was typical, the dice, the indeeds, the big name.coms that that handled searches, monster. Then filling out one of those profiles, doing as best as I can to really beef up what it looked like on paper.

Because I knew I didn't have the backing of them seeing me around town. That was really the first step. Beyond that, then I started just doing searches. On those sites, through Google, just like best places to work in that area. That led me to a few places here in Nashville. I tried to go in through their direct recruiting process. That was probably the hardest part for me. It was just not knowing anyone and not being in the area. It really kind of cut my chances down. If I had to go back, I probably would just, I'd look for someone like Taylor in that area, find a good recruiter that I can trust.

I know as looking out for my best interest, that actually knows the area, knows the market, and can kind of be the benefactor in that area. I know the compensation differences. I had no idea places to work, what areas were good or bad or any of that. Not only was it difficult to find what company I wanted to work for, but I also have to not figure out where to move my family to. That's just a stressful combination. Absolutely. So, so recently, so you left the company that I placed you at and obviously ended up at a Vembrite. What did that job search look like from your end?

I mean, obviously you're much more connected now. Given you a little plug, you know, you helping lead node Vembrite and being a part of that team and really obviously being very active and meet up around town. I'm sure it was a little bit easier. And also you didn't have to move your family down. But what did that process look like from a networking side of things and just kind of spell that out? That process is both a little bit slower and a little bit longer. So like you said, a lot of it was network building. Just finding the right people will get in them in the room, showing up in their social media feeds enough and just making sure people saw my face.

And then eventually going to enough conferences and speaking enough that I start hanging around the same group of people that eventually led to just basically people calling me, which was very similar to the experience where I was flown places. It was kind of bizarre to reach out to, you know, that a job hunt didn't have to be one directional in the way that I had always thought of it, that I'm always looking for the company. It's interesting to hear companies looking for someone like me. And not just, you know, through recruiters, actually through the development team and through people that had their feet on the ground that I'd become good friends with and so much so that they wanted to work with me.

So there was a few places in the running, which was always good to have a little bit of competence and kind of really weigh your options. Eventually landed here at a Vempray and I haven't looked back since. That's awesome. And so I do and I've wanted to ask you this question in general. I mean, you've really for anybody who's on Twitter, you definitely need to follow Kyle. But Kyle did, first off, what's your handle on Twitter so people can probably, but also second off, what has that been a strategy of yours? Because obviously, I mean, you've been extremely active and is that something that you've I guess set out to do or what does that look like and why have you driven so much activity through Twitter?

So yeah, handle is just Kyle Welch all one word, all lowercase, all just me. So that actually has been a very direct campaign that I've been trying to work. So I've also last year started speaking at conferences and I find that Twitter is pretty good way and network with the people that you need at those conferences. But in addition to that, it's a really good way to find out more about the technical community and just different people's opinions and ideas outside of your own and outside of your own circle of influence. So typically, I'll find people that are very terrific in the JavaScript realm or just bigger in the community that I want to get involved with or stay in touch with.

And I'll just follow their feeds and try to contribute my own opinions and ideas. But when I see an opportunity where something comes up and I really like the thread they're on, or I really want to understand why they did something. That's when I tend to speak up and just be there to listen to someone that can show me more and teach me more. That for me has been working pretty well. I'm not one of the people with 10,000 followers, but it seems to be working well. I'll just go in there to speak my mind at times, go in there to seek help, and then go in there to give help and show ways that I've gotten past blockers and hurdles in my career.

That's awesome. And so I guess my question is, is do you recommend? I know from my perspective, a lot of people ask me, hey, what are your thoughts on social media? I know a lot of my recruiting teams like, hey, you've leveraged social media preactively, like, I'm not recommended. And I personally do recommend it. And because from our end, from the recruiting side, we always want to be top of mind. So a lot of times, so if you're not active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, you know, when a developer from my case is on the job hunt and you're not always on the top of their feed, like, they're going to forget about you.

So from your perspective, would you recommend anybody in the tech field to get active on Twitter and or social media? Because I know you're not really on LinkedIn as much. I mean, you drive a ton of activity through Twitter. So I want to kind of see kind of what your two cents and suggestions are for other people possibly looking at social media options. Yeah, I highly recommend it. It's it's been a really good way for me to network people outside of just the community because tech is more than just the community. As much as I love building out the national development community and specifically with things like November, Nash, J.S., Nash react.

I like the idea that we we're much bigger than just that and other people are facing a lot of these same problems. So little simple things of just a tweet that says, man, I got past this bug because of this issue or just, you know, kind of showing empathy for some of the same issues that people are running into makes you more relatable. I think that can be said, the same can be said for someone like Taylor hears is on the recruiting side. If I want to work with a recruiter, I want to make sure that they're both someone that I can trust and someone is relatable to me.

So it's good to see someone and kind of their true feelings that I'm emotions. And I feel like there's no better way to do that than just quick tweets. Yeah, it's easily become an addiction. Yeah, a lot of cat deaths on my part. But in general, I think it's just it's a really good tool to reach more people than you can do physically. And, you know, I've had the pleasure of meeting people from Canada and all across the United States just from basically my Twitter feed and my GitHub page, like I want to make things that I like to say for especially new developers is that being a social developer is the best way for you to really level up.

And by that, I mean, being very active on Twitter, being very active on GitHub, building out more issues and more projects, you got to be very vocal for you to be noticed. And those type of things where higher managers are definitely going to look for, what are you doing in your spirit? Not just from a like, I want you to be coding all day. Like, I don't expect any developer to just code all day and night. But it is good to see that in the off hours, you're trying side projects to explore new ideas and that you're passionate about what you're doing. And that you're also willing to help and take criticism.

Those are some of the big things that I look for in technical interviews. And that's really been the best way for me to find new candidates to work with. Absolutely. And you mentioned something that I kind of want to expound on real fast and see your thoughts. So something I've seen within the dev community, obviously, within Twitter, mostly you, obviously, and some other local developers I follow. You know, is, and obviously being with a part of the dot net user group and helping lead that up, you know, we get a lot of NSS grads and we did a career panel in January and went over really well.

But I mean, do you, one thing that I keep hearing is being open to critiques. I mean, is that something and you're educating me on this? Is that something in a dev community that's hard to overcome? I mean, ultimately the code you write is kind of your baby. And I'm sure it's probably not the easiest thing to get picked apart. I mean, I feel like I'm seeing more of that on social media as of late. I mean, is that something that the dev community I think across the country is trying to push or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I definitely think that that's something that just like criticism and feedback is always something that's hard to take just just as a human and, you know, furthermore, with when you build something and it's yours, you get that sense of pride.

So it's a lot harder when someone tries to come along and kind of bash on it. So I think that stems not just, or I don't think that results just in junior devs. I think that's devs across the board. But seeing and working with other developers that have an open mind to hear other opinions and be able to gracefully disagree is an awesome quality. I actually had a few conversations this morning and in a very similar way. One of our back end developers and I were kind of chatting for a bit. And although we didn't agree that or we found that not one of us was exactly right, but we agreed that we both points were valid and that, you know, at the end of the day, we grew better as co-workers just because we were able to listen to each other openly and kind of understand some of the feedback that we were given each other.

Absolutely. Do you have any suggestions? I guess just in general for any developers right now that are on the job hunts, any last words of wisdom that you want to leave them as we wrap up? Yeah, I think like I said before, you got to be as loud as you can. So doing that through social media, doing that through GitHub, doing that throughout the community. The easiest way for you to level up as a developer is to meet other developers. So go to meet up, go to local conferences, paint, paint their Twitter and see if you can get a scholarship ticket or student tickets. If that's a position that you're in and you're not able to actually, you know, have a company that can back you to get some of these conferences, a lot of them have a budget to bring students and other developers that really wouldn't be there otherwise to get to these conferences and network with people that can really help them level up.

So don't try the biggest thing that that I could tell you. Fantastic, man. Well, Kyle, thanks again for hanging out for a few minutes. For everybody else who's listening, I know I kind of do this all the time. If you want to rate this podcast in the Apple and Google Play store, that would be fantastic. I would love for this thing that kind of gains from traction and help other individuals not only the tech field, but also just in general, looking that are on the job search, be able to help them and be a resource and tool for them. If you want to follow me, all my social media, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat is at t-desk and that's a D-E-S-S-E-Y.

And if you want to reach me and talk about career stuff, email is going to be the best. That's Taylor at vaco.com, V-A-C-O.com. But Kyle, man, thanks again for hanging. And let's catch up soon over lunch. Okay?