0:00

It's very easy to fall into the trap

0:02

of thinking that you have to pay to

0:04

be successful as

0:07

someone who's learning how to code. And

0:10

we have that idea that if we pay for

0:12

something, it has more value than something that's free.

0:15

But there are some amazing free things out there.

0:17

And I usually try to recommend things that are

0:19

free or affordable. Welcome

0:57

back to the Free Code Camp

1:00

podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and

1:02

founder of freecodecamp.org. Each

1:04

week, we're bringing you insight from

1:06

developers, founders, and ambitious people getting

1:08

into tech. This week, we're talking

1:11

with Dorian Develops. He's a software

1:13

engineer and prolific YouTube creator. Dorian

1:16

grew up in Little Havana as a

1:18

child of a single mother refugee from

1:20

Cuba. After a rough childhood

1:22

and dropping out of high school in

1:25

ninth grade, Dorian eventually found himself as

1:27

a valet car parker in

1:30

Las Vegas. It was here

1:32

that Dorian realized he needed to make

1:34

changes for the sake of his family.

1:37

He taught himself to code using Free

1:39

Code Camp and other free,

1:41

open learning resources. And he has

1:43

since gotten six-figure jobs as a

1:45

web developer and created a popular

1:47

YouTube channel. Dorian, welcome to

1:50

the Free Code Camp podcast. Hey,

1:52

thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be

1:54

here. Yeah, man, you're

1:56

somebody I've followed for, I

1:58

don't know, like four years. or so like

2:01

I've watched a ton of your videos

2:03

over the years and kind of followed

2:05

your career progression and your many popular

2:07

videos on like just learning more about

2:09

you. It's like learning about Dorian is

2:11

like peeling back different layers of onion

2:14

and exposing new kind of like levels

2:16

of Dorianism. I'm

2:20

like Shrek. Anyone

2:24

who's got kids and has watched Shrek will get

2:26

that reference. I'm sure. Yeah. So

2:29

first of all, like for those most people listen

2:31

to the audio edition, but if you're watching

2:34

the video edition, you can see Dorian's background

2:36

and it's just like wood

2:38

like like it's like

2:40

raw construction. Where are you? Yeah.

2:42

It's OSB board. I think is

2:44

what that's called. I don't really

2:47

know too much about construction. But

2:49

yeah, I am

2:51

in a wooden shack that my brother-in-law

2:53

built for us to have a co-working

2:55

space in office where we can work

2:57

together as we are visiting his

3:01

new house in Washington because we're stopping by

3:03

for the summer or the tail end of

3:05

summer before we head back out to Southeast

3:07

Asia. Yeah. So you have

3:10

lived in a lot of places, of course, Florida,

3:12

Las Vegas, and now the

3:16

Pacific Northwest. But you've also

3:18

traveled extensively. We're going to talk about a

3:20

lot of that, but right

3:22

now, like what is going

3:24

on in your world? Like right at this exact

3:26

moment that we're catching you. So

3:29

right at this exact moment, we just

3:31

came back to Washington about

3:33

four weeks ago and we got about three

3:35

weeks left before we go back to Asia.

3:38

I'm about I

3:40

don't know, like seven, eight months ago, kind

3:43

of decided to take a break from

3:45

working and try to

3:47

pursue full-time content creation and dabble

3:50

in some indie hacking while my

3:52

family and I travel the

3:54

world a bit. We did this about

3:57

a year and a half before that. And

4:00

We went to Europe. And I

4:03

have some videos where I kind of talk about

4:05

that being a bit of a failure on my

4:07

end because I couldn't make it work for various

4:09

reasons. And then after coming back, we

4:11

kind of, I immediately went into

4:13

a developer job. Actually

4:16

it was a design job, but it was back into

4:18

software. And almost instantly I

4:20

was like, oh, we want to travel again. Even

4:22

my wife was like, oh, we're not really liking

4:24

this, but we signed the lease and did the

4:26

right thing. We stuck it out for that year

4:29

and then we pretty much got back on

4:31

the road as soon as the lease was up. And

4:33

that's what we've been doing since. So

4:35

that was about January, February, this year.

4:38

We headed back out. Awesome. Yeah.

4:41

When I was like, I was living in China as a

4:44

24 year old, like 25 year old with my wife. We

4:49

got married, like you, we got married very early. I've

4:52

been married for like 19 years and you've been

4:54

together with your wife for probably nearly that amount

4:56

of time. I think you mentioned

4:58

you two got together and you were like 23

5:00

or something like that. Yeah. We started

5:02

dating right around 23 or 24 for me. She's

5:05

a couple of years older than me. So I

5:08

got married right before turning 28. If

5:12

she hears this episode, she'll be like, how

5:14

long have we been together? You messed it up

5:17

on the interview, huh? But no, we've been together

5:19

forever now, like 15 years and we've been married

5:21

for over 10. Yeah, that's

5:23

awesome, man. And you have kids as well. Yes.

5:27

Yes. And you have kids a little later. My

5:30

first was born when I was about 31. So

5:33

yeah. Yeah. And similar with me, like we

5:35

waited, I think 34, I think is I'm

5:37

slightly older than you. I'm

5:40

43. But yeah, like similarly, we waited

5:43

to make sure our economics were in order

5:45

and we'd done what we

5:47

needed to do as far as like earning

5:49

degrees and certifications and my wife

5:51

got her CPA and everything like that. And so

5:53

we're like, finally, okay, we feel like comfortable that

5:55

we can have kids. But

5:59

we didn't. So what

6:01

I was going back to is I was in China and

6:03

there was this book that came out called

6:06

Vagabonding by Ralph Potts and it's

6:08

about basically saving up a bunch

6:10

of money and then going on

6:12

the open road and traveling and he

6:14

talks about how this

6:16

is really something designed for people

6:19

that are young that don't have a lot of

6:21

responsibility, that don't necessarily have a spouse or kids

6:23

or anything like that, but that it is technically

6:25

viable to do with kids but he's

6:27

not sure exactly what you would do because you didn't do

6:29

it with kids. But he'd

6:31

met people doing this, basically, and this

6:34

was 20 plus years ago, so

6:37

it was before Indiehackers, Revolution, and

6:41

before Peter Levels and all these other people kind

6:43

of proved out the concept of being a

6:46

digital nomad. And

6:49

it sounds to me like you're

6:51

kind of living that lifestyle, like you're parking

6:53

somewhere, you're saving up some money and then

6:55

you're getting on the road and exposing your

6:58

kids to all these different cultures and all

7:00

these different experiences in Europe and Asia. We're

7:04

absolutely, just to be completely clear, we're gonna

7:06

talk a lot about software development on this

7:08

podcast, but I cannot resist. I have to

7:10

talk a little bit about your recent travels

7:12

and your philosophy toward taking

7:15

your kids and showing them the world. So

7:17

yeah, it's funny because it's actually like thinking

7:20

about it and I've thought about this a

7:22

couple times recently, it kind of all goes

7:24

back to learning how to code, funny enough,

7:26

because I remember when I was learning

7:28

how to code and I was talking to my wife and

7:31

back then at that point in time

7:33

it still felt very much like a dream. I

7:37

wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to land a job, I

7:39

wasn't sure if what I was doing was gonna eventually

7:42

lead to me doing it as a career

7:44

and I was just kind of learning online

7:46

and free code camp and different

7:48

resources and at that time, I

7:50

remember talking to my wife and I was like, one

7:52

day if I do this as a job, I could

7:54

eventually go remote and then one day

7:57

we could live anywhere in the world and it

7:59

did an exact. play out that way,

8:01

but it kind of did in a way

8:03

because I do think that my YouTube channel

8:05

started around me talking about learning how to

8:07

code and then that's kind of helped us

8:09

afford being able to

8:11

travel because it does kind of fund that

8:13

a bit. But it is

8:16

a bit of a weird life to live I guess

8:18

when you try to do it. There are a few

8:21

things that we kind of

8:23

did not intentionally but it

8:25

kind of worked out that way with the

8:27

way that we educate our children. They were

8:29

at school age

8:31

during COVID so we had

8:34

either the choice of like we start them

8:36

in school and they they go to school

8:38

on a tablet or my wife at that

8:40

time she had a friend that was a

8:42

close family friend that had two kids the

8:44

same age and they were like maybe

8:47

we just start like our own little home

8:49

school with just our kids. At

8:51

that point it was social distancing and we knew

8:54

that they were being good

8:56

about following the rules and we were too and

8:58

we were like alright we'll just do this and

9:00

they converted their basement into a preschool.

9:03

My wife's friend's husband was in construction

9:05

and he built a whole like it

9:07

looked like a legit preschool even had

9:09

like the floors that with the specs.

9:11

Like the foamy floor? Yeah. Yeah. Kids

9:14

fall they don't get hurt. Yeah

9:16

it was like a little puzzle piece like border so you

9:18

can like clip them together. If

9:21

I could find pictures it would be great because if you'd

9:23

see it you'd be like man that does look just like

9:25

a preschool. So that kind of set us up

9:27

for for homeschooling and then we just kind of

9:29

kept doing it even though like after COVID we

9:31

could have put them in school. We did my

9:34

daughter wanted to go to school for a bit so

9:36

we we let her do it and after a few

9:38

it was about a couple months she was just like

9:41

I don't like it it's it's it's not like how

9:43

we learn at home and we just sit at the

9:45

chair all day it is like all right well you

9:47

got to try it and then we just kept homeschooling

9:49

and homeschooling has been like it's

9:52

really hard to travel with children

9:54

and like work out the education

9:56

aspect of it and like I can't take too much

9:58

credit for that because my wife really does. I

10:00

do my best to help where I can and, and you

10:02

know, everything is a learning experience,

10:05

especially when you travel, you have a lot of like

10:07

real world experience that you

10:09

can't really get in school. Like

10:12

my kids have been to anchor watt in Cambodia, which is, you

10:14

know, like 2000 year old

10:16

temples. And they're learning about all kinds of ancient history

10:18

and stuff like that. That's like really

10:20

cool. And you know, they've been to London

10:22

and they've gotten to see like big Ben and you

10:26

know, the, the Royal palace. And

10:28

Buckingham and all of this stuff where,

10:30

um, you know, that's definitely like more geography and history

10:32

that we're teaching them. But my, you know, we make

10:34

sure to also teach them reading and math as part

10:37

of stuff that we do at

10:39

home. Cause we feel like, you know, as long

10:41

as they got reading and math down, that's really

10:43

like, that's the bulk of what you need. There's

10:46

a lot of other stuff. Like my, my son loves science. My, my daughter

10:48

loves art. So like,

10:50

we're always like, how much science can we teach

10:52

you? How much art can we let you,

10:54

you know, create with? And as a result, I think that's, that's, that's the,

10:56

that's the, that's the creative. And, and, um, it's a

10:58

lot of fun. And you know, we meet

11:01

traveling families as well. I haven't

11:03

read that book, but it would be a good one

11:05

to read, um, for me because we

11:07

have met other families in the process

11:10

and they refer to themselves as world

11:12

schoolers. And what they do is they kind

11:14

of either stay in certain places for a while or they

11:17

hop around to different locations and they

11:19

kind of travel in packs

11:21

and it's, um, it's expats and people

11:23

from different countries that are living the

11:25

same lifestyle and they try to stay

11:27

in the same areas together. So then

11:30

their kids can socialize because socialization is

11:32

a big aspect of like traveling with

11:34

kids too. Like my

11:36

wife and I just, you know, we talk about like,

11:38

man, this would be so different if we were single,

11:40

but we, you know, we wouldn't do it any other

11:42

way now. And it's an experience that my kids will

11:44

have. And remember as they grow up and, you

11:47

know, meet people when you say you've been

11:49

to so many different parts of the world,

11:51

like I, I didn't get on

11:53

a plane until I was 22. I

11:57

think was the first time I got on a plane and my. kids

12:00

have been to like eight or nine

12:02

different countries now, maybe more. And my

12:05

daughter is only eight years old. So it's kind

12:07

of easy to think that. Yeah. I

12:09

mean, that's like you want every generation wants

12:12

the subsequent, like their kids to be better

12:14

off and more worldly and more capable, more

12:16

confident, uh, and navigating the world. And, uh,

12:19

you know, I'm like right there with you,

12:21

like, you know, prioritizing your kids, having like

12:23

a lot of world experience. Like that's one

12:25

of the things we, we, you know, we

12:28

try to save most of our money, but

12:30

like to the extent that we use money,

12:32

it's to take them out to have experiences

12:35

like take, take them to the Boston, for example, so they

12:37

can see like the early colonial days

12:39

of like the United States and stuff, or, or

12:41

take them out to, uh, San

12:43

Francisco so they can see where they were born and like

12:45

get a feel for the city and stuff like that. Right.

12:47

So like little things like that. Um, but

12:50

I mean, the thing you said about getting on a plane at age

12:53

22, I would venture to say like

12:56

many Americans. Air

12:58

travel is just a routine part of their

13:00

childhood. Maybe they're traveling for like a soccer

13:02

competition or something like that. And I

13:05

think the fact that you didn't write on a plane until you

13:07

were 22 kind of speaks to the,

13:10

you know, relatively like. Hard

13:12

early life you had. And I want

13:14

to get into that. Um, and I

13:16

think now is as good a time

13:18

as any, because it really informs a

13:21

lot of who Dorian develops is in

13:23

my mind. Like my, my, uh, my

13:25

image of you as someone who

13:28

your mother, uh, immigrated from Cuba

13:30

to the United States. Cuba

13:33

of course, famously had

13:35

a collapse. If you watched the

13:37

Godfather part two, very dramatic retelling

13:40

of what happened. Uh, but basically that

13:42

country went to hell. Right.

13:45

And, uh, a lot

13:47

of people from Cuba got on the ships and

13:50

traveled to Florida and

13:53

settled this area called little

13:55

Havana. And it's,

13:58

and that's where you grew up. Right. Like. Yeah. Can

14:01

you talk about your early years?

14:03

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so there

14:05

was two big times in Cuban

14:08

history when like basically, you know,

14:10

Cuban just left in mass Exodus

14:12

and like my my mom was

14:14

from the first time back in

14:16

the 60s because my mom is older and she

14:18

had me at an older age and yeah, pretty

14:20

much the whole family had to come and I've

14:22

heard the stories, you know,

14:24

as I was a kid where they were

14:26

given like one personal item and told to

14:28

to leave, you know, and there's

14:31

like a lot of my family that came

14:33

from Cuba when we still have a small

14:36

family. It's it's weird because like my my

14:38

mom, my grandmother, my uncle

14:40

and my grandfather who I don't know

14:42

but was you know, alive when they

14:44

they came from Cuba were kind of

14:47

like the outcast of the

14:49

the whole family and even though there

14:51

was a larger family, they

14:53

didn't really talk to us unless like

14:55

someone had had died and then

14:57

we get called for a funeral and then mostly

15:00

because like my grandfather, I guess wasn't the

15:02

the best individual and again, I didn't meet

15:04

him. He was dead before I was born.

15:06

But yeah, I you know, they they lived

15:09

in Miami for a while. My mom actually

15:11

came from Cuba

15:13

to Miami and then she went to Vegas

15:15

and she came back to Miami

15:17

when she was pregnant with me. She was living

15:19

a very crazy life in

15:21

Las Vegas. I won't get

15:23

into too much details about that. But I know

15:25

some of that history and I haven't really talked

15:27

too much about like my mom's like lifestyles. But

15:29

when she came back to Miami to

15:32

have me because my grandmother was there, my uncle

15:34

was there, it gave her like some better stability

15:36

than what she had going on. She

15:39

was still struggling with a lot of just

15:42

you know addiction and like

15:44

she came from Vegas when she found

15:46

out that I was I was going

15:48

to be born because she

15:50

was three months pregnant. She had been

15:52

partying doing like cocaine and freebasing

15:55

and drinking and then found out she was

15:57

pregnant with me and was like, oh, I

15:59

I I. I gotta go get

16:01

to see if he's gonna be okay. And then when

16:04

she got positive results that I was healthy, she

16:06

made a big decision, which, you know, I give

16:08

her props even though her and I don't have

16:10

like the best relationship, that was a big thing

16:12

for her to do, come to Miami and then

16:14

eventually have me. But you know, those demons stick

16:16

around. And my mom was still like a heavy

16:18

drinker when I was a kid and she still

16:20

kind of, she still struggled with

16:23

her own problems, which wasn't good for

16:25

me growing up. Luckily I

16:27

had a bit of stability with my

16:29

grandmother and my uncle being like positive

16:31

role models in my life. And then, but it

16:35

wasn't enough, you know. Also

16:37

like the area that I was

16:39

in, if anyone's familiar with Little

16:41

Havana or Alapada, I kind of

16:43

lived on the

16:45

line between Little Havana and Alapada, they're both

16:47

pretty bad neighborhoods. Although Alapada is

16:50

getting like gentrified now and it's become like

16:52

the art district. It's still at the time

16:54

when I was there, it was just like

16:56

Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, it was like the

16:59

90s and Latin Kings and

17:01

the disciples and gangs were just like a big thing

17:03

in the 90s there in Miami and it was a

17:05

really rough neighborhood. And I went to a school in

17:08

Little Havana that was, even

17:10

for a middle school, it was rough. And

17:12

I was kind of like a crappy kid for

17:14

the most part. I

17:19

hate to say that because you want to be like, no, kids are

17:21

good, but I had a lot of bad influences

17:23

and I let them get the best of me and

17:26

I wanted to do bad stuff because I thought

17:29

it was cool and I was probably lashing out

17:31

as a kid trying to get attention that

17:33

I wasn't getting. And eventually

17:35

I became a teenager who then became a

17:38

criminal, right? By

17:41

the time I was 16, just about to

17:43

turn 17, I had already been arrested four

17:45

times, different

17:47

things like assault and

17:50

battery, disorderly conduct, grand theft auto,

17:52

possession would intend to distribute. And

17:54

I was really just headed

17:56

down a bad path and I did make it

17:58

into high school and I was. there for

18:00

about three months before I dropped

18:03

out at ninth grade. I

18:05

was in a school at Miami senior high, which

18:07

is a really, you know, everybody knows about Miami

18:10

high in Miami and I wasn't technically supposed to

18:12

be there. Like I said, I lived on the

18:14

cusp of of

18:16

Little Havana and alapada, but

18:18

I was worked into going to Miami

18:20

high. And then when I got

18:23

kicked out of there for for fighting and

18:25

different reasons, I got sent to the school

18:28

that I was supposed to go to, which was

18:30

Miami Jackson, which is

18:32

a really rough school.

18:34

Like that school had bars that faced

18:36

inward with motor grease on it to

18:38

like prevent people from climbing out to

18:40

skip skip school and stuff like that.

18:42

Like it was, it was wow. And

18:45

and then I was just like, you know what,

18:47

school's not for me. At that time I was

18:49

working like, gosh, I think I was working like

18:51

a busboy job because I always kind of kind

18:54

of had jobs even though I did other dumb

18:56

stuff. And yeah, eventually I was just like, I'm

18:58

not gonna do that anymore. And dropped out real

19:00

young, kept getting in trouble. And then my mom

19:02

was like, you know, we're out of here. She

19:05

always talked about going back to Vegas my

19:07

whole childhood. And it was just like, you

19:10

know, most of the time it's just kind of like

19:12

crazy drunk talk. And then one day we just we

19:14

did it. She had a like her

19:16

tax return saved up and and like

19:19

it was I don't know, like looking back now, I think

19:21

it's like crazy because she had like 3000 bucks,

19:23

which I realize is not a lot of money now. And

19:27

yeah, we drove to Vegas and then, you

19:30

know, I lived there since I was 17 till

19:33

33. So I felt like I was

19:36

born and raised in Miami, but then I kind of

19:38

grew up in Vegas. So yeah,

19:40

felt long winded. I hope I answered.

19:42

No, don't worry about being long winded.

19:44

Like, I mean, just just

19:46

that portrait of young

19:48

Dorian being arrested

19:50

repeatedly and lashing out. I

19:53

think a lot of people can relate to that. You know,

19:57

I had I've had lots of people on

19:59

the podcast. who had relatively rough upbringings, but a

20:01

lot of that was kind

20:03

of like they did it to themselves, like in

20:06

terms of like maybe they didn't have circumstances

20:08

as dire as yours where they're literally greasing

20:10

the bars on the school to keep people

20:12

from climbing over and skipping school. I

20:15

mean, like what kind of crazy

20:17

environment is that? What is that signal

20:19

to kids? We don't trust you

20:22

to be responsible adults. We're gonna literally trap

20:24

you in here as though this were a

20:26

prison, and you're gonna be here for like eight hours a day. It

20:29

doesn't jive with me as an educator. Like I'm trying

20:31

to figure out like the decision process. Yeah,

20:37

so yeah, you're in Vegas, kind

20:39

of like a clean break. You probably separated from

20:42

a lot of like friends that

20:44

were like bad influences and stuff like that. Yeah,

20:47

but old habits die hard, you know,

20:49

kind of similar to my mom having

20:52

struggles of like leaving Vegas,

20:54

going to Miami for a better life,

20:56

but still battling those demons that she

20:58

had. I guess weirdly

21:01

enough, it's kind of like I kind of did

21:03

the same thing. When we went to Vegas, like

21:05

I didn't wanna go to Vegas, even

21:08

though I was coming off my last arrest and

21:10

my mom was able to work something out with

21:12

my probation officer, where she

21:14

got my probation cut early, and

21:16

the last arrest that I had was a

21:19

big one. Like it was possession wouldn't intend to

21:21

distribute, and it was for

21:23

marijuana, but it was a large amount of marijuana that

21:25

we were caught with. She

21:29

basically, I took that to court. It

21:32

cost her money, it cost me a little bit

21:34

of money, because like I said, I was working,

21:36

and we kind of beat that case to where

21:38

I got it reduced, and I was on probation,

21:40

and part of my probation was like, you

21:43

can't leave your home city and move across

21:45

the country, but

21:48

my mom was able to like talk it

21:50

out with the PO and tell him like,

21:52

hey, you know,

21:54

I'm gonna move him to Las Vegas, and

21:57

I wanna get him out of here, because he's gonna get in trouble, and he

21:59

was like. All right, you you you get there

22:01

and you send me a postcard you contact me

22:03

when you get there and I'll like drop it

22:06

but if like if anything happens then you know,

22:08

he's He's looking at being in a

22:10

lot of trouble if and and that kind of worked out

22:12

that way But I didn't want to be there. I I

22:14

was reluctant to go. I I

22:17

loved my hometown, Miami, even though my life was crap

22:19

at the time. I didn't see that I was just

22:21

that was where I grew up. That was where my friends

22:23

were So when we went to Vegas, you

22:25

know like I said, my mom had a small

22:27

amount of money and she like prepaid for an

22:30

apartment and That apartment was

22:32

like a three-month lease Or

22:34

a mini lease that they just kind of took the cash

22:36

up front and when that money ran

22:38

out I wasn't trying to get a job. I wasn't

22:40

trying to work. I wasn't really happy to be there

22:44

So it kind of put us into some struggles and my

22:46

my mom was having a hard time getting a job And

22:48

I wasn't working and then we eventually like got to the

22:50

point where you know We slept in our car for a

22:52

couple days and then I had made friends with a few

22:54

people that eventually let us crash at Their house and I

22:56

remember my mom and I like sleeping on their floor to

22:59

then like renting a room from somebody to

23:01

then eventually like I started working and kind

23:03

of trying to get on like My

23:06

mom started working too and we kind of started getting

23:08

on our feet and you know rented a room for

23:10

someone then eventually We rented from a like a weekly

23:12

apartment that would charge you by the week and

23:14

then we eventually got our own apartment But that

23:17

kind of took some time but those first that

23:19

first year or so man It was still like

23:21

even after that I would say up until like 21

23:25

or so I kind of got away from all

23:27

the bad people I was hanging out with in

23:29

Vegas I still like trouble finds trouble and like

23:32

the friends I started making the people that let

23:34

us like sleep on their floor and Rent

23:36

a room from them. We're still not the best people and

23:39

there you know There was still like a lot of drug

23:41

use going on and a lot of Just

23:44

bad stuff that could have led me down

23:46

the same path. I was already on in

23:48

Miami, but luckily, you know I just by

23:50

by luck I didn't get pulled

23:53

over at the wrong time or I didn't do

23:55

anything Bad enough that would have got

23:57

me arrested again because at that point now I'm an

23:59

adult and things would have been more serious.

24:02

And eventually I was just like, I

24:04

don't know, I was hanging out with

24:06

not the best people and I

24:08

was working a job and I started getting closer

24:10

to 21 and I'm like, man, what am I

24:13

doing? What am I doing with

24:15

my life? I'm kind of hanging out with people that

24:17

aren't doing much and I'm trying to work, I'm trying

24:19

to save money and I'm trying to be a little

24:21

bit better. And I just

24:23

can't really do this anymore. So

24:26

I started distancing myself from friends and by doing

24:28

that I kind of, I

24:30

feel like I just talked about this in a video, but I kind

24:33

of decided to, I'm gonna

24:35

work two jobs. I ended up

24:37

working 16 hour days for three

24:39

months, but that was actually really good because it distanced

24:42

me from some of those friends that I would

24:44

see after work and I was just like,

24:46

I consumed myself with work, which was waiting tables

24:49

at the time and running food in

24:51

the kitchen. And then eventually that led

24:53

to a valet parking job in my

24:55

early 20s, which I did that for

24:57

a while. I was a valet bellman

24:59

at a small boutique hotel, as they

25:01

called it. And then eventually I made

25:04

different friends, started working for a

25:06

valet agency, time went on. I

25:08

still struggled with drinking and smoking weed

25:11

like that. That just kind of followed me my

25:13

whole life, but I stayed away from doing

25:15

a lot of the hard drugs that I was involved

25:17

in when I was younger, like

25:20

in Miami in those first couple of years in

25:22

Vegas. And then eventually I kind of grew

25:24

up, met a girl, we

25:27

started dating and in my late 20s,

25:32

decided to get married. By that

25:34

point I was working a decent

25:36

restaurant job that made

25:38

decent money and my wife was a

25:41

blackjack dealer and she made good money. And

25:44

anyone who's lived in Vegas knows that people

25:46

make careers out of those hospitality jobs and

25:48

we were able to kind of get married

25:50

and buy a house fairly young, just

25:52

good timing. The market was

25:55

just starting to bounce back. We bought a foreclosure.

25:57

We had just got our credit just enough to

25:59

get a FHA loan. and started growing

26:01

up, but at that point, we

26:03

hadn't even had kids yet. And

26:06

I guess I can get into, that's

26:08

when eventually we started talking

26:11

about having kids, and then

26:14

one thing led to another, and we

26:16

end up getting pregnant with

26:19

our first child, and that's when I started

26:21

looking into tech jobs, and thinking

26:23

about maybe changing careers, because I was

26:25

getting sick of parking cars,

26:27

and not that it's a bad job, but I

26:29

didn't want my wife having

26:31

to be a blackjack dealer and me be parking

26:34

cars at a strip club as

26:37

our life goals, you know? Yeah,

26:40

I mean, I think, I

26:42

spoke probably for a lot of people. I

26:44

mean, there are definitely plenty of jobs

26:46

in hospitality that are seen as

26:49

terminal jobs in the sense that, okay,

26:51

I've made it. I'm running an entire

26:54

hotel, right? Or

26:57

I'm a chef at this really good restaurant or

26:59

something like that. But there's

27:02

also a lot of jobs that are seen

27:04

as kind of steps toward something better, right?

27:06

And I would imagine being a valet

27:10

car parker, even a bellman,

27:12

which, is that a higher rank than the?

27:16

A bellman is just who carries your bags. You

27:19

know, there's bellman, doorman, so doormens stand at

27:21

the door and get your door, get you

27:24

cabs, help you with things that you might

27:26

need at the door. Then there's the bellman that's the guys

27:29

that deal with your luggage, take it to your

27:31

room, take it from your car, and then valet.

27:33

The hotel that I worked at was kind of

27:35

like, you were valet bellman, so you kind of

27:37

did it both. And, you know,

27:39

anyone who knows about Vegas jobs, like, man,

27:41

being a valet attendant in Vegas, at

27:44

one point, I think it's gotten bad now with

27:46

Uber, and there's just been a lot of change in

27:48

Vegas since. But at the time, it

27:51

was a decent job to have. You made

27:53

good tip money, and I did have a

27:55

chance to eventually go into a management role

27:58

at my valet bellman. and job that I

28:01

worked at, uh, I eventually became like

28:03

the bell captain, which is the, like

28:05

basically the manager for the valley and,

28:07

um, and, um, and I, I,

28:10

man, I had that job when I was like, I

28:12

was too young to have that job. Um, I was

28:14

probably like 22 or 23 at that time. And,

28:18

um, I hated it. It was my

28:20

first taste of management. And I realized

28:23

that that wasn't really something

28:25

that I enjoyed doing. I was younger than

28:27

everyone else there. They gave me the job

28:29

because I had been working there longer

28:31

than some people. And then the people

28:34

that had seniority on me didn't want

28:36

the job. And I

28:38

kind of understand why now because I didn't know

28:40

any better. And they offered it to me and

28:42

it was kind of like, Hey, you take it

28:44

now, or we're going to like put out a,

28:46

you know, a job rec for it and start

28:48

interviewing people outside of the, the,

28:50

the hotel. And I was just like, all right, I'll

28:52

take it, you know, I'll take it. And then, uh,

28:55

I got a taste for what it's like to like

28:57

have to manage people. And, you

28:59

know, it's, there's a bit of babysitting involved

29:01

and there's like, like listening to people's complaints

29:03

and then having to deal with people taking

29:06

time off or, or just calling in sick.

29:08

And then you got to, you know, deal

29:10

with getting shifts covered. And, and after I

29:12

did that, I was like, I am never

29:14

doing a management job again. I just, I

29:17

was like, why did I take on more responsibility

29:19

for less money? Or essentially that's what you do

29:21

in some of those jobs, because like, you know,

29:23

you can be a hote or you can be

29:25

a hotel manager, but the guy parking cars could

29:27

a lot of the times, you

29:29

know, back then we're, we're making just as much

29:31

money as the managers. Um, so it's just like,

29:34

why, why do so much extra work? Same thing

29:36

in restaurants, right? I worked at, I worked at

29:38

a, a very high end, uh, steak

29:40

house in Vegas. And, um, you know, the,

29:43

the managers there were people who were waiters

29:45

before and got moved into management positions, but

29:47

a lot of the waiters, especially the ones

29:49

that had the good sections and the good

29:51

shifts, like they would make a lot of

29:53

money more than the managers would, and they

29:55

would work, you know, four to six hours

29:58

and the managers would work like 10. hours and

30:01

it was just, it was, you know,

30:03

it sounds like the lazy way to do it,

30:05

but I was just like, I'd rather have more

30:07

free time and not have to work as hard

30:09

and, you know, maybe not have a career out

30:11

of this, but, uh, you know, I'm happy with

30:13

my tip money and, and working four

30:15

to six hours would sound better than working 10

30:17

for the same amount. Yeah. And like, one of

30:19

the things that strikes me from watching a lot

30:21

of your videos and hearing you talk about like

30:23

the nature of work, uh, which,

30:25

which, you know, working as a developer is similar. Like

30:27

you can be, uh, an individual

30:29

contributor. You can just say, okay, I'm checking

30:31

in here. It's my work to be done. I'm going to

30:33

be coding all day. I'll go to some meetings, uh,

30:36

and then I'm going to go home. All right.

30:38

But the manager has to like figure out how

30:40

to coordinate and they're probably also having to code

30:42

and like, you know, fix other people's

30:44

code and do other stuff on top of just,

30:46

you know, their own responsibility. So

30:49

there's almost like this, uh, kind of

30:51

like Fosse and Bargain, like, you

30:53

can either let people promote you

30:55

to a manager, which sooner or later, if you're doing a

30:57

good job, somebody will probably approach you and be like, Hey,

31:00

you should be the manager. You can

31:02

either like take that management or you can become

31:05

subjected to the management of whoever's

31:07

foolish enough to take that job. So it's kind

31:09

of like, do I want a, you know, a

31:11

bad manager or am I willing to like become

31:13

a manager? So it all has to deal with

31:15

like a bad manager, you know? Um,

31:17

but I imagine like

31:19

a lot of the people who become

31:22

managers, like, you know, they're like, not

31:25

the kind of people you want to give power to.

31:28

And now you're reporting to somebody who, uh, who's like,

31:30

you know, all, uh, you know, pulling rank on you

31:32

and stuff, right? Yeah. Did that

31:34

happen? No, it does. It

31:36

definitely does happen. Um, for the most part,

31:38

I think that some people that do become

31:41

managers, I think there's a bit of like

31:43

that stability aspect. I know, I know people,

31:45

at least in, in, you know, the, the,

31:47

the waiting world, uh, uh, you

31:49

know, the restaurant world, it

31:52

comes with, you

31:55

can't wait tables forever. Although there are people

31:57

that do like I met 60 year

31:59

old waiters. that have been waiters their

32:01

whole lives and that they were career waiters.

32:03

And I think eventually people move into those

32:06

management positions because there is more

32:08

room for growth and to make it a career

32:10

because many times you'll become like a supervisor,

32:13

like a wait staff supervisor, and then you

32:15

move into like a management role. And then

32:18

you move into like a higher management role.

32:20

And then eventually like you become the general

32:22

manager at the steakhouse that I worked at,

32:24

there's a real like Cinderella story of the

32:26

person who was the president of the company.

32:29

And he started as a

32:31

dishwasher and just

32:33

years and years and years of

32:35

working for that company, he

32:38

eventually from dishwasher to,

32:42

we didn't do Busboys,

32:45

sorry, I don't know if I cut out there, my phone started

32:47

ringing. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. We didn't

32:49

do Busboys, but it was waiter teams, but he

32:51

eventually started as like the food runner and

32:54

because there was a back waiter and a front

32:56

waiter, and then he moved up to a waiter

32:58

and then he moved up to like another position

33:00

and another position. And then eventually he was a

33:02

general manager. And then the next thing you know,

33:04

he's in charge of 10 restaurants and he's like

33:06

the highest guy on the list. And

33:09

when you hear stuff like that, like that

33:11

really is possible. And that was something that

33:14

my mom knew about Vegas

33:16

that sounded, it didn't

33:18

sound real when she would tell me when

33:20

I was younger and it was just like,

33:22

yeah, whatever. You're not gonna go to Vegas

33:25

and have no high school diploma, no kind

33:27

of experience doing any real

33:29

jobs and just become a waiter and then be

33:31

set for life. But there was some of that

33:33

too. Of course you still had to work hard

33:35

and you still had to do a good job,

33:37

which eventually gets you promoted. Like I have a

33:39

good friend of mine now who, he

33:42

was fairly degenerate like I was, maybe not as

33:44

bad as I was, but I met him when

33:47

we first moved to Vegas and he's a good buddy

33:49

of mine, still talked to him. He

33:51

was at my wedding, but he has now

33:54

moved his way up to, I wanna

33:56

say he's like assistant general manager of, like

33:59

the, Tom's Resort, which is

34:02

like, you know, kind

34:04

of a big deal. And he started off, same

34:06

thing, you know, like he was parking cars. I

34:08

got him some of his first like jobs and

34:11

he's moved his way up the ranks. And

34:13

now he's got like a good

34:15

title and eventually he'll become like the general

34:18

manager and, you know, he could

34:20

continue to go up and he's also a

34:22

high school dropout. So, you know, there is

34:24

potential there. But when you don't have like

34:26

a lot going for you, like those are

34:28

like your best case scenarios and a lot

34:31

of people don't end up like

34:33

in a spot like that. But yeah, for me,

34:35

it was just like, I don't know. I just

34:37

didn't like the extra responsibility. You mentioned that with

34:40

like software and it's true. And there's kind of

34:42

like a meme where people will tell you like

34:44

the longer you work as a programmer, the less

34:46

code you write. And it

34:48

does seem like when you have more experience,

34:50

you do become, you know,

34:53

like eventually you'll start mentoring some newer

34:55

developers and you might take like a

34:57

junior developer and you're under your

34:59

wing. And then that's like a little more responsibility

35:01

where you're kind of watching over someone else's code

35:03

and you're trying to help them write their code,

35:05

which will cut into some of your time. And

35:07

then you'll start getting more meetings because there's more

35:10

higher level decisions that need to be made

35:12

that don't really require you just sitting there

35:14

writing code. You need to start talking about

35:17

architectural decisions. You need to be parts of

35:19

hiring processes because you have more experience and

35:21

you understand the code base better and you know

35:23

the process is better. So middle

35:26

management and upper management will

35:28

want your input on a lot more things. And

35:30

then eventually, like you said, you do kind of

35:32

go into potentially

35:34

a manager role or like a tech lead

35:37

role where you become the go-to

35:39

guy for certain things. And then next thing you

35:41

know, you're in way more

35:43

meetings and you're like writing code very little.

35:45

And it's like, hey, like I started this

35:47

to write code and that's like what I

35:50

enjoyed. And now I'm just kind of managing

35:52

people and I hardly ever get to write

35:54

code. And when I do, I get interrupted.

35:58

Yeah, yeah, manage your mind. versus

36:03

creator mind, I guess. I can't remember the exact terms.

36:05

But basically, it's two completely different types of work. And

36:08

if you want to be able to succeed, do you have

36:10

to figure out a way to compartmentalize the two? I'll

36:13

get a little bit autobiographical here and say that

36:15

I only check my email two or three

36:17

times a week. Because that's

36:19

manager mind stuff. And then

36:21

when I do, I try to hit inbox zero. But

36:24

I can't be having notifications. You just go to the

36:26

new email. It

36:29

just pulls me out of what I'm actually trying

36:31

to do, which might be watching

36:33

as many Dorian develops videos as possible and

36:36

researching and reading your blog and all that

36:38

stuff. And then suddenly, I have zero notifications

36:40

on my phone. Even

36:43

if people call me, I don't get a notification. I

36:45

just call people back. And I know that's kind of

36:47

like, people might be, oh, that's such an egotistical thing.

36:51

You'll talk to them. They won't be able to talk to you. But

36:55

it works for me. One

36:58

thing I want to emphasize, though, is

37:00

you are a high school dropout. You

37:03

dropped out in ninth grade. People

37:05

who've listened to the podcast may know this about me. But I dropped

37:07

out in 10th grade. I spent a year living

37:09

in my car, just eventually

37:13

made enough money working at grocery stores and stuff like that

37:15

to basically be able to pay one of my friends so

37:17

I could sleep on his floor. And

37:20

just gradually worked from there and got

37:22

the apartment and eventually was able to pay

37:24

$1,000 a semester to

37:27

go to a state university in

37:29

the middle of Oklahoma that people probably

37:31

haven't heard of. But it

37:33

was a pretty good school in 1999, 2000. And

37:40

it was just extremely inexpensive. And from

37:42

there, I went to China and pursued

37:45

a lot of opportunity. But

37:49

I want to emphasize that just because you

37:51

had success is a dropout, just because I've

37:53

had success is a dropout, just because your

37:55

friend had success as a dropout and has

37:57

been able to climb the ranks

37:59

at. at the Palm and

38:01

probably has an illustrious career

38:03

ahead of him. For

38:06

those, listen, I hope you all agree with

38:08

this sentiment. Mr. T says,

38:11

don't be a fool, stay in school. And like,

38:13

I just wanna emphasize that. Like, please don't think

38:15

like, if you're in high school listening to this,

38:18

don't think like, oh, like they're giving me permission

38:20

to follow my dreams and drop out of school.

38:22

I do strongly recommend finishing school. I also strongly

38:24

recommend going to college. So just because Dorian didn't

38:26

go, I did go to college. I even got

38:29

a graduate degree. Please,

38:32

your mileage may vary. And we're not advocating

38:35

anybody drop out of school. I just wanna

38:37

say that like, again, just to make sure

38:39

people don't get the wrong impression from us.

38:42

So with that, you're

38:45

working as a valet, you

38:47

have this wife who's working as a blackjack

38:50

dealer. Both are good, you know, stable

38:52

jobs in Las Vegas. And it may

38:54

sound like weird, but Las Vegas is

38:57

a weird place. It's

38:59

a place in the desert that shouldn't exist. They've

39:01

done all kinds of ingenious stuff with like

39:03

water recycling and things like that to make

39:06

the city viable. They have figured out all

39:08

kinds of crazy attractions like this big ball

39:10

thing that like has images on it, like

39:12

these amazing like fountain shows. You can just

39:14

walk around the Las Vegas trip and just

39:17

see an incredible ornate, like

39:20

an incredibly garish architecture and

39:22

just like everything is crazy and amped up to 11

39:25

in Las Vegas. Like if you haven't visited Las Vegas, I

39:28

don't gamble and I strongly advocate that

39:30

people don't gamble. But I

39:33

mean, these are like temples of vice basically.

39:35

Like it's just like a monument to like

39:37

human degeneracy. But it's like very interesting. There's

39:39

some really cool stuff in Vegas too. Like

39:42

I went to the pinball hall of fame.

39:44

I don't know, have you ever been over

39:46

there? Yeah, I actually, I used

39:48

to live on Tropicana. So

39:50

I would drive past it like when they first

39:52

opened it up. I never actually set foot in

39:55

there, but I know enough of it and I've

39:57

seen enough pictures. Like I'm familiar with it. And

39:59

it's actually. supposed to be really cool. It's

40:02

so cool. So like they the

40:04

owner takes like all the proceeds every year. Not I'm

40:06

not sure if it's all of it but like millions

40:08

of dollars and donate some to charity and it's basically

40:10

you walk in and you get some quarters and it's

40:12

reasonable. You spend like 50 cents to play

40:14

pinball and stuff like it's not like some crazy

40:16

like get a card so it confuses you as

40:18

to how much you're spending and use credits and

40:21

like walk around and like get a bunch of

40:23

tickets. No it's like all retro pinball machines. There

40:25

are a few arcade machines there as well but

40:27

if you're in Vegas definitely hit up the pinball

40:29

hall of fame. But you

40:32

know it's a very cool city. My brother lived there for

40:34

a while so we did go out there

40:36

quite a bit and yeah

40:38

it's just unlike any other city I've ever been to.

40:40

I mean it might be the only city that's like

40:43

that in the western world. You might say like Macau

40:45

or something in the eastern world or UAE.

40:47

I'm not sure what other places would

40:50

be similar to that kind of like desert paradise

40:52

so to speak but that's

40:55

the glitzy like touristy perspective

40:57

of Vegas. What was it actually like

40:59

being kind of a working you

41:01

know the working class like hospitality

41:03

worker? So it's it's

41:06

pretty funny right because you think of Vegas

41:08

and a lot of people will be like

41:10

I couldn't live there man it'd be too

41:12

crazy and and there's some truth to that

41:14

like there's there's like it's a very real

41:16

thing when you when you meet friends who

41:18

are you know addicted to gambling or you know

41:20

alcohol because it's just a 24-hour city you can

41:22

you can get a drink at six in

41:24

the morning like it's it's like like

41:27

there there is no limit to how how bad you

41:29

can let it get but I remember

41:31

when I like very early when I

41:33

first moved there like we were walking

41:36

into a grocery store because there's slot machines

41:38

in grocery stores like

41:40

you walk into Albertsons and there's a gambling

41:42

section and I remember hearing someone just kind

41:44

of say out loud like how

41:47

am I supposed to buy groceries now and I

41:49

was like whoa that's crazy you came in here

41:51

with grocery money and you put it in the

41:54

machine and now you're you don't have groceries like

41:56

that's the the reality it's hardcore Vegas could be

41:58

if you live there but For most

42:00

people, I will say that there's a

42:02

lot of us that just

42:05

kind of live regular lives, right? But since

42:07

if you work in the industry, right, if

42:09

you work in the nightclubs, if you work

42:11

in the hotels, you kind of

42:13

do everything like on a Tuesday or

42:15

Wednesday, right? Like industry night is usually

42:18

like Monday, Tuesday, or

42:20

Wednesday, because that's when most people

42:22

would have their days off because

42:25

most people worked on the weekends because

42:27

most people work at the hotels. There

42:29

are some corporate jobs there. And one of

42:31

my first developer jobs was for Caesar's entertainment, which

42:33

is like Caesar's palace and all of the different

42:35

hotels that they own. And like, I worked a

42:38

nine to five when I got that job, and

42:40

it was in the corporate office. But for the

42:42

most part, the majority of people that live in

42:44

Vegas work in the industry. But you

42:46

know, there are some things that do get somewhat

42:49

like normalized, like, you

42:51

know, it's not rare for you to go

42:54

out to like a bar and put money

42:56

in a machine because they're just the bars

42:58

are all lined up with video poker machines

43:01

and, and ways to gamble or like go

43:03

bet on sporting events, because it's just accessible

43:06

to you everywhere. We're like now I remember when I

43:08

first moved out of Vegas, there was like some UFC

43:10

fights and I was like, Oh man, I wish I

43:12

could bet on this fight. And I'm calling my buddy

43:14

like, like, like if he was a bookie and I'm

43:16

like, Hey man, go put some money on this fight

43:18

for me. And I was just like, what am I

43:20

doing? You know, but it's just like something that

43:22

just comes very normalized. Yeah.

43:24

Like the act of gambling, which gambling

43:27

is probably like, I've seen,

43:29

you know, a lot

43:32

of drug addiction, a lot of addiction

43:34

to other bad things, but gambling is

43:37

the thing that is just probably the

43:39

most ruinous of all because it destroys

43:41

entire families, like financially. And, and

43:43

I don't know if you want to talk about that. If you got any,

43:46

you know, personally, I

43:50

luckily have never gotten like gambling

43:52

was just something that I mean,

43:54

I've lost some money, you know, but

43:57

I've never gotten into like financial troubles

43:59

because It's always been like a

44:01

few hundred bucks here or some extra money

44:03

that I had that I probably shouldn't have

44:05

gambled and I always Have the same feeling

44:08

afterwards. It's that why did I do that?

44:10

I lost a hundred bucks. I lost 200

44:12

bucks I could have bought this thing

44:14

that I wanted to buy that I've been saying I

44:16

can't afford that But then I go and gamble this

44:18

away and and it always had like I

44:20

never Like there was

44:22

only a couple times ever where I intentionally

44:25

went out of my

44:27

way to go gamble But since

44:29

it's just everywhere you anywhere

44:31

you go if you go out to go bowling

44:33

you walk through a casino So then you end

44:35

up like alright, I'll play a little blackjack. I'll

44:38

play some craps and then it's like ah crap

44:41

Yeah, you know pun intended Unintended

44:45

But yeah, you know like one birthday I

44:48

was just like I'm gonna have some fun and then

44:50

I gambled away like 500 bucks and I remember just

44:52

being like Oh, I was so stupid Like

44:55

could have used that money and I've known

44:57

people that that You

44:59

know friends of friends, you know Acquaintances

45:01

where you hear those stories where it's

45:04

just like yeah They they had the

45:06

leaf because they couldn't continue living here

45:08

because they just had such a bad

45:10

gambling problem and then there's different types

45:12

of jobs that you'll see like like

45:15

bartenders they tend to Really

45:19

It's probably one of the hardest jobs to

45:21

have especially if you work in as a

45:24

bartender in a bar that has gambling

45:27

Because there's a very common thing for you

45:30

to like clock out of your shift and

45:32

then walk Around to the other

45:34

side of the bar sit down order a

45:36

drink and start gambling like right then and

45:38

there also You know a lot of bartenders

45:40

will also drink with their customers there at

45:42

the big hotels You won't see that but

45:44

you'll see that more in like smaller

45:46

like little bars Which

45:49

it's it's just it's

45:51

so weird because like thinking about it I'm

45:53

like gosh that really isn't normal, but it

45:55

just becomes kind of normal and yes, you

45:57

know like it's not just by virtue

45:59

of it being pervasive everywhere. You

46:03

wouldn't walk like, so

46:05

just like, there have been

46:08

lots of studies of human beings, you're

46:10

walking through a parking lot and

46:13

you've got some trash in your hand and you're like, oh, there's a

46:15

trash can over there, or I need to find a trash can for

46:17

this. And you see a big pile of trash and

46:19

human beings, at least

46:21

according to, they always do

46:23

these psychological studies with a bunch of university

46:25

students and stuff, whoever they have on hand, and

46:28

it's debatable whether these results are

46:30

reproducible, but there are lots of

46:33

studies I think that have shown that if people

46:35

see a bunch of trash lying around, they'll be

46:37

less inclined to go find a trash can somewhere

46:39

and just throw their trash onto the pile of

46:42

existing trash. And little things like that, when you're

46:44

constantly swimming through slot machines and

46:46

things like that that are designed to take

46:48

your money basically and give you... It's always

46:50

a net zero or a

46:52

net negative expected value whenever

46:54

you're gambling basically. The

46:57

only skill intensive games in

46:59

Vegas, like poker and

47:01

blackjack, I guess if you use like,

47:04

there's some great videos. I'll share a video

47:06

about like advantage blackjack or

47:08

whatever, but keep in mind, I

47:11

have never gambled. I've never gambled with my money

47:13

and I'm too scared to

47:15

even try it because I'm somewhat compulsive

47:17

and I'm deathly afraid that next

47:19

thing you know, I'm running some sort of

47:21

crypto scam or something like that to try to

47:23

like get money so that I can gamble

47:26

more. Because it seems like a lot of scammers

47:28

and a lot of things like it goes back

47:30

to they got addicted to gambling and that's why

47:32

they need these incredible amounts of money to be

47:35

able to survive because they're just hemorrhaging money

47:37

everywhere they go because they're like

47:40

degenerately betting on sports. And I've

47:42

watched some crazy movies about this. Casino,

47:45

of course, Martin Scorsese movie. It's

47:49

like a TV series called lucky from

47:51

like 2010 or something. It was only like 13 episodes.

47:55

You can find on YouTube, but it's about like this gambling

47:57

addict that lives in Las

48:00

Vegas and it started starting the

48:02

guy from Sex and the City the tall guy Aiden

48:05

the Aiden character from Sex and the City my

48:08

wife watched that show when she was in college. So

48:10

that's how I know that but I

48:13

don't want you to think like I'm like I'm like I'm wanting it the

48:15

end of the day and watching Sex and the City It's not my cup

48:17

of tea, but But that

48:19

guy like like he's like, you know World

48:21

series of poker champion itself and he proceeds

48:23

to just gamble like destroy his

48:25

life over and over again you

48:28

know like like and I'm not obviously

48:30

that's a work of fiction, but there are plenty

48:32

of works of you know, like essays

48:35

and stuff about like the corrosive Effect

48:38

of gambling and yet, you know people

48:41

are gonna gamble Right like that's

48:43

that's just how it is and the fact that there's like this legally

48:46

sanctioned place where it can be regulated You

48:48

know, some people may argue that's a good thing But

48:51

but you were like right there in the belly

48:53

of the beast and seeing bartenders who were you

48:55

know Clocking out and going straight to the

48:57

video poker and stuff like that And

49:00

then you ultimately worked for one

49:02

of the biggest, you know, gambling conglomerates, I

49:04

guess as a software engineer Can

49:06

you talk about like was that one of your first?

49:09

Okay. That was my first job. Yeah as

49:12

a dead Well, let's let's talk. I want to talk about

49:14

your learn to code journey and I don't want people to

49:16

think like Oh, you know Quincy's just gonna spend the entire

49:19

Podcast like expounding upon vice and how

49:21

gambling is bad and things like that

49:23

like like you

49:26

do you but like It's

49:28

it's not a net positive expected value

49:30

like the house always wins right like

49:33

Otherwise there wouldn't be these giant buildings that cost

49:35

millions and millions of dollars to build like they

49:37

were built for a reason It's a business for

49:39

a reason. It's not like a charity This is

49:42

not like you're going to a food bank and

49:44

getting free money or something, right? like

49:47

they and and it is Studied

49:49

to you know, they've got PhDs in You

49:53

know human behavior like basically figuring out more ways that

49:55

they can get you in a Skinner box and like

49:58

Part you with with your money, right? and

50:00

they've got financial engineers figuring out new legal ways that they

50:02

can get you to like sign over more and more of

50:04

your future and go further into

50:06

debt and yeah like it's it's

50:08

terrifying that this stuff exists but it

50:10

exists but what

50:13

we're here to talk about is your journey

50:15

into coding and not every single job you've

50:17

done has bet at a you

50:19

know casino company like you've done a lot of other

50:21

work and stuff like that but because you were in

50:24

vegas and those were the employers there let's

50:27

talk about kind of like your journey sorry

50:29

I'm like yeah really trying to do

50:31

this up for you yeah no

50:33

no no worries okay so my

50:35

learn to code journey was interesting

50:38

so it didn't start with

50:40

coding actually like it started with me

50:43

trying to get into uh networking the

50:46

what happened was we had my wife

50:48

had a friend who came to visit

50:51

for deathcon which if you're familiar with

50:53

deathcon they actually hosted deathcon

50:55

at the hotel that i worked at

50:58

as a valet bellman for almost

51:01

like the like from the

51:03

inception of deathcon up until they moved um

51:06

to the i think it was the rio

51:08

where they first went to i don't know

51:10

where they're holding it now but deathcon is

51:12

this this this hacker convention and

51:15

they come in there and

51:17

they they rent the place out and they

51:19

have they they hack they try to you

51:21

know break in the stuff i

51:23

remember when i worked at that hotel they would

51:26

like hack the tv system and they would hack

51:28

like everything and it was just like there was

51:30

this one rule that it was just like you

51:32

are not allowed to hack like our financial stuff

51:34

like you can't hack our actual computer system but

51:36

other than that they they allowed them like free

51:38

free rein and um one year there

51:41

was actually sorry one famous thing about deathcon if

51:43

you want to go to deathcon if

51:45

you can figure out how to sneak into the

51:47

event like or or like print like fabricate

51:49

like something they have really good security as you can

51:51

imagine if you can figure out a way to get

51:53

into the event without paying they will just let

51:56

you in that's like part but

51:58

you have to disclose like how you got in so that

52:00

they can patch that to other people. So next

52:02

year, somebody will have to find some new vulnerability

52:05

to a dev, right? That's fun. That's fun. Yeah.

52:07

I would sit, I would watch what they did.

52:09

It's funny because from the

52:11

time that I, like I was familiar

52:13

with what Defcon was because I worked

52:15

the event or I worked at the hotel that held

52:17

the event to the time that I actually decided

52:20

to learn something about software was like,

52:22

I hadn't been at that hotel for

52:24

a long time. And I

52:27

only knew of Defcon because I had

52:29

worked it. And then my wife's friend who came

52:31

to visit was there visiting for it. And I'm

52:33

like, Oh, I remember Defcon. And they have a

52:35

game they call spot the fed where, because they

52:37

have actual FBI goes there to kind of like

52:40

see what they're talking about. And they're undercover for

52:42

the most part. So they'll play this game called

52:44

spot the fed, where if you're able to spot

52:46

out the FBI agent or guess who might be

52:48

an FBI agent, like they give away prizes and

52:50

stuff like that. Like, and one year

52:53

I wasn't working there, but I heard

52:55

from security, they actually busted this like

52:57

big hacker who was there for the

52:59

event. And he had hacked into some

53:01

banking systems and in Europe and like

53:03

they FBI busted them at Defcon. So

53:06

it's just it's wild. So my, my, my

53:08

wife's friend is, is visiting for Defcon. He's

53:11

not a hacker, but he goes there to

53:13

party with all his buddies that all work

53:16

in some form of, of hacking.

53:18

And he kept saying, man, you got to

53:20

learn Linux. That's the, which is like looking

53:22

back now is like, that is the most

53:24

vague thing that you can tell someone like,

53:27

while you could tell someone, Hey, yeah, learn

53:29

Linux. When you actually start learning Linux, Linux,

53:31

you're like, what do you like the operating

53:33

system? Like, what do you mean? Learn Linux.

53:36

And, but that's the advice he gave me

53:38

because all of his friends from Defcon, they,

53:41

they had some knowledge of Linux and

53:43

he just, I guess from, you know,

53:45

that secondhand information, he's like, I just keep

53:47

hearing them say that they, they know Linux. So

53:49

you should learn Linux, which that

53:51

eventually led me down like this rabbit hole

53:54

of like, let me look into this stuff.

53:56

And then I had another friend who was

53:58

actually, he worked cybersecurity. and

54:00

he had a background in that, he was

54:03

ex-military, and he worked for the Department of

54:05

Energy, and he's the one that kind of

54:07

gave me a little bit better of a

54:09

roadmap, and he was like, you need to

54:11

go get your comT-asserts. He's like, if you

54:13

want to work your way into this stuff,

54:15

you need to start with the A+, get

54:18

your Net+, and get your Security+, and then

54:20

you can kind of figure out where you're gonna go from there.

54:23

So I end up starting to study for

54:25

the A+, and I

54:28

study, I brain dump for like, gosh,

54:30

like six months. I overstudied. I

54:34

passed, I was worried because it cost like 250 bucks

54:37

per test, and the comTia is like two tests, so

54:39

it would have been close to like $500. It

54:42

might have been a little less than that, but I

54:44

didn't want to fail it, so I got. I'm

54:47

at the strip club where I park

54:49

cars, and at this point in time,

54:51

I'm watching videos, I have flashcards of

54:53

the questions that I might get asked,

54:55

and I'm like studying flashcards in between

54:57

cars that I'm parking, and

55:01

I eventually get my comTia A+, and then

55:04

I start looking for, like I try

55:06

to start looking for jobs in

55:09

the process of me going and starting

55:11

to learn my Net+, for

55:13

the next cert, and then

55:15

I start like going down the rabbit

55:17

hole of like, possibly learning Cisco certifications,

55:20

and the CCNA, and like the different

55:22

certs could eventually get me to like

55:24

a network engineer job, and

55:27

at this point, I'm just getting

55:29

really bored of it. I just,

55:31

I start studying IP addresses, and

55:34

subnet mask, and like how different

55:37

packets are transferred over the internet, and

55:39

I'm just like, ah, this is so boring,

55:41

and I'm like just studying the passive test,

55:44

which like nobody really likes to. Maybe

55:46

there are some people out there that might enjoy that,

55:48

but like, studying the passive test is not fun. Andrew

55:51

Brown on the Free Code Game channel, he's passed

55:53

like more than 50 certification exams. He's

55:57

like a former CTO who just like

55:59

loves taking. Test and if you

56:01

if you're familiar with the free coke game

56:03

of YouTube channel, you'll see like every month

56:05

or two We'll have a new Andrew Brown

56:07

course where he's got like a comprehensive like

56:09

10 15 hour video that basically teaches

56:11

you everything You need to know to pass XYZ

56:14

cert now I don't know if he has them for

56:16

like we I think we do maybe have some comp

56:18

He has specific ones But the comte is like a

56:21

huge certification with huge corpus of knowledge that you need

56:23

to learn whereas he most Andrew

56:25

Brown mostly covers like certifications

56:28

focused on like You

56:30

know Azure cloud certifications rate of those cloud

56:33

certification Sorry, I didn't mean to disrupt your

56:35

flow, but I didn't want to point out

56:37

There's at least one human being on earth

56:39

who really likes taking this earning certifications. He's

56:41

got to catch them all He's

56:44

got to be like the only one actually my brother-in-law Who's

56:47

an electrician? He's actually a licensed Master

56:51

electrician in like almost 40 states and

56:53

he's going for every every state and

56:55

that's crazy. Why? Yeah, you just I

56:58

so There's like he's

57:00

able to like get work by

57:04

Basically being the licensed electrician on

57:07

staff so there's like companies that

57:09

will pay him to to consult

57:11

for them basically because they need

57:13

to have a licensed electrician on

57:15

staff and So

57:17

he it's like a whole side hustle. I

57:19

don't I don't know how much of a gray area it

57:21

is I don't want to like let out too much, but

57:23

he he's been doing it for a

57:25

while And it's like his retirement plan and even my

57:28

so that you know my

57:30

wife's family. They come from a long line of Electricians

57:33

like their dad was an electrician. That's

57:35

how they became electricians. So her

57:38

dad has even completed a few of the

57:41

Certifications to be a master electrician in different

57:43

states And I think he's he's actually on

57:46

the payroll for a couple companies that kind of

57:48

you know Send them some money every month just

57:51

to be on on their list

57:53

of electricians because they need to have

57:55

a Master electrician and not it's

57:57

kind of hard to find master electrician, so He

58:00

studies certs all the time and he's familiar with the

58:02

process because I was telling him my story a little

58:04

bit. He was like, oh yeah. He's like, that's how

58:06

I have to do my test where you go and

58:09

you show your ID and they have a camera on

58:11

you and you have to be at the computer to

58:13

make sure you're not cheating. That's how they do it

58:15

for the CompTIA search too. I forget what

58:17

the name of that company that runs those testing

58:19

things. It's called CompTIA. CompTIA,

58:22

no, but there's like a Pearson View. Oh,

58:25

you're talking about the actual like, test

58:27

proctoring. Yeah. Yeah, I think Pearson

58:29

View, Longman, like, uh... There's

58:32

a few of them. I'm trying to remember

58:34

some of the other names, but it doesn't matter.

58:36

But basically, there are these companies that do like

58:38

proctoring and a lot of those, like, you know,

58:40

the way FricoCamp is developing proctoring is

58:43

it's, you know, human proctored, but we

58:45

just have like, you know, AI

58:47

watch the video and then flag it for like

58:49

a human to look like, oh, it's really weird.

58:52

But like, there have been

58:54

a lot of, just total side

58:56

note, there have been a lot of people on like,

58:58

Reddit, on Twitter, like, I got failed for this exam

59:00

and I did not cheat. Like, why

59:03

did they, you know, fail

59:05

me on this exam? Now I'm going to retake

59:07

it. It's humiliating. And like, I spent all this

59:09

time, I spent all this money and they think

59:11

I cheated, but I didn't actually cheat. I was

59:13

just like a false positive in their system. And

59:16

I will say that FricoCamp, when we roll out

59:19

those kinds of exams, which we're going to announce

59:22

in a, you know, probably around our 10th

59:24

birthday, which might have actually already passed

59:26

by the time this goes live. But I

59:29

want to emphasize there will always be a human in the loop. And,

59:31

and yeah, since these certifications are free,

59:33

you don't lose any money, even if

59:35

you did, you know, get off

59:39

if we did get a false positive, but we should never get a false

59:41

positive because we're going to err on the side of caution. Anyway. Nice.

59:43

So, sorry. Yeah.

59:49

There's a huge industry of professional

59:51

kind of like test proctoring. So you can sit on

59:53

your computer. You don't have to report to a test

59:55

center. Like you used to have to. A lot of

59:57

this was accelerated by COVID. Yeah,

1:00:00

but yeah, back to your story.

1:00:05

Sorry. I can't help myself. I

1:00:07

can easily digress too because I'm like, oh, he does a lot of

1:00:09

continuous education where he has it like,

1:00:11

as he's on his phone watching videos, occasionally it'll

1:00:13

ask him for a picture just to show that

1:00:15

he's actually there and made me think of like

1:00:17

the different process that they try to do for

1:00:19

like these remote learning platforms. To

1:00:23

just go back to what

1:00:25

we were talking about. Prometric is the thing that I

1:00:27

couldn't say earlier, but that's

1:00:30

another big company. Sorry. Gotcha.

1:00:33

No worries. Yeah, no worries. No worries. So

1:00:36

yeah, so then I'm just, I find myself, if

1:00:38

you ever seen the CCNA book for

1:00:41

Cisco, it's like this thick. I mean, it's

1:00:43

like, it's like four. Just

1:00:45

for those listening to the audio, it's like

1:00:47

your full grip, like your thumb to your

1:00:49

index finger. If you were to stretch out

1:00:51

your hand, it's like, yeah, it's like my

1:00:53

personal Instagram, which

1:00:55

I don't share. And I don't think anyone knows there's

1:00:57

actually a picture of when I was studying from like

1:01:01

2016 where I'm like sitting on my hammock and I have that

1:01:03

book on my lap and it just, it looks like a phone

1:01:05

book. And anyone, anyone who's

1:01:07

not over 35 probably doesn't

1:01:10

know what a phone book is anymore.

1:01:12

But it just, just, it's just massive.

1:01:14

And you know, I'm watching videos, I'm studying

1:01:16

for this thing and I'm just like, I

1:01:19

don't want to do this anymore. I just started to get

1:01:21

super bored of it. And then like a buddy of

1:01:23

mine that I worked with at the

1:01:25

time at the strip club at the spearmint rhino, which

1:01:28

if you're familiar with Vegas, it's like the

1:01:30

most famous strip club in the world. And

1:01:33

we're parking cars there. And you know, he's,

1:01:35

he's a kind of a tech guy. His,

1:01:38

his cousin owned like a

1:01:40

computer repair, you know, a

1:01:43

two year door kind of service. And you

1:01:46

know, I was trying to get a job with

1:01:48

him and I had my A plus and like

1:01:50

the only person that called me back was geek

1:01:52

squad and you know, not to down talk. He's

1:01:54

one of like best buys, I see

1:01:57

support. Yes. But at the time,

1:01:59

like I'm making really good

1:02:01

money working three, four days a week,

1:02:03

parking cars, and like geek

1:02:06

squad would have been such a downgrade and

1:02:08

pay for me that I

1:02:10

couldn't like, it just made no sense for me to

1:02:12

take that job. Like I, I could not say like,

1:02:14

Oh yeah, I'm going to quit my valet job and

1:02:16

go work at geek squad, even if it was part

1:02:19

time, but I couldn't get any work with the A

1:02:21

plus. So I was like kind of forced to keep

1:02:23

studying and I, I didn't want

1:02:25

to do it. And I'm talking to my buddy who's the

1:02:27

tech guy who kind of was a not, not the guy

1:02:29

that came from death con, but the guy that I worked

1:02:31

with that was just into tech and he saw me studying

1:02:33

for these certs. And, and he was just

1:02:35

like, why don't you learn how to code, man? He's like,

1:02:38

you love it. And like, I, you know, me and him

1:02:40

were like, we worked together almost every

1:02:42

day. So he kind of knew my personality. He

1:02:44

saw how hard I was studying. He saw me

1:02:46

there with flashcards in between like

1:02:49

parking cars. And he's like, dude, you'd

1:02:51

love it. He's like, I, you know,

1:02:53

I've, I've got a Udemy

1:02:56

course that I've started and this and that. And

1:02:58

the whole time I'm like, no, no, I'm going

1:03:00

to do this. No, no, I'm going to do

1:03:02

this. And then finally, like one day I, I,

1:03:04

I, I'm starting to think

1:03:06

like either this is what actually happened or I can't

1:03:09

remember now. Cause it was so long ago. He was

1:03:11

like, he's like, dude, here's my login

1:03:13

information for my Udemy. He's like, you don't

1:03:15

have to pay for it. Like it's your

1:03:17

Friday. Go and just watch

1:03:19

a few videos. And it was

1:03:21

a Ruby on rails bootcamp on

1:03:24

Udemy. And

1:03:26

I started with the HTML and CSS stuff

1:03:28

on there. And that like that, like one

1:03:30

thing led to another. And

1:03:33

then I got to like the JavaScript portion. I was

1:03:35

like, oh, this got, it got too complicated for me,

1:03:37

but I liked it. I saw like, I was like,

1:03:39

oh, this is, this is actually kind of cool. And

1:03:42

then I ended up buying a few

1:03:44

other Udemy courses. I eventually found free

1:03:46

code camp, which became like a like

1:03:49

one of my primary learning resources throughout

1:03:51

my, my learning process because you know,

1:03:53

it took me like I

1:03:55

almost, almost a year worth of studying,

1:03:57

like almost every day of. learning

1:04:00

how to code to get there. I

1:04:02

remember right before the interview

1:04:06

for my first dev job, I

1:04:08

remember the night before I was

1:04:11

doing the whole beginner portion of

1:04:13

the JavaScript on Free Code Camp,

1:04:15

which is funny talking to you

1:04:17

now. But that was in

1:04:19

2017, and I was just, I

1:04:24

just was about to turn 33. My

1:04:27

son was born, my daughter was already

1:04:29

born, because I started learning about

1:04:32

the Net Plus and all the CompTIA stuff

1:04:35

as my wife was pregnant with

1:04:37

our first born, and then when I switched over to

1:04:40

learning how to code, my next baby

1:04:42

was born, and we had our first kid that was

1:04:44

already six months old. And it's funny because, as

1:04:47

a disclaimer, don't go thinking

1:04:49

that having kids is the solution to

1:04:52

you getting your life together, but it

1:04:54

really made me want to do better.

1:04:58

And because now I felt like I had, I

1:05:01

had human beings that

1:05:04

I needed to take care of, and

1:05:06

I couldn't keep goofing around, and if

1:05:08

it wasn't for my wife getting

1:05:10

pregnant and thinking I need to be able to support

1:05:12

my family, I don't think

1:05:15

I would have ever gone down the path of

1:05:17

trying to learn how to code. So

1:05:19

yeah, I could talk a little

1:05:21

bit about my actual learning the code process because

1:05:23

it wasn't as simple as like, oh, I

1:05:25

got a couple of Udemy courses, and then I did

1:05:28

free code camp, because it was a big grind. So

1:05:31

when I went after doing the

1:05:34

Udemy course and then

1:05:36

picking up a couple different courses, anyone

1:05:39

who's self-taught and has successfully

1:05:42

gotten a job as a developer will

1:05:45

know that early in your

1:05:47

learning, if you don't have

1:05:49

good mentorship or you don't have a solid, like,

1:05:53

back then it was harder too. There was very

1:05:55

little resources that really gave

1:05:57

you the... the

1:06:00

path laid out and I think Free Code Camp did

1:06:02

a really good job of that. And, you know, there

1:06:04

was other paid resources that I used, but I refused

1:06:06

to like pay too much money

1:06:08

for anything. So I did do like Team

1:06:12

Treehouse at the time and I did do like

1:06:14

Code Academy and I did like other like, you

1:06:16

know, I even tried the Odin project for a

1:06:18

little bit and I have videos where I'm like,

1:06:20

you know, which one's better Odin project or Free

1:06:23

Code Camp? And I think, I think like they're

1:06:25

both very good resources and I often recommend free

1:06:27

resources because it's very

1:06:29

easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you

1:06:31

have to pay to like

1:06:34

be successful as someone

1:06:36

who's learning how to code. And you know,

1:06:38

we have that idea that if we pay

1:06:40

for something, it has more value than something

1:06:42

that's free, but there are some amazing free

1:06:45

things out there and I usually try to

1:06:47

recommend things that are free or affordable. I

1:06:50

try to stay away from really

1:06:52

expensive learning curriculums and programs because

1:06:54

I feel that like it's not

1:06:56

very necessary. So you know,

1:06:58

my process took about 10 months. The first

1:07:01

three months was really like just fumbling around,

1:07:03

you know, at that point I started with

1:07:05

that Ruby on Rails course and then I

1:07:07

jumped into PHP at one point and then

1:07:09

I like, you know, I was

1:07:12

trying to find the glass slipper.

1:07:14

There's another Cinderella reference, but I was trying

1:07:16

to find like what like what

1:07:18

I like to learn with and then, you know,

1:07:20

after a little while I started to realize like,

1:07:22

oh, I don't need to find like one thing

1:07:24

to learn from because after you do, after you

1:07:27

do five HTML courses, you kind of start

1:07:29

seeing that they're all really teaching you a

1:07:31

lot of the same things and the same

1:07:34

is true for CSS or

1:07:36

JavaScript or React. Like once

1:07:39

you realize that they just keep kind of teaching you a

1:07:41

lot of the fundamentals and the basics and then you can

1:07:43

get into more advanced stuff that could teach you new things.

1:07:46

When you start going back and you get into

1:07:48

that tutorial hell loop where you're, where you're going

1:07:50

back and you're relearning stuff that you've kind of

1:07:52

already learned, but you feel that you have to

1:07:54

know it better in order for you to move

1:07:56

forward and to really understand it and you don't

1:07:58

realize that like the learning actually. happens from

1:08:00

the building part and you only see

1:08:02

that in hindsight and I see that

1:08:04

now but eventually I

1:08:07

did a bunch of courses I finally started like

1:08:09

building stuff and then I started

1:08:12

watching youtubers there wasn't a lot of youtubers at

1:08:14

the time that kind of talked about this stuff

1:08:16

but a lot of people would say like oh

1:08:18

go network go network go network so I found

1:08:20

like a meetup in my area and it was

1:08:22

crazy because I remember I worked

1:08:24

some crazy shifts at the at the club

1:08:28

I would work what we called

1:08:30

the the the morning shift which

1:08:32

was you go in at 2 a.m. and

1:08:35

you'd either get out early at 10 a.m. or

1:08:37

you'd be the late guy to stay till noon

1:08:39

until the day shift guy came in and replaced

1:08:41

you so I would

1:08:44

on on Friday nights I

1:08:46

would go in at 2 a.m. which

1:08:48

was technically Saturday morning and I would

1:08:50

stay there until noon and then the

1:08:53

meetup was like right at noon in

1:08:55

downtown which was fairly close to where

1:08:57

the club that I was at where

1:08:59

I worked at so I would just like

1:09:02

have a change of clothes and

1:09:04

be completely sleep deprived and

1:09:07

every other Saturday there would be

1:09:10

a meetup and I would go there jacked

1:09:12

up on Red Bull and coffee and

1:09:14

like go into these these these

1:09:17

meetups for coding and they would the the one that

1:09:19

I would go to often was called demo day I

1:09:21

eventually went to a react meetup which kind of like

1:09:23

led me to my first job but I would go

1:09:25

to demo day and I remember going

1:09:28

there the first time and having

1:09:30

like my free code camp portfolio

1:09:32

or that that I

1:09:36

think you guys still have it but it's like

1:09:38

one of the very first things that you build

1:09:40

that it's just like a you know a picture

1:09:42

a blurb and then like a couple sections at

1:09:44

the time this was like 2017 so it was

1:09:46

a while ago I know the

1:09:50

curriculum's changed a lot in the projects that you guys

1:09:52

have have changed a lot and that's kind of what

1:09:54

I show it like I got there and the coordinator

1:09:56

was like hey what are you gonna show us today

1:09:58

I like I'm not showing and you guys did

1:10:00

nothing. I am sitting right back here and he's like,

1:10:03

no, it'd be fine. Just show us

1:10:05

what you'd be working on. And I'm super

1:10:07

embarrassed and like, I shouldn't even

1:10:09

be here. It's kind of like the

1:10:11

way I was thinking, right? Like your first

1:10:13

night at fight club, you have to fight.

1:10:16

Yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly what it felt

1:10:18

like. And, uh, and you know, I'm like,

1:10:20

all right, I guess so. And it's just

1:10:22

like, it's just a portfolio HTML CSS thing

1:10:24

I've been working on. Like nothing cool. And,

1:10:27

um, I was like one of the first people that went

1:10:29

up to, and there was, I don't know, like 30 people

1:10:32

there. So there was, it wasn't like, it wasn't like

1:10:34

two people I was presenting to. It was

1:10:36

quite a few people. And I had this old

1:10:39

shit. I don't, I don't want

1:10:41

to cuss. I had this fine. Don't worry about it.

1:10:43

Crappy laptop. I mean, it

1:10:45

was so bad. I had installed Linux on

1:10:47

it. And the only reason I installed Linux

1:10:49

on it was because of my wife's friend

1:10:51

who told me I needed to learn Linux.

1:10:54

And it was good because it actually made that laptop run

1:10:56

again. But I remember I had to use it with

1:10:59

a, with a big cooling tray.

1:11:02

Um, because I was just like too cheap to buy a

1:11:04

new one. I probably could have bought anything else but that,

1:11:06

but I was like, this is going to be like, I'm

1:11:09

going to hold this as a thing of pride. And I

1:11:11

kept there for a really long time. I actually have

1:11:13

a video that I recorded where I was like, this

1:11:15

is the laptop. I, I learned to code on it.

1:11:17

When I open it, one of the keys falls off

1:11:19

and that wasn't like something I did for that video.

1:11:22

That key was really, it was like. The W

1:11:24

key, I think that key was really busted and,

1:11:26

and I, I just

1:11:29

kept it on there. And anytime I lifted it

1:11:31

up or flipped it upside down, that key would

1:11:33

fall off. So that's the laptop I have that

1:11:35

I'm trying to present on. And the, the

1:11:37

guy that's, that's running the show, he's

1:11:39

a professional developer at the time, he was also self-taught.

1:11:41

He ended up becoming like a pseudo mentor, but he lets me

1:11:43

use his, his Mac book and it's like the first time I

1:11:45

touched like a brand new Mac book

1:11:48

pro. And it was like all silvery and,

1:11:50

and smooth. And I have like this monster

1:11:53

of a laptop that I sit the Mac

1:11:55

book pro on top of. And it's just,

1:11:57

it's like the 17 inch. laptop

1:12:00

that I used to have. I know.

1:12:02

I know how they are. Like, they

1:12:04

probably got like the plastic exterior and

1:12:06

super loud. It was an HP. It

1:12:10

was just terrible. And it was like,

1:12:13

you know, I think of it as a badge of

1:12:15

honor now because man, I was embarrassed

1:12:17

to be there. And like, not only did I not

1:12:19

feel like I shouldn't be there just because I'm like,

1:12:21

I'm just some dude. I literally

1:12:23

got off of work from parking cars and like,

1:12:26

there's all these real developers here. There

1:12:28

were people that were learning too. I felt like I had

1:12:30

no right being there and dude

1:12:32

was super nice. And then like, I always

1:12:34

tell people you'll be surprised because that's kind

1:12:36

of like the experience that a lot of

1:12:38

people have whenever they go to a meetup.

1:12:41

It's like, everybody's really nice. And we developers,

1:12:43

we love the talk about tech and stuff

1:12:45

that people are working on. So even if

1:12:47

you feel like your portfolio is this crappy

1:12:49

little HTML CSS website, I guarantee you like,

1:12:51

like, like I'll geek out and I'll be like, oh,

1:12:53

you should use this or you should fix this. And

1:12:55

then like, I have design chops now. So I would like give

1:12:58

you pointers on like how you could redesign it. And I've had

1:13:00

a few one-on-one calls where I like,

1:13:02

I have done that where like we open up the code.

1:13:04

One of the guys that I'm helping

1:13:07

and mentoring and meeting up with Izzy, he's, he's

1:13:09

been learning and he's crushing it. Like he's, he's

1:13:11

doing it like almost like a full-time job. And

1:13:13

like, I love geeking out over that stuff. So

1:13:15

like, if you go to a meetup and you

1:13:17

feel like how I felt that you just don't

1:13:19

belong there, you'll be surprised how quick people are,

1:13:21

are like really nice and helpful. So I get

1:13:23

up on the stage. I show off

1:13:26

my crappy little portfolio website that I'm like

1:13:28

probably a little too proud of, but also

1:13:30

ashamed of at the same time. Because I

1:13:32

was like, I built this with my bare

1:13:34

hands. You know, this was like HTML page.

1:13:38

And afterwards, like I got some feedback

1:13:40

and I remember I think it was that very first meetup.

1:13:43

There was this startup that was based out

1:13:45

of Vegas. They were doing stuff with the

1:13:47

IBM Watson. Yeah. The old AI, the

1:13:49

original way over. Yeah.

1:13:52

Way overhyped. Way overhyped, but they, they

1:13:54

were a startup and they were like

1:13:57

known for being like the startup because

1:13:59

eventually. Zappos ended up like, um,

1:14:01

headquartering in, in downtown Las Vegas. And

1:14:03

I mean, we, you know, the tragic

1:14:06

story about the, the, the founder of

1:14:08

Zappos, he had a pretty wild life and

1:14:10

it goes back to like the stuff we talked about with

1:14:12

how Vegas can be. And it's just an

1:14:14

example of that. And it's a, it's a shame, but like, There

1:14:18

was a little bit of a text scene

1:14:20

in Vegas that started to happen. And,

1:14:22

um, the C the CFO are

1:14:25

not the CTO, um, of

1:14:27

that startup, I believe he was there. He might've

1:14:29

been at the second one, uh, that I went

1:14:31

to, but he gave me like a card and

1:14:33

he was like, when you're

1:14:35

ready, you know, email this assistant of mine

1:14:38

and maybe we can get you like an

1:14:41

interview. And I was

1:14:43

like, what I got it off

1:14:45

of that. But

1:14:48

the thing is, um, I

1:14:50

was not qualified for that job at all. It was actually,

1:14:53

they had a, a pre vetting

1:14:55

process. They worked in Haskell, which is

1:14:57

a very like kind of

1:14:59

an obscure, functional programming language that not too

1:15:01

many people know about unless you're like a

1:15:03

real geek or you just know you've heard

1:15:05

of it and, um, like telecommunications or something

1:15:07

like that. Yeah. It's also, it's also the,

1:15:10

I believe Cardano, which is a crypto, um,

1:15:12

that I, I, I kinda, I kinda like,

1:15:14

um, is written in Haskell if I'm not

1:15:16

mistaken, I hope I didn't misspeak on that,

1:15:18

but it, it's, it's a pretty, so the

1:15:20

thing about Haskell, they tell you like, if

1:15:23

it's got such a good compiler, like if

1:15:25

it passes compile, then your code is safe

1:15:27

because it's just like a very safe

1:15:30

programming language with a lot of like,

1:15:32

you can't really make a mistake if it's,

1:15:34

if it's compiling, like your code's probably solid

1:15:37

if it passes. Um, uh,

1:15:39

but I, again, I didn't know much about Haskell.

1:15:41

I still don't know much about Haskell, but I

1:15:43

went down this, uh, sidetrack. Again,

1:15:45

it happens when you're first learning how to code

1:15:47

because I have this opportunity to like interview for

1:15:50

a real company with a real job and it's

1:15:52

like looking back now, I realized what some of

1:15:54

the questions were, but at the time I had

1:15:56

no idea I was in over my head. It

1:15:58

was actually one of the. first ones was

1:16:00

fizz buzz. And if you're, if you're familiar

1:16:02

with fizz buzz, it's just a very simple

1:16:05

algorithm. It's, it's hard to even

1:16:07

call it an algorithm because it really is

1:16:09

just like a couple if-else statements for where

1:16:11

like, if it, if it's divisible by three,

1:16:13

if print fizz, if it's divisible by five,

1:16:15

you print buzz, if it's

1:16:17

divisible by both, you print fizz buzz,

1:16:20

right? Like it's, it's

1:16:22

actually really simple once you have

1:16:25

an okay understanding of programming. But

1:16:27

at the time I, I didn't

1:16:29

know what I was doing. I ended up going on

1:16:31

one of those freelancing websites. It might have been like

1:16:33

freelancer and I found like a tutor to try to

1:16:35

like help me pass this thing. And

1:16:37

for like two weeks I tried to like pass this

1:16:40

interview, you know, pre-req coding

1:16:43

tests with like three different algorithm

1:16:46

challenges. And then like that

1:16:48

was kind of like disheartening and I felt like,

1:16:50

oh, you know, I'm not gonna get this. And

1:16:52

it kind of, it, luckily

1:16:55

I stuck with it because I realized that like,

1:16:57

oh, there's gonna be more opportunities there. And that

1:16:59

happened through going to more meetups and continuing to

1:17:01

learn. Like, like I got sidetracked and started learning

1:17:03

Haskell for a little bit, but then when I

1:17:05

realized that I, like I wasn't ready, I kept

1:17:07

going back to free code camp. I

1:17:09

kept going back to web development and I kept like going

1:17:11

back to the stuff that I was learning. And

1:17:14

then I started like learning React, you know, it's

1:17:16

a, it's still like a very similar path now.

1:17:18

You learn your HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and you start

1:17:20

learning your front-end library or framework. And then, you

1:17:22

know, then you can start learning a little bit

1:17:24

more about CRUD and you start learning about backend

1:17:26

and you start learning about databases. And it's

1:17:29

very overwhelming when you start. And as you continue

1:17:31

to progress through your learnings, you start to feel

1:17:33

a little bit better about it because you start

1:17:35

retaining some of the information and things start to

1:17:38

make sense. And I remember

1:17:40

going to my first React meetup and

1:17:42

they did that one like every two weeks and

1:17:44

it was all real, real cool, real, real developers

1:17:46

that I was around in another place that I

1:17:48

felt completely out of place because I had just

1:17:51

started learning React and I saw that meetup and

1:17:53

I was like, I had already been going to

1:17:55

that other demo day meetup. So I was just

1:17:57

like, I felt comfortable enough to just show up.

1:18:00

And it was like they had free pizza there and it

1:18:02

was just like, uh, why not? And

1:18:05

I met with the coordinator and he was super

1:18:07

cool and he starts telling me about react and

1:18:09

I'm like, Hey, what's up? You know,

1:18:11

I'm just learning and I know a little bit of

1:18:13

this, a little bit of the basics and I want

1:18:15

to like start really learning react and I've been watching

1:18:18

a few videos, but I haven't started yet. And he

1:18:20

starts telling me that I should do a, uh, uh,

1:18:23

a messenger clone, like a Facebook messenger

1:18:25

clone. And, and he starts just talking

1:18:27

tech. And I'm like, my eyes glazed

1:18:30

over and everything he's saying is just

1:18:32

like, I'm overwhelmed. I'm like, I don't

1:18:34

know any, like it felt like

1:18:36

he was speaking another language. He's showing me code and

1:18:38

he's like, just getting into the weeds of it. And

1:18:41

I know that I do that now with, with like

1:18:43

people who are newer, but, uh, like

1:18:45

he was still super nice and I kept

1:18:47

showing up to that react meetup. Eventually that

1:18:49

react meetup was the meetup that led me

1:18:51

to meet the recruiter that got me my

1:18:54

first job and the first meetup at

1:18:56

demo day, the guy

1:18:58

that became kind of my pseudo mentor that

1:19:00

was the coordinator that made me kind of

1:19:02

go up on stage the first day, you

1:19:04

know, I became such a familiar face that,

1:19:06

that like, they knew that I was serious

1:19:08

about learning and it worked

1:19:10

out very interestingly because I

1:19:12

had a, I had

1:19:14

an interview for the job

1:19:17

at a smaller insurance startup of

1:19:19

the, uh, coordinator for demo

1:19:21

day. His name was Mike Zephalo.

1:19:24

He's a, I think he's still like involved in

1:19:26

the community too. And I had

1:19:28

a interview for, for a job at his,

1:19:30

um, company that he set up for me.

1:19:32

At this point, I had already been learning

1:19:34

for like 10 months and at that

1:19:38

Friday. So that, that interview

1:19:40

would have been on Monday, that Friday I got a

1:19:42

call from the recruiter saying that like, Caesar's

1:19:44

entertainment wanted to follow through with me after I

1:19:47

had interviewed twice with them and that interview process

1:19:49

was like, after working there,

1:19:51

I realized that it was just kind of like

1:19:53

they take forever to hire, but it was very

1:19:55

nerve wracking for me because the inner, the recruiter

1:19:57

kept telling me that they liked me from the.

1:20:00

interviews, but from the first interview to the

1:20:02

last interview to getting the offer was like

1:20:04

a three week process. And I

1:20:06

was just like, I don't know what to do. I've

1:20:08

got this other job in hindsight. I wish I would

1:20:10

have still gone and interviewed that Monday for the other

1:20:12

job because I don't know if I would have, that

1:20:15

would have been a better path in. But nonetheless, I

1:20:17

ended up from meetups getting

1:20:19

a job and it was

1:20:21

at the react meetup where I met that

1:20:23

recruiter randomly. She had bought pizza for everybody

1:20:25

and gave out her business cards. And it

1:20:27

was so funny because I remember now all

1:20:30

the experienced developers where they're like, Oh, head

1:20:32

hunters, dam recruiters. They're like, at least we

1:20:34

got free pizza. And I'm like, yeah, I'll

1:20:37

take your business card. Yeah, I'm going to

1:20:39

email you. And I did. And she, it

1:20:41

just happened to be like just the perfect

1:20:44

timing when preparation meets opportunity, right? Like

1:20:46

I, they were hiring for a

1:20:48

junior developer. I had just

1:20:50

learned just enough. I really crushed it

1:20:53

on the first interview. After

1:20:55

I got hired, I talked to the, to

1:20:58

the people that hired me and like the

1:21:00

lead dev was a self taught developer. So

1:21:02

he kinda like, he took a

1:21:04

liking to me because of that. And then like, they

1:21:06

told me, they were like, dude, you, you

1:21:09

interviewed better than other people that

1:21:11

had experience. And I don't know.

1:21:13

I think it was just, I studied enough and

1:21:16

I was probably over prepared. I was like I

1:21:18

said, the night before I'm redoing free code camp

1:21:20

curriculum and like trying to make sure I know

1:21:22

everything I need to know. And there were still

1:21:24

things that in the interview process I messed up.

1:21:26

And then after like becoming friends with the people

1:21:28

that hired me and, you know, going out for,

1:21:30

for a couple of beers back when I used

1:21:32

to like still drink and like talking it out

1:21:34

with them and being like, why did you guys

1:21:37

hire me? Do you realize you made a mistake?

1:21:39

And they're like, no, dude, you were, you're

1:21:41

good. You're like, you're, you know, that. Having

1:21:44

that insecurity of just like

1:21:46

being a dropout and like, I shouldn't

1:21:49

be a programmer. I shouldn't, I like, this isn't

1:21:52

something like this was not in my cards. I

1:21:54

still have very bad imposter syndrome and still believing

1:21:56

that I'm not good enough to do the job.

1:21:58

And I still struggle with. that now after I've done

1:22:00

it professionally and I know that I know how to do the

1:22:02

job and I know like what a bad

1:22:05

developer looks like and I know what a great developer

1:22:07

looks like and I know that I'm somewhere in between

1:22:09

there but I still struggle with believing that this is

1:22:11

something that I was able to accomplish and

1:22:13

that first six months was at

1:22:15

the job was rough because I there was so much

1:22:18

imposter syndrome and there was a lot of politics going

1:22:20

on in that office and there was just a lot

1:22:22

of stuff where like my lead that hired me couldn't

1:22:25

he couldn't devote as much time to me as he

1:22:27

wanted to because he was overworked and and

1:22:30

it was really hard but I learned so much because

1:22:32

there was a bit of a an

1:22:35

overworked culture there and

1:22:38

as bad as it sounds I almost think that that's good

1:22:41

for people who are just getting started and

1:22:43

it's toxic it's not really good but man

1:22:45

you sure do learn a lot when you're in

1:22:48

a work environment that is like pushing you to

1:22:50

learn and we can get into

1:22:52

that too I feel like yeah I mean like the

1:22:55

military right like it's

1:22:57

hard to think of something more toxic than having

1:23:00

a drill sergeant barking orders at

1:23:02

you while you're like you've barely slept and

1:23:04

you probably smell terrible and and you

1:23:06

know you're out in some strange camp

1:23:08

in the wilderness doing all these grueling

1:23:11

physical things but like the US government

1:23:13

is hit upon that and probably most

1:23:15

other governments have hit on like putting

1:23:17

people through this brutal rite of passage

1:23:20

they can learn a lot right so

1:23:24

yeah if you have the luxury of

1:23:26

putting yourself into the frying pan so

1:23:28

to speak I

1:23:31

imagine you can you can forge quite a

1:23:33

bit of knowledge and experience very quickly but

1:23:39

it's not for everybody and yeah like

1:23:41

yeah it's not the only way but

1:23:45

no it's hardening to hear that like

1:23:47

even though you're in like a toxic

1:23:49

kind of high pressure you know long

1:23:51

hour type work culture that would be you

1:23:53

know totally not out of place in places

1:23:55

like Asia but would be very out of

1:23:57

place in Europe and to an extent maybe

1:23:59

in North America. Yeah. Yeah.

1:24:02

Like, like, I'm glad you were able to make the most of it

1:24:04

and get the most out of it. And I'm

1:24:06

also glad you look back. What kind of mixed

1:24:08

feelings, but you can see the good and not

1:24:10

just the bad. For

1:24:13

sure. For sure. And, and, you know, and that's

1:24:15

kind of what I, I, I take from it

1:24:17

because I do think that there was, like you

1:24:19

said, trial by fire, you know, in

1:24:21

the, into the frying pan, like I

1:24:23

did learn a ton. And at that point, like

1:24:25

I had already, so you got to

1:24:27

imagine, right? Like learning to code for

1:24:30

me was something that I took with a

1:24:32

bit of my extreme personality

1:24:34

that I applied to a lot of things in my life

1:24:37

that weren't good until I applied it to

1:24:39

something that was like programming. And I was

1:24:42

learning, like when I say I learned

1:24:44

how to code in 10 months, now

1:24:46

you hear stories of people that do it in three

1:24:48

months or six months. And like, I still think 10

1:24:50

months was an impressively short amount of time, but I

1:24:52

was like, I was waking

1:24:54

up in the morning on my days off

1:24:57

and I would open my laptop and I

1:24:59

would close it at night after being on

1:25:01

there for 16 hours

1:25:04

sometimes. And that whole time I

1:25:06

was on my laptop, I was watching videos following

1:25:08

along with tutorials, building, coding, and

1:25:10

like every waking

1:25:12

moment of my life for those 10 months was

1:25:14

learning how to code. And that's not healthy. I,

1:25:16

I, like I said, like

1:25:19

that's a bit of an extreme personality type on

1:25:21

my end, but like

1:25:23

I stopped, I stopped hanging out with people. I stopped,

1:25:25

I stopped going to jujitsu. I stopped going to the

1:25:27

gym. Like I basically just consume my entire life with

1:25:29

like, I

1:25:32

am going to get a job doing this thing.

1:25:35

And the only way for me to do

1:25:37

that is that I have to prove myself that I am capable

1:25:39

of doing this against people who have college degrees,

1:25:41

against people who have a job, against people

1:25:44

who have college degrees, against people who have

1:25:46

experience against people who have a

1:25:48

bootcamp under their belt. And

1:25:50

there was many times through that process where

1:25:52

I was doubtful that it was going to

1:25:54

happen. And I remember along with

1:25:56

like telling my wife, we're like, Hey man,

1:25:59

one day we're. We're gonna be able

1:26:01

to travel the world if I can do this. And

1:26:03

also telling her, I remember being like,

1:26:05

look, just kind of like, give

1:26:08

me a chance to do this. It

1:26:10

was a stressful time. We had a newborn. Eventually

1:26:13

she was expecting another kid, and I'm sitting

1:26:15

on my computer all day, and I'm like,

1:26:17

just give me some time to do this.

1:26:20

I'm gonna work as hard as I can. If

1:26:22

I can't do it by X amount of time,

1:26:25

we'll reconsider our options. And

1:26:27

I was like, there

1:26:30

was something that I told myself. I was like,

1:26:32

I am going to get so good at this

1:26:34

that somebody is gonna come across

1:26:36

me and be like, I have to hire that guy.

1:26:39

I can't let this guy get away from me

1:26:41

because I was willing to work for cheap, and

1:26:43

I knew that I would be willing to work

1:26:45

as hard as I could to do the job.

1:26:48

So with that mindset, it was

1:26:50

a bit of a pitfall of my

1:26:52

own when I got the

1:26:54

job eventually and realized that I shouldn't have

1:26:56

continued to be like that because what I

1:26:58

was doing was that I felt like I

1:27:01

didn't know enough. I went into a stack

1:27:03

that I had no idea of. We

1:27:06

were using Kotlin at the time, but it

1:27:08

was a Java slash Kotlin backend. It

1:27:11

was AEM, which is a weird CMS that

1:27:13

there's no information about on the internet because

1:27:15

it's proprietary through Adobe, and they probably have

1:27:17

more info now, but back then there was

1:27:19

even less. And then there was a bit

1:27:21

of toxic work culture, not because

1:27:23

of the developers, but because of the management, which

1:27:26

then affected the developers. And I saw how hard

1:27:28

my lead was working, and I saw how hard

1:27:30

other devs were working, that I was like, I

1:27:32

gotta go home, and I gotta get better. I

1:27:35

have to be as good as these guys were, which

1:27:37

is, as a junior developer, you shouldn't think like that

1:27:40

because as long as you're putting in the time, and

1:27:42

the whole idea is you spend all this time studying,

1:27:44

so then you can do it as a job because

1:27:46

then that's when you'll really learn because now you'll do

1:27:48

it eight hours a day, and you'll be paid to

1:27:50

do it, and it'll be easier, but for

1:27:53

my own personal reasons, and my personality

1:27:55

type, and my imposter syndrome, I was

1:27:57

like, I gotta get better faster I'm

1:28:00

going to get fired and I didn't feel like I belong

1:28:02

there in the first place. And I thought they, they made

1:28:04

a mistake when they hired me. And, but

1:28:06

man, did I learn a lot, you know,

1:28:09

by, by my second year of,

1:28:12

so by my, by the end of my first year of being a

1:28:15

dev professionally and having almost two years

1:28:17

from when I started learning how to

1:28:19

code, like I could tell like

1:28:22

looking back now, it's like, you know, I

1:28:24

might not know algorithms. I might not know

1:28:26

some things that might make me a better

1:28:28

developer or what people would think of as

1:28:30

like a really like a great developer, but

1:28:33

for like someone who didn't go to school

1:28:35

and, and like felt like they had no,

1:28:38

no excuse doing this job,

1:28:40

like I am, uh, I feel like,

1:28:42

yeah, like there was a point in time where I kind of looked

1:28:45

back and I was like, yeah, and I kind of know a lot

1:28:47

of stuff financially, which is crazy.

1:28:49

Cause everybody knew where I had worked at

1:28:51

previously when they hired me as a developer

1:28:53

for almost a year. I

1:28:56

kept one night at the club and I

1:28:58

kept it secret from my, my managers and

1:29:00

like the developers I worked with because I

1:29:02

didn't want them to think that I couldn't

1:29:04

do the job, but I wanted

1:29:06

to try to like catch up money wise. We had some

1:29:08

debt and like that extra night at the club

1:29:10

was good money. And I was just

1:29:12

like, so I'm working a nine to five working

1:29:15

after hours on development tasks

1:29:18

from work. And then

1:29:20

Friday night comes, I go home at five o'clock.

1:29:22

I take a nap. I wake up at 1am

1:29:24

and then I go work at two in the

1:29:27

morning till, till 10am. We're new

1:29:29

on Saturday morning. And I did that for like, God,

1:29:31

it was like eight or nine months. It was, it

1:29:34

was the better part of a year until I was finally

1:29:36

like, I can't do this anymore. And I started giving away

1:29:38

the shift, but I didn't want to get rid of it.

1:29:40

Cause it was like, I still had like, I was like,

1:29:42

if all else fails, I can always go back to parking

1:29:44

cars. And I was scared because I felt like, like

1:29:46

if I get fired, at least I can go

1:29:48

back to the, to the job at the club.

1:29:51

But then I finally realized that they weren't going

1:29:53

to fire me. And I was there to stay,

1:29:55

but that, that almost took a year. So it

1:29:57

was just funny. And I don't know, it's just

1:29:59

something there. They found out eventually I

1:30:01

told them like five months in after

1:30:03

I felt comfortable with all the guys I was working

1:30:05

with or the devs I was working with I was

1:30:07

like you guys know I still work there, right? They're

1:30:09

like what what are you doing? Early

1:30:13

on Friday so I can go to work and you

1:30:15

know, it's kind of nice. All right.

1:30:18

Well, that's a lot to unpack Let me just kind

1:30:20

of quickly recap a lot of the insights here. I

1:30:23

mean you are an incredibly I

1:30:27

could just sit back you're like the easiest person I've ever had

1:30:29

to interview Like and I've

1:30:31

done I think like a hundred interviews or something

1:30:33

like that Like like I've never talked with somebody

1:30:35

who could just so effortlessly like bring

1:30:38

forth so many Interesting insights in such

1:30:40

rapid succession without any prompting at all

1:30:42

for me It's almost

1:30:45

as if you're like a youtuber who has like

1:30:47

a quarter million subscribers and like all this, you

1:30:49

know so a

1:30:52

couple observations first It

1:30:55

sounds like you used your external

1:30:58

pressure as kind of like a

1:31:01

motivating force like you had extreme

1:31:05

extrinsic pressure that

1:31:07

like gave rise to intrinsic pressure to

1:31:09

perform to continue to Expand

1:31:11

your skills to not let your team down to

1:31:13

get as good as they are. So so what

1:31:16

started off as Just

1:31:18

you maniacally like learning to code and thinking that

1:31:20

getting the job was the endpoint then you realize

1:31:22

oh, no I just went like I just went

1:31:24

up to the next level right now things are

1:31:27

gonna be even harder and Kudos

1:31:30

to you for finding

1:31:32

it within yourself to do that because that sounds like

1:31:34

a hellish two or three years

1:31:36

of your life Like just constantly do it

1:31:38

and then working the crazy graveyard

1:31:40

shift At the

1:31:43

club on Friday night. That's wild like um

1:31:46

Yeah, my condolences your family because you

1:31:49

probably not super present during that time

1:31:51

but Seriously

1:31:53

like some some observations first building your

1:31:56

network like going to those meetups

1:31:58

even though you felt like a a total fish out of

1:32:00

water and putting yourself out there

1:32:02

and not just shrinking. A lot of

1:32:05

people, when they face that kind of like, almost

1:32:07

traumatic experience of like having to go on the

1:32:09

stage and plug in their laptop and talk in

1:32:11

front of a bunch of people that knew way

1:32:13

more about them, I've been there. By

1:32:16

the way, a lot of Dorians, for

1:32:18

those listening, a lot of Dorians' journey

1:32:21

points kind of mirror similar things that I did

1:32:23

when I learned to code. I

1:32:25

left my day job of being

1:32:27

a school director. Again, we come from

1:32:30

very different backgrounds, but the process was the

1:32:32

same. You have to learn

1:32:34

this stuff. Everybody ultimately has to learn

1:32:36

the skill. Everybody ultimately has to

1:32:38

build their network and their reputation as a

1:32:40

developer. And how you and I

1:32:42

went about it, despite the fact that we did

1:32:45

have a little different academic background, certainly, we

1:32:47

went about basically the exact same way. So

1:32:51

it's incredibly hardening to hear that you

1:32:54

leverage recruiters instead of listening

1:32:56

to the people that poo-poo recruiters. First

1:32:58

of all, I never understood the hate

1:33:01

for recruiters. I think recruiters are a

1:33:03

huge asset to you as

1:33:05

you're looking for a job. And if you can find

1:33:07

a recruiter that will advocate for you, don't

1:33:10

give them any money, that's probably a scam. But

1:33:12

if they're just taking a finder's

1:33:14

fee from the company that you ultimately

1:33:16

get employed at, that is very

1:33:19

much a positive expected value

1:33:21

for you. And

1:33:23

so you leverage the recruiter, you met

1:33:26

the people, and you earnestly followed up with them,

1:33:28

and you actually made up, like, oh, this person's

1:33:31

offered me a job. Once I feel ready, or

1:33:33

offered me an interview, once I feel ready, I'm

1:33:35

gonna go and interview. And you didn't let those

1:33:38

setbacks push you down. You

1:33:40

just kept redoubling your effort to study.

1:33:42

It's like incredibly motivating, and I

1:33:44

can see why so many people have watched

1:33:46

your videos over the years to

1:33:49

fire themselves up about learning the

1:33:51

code. So yeah,

1:33:53

like everybody, be sure, like I've got links

1:33:56

to everything in the show notes, check those out. Let's

1:34:01

talk about the next

1:34:03

few years of your life. Because I want to be

1:34:05

sure we touched on that. And I do have another

1:34:07

thing that I want to talk about. I'll go ahead

1:34:09

and tease it. But

1:34:11

your own struggles with

1:34:13

addiction that I think a lot of

1:34:16

people in the audience can probably relate to. We are going

1:34:18

to talk about that in a little bit. But I

1:34:20

want to go ahead and go through, maybe just

1:34:22

quickly go through the next few years. Because

1:34:24

at this point we're maybe like 2021? 2019,

1:34:30

actually. 2019, OK. I got my first

1:34:32

job at 2017. Was

1:34:35

my first job in July. And

1:34:38

then I left there almost

1:34:41

after two years in 2019. And

1:34:43

then I guess we can

1:34:45

go right into it. Yeah, go for it. So

1:34:48

yeah, so then I did that job for about

1:34:50

two years. You

1:34:52

know, there was with toxic

1:34:54

work environments. It's

1:34:57

funny because sometimes the management doesn't realize

1:34:59

the stress that they're putting on certain

1:35:02

developers. And I think everybody deals with

1:35:04

their own stresses. And everybody's got like

1:35:07

when you're dealing with a big corporation, it's

1:35:09

like that meme where

1:35:15

it's like the birds on different sticks.

1:35:17

And then there's like the bird at the top that

1:35:19

poops on the birds under there. And then they poop

1:35:21

under there. And then the people at the bottom get

1:35:23

the most pooped on. There's

1:35:26

kind of a bit of that too. So I don't

1:35:28

want to talk poorly about any other management. I

1:35:31

think that everybody was dealing with their own pressures. But

1:35:34

I think that there was also a

1:35:36

big mystery to what the developers did

1:35:38

there because we worked in a marketing

1:35:40

department. We weren't part of IT because

1:35:42

we, since we were responsible for the

1:35:44

websites of the entire corporation, we

1:35:47

used AEM as a content management system.

1:35:49

And I was responsible for 50 plus

1:35:53

websites for every casino that was

1:35:55

under the Caesars entertainment umbrella. So

1:35:57

we had a lot of people. that

1:36:00

were a part of marketing that didn't know what

1:36:02

we were doing and they they

1:36:05

had good intentions and what happened was

1:36:07

that they there was

1:36:09

eventually an employee survey and our department got the

1:36:11

worst rating and it was us we were it

1:36:13

was the devs there was like six of us

1:36:15

they had just hired two new guys they hired

1:36:17

a senior guy and a junior guy and I

1:36:20

was the junior guy and the

1:36:22

senior guy ended up becoming like a really good friend of

1:36:24

mine and I ended up working with him again in the

1:36:26

future again building your network

1:36:28

at a different job but he

1:36:30

eventually became the lead after everybody

1:36:33

started quitting right like the

1:36:35

guy that hired me he stayed for about

1:36:37

another year got overworked and then realized that

1:36:39

he had so much experience that he could

1:36:41

just double his salary and

1:36:43

get half of the stress immediately and

1:36:45

they tried to like revamp and like

1:36:48

you know that we we all there was eight

1:36:50

of us in like one small office that was

1:36:52

supposed to be for like one executive but

1:36:55

we just it was very much like the

1:36:57

startup vibe in there right it was just

1:36:59

like eight sweaty developers in a small room

1:37:01

and we all there are laptops are on

1:37:04

top of books and we were like you know we're

1:37:06

sharing desk it was very it was very fun and

1:37:08

it was a really good learning environment for us but

1:37:10

then after they got the bad reviews

1:37:12

saying that there was a lot of us that were

1:37:14

unhappy they wanted to bring us out into the open

1:37:16

and they wanted to give us a new office which

1:37:18

was nice but at the same time I think there

1:37:20

was a mix of like we got a micromanage these

1:37:22

guys more because we don't know what they're doing in

1:37:24

that office and I think that they felt like we

1:37:27

weren't actually contributing when the truth was that the like

1:37:29

we were all overworked ironically enough

1:37:31

but we just like people started

1:37:33

getting sick of it and eventually I got sick

1:37:36

of it they gave me an insultingly low raise

1:37:38

and then everybody will tell you the best way

1:37:40

to get a raise is to find a new

1:37:42

job so I eventually started

1:37:44

interviewing for other places and

1:37:46

I got an interview and an offer from

1:37:48

a Legion airline and it's funny

1:37:51

because when it rains it pours I started applying and

1:37:53

it was like I think I applied

1:37:55

for almost three months and like heard nothing and I

1:37:57

was like oh man maybe I don't have enough experience

1:37:59

yet I was approaching the two

1:38:01

year mark, which people tell

1:38:04

you that's a sweet spot. Now I don't know the

1:38:06

job market's a little different, two years might not be

1:38:08

the same, but at that point

1:38:10

in time, if you had two years of experience,

1:38:12

you were junior to mid level and

1:38:14

you were more marketable when it came to

1:38:17

recruiters. I've got

1:38:19

a mixed feeling for recruiters and I made a

1:38:21

video talking poorly about recruiters a while back and

1:38:23

I kinda made it private because I feel like

1:38:26

I spoke out of personal, like

1:38:28

just I hate my inbox getting emails

1:38:30

and then texts and then phone calls and then like

1:38:32

they don't know what they're actually hiring for, but there

1:38:35

are some very competent and good recruiters. So I

1:38:37

took that video down, but nonetheless, like I

1:38:39

started meeting with recruiters and then I found

1:38:41

the Allegiant job and

1:38:44

I interviewed for that. And it was funny