[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":443},["ShallowReactive",2],{"footer-primary":3,"footer-secondary":93,"footer-description":119,"trace-talks-jordan-cutler":121,"trace-talks-jordan-cutler-next":175,"sales-reps":191},{"items":4},[5,29,49,69],{"id":6,"title":7,"url":8,"page":8,"children":9},"522e608a-77b0-4333-820d-d4f44be2ade1","Solutions",null,[10,15,20,25],{"id":11,"title":12,"url":8,"page":13},"fcafe85a-a798-4710-9e7a-776fe413aae5","Headless CMS",{"permalink":14},"/solutions/headless-cms",{"id":16,"title":17,"url":8,"page":18},"79972923-93cf-4777-9e32-5c9b0315fc10","Backend-as-a-Service",{"permalink":19},"/solutions/backend-as-a-service",{"id":21,"title":22,"url":8,"page":23},"0fa8d0c1-7b64-4f6f-939d-d7fdb99fc407","Product Information",{"permalink":24},"/solutions/product-information-management",{"id":26,"title":27,"url":28,"page":8},"63946d54-6052-4780-8ff4-91f5a9931dcc","100+ Things to Build","https://directus.io/blog/100-tools-apps-and-platforms-you-can-build-with-directus",{"id":30,"title":31,"url":8,"page":8,"children":32},"8ab4f9b1-f3e2-44d6-919b-011d91fe072f","Resources",[33,37,41,45],{"id":34,"title":35,"url":36,"page":8},"f951fb84-8777-4b84-9e91-996fe9d25483","Documentation","https://docs.directus.io",{"id":38,"title":39,"url":40,"page":8},"366febc7-a538-4c08-a326-e6204957f1e3","Guides","https://docs.directus.io/guides/",{"id":42,"title":43,"url":44,"page":8},"aeb9128e-1c5f-417f-863c-2449416433cd","Community","https://directus.chat",{"id":46,"title":47,"url":48,"page":8},"da1c2ed8-0a77-49b0-a903-49c56cb07de5","Release Notes","https://github.com/directus/directus/releases",{"id":50,"title":51,"url":8,"page":8,"children":52},"d61fae8c-7502-494a-822f-19ecff3d0256","Support",[53,57,61,65],{"id":54,"title":55,"url":56,"page":8},"8c43c781-7ebd-475f-a931-747e293c0a88","Issue Tracker","https://github.com/directus/directus/issues",{"id":58,"title":59,"url":60,"page":8},"d77bb78e-cf7b-4e01-932a-514414ba49d3","Feature Requests","https://github.com/directus/directus/discussions?discussions_q=is:open+sort:top",{"id":62,"title":63,"url":64,"page":8},"4346be2b-2c53-476e-b53b-becacec626a6","Community Chat","https://discord.com/channels/725371605378924594/741317677397704757",{"id":66,"title":67,"url":68,"page":8},"26c115d2-49f7-4edc-935e-d37d427fb89d","Cloud Dashboard","https://directus.cloud",{"id":70,"title":71,"url":8,"page":8,"children":72},"49141403-4f20-44ac-8453-25ace1265812","Organization",[73,78,84,88],{"id":74,"title":75,"url":76,"page":77},"1f36ea92-8a5e-47c8-914c-9822a8b9538a","About","/about",{"permalink":76},{"id":79,"title":80,"url":81,"page":82},"b84bf525-5471-4b14-a93c-225f6c386005","Careers","#",{"permalink":83},"/careers",{"id":85,"title":86,"url":87,"page":8},"86aabc3a-433d-434b-9efa-ad1d34be0a34","Brand Assets","https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lBOTba4RaA5ikqOn8Ewo4RYzD0XcymG9?usp=sharing",{"id":89,"title":90,"url":8,"page":91},"8d2fa1e3-198e-4405-81e1-2ceb858bc237","Contact",{"permalink":92},"/contact",{"items":94},[95,101,107,113],{"id":96,"title":97,"url":8,"page":98,"children":100},"8a1b7bfa-429d-4ffc-a650-2a5fdcf356da","Cloud Policies",{"permalink":99},"/cloud-policies",[],{"id":102,"title":103,"url":81,"page":104,"children":106},"bea848ef-828f-4306-8017-6b00ec5d4a0c","License",{"permalink":105},"/bsl",[],{"id":108,"title":109,"url":81,"page":110,"children":112},"4e914f47-4bee-42b7-b445-3119ee4196ef","Terms",{"permalink":111},"/terms",[],{"id":114,"title":115,"url":81,"page":116,"children":118},"ea69eda6-d317-4981-8421-fcabb1826bfd","Privacy",{"permalink":117},"/privacy",[],{"description":120},"\u003Cp>A composable backend to build your Headless CMS, BaaS, and more. \u003C/p>",{"id":122,"slug":123,"vimeo_id":124,"description":125,"tile":126,"length":127,"resources":8,"people":8,"episode_number":128,"published":129,"title":130,"video_transcript_html":131,"video_transcript_text":132,"content":8,"status":133,"episode_people":134,"recommendations":161,"season":162,"seo":174},"26e762ac-1fcd-4f49-a364-b5b2e21b1ebe","jordan-cutler","947424116","In this episode of Trace Talks, Jordan Cutler shares his journey from intern to Senior Software Engineer at Pinterest. He discusses overcoming imposter syndrome after not getting a return offer from Twitter, and how he quickly advanced at Gusto by focusing on being a reliable team member. Jordan emphasizes the importance of curiosity, seeking feedback, and understanding the intricacies of tools and technologies. He also talks about his passion for teaching through his High Growth Engineer newsletter and courses.","b55ab912-f6ff-40f1-a757-40dce11b8e7d",33,3,"2024-06-13","Jordan Cutler, Senior Software Engineer at Pinterest","\u003Cp>Speaker 0: If you accept that there will always be room to grow, then there you will never be afraid of feedback.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Alright, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Trace Talks. We have Jordan with us today. Jordan, I'll let you do an introduction on yourself. Just give us a brief background into who you are, where you're from, maybe your favorite, winter activity since we're recording this during the winter.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And then after that, we'll kind of dive into the conversation.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Alright. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. My name is Jordan.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I'm a senior software engineer. I'm primarily doing front end right now, but I've been all across the stack. I started at, my career, like, my full time career at Gusto. It's about might have been 4, 5 years ago now, something like that. And I quickly, you know, climbed up the ranks to senior engineer.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And, more recently in the past year, I've kind of been writing about that journey, helping, others try to do the same and learn how to level up, go from junior to mid level, then from mid level to senior. And then finally, I've also, you know, just been exploring a bunch of different avenues. One of them right now is a is a course. So I've, you know, started doing, teaching through a cohort course on on Maven, and it's called mid level to senior engineer. I forget if I mentioned that I'm from Philly, but, my favorite, winter activity is probably stumbling through the snow as I'm walking to anywhere I wanna try to get to, because I refuse to wear anything other than my sneakers.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: You you get the crunch the crunch under your sneakers.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: But, yes, thanks so much for the introduction. It's so funny to hear somebody say, you know, back at the beginning of my career, and you said 4 or 5 years ago. When I say that phrase, that was 15 years ago. So, what a what a yeah. I think that'd be a great place to start.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know? You you've advanced pretty quickly in your career and as as a software engineer. So if you could, let us know about 4 or 5 years ago at the beginning of your career journey. Let us understand how you made that that quick trajectory from junior engineer, essentially, to senior engineer so quickly.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, in fact, like, when I first started my first job at Gusto, I was kind of feeling a bit of imposter syndrome, because, before that I had done 2 Twitter internships, which you might think, wow, you did 2 Twitter internships and you're feeling imposter syndrome? Well, the thing is is on, you know, on that second Twitter internship, I didn't get a return offer. And, you know, that was kinda like a devastating blow to, oh my gosh.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, am I gonna be you you you thought you had everything sort of figured out and then it's like, oh, you know, is there something wrong with me? What did I what did I do wrong? Am I gonna get a job at one of these places that I've always dreamt about and all that stuff? And, to get the job at Gusto, I I was very excited, but at the same time, I was scared that the same thing would happen again. You know, maybe they let go of me within 3 months or something like that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So I I I took a lot of the lessons from that experience and what I feel like I did wrong, to not get that return offer going into Gusto. It was almost sort of a blessing in a way. I mean, like, I mean, I I as long as you learn from it. Right? And so one of the things that I remember distinctly sort of being one of my, like, guiding principles is to not try to, like, overshoot too much, and instead to just, like, try to be normal.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, try to be, like, a normal person in the team, but, like, show how you're kinda contributing. Right? Like, rather than try to be the hero, you know, always and, you know, try to appear like you're smarter than you are or anything like that. Instead, I just felt like, I tried to be the contributing, you know, entry level member of the team, respecting the people, you know, above me, their opinion, and, you know, what what guidance they have, doing the projects that are assigned to me, and just doing them really well rather than trying to, you know, like, change the whole system and, you know, be better, you know, and, like, that that can be done later when maybe, you know, you're at the staff level and, like, you really need to improve things from a foundational perspective.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. You you speak to, something that we don't typically talk about on this podcast, but something that we all deal with every day, which is sort of rejection or our ideas of rejection. Like, you maybe thought you were on this course to do this one thing. And like you said, fortunately, it led you this other path, and and and it turned out to be probably or maybe the better scenario. But we we all face, like, a lot of rejection in our lives, especially John and I, you know, in on the sales side.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Of course, it's, like, 90% dealing with rejection, which is just part of the job. But, it'd be interesting to know, you know, through that first of all, with the the Twitter experience, was it was it a a rejection of you, or was that just that your interpretation of it at the time? Or maybe there were external factors that contributed to it that it really wasn't like, oh, I didn't get the callback. It had nothing to do with me. It was maybe organization restructuring or, like, something else.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And speak to, like, the psychology of of that. Like, damn, this is a crushing blow to me, but maybe it actually doesn't have anything to do with me.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there there was some elements at the time where, I wasn't really sure about it a 100 percent because there was other people who didn't get the offer as well. And there were, I think, talks of, like, maybe there were certain limitations on the number of return offers, that they they could give for some reason. But I do know that even in those circumstances, even if maybe you are, you know, it's almost kinda like when you hit the end of the year, and you just, like, start to have that mindset shift of, like, alright, what are my goals gonna be, you know, for the the next year?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, it's kinda like that in a way where it's just kinda a reality check regardless where it's, you know, what what could I have done better? So that way, regardless of the situation from Twitter's end, I could have done my part the best that I possibly could. And I don't feel like I did like, if I take that time to reflect on that, there were tons of things that I felt like I I could have done better, on that end.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think maybe that's the the takeaway here. It's really about, like, whether it's, you know, wholly our responsibility or not, it's we can at least learn from these things and taking the time to reflect can make us grow. Like, every time we're, you know, I lose an opportunity or something like that, I'd take a sit down and say, like, okay. What part of this was in my control?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>What part was out of my control? And how can I, you know, improve myself in the future so that this I can minimize this at least from the things that are in my control? So it sounds like it's, you know, reflecting is that valuable time you do after something like that that kinda sets you up for the next stage of the career, I guess.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I would say that that's a that's a huge, like, lesson in general as part of the career growth. There's always gonna be tons of things that aren't in your control.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I mean, just to give, like, a practical example, I wrote, like, a post yesterday about estimates. A lot of people complain about when you give estimates, people interpret it as deadlines. Well, what are you doing maybe that could potentially give that impression? You know, maybe if you like, someone asked you, hey. How long do you think like this would take?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And you say it in a way where it's like, I think if I worked on it, it would take me, like, 3 days. And, like, if you say it like that versus, well, if I were to just give a rough ballpark number right now, then, you know, my guess would be 3 days. But if you wanted me to give you a more accurate number, then let you know, give me some time to to look into it. Like, if you say it like that, well, then it's a much different impression that the person receives. And so even if you could blame them for, you know, can't you know, making it a deadline when it really wasn't, well, what what could you do, like, on your part to make sure that that's as clear as possible?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, basically, don't pull an Elon and tell everyone full self driving is coming in a year when it's 2016.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Uh-huh. Exactly.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Well, at least at least the Cybertruck finally came out. You know, it might have taken 4 years for that, but it's here. You you mentioned your, you you mentioned writing a post, and I I think that's a good segue into who you are publicly. You know, you are, I guess, a engineer influencer. I don't I don't even know what those terms are anymore.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>But, I I've read a lot of your articles, and I think there's a lot of lessons that you you share, you know, about being a go to player and and taking rejection and all of those types of posts. Why did you originally start posting to social media and LinkedIn, and then you now have a, a newsletter that goes out? So I'd love to understand how I I typically perceive engineers as a little bit kind of quieter and typically don't post those types of things. But was it some of the lessons that you learned early on that made you want to be more social and share those experiences, or was there different reason that you started posting and and started the newsletter?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a great question. I mean, it's it's hard to pinpoint, like, one exact thing, but I do remember, like, where it started. And, you know, the it started from, one single post, and it had nothing to do with, like, what I write about now, actually.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It was, you know, it was on accessibility, like, alt text. And, I think, like, at the time, I was thinking that previously at at my, you know, at Gusto, I had started a channel that was called, Jordan's Front End Learnings, and it was essentially like, me just taking notes, but, like, kinda sharing it in a way that could be consumed, like, more broadly rather than just, like, a brain dump, you know, of things. And it would almost be, like, little mini lessons. And I would, like, write, you know, in there as I learn stuff because I wanted to learn more about front end. And, like, over time, you know, people started to join that, And, it kinda opened my eyes a little bit of, like, oh, okay.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, people like, I'm not even really trying. And people seem to enjoy some of these, like, this sort of, like, learning community, you know, like, and eventually it got up to, like, 50 people and it started, you know, from 0 where I'm just like not even advertising it, like just kind of spread through word-of-mouth a little bit. And it made me think, well, like, if I'm doing this, like, on a company scale, like, what if I try this out, like, more broadly? And that's kinda why, like, my first post was a little bit, like, about front end because Yeah. I was just like, well, let me think, like, okay.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I wrote about front end before. Let me, like, write about front end here. And then that first post, it got, like, 30 plus, you know, likes on LinkedIn. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, this is already, like, more than my front end learning channel, you know.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So then I just sort of, like, continued a little bit, but I I was thinking, well, you know, this is good. Like, I can write about front end, but long term, I think, like, the thing that kind of makes me stand out is maybe more of my career journey and it also has, like, more of a broader audience. And, I mean, I've always, like, been into, like, a couple things, like, one, like, the Feynman technique of, you know, like, you teach and you learn it better. And then also just in general, like, I think if I wasn't gonna be an engineer, I've always talked about, like, being a teacher, But, unfortunately, like, teachers are not really paid that way.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: So so, like, this is kinda like a win win on that boat, you know, where I could get get the benefits there, kinda do what I, you know, wanted to. And I've kinda just continued from there, and I have made, like, small iterative tweaks to how I do things. But, I mean, I'm still generally just doing the same thing as I did, you know, day 1.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. That really reminds me, it takes me back to to my elementary school days when the teacher is teaching something and they asked, does anybody have any questions? And you're hoping that one person asks a question because everybody's asking the same question. So being a being that person who shares that that front end experience, you know, even about alt text or whatever, you whatever your learnings are, I kind of equate you to that purse that kid in in elementary school who raised their hand and asked the question that everybody had because I was the kid who was kind of scared that I would look dumb if I asked a question. Were you that type of kid in school?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: It's so funny you mentioned that because, yeah, I definitely was. Like, there was even I had a elementary school teacher that was, you know, like, I remember I raised my hand at one point and he kind of made like a joking, like, tantrum a little bit where it was like, oh, Jordan. Okay. What is it now? You know?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>What is the color of the sky? Like, what is it? You know? Like, and he just, like, started asking, like, a bunch of, like, rent like, questions kinda, like, making fun of me a little bit. But, I mean, I didn't take it to heart.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I think we're Yeah. We kinda, you know, we had a decent relationship, I suppose. But, yeah, it was to the point where someone even made fun of me for it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Even a teacher. Yeah. Yeah. No. I think that's a I think that's a trait that a lot of us have in common.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It's kind of you wanna understand is it's kind of a curiosity almost. Do you do you find that that's actually an important trait to have as an engineer is curiosity? And then how important do you think it is to ask questions that you feel might make you look dumb, but it's important to ask the questions so that you understand what you're trying to learn.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I curiosity, and just, you know, this is part of curiosity, but, like, the willingness to not just look at the surface level and accept it for what it is is super important. One of the things that I, that I teach, like, in my course about, like, senior level coding is that you are constantly thinking about, like, if you use maybe a library, you know, an external tool or something like that, how, like, how does this thing actually work?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, you're not just accepting it for, like, a black box, right? Like, when you use chat gpt, what is it actually doing behind the scenes? And if you, like, think about, like, those types of things, like, enough, then over time you start to build kind of like a like a mental model or like a mental map in your head of like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like this thing is kind of similar to this thing.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I expect it to work in this certain way. And because I can, like, make that assumption, I might even just be able to, like, try this method and see if it exists. And, like, you know, I don't even need to look at the docs. And, like, I Yeah. I have a feeling, like, that this is gonna work this way.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And, or, like, if you need to build a similar tool yourself, you kinda already have an idea, you know, of of how you're gonna do it and you can, you know, form the architecture for it or ace your interview because they'll ask you like, hey, design Netflix. And if you've thought enough, like, while you're watching Netflix, like, how is the video streaming, you know, to my to my TV right now? Then Yeah. Maybe you have a decent idea of, like, you know, how you'll be able to do it in an interview. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. And I I think, like, just to add to that, like, curiosity is a big element of that, especially with engineering. And I think the more that you like you said, the more that you dive into, like, the what, why, and how. Of course, there's gonna be questions that sound stupid and elementary and basic around it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Right? But, they're important questions to get you to dive a bit deeper. Right? And and they're just, like, instinctual things. Like, oh, I just wanna know how this works.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Right? And sometimes those instinctual things to to me and and to many people are the things that actually end up being these big light bulb moments. At least in I I always relate things back to music because I was, like, sort of the first career path I had. And it was always funny to me to learn that, like, some of these really big number one hits. Right?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, Guns N' Roses, for example, Sweet Child of Mine, that riff was written as a total joke because they had gone to, like they had gone out to Vegas and the casinos, and Slash is just writing this, like, oh, this is what the slot machines sound like. And they just it was a pure joke, and they gave it to the label, and they're like, this is the best song, you know, you guys have. And and they're like, no. We're not releasing this. This is like a joke.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>But sometimes the point is that, like, these through these, like, initial, like they're just, like, gut instincts, and you treat them as that. You don't, like, you know, you don't put too much weight and judge them. They're just, like, these ideas that once you put them out, it's like, oh, actually, that's that's the brilliant idea. It's not the stupid idea. Right?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>That's the brilliant question that led you down the path, not the stupid question. So maybe, yeah, maybe it's it's best that we don't, like, put others' judgment into these things because that can just, like, stop us right there and kill the curiosity.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Exactly. And don't, yeah, don't let it die for\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: sure. Yeah. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Do do you find that your community you've built, you know, a a decent a good sized following, about 40,000 times bigger than mine. But do you find that your community, leads you to new tools and new technologies? I'm sure you're out there kind of seeing things that are new on the market or people are sharing, but do you find that one of the benefits of having this community is people sharing back things that you then become curious about? Is that the feedback that you're getting from your community?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Mhmm. Yeah. It's Or\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: or are they just silent listeners?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Definitely not silent listeners, but, I mean, I I think I do get questions sometimes about, like, oh, you know, like, have you have you heard about this tool? Have you tried this tool or something like that? And I think one downside, honestly, you know, because a lot of people reach out to me and they'll they'll say also that they were inspired by my journey to start content creation. It doesn't come without its downsides. It for sure.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, one of the downsides that I've personally experienced is you lose a lot of time to actually especially if you're talking about, like, career growth stuff, more like soft skills, you lose a lot of time to dive into some of those, like, more technical, like, alright. Let me figure out, like, how, you know, Next. Js versus Vite versus Solid. Js, like, all these things, like, work. Like, the most, you know, that I can really do a lot of the time is maybe watch a video, you know, on some some person that's kinda already done that deep dive, and I can't really, like, do it myself.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know? So it is something that I wish I could, like I'm trying to sort out and actually, maybe, hopefully, like, if I can figure out how to use AI to save some time on some of the things that I do, then maybe I'll be able to get some time back on\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Has sorry.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I was gonna ask, did has the the high growth engineer, right, your your newsletter, has that led you to meet anyone interesting or inspiring that maybe somebody that you've looked up to or just someone notable in the community?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that would I would say would be, like, one of the biggest benefits. I mean, just like a couple off the top of my head, would be, like, Gregor, you know, the engineering leadership guy, Caleb, John Cricket, Wes Kao, the founders, like, at at Plato. It was like a mentorship platform.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Through that, like, I was able to, get, an opportunity to emcee at a conference that they held in San Francisco. I they would have never known about me if I didn't write online or anything like that. And then through that conference, I met, like, a bunch of senior engineering leaders, you know, like VPs of engineering. I met a director of engineering at Netflix, Bruce, a a bunch of other, you know, people as well. Oh, one one 2 more quick shout outs too on people.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Ryan Peterman, he's a staff engineer at at Meta. Ravi Raj Achar, he's, like, tech lead mentor. And he him and Irina, Irina Stanescu, they have also base essentially, like, participated in my course as guests, and they just, like, do it out of the goodness of their heart. Like, because we're, you know, connected, we help each other out and all that stuff, that helps like improve the value of my course as well. People love them, you know, when, when they're there, it's like super awesome to be like, hey\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: I I have like a past, you know, engineering manager and stat like staff engineer, like at Meta, Google, Uber, like all this stuff. And they're like, you know, they're just like their eye all the students in the course, like, their eyes light up and everything. You know?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. That that really speaks to, like we we had spoken to someone else on this podcast, maybe a few episodes ago, but one of the key takeaways is, like, get out there, meet people, like, be a part of the community, like, shake some hands. Right? Because networking is something that's never gonna go away, and it's even actually increasingly more important to meet people in real life. So it sounds like you've definitely benefited from the, you know, the publicity or the or the the exposure that you've gotten online, but actually converted that into, like, actual handshakes, which is really impressive and, like, I think a great way to build your career, especially, like, you know, at at a at a younger age too.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's it's it's amazing. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And one one interesting insight that I've found about networking, especially because, like, you know, I guess within the creator space, normally, it's kind of about, when you help people, you get help in return. Right? Like, the you know, maybe you give someone a shout out and they'll be like, oh, wow. Like, I didn't even know about you before, but, like, you're giving me a shout out. That's super cool.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Let me check out your stuff. Oh, yeah. I'll, like, I'd love to, like, add you as a shout out. And so it's kinda like cool that you've realized that networking really is about, like, giving value first and then, like, getting value back. And, it's not like, hey, you know, tell me about your life story.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I'm here as, like, a person that you can talk to even though you know nothing about, like, you don't you don't know me at all. And then, like, after you tell me your life story, can I ask you, like, for a job? You know? Yeah. It's nothing it's nothing like about that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Sounds like the typical LinkedIn message. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But the the thing that I found particularly especially as I help other people is, like, it's a little easier for me to kind of do that giving value thing when I have something like, you know, my audience, my LinkedIn post, my newsletter thing, all that stuff.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>But I I could see it being difficult for someone that is maybe, like, just getting started in the industry or something like that and it's, like, you know, maybe they just, like, my my just view of it from from where I'm looking, it doesn't look like they have that much to give. But I also don't know, You know, if they like, that's the high level principle. If you can find something to give, then you're good. But I don't I don't really know, like, what I can suggest to them. That's part of the issue that I run into when I try to help people with that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you so looking back at your quick journey from junior engineer to senior engineer and building this audience, you know, what do you did you have this where you're at now, did you kind of have this as a goal back 4 or 5 years ago? And then what is your goal for the next 5 years? You mentioned love the love for teaching, and you would do teaching if it was more, lucrative. But, you know, where do you do you wanna move further into leadership and become even more of a mentor for people who are both in your company but also external, or would you rather go down the content creation leader or teacher type, journey?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. I I think the content creation, it needs to come from your actual experience. If maybe I wanted to write, you know, indefinitely about how to become a senior engineer because that's where I am right now, right, then I could leave my, you know, leave my job maybe and try this out. But, like, I you know, it would be, it would be, like, inauthentic of me to try to expand outward and say, hey. Here's how you go from senior engineer to staff engineer.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Here's how you go from, you know, senior engineer to manager. I haven't tried those things out. So Yeah. I think one of the unique things that, like, I, bring to the table, like, as a creator is I do have, like, a wide range of experiences in a short amount of time. Like, I, you know, I I worked at Twitter as, like, internship.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I got I got rejected, like, on my like, I got I also I got the return offer, but I also got rejected. So I, like, I know what that both of those, like, feel like. And I also, like, worked at a startup, you know, crypto startup, like, 3, 4 person thing, you know, like, while I was in university. And then, like, I did Gusto, which was, like, medium size. So, like, just in those 3 alone, I basically have, like, all the different sizes.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Like, I have, like, super small, like, Gusto, like, medium size, Twitter, like, you know, bigger. And then now I'm kinda, like, in between, like, 0 and gusto size right now. I qualified.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: So I think, like, if I could just keep on, you know, varying the experiences up and and, like, you know, just just add to the repertoire of different things that I've tried, then, it'll probably, you know, make me just be able to relate to pretty much anybody, hopefully, and and keep writing about, you know, things that that hopefully provide value to people.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. No. That's that's such a great point is continuing on the the leadership to, you know, higher positions will naturally create that content that other people are looking for. So it's it's almost like you don't have to make that decision, yet you just kind of continue the path that you've been on, and both will come naturally naturally because it sounds like you're a hard worker and you're curious and that that from what who we've who we've talked to before for this podcast and just from our own personal experiences, that's the kind of things that it takes to continue climbing up in the ranks. And so that's such a good point that you don't have to make that decision.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You just keep going where what you're doing, and both will naturally come. So\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. The inspiration for the content will seem to generate itself. Right? And then it's just, like, translating that experience into content.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like it would it would be, difficult to come up with ideas, you know, after you're, like, you know, not, you know, in a tech working environment for, you know, the 8 hours a day. At the same time, though, it is it is a lot of work, to do both.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So so I don't know. I'm gonna try to figure out something, but, you know, for TBD.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, there's one position that it sounds like you haven't had, and that is founder of a company. So True. Yeah. Maybe if, you know, you are your founder of your content, but maybe you've been at a startup, but you haven't been the founder.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So maybe that's in your journey eventually. Yeah. So so, you know, what have you learned over the years? What would be some good advice that you give to people who are listening? Pretend that the listeners are are you're their mentor?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know? What would you what advice would you give them from your experience?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Well, so it's tough to give any general advice because every depending on the stage of your career, the advice is gonna be, you know, different. But if I had to give, like, something, you know, maybe to everyone, then I would say, one one really nice takeaway is if you accept that there will always be room to grow, then there you will never be afraid of feedback. And, you know, one way that that kinda sees itself is, a lot of time, you know, we're scared to ask our peers, you know, for feedback or say, hey. How did I do, like, in that presentation? Or, like, how do you how do you feel like, do you feel like I could have done anything better, like, in that meeting that I just ran?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Or, you know, like, how was my how did I how did I do leading this project or something like that? Or, like, just anything like that. A lot of times, we're a little scared to ask. And understandably, you know, we all kinda put our we we put our best foot forward and we we we don't wanna hear that potential that we didn't do as best as we can. But at the same time, the the those two things, like, you can put your best foot forward and you can also always grow.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So if you accept that, then you'll constantly seek out that feedback, and you'll also constantly be growing.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. I might just put that phrase on my wall, you know, because that that's actually some really, really good advice. You know? So that's very good advice that was that was very generic for generic questions.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So well well said. Hopefully, broadly applicable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Awesome. So I guess, you know, we'll we'll wrap it up here. It's been a awesome conversation. But, you know, we've mentioned throughout the conversation some of the things that you're doing, but, obviously, we want people to be, followers of you because you're putting out good things. You're putting out good advice, good content.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So where can people find you? You know? Where what is the courses that you teach? What is your newsletter? Just repeat that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And then if people wanna follow you in other places, where where are you?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, LinkedIn is the main place where I post every day, you know, updates on kinda everything. So just search Jordan Cutler on LinkedIn.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>The newsletter is called high growth engineer. And the course, if you're interested in that, I don't think I will be running that many more cohorts. I think I'm gonna explore different avenues. So try to get in either on this upcoming cohort, although I don't know when the podcast will be out Yep. Or the next one might be my last one.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>We'll see. And that one is called mid level to senior engineer, on Maven.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Okay. Awesome. Well, any any last questions from you, Pedro? I feel like I just took over that end.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: No. That's that's amazing. Definitely excited to to continue following your journey as I'm sure most of the, you know, the viewers and the listeners are as well. And, yeah, so subscribe. Right?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think I think the last word I'll say is I think it's really motivational. There's a lot of young engineers out there and and even older engineers too, so I don't wanna pigeonhole into young engineers who they're curious and they wanna learn. And so I think some of the articles that you've put out about, you know, being a go to in a specific, field or a specific piece of content or what it what may it be.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>But, it's really, encouraging to see somebody who's younger than me who puts in the effort and has had the success that, they can then share with other people. So it's been a fantastic conversation.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. Definitely appreciate it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. It's been great, guys. I really appreciate it.\u003C/p>","If you accept that there will always be room to grow, then there you will never be afraid of feedback. Alright, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Trace Talks. We have Jordan with us today. Jordan, I'll let you do an introduction on yourself. Just give us a brief background into who you are, where you're from, maybe your favorite, winter activity since we're recording this during the winter. And then after that, we'll kind of dive into the conversation. Alright. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. My name is Jordan. I'm a senior software engineer. I'm primarily doing front end right now, but I've been all across the stack. I started at, my career, like, my full time career at Gusto. It's about might have been 4, 5 years ago now, something like that. And I quickly, you know, climbed up the ranks to senior engineer. And, more recently in the past year, I've kind of been writing about that journey, helping, others try to do the same and learn how to level up, go from junior to mid level, then from mid level to senior. And then finally, I've also, you know, just been exploring a bunch of different avenues. One of them right now is a is a course. So I've, you know, started doing, teaching through a cohort course on on Maven, and it's called mid level to senior engineer. I forget if I mentioned that I'm from Philly, but, my favorite, winter activity is probably stumbling through the snow as I'm walking to anywhere I wanna try to get to, because I refuse to wear anything other than my sneakers. So You you get the crunch the crunch under your sneakers. Yeah. But, yes, thanks so much for the introduction. It's so funny to hear somebody say, you know, back at the beginning of my career, and you said 4 or 5 years ago. When I say that phrase, that was 15 years ago. So, what a what a yeah. I think that'd be a great place to start. You know? You you've advanced pretty quickly in your career and as as a software engineer. So if you could, let us know about 4 or 5 years ago at the beginning of your career journey. Let us understand how you made that that quick trajectory from junior engineer, essentially, to senior engineer so quickly. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, in fact, like, when I first started my first job at Gusto, I was kind of feeling a bit of imposter syndrome, because, before that I had done 2 Twitter internships, which you might think, wow, you did 2 Twitter internships and you're feeling imposter syndrome? Well, the thing is is on, you know, on that second Twitter internship, I didn't get a return offer. And, you know, that was kinda like a devastating blow to, oh my gosh. Like, am I gonna be you you you thought you had everything sort of figured out and then it's like, oh, you know, is there something wrong with me? What did I what did I do wrong? Am I gonna get a job at one of these places that I've always dreamt about and all that stuff? And, to get the job at Gusto, I I was very excited, but at the same time, I was scared that the same thing would happen again. You know, maybe they let go of me within 3 months or something like that. So I I I took a lot of the lessons from that experience and what I feel like I did wrong, to not get that return offer going into Gusto. It was almost sort of a blessing in a way. I mean, like, I mean, I I as long as you learn from it. Right? And so one of the things that I remember distinctly sort of being one of my, like, guiding principles is to not try to, like, overshoot too much, and instead to just, like, try to be normal. Like, try to be, like, a normal person in the team, but, like, show how you're kinda contributing. Right? Like, rather than try to be the hero, you know, always and, you know, try to appear like you're smarter than you are or anything like that. Instead, I just felt like, I tried to be the contributing, you know, entry level member of the team, respecting the people, you know, above me, their opinion, and, you know, what what guidance they have, doing the projects that are assigned to me, and just doing them really well rather than trying to, you know, like, change the whole system and, you know, be better, you know, and, like, that that can be done later when maybe, you know, you're at the staff level and, like, you really need to improve things from a foundational perspective. Yeah. You you speak to, something that we don't typically talk about on this podcast, but something that we all deal with every day, which is sort of rejection or our ideas of rejection. Like, you maybe thought you were on this course to do this one thing. And like you said, fortunately, it led you this other path, and and and it turned out to be probably or maybe the better scenario. But we we all face, like, a lot of rejection in our lives, especially John and I, you know, in on the sales side. Of course, it's, like, 90% dealing with rejection, which is just part of the job. But, it'd be interesting to know, you know, through that first of all, with the the Twitter experience, was it was it a a rejection of you, or was that just that your interpretation of it at the time? Or maybe there were external factors that contributed to it that it really wasn't like, oh, I didn't get the callback. It had nothing to do with me. It was maybe organization restructuring or, like, something else. And speak to, like, the psychology of of that. Like, damn, this is a crushing blow to me, but maybe it actually doesn't have anything to do with me. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there there was some elements at the time where, I wasn't really sure about it a 100 percent because there was other people who didn't get the offer as well. And there were, I think, talks of, like, maybe there were certain limitations on the number of return offers, that they they could give for some reason. But I do know that even in those circumstances, even if maybe you are, you know, it's almost kinda like when you hit the end of the year, and you just, like, start to have that mindset shift of, like, alright, what are my goals gonna be, you know, for the the next year? Like, it's kinda like that in a way where it's just kinda a reality check regardless where it's, you know, what what could I have done better? So that way, regardless of the situation from Twitter's end, I could have done my part the best that I possibly could. And I don't feel like I did like, if I take that time to reflect on that, there were tons of things that I felt like I I could have done better, on that end. Yeah. And I think maybe that's the the takeaway here. It's really about, like, whether it's, you know, wholly our responsibility or not, it's we can at least learn from these things and taking the time to reflect can make us grow. Like, every time we're, you know, I lose an opportunity or something like that, I'd take a sit down and say, like, okay. What part of this was in my control? What part was out of my control? And how can I, you know, improve myself in the future so that this I can minimize this at least from the things that are in my control? So it sounds like it's, you know, reflecting is that valuable time you do after something like that that kinda sets you up for the next stage of the career, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I would say that that's a that's a huge, like, lesson in general as part of the career growth. There's always gonna be tons of things that aren't in your control. I mean, just to give, like, a practical example, I wrote, like, a post yesterday about estimates. A lot of people complain about when you give estimates, people interpret it as deadlines. Well, what are you doing maybe that could potentially give that impression? You know, maybe if you like, someone asked you, hey. How long do you think like this would take? And you say it in a way where it's like, I think if I worked on it, it would take me, like, 3 days. And, like, if you say it like that versus, well, if I were to just give a rough ballpark number right now, then, you know, my guess would be 3 days. But if you wanted me to give you a more accurate number, then let you know, give me some time to to look into it. Like, if you say it like that, well, then it's a much different impression that the person receives. And so even if you could blame them for, you know, can't you know, making it a deadline when it really wasn't, well, what what could you do, like, on your part to make sure that that's as clear as possible? Yeah. Like, basically, don't pull an Elon and tell everyone full self driving is coming in a year when it's 2016. Uh-huh. Exactly. Well, at least at least the Cybertruck finally came out. You know, it might have taken 4 years for that, but it's here. You you mentioned your, you you mentioned writing a post, and I I think that's a good segue into who you are publicly. You know, you are, I guess, a engineer influencer. I don't I don't even know what those terms are anymore. But, I I've read a lot of your articles, and I think there's a lot of lessons that you you share, you know, about being a go to player and and taking rejection and all of those types of posts. Why did you originally start posting to social media and LinkedIn, and then you now have a, a newsletter that goes out? So I'd love to understand how I I typically perceive engineers as a little bit kind of quieter and typically don't post those types of things. But was it some of the lessons that you learned early on that made you want to be more social and share those experiences, or was there different reason that you started posting and and started the newsletter? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a great question. I mean, it's it's hard to pinpoint, like, one exact thing, but I do remember, like, where it started. And, you know, the it started from, one single post, and it had nothing to do with, like, what I write about now, actually. It was, you know, it was on accessibility, like, alt text. And, I think, like, at the time, I was thinking that previously at at my, you know, at Gusto, I had started a channel that was called, Jordan's Front End Learnings, and it was essentially like, me just taking notes, but, like, kinda sharing it in a way that could be consumed, like, more broadly rather than just, like, a brain dump, you know, of things. And it would almost be, like, little mini lessons. And I would, like, write, you know, in there as I learn stuff because I wanted to learn more about front end. And, like, over time, you know, people started to join that, And, it kinda opened my eyes a little bit of, like, oh, okay. Like, people like, I'm not even really trying. And people seem to enjoy some of these, like, this sort of, like, learning community, you know, like, and eventually it got up to, like, 50 people and it started, you know, from 0 where I'm just like not even advertising it, like just kind of spread through word-of-mouth a little bit. And it made me think, well, like, if I'm doing this, like, on a company scale, like, what if I try this out, like, more broadly? And that's kinda why, like, my first post was a little bit, like, about front end because Yeah. I was just like, well, let me think, like, okay. I wrote about front end before. Let me, like, write about front end here. And then that first post, it got, like, 30 plus, you know, likes on LinkedIn. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, this is already, like, more than my front end learning channel, you know. So then I just sort of, like, continued a little bit, but I I was thinking, well, you know, this is good. Like, I can write about front end, but long term, I think, like, the thing that kind of makes me stand out is maybe more of my career journey and it also has, like, more of a broader audience. And, I mean, I've always, like, been into, like, a couple things, like, one, like, the Feynman technique of, you know, like, you teach and you learn it better. And then also just in general, like, I think if I wasn't gonna be an engineer, I've always talked about, like, being a teacher, But, unfortunately, like, teachers are not really paid that way. Yeah. Yeah. So so, like, this is kinda like a win win on that boat, you know, where I could get get the benefits there, kinda do what I, you know, wanted to. And I've kinda just continued from there, and I have made, like, small iterative tweaks to how I do things. But, I mean, I'm still generally just doing the same thing as I did, you know, day 1. Yeah. That really reminds me, it takes me back to to my elementary school days when the teacher is teaching something and they asked, does anybody have any questions? And you're hoping that one person asks a question because everybody's asking the same question. So being a being that person who shares that that front end experience, you know, even about alt text or whatever, you whatever your learnings are, I kind of equate you to that purse that kid in in elementary school who raised their hand and asked the question that everybody had because I was the kid who was kind of scared that I would look dumb if I asked a question. Were you that type of kid in school? It's so funny you mentioned that because, yeah, I definitely was. Like, there was even I had a elementary school teacher that was, you know, like, I remember I raised my hand at one point and he kind of made like a joking, like, tantrum a little bit where it was like, oh, Jordan. Okay. What is it now? You know? What is the color of the sky? Like, what is it? You know? Like, and he just, like, started asking, like, a bunch of, like, rent like, questions kinda, like, making fun of me a little bit. But, I mean, I didn't take it to heart. I think we're Yeah. We kinda, you know, we had a decent relationship, I suppose. But, yeah, it was to the point where someone even made fun of me for it. Even a teacher. Yeah. Yeah. No. I think that's a I think that's a trait that a lot of us have in common. It's kind of you wanna understand is it's kind of a curiosity almost. Do you do you find that that's actually an important trait to have as an engineer is curiosity? And then how important do you think it is to ask questions that you feel might make you look dumb, but it's important to ask the questions so that you understand what you're trying to learn. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I curiosity, and just, you know, this is part of curiosity, but, like, the willingness to not just look at the surface level and accept it for what it is is super important. One of the things that I, that I teach, like, in my course about, like, senior level coding is that you are constantly thinking about, like, if you use maybe a library, you know, an external tool or something like that, how, like, how does this thing actually work? Like, you're not just accepting it for, like, a black box, right? Like, when you use chat gpt, what is it actually doing behind the scenes? And if you, like, think about, like, those types of things, like, enough, then over time you start to build kind of like a like a mental model or like a mental map in your head of like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like this thing is kind of similar to this thing. I expect it to work in this certain way. And because I can, like, make that assumption, I might even just be able to, like, try this method and see if it exists. And, like, you know, I don't even need to look at the docs. And, like, I Yeah. I have a feeling, like, that this is gonna work this way. And, or, like, if you need to build a similar tool yourself, you kinda already have an idea, you know, of of how you're gonna do it and you can, you know, form the architecture for it or ace your interview because they'll ask you like, hey, design Netflix. And if you've thought enough, like, while you're watching Netflix, like, how is the video streaming, you know, to my to my TV right now? Then Yeah. Maybe you have a decent idea of, like, you know, how you'll be able to do it in an interview. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I I think, like, just to add to that, like, curiosity is a big element of that, especially with engineering. And I think the more that you like you said, the more that you dive into, like, the what, why, and how. Of course, there's gonna be questions that sound stupid and elementary and basic around it. Right? But, they're important questions to get you to dive a bit deeper. Right? And and they're just, like, instinctual things. Like, oh, I just wanna know how this works. Right? And sometimes those instinctual things to to me and and to many people are the things that actually end up being these big light bulb moments. At least in I I always relate things back to music because I was, like, sort of the first career path I had. And it was always funny to me to learn that, like, some of these really big number one hits. Right? Like, Guns N' Roses, for example, Sweet Child of Mine, that riff was written as a total joke because they had gone to, like they had gone out to Vegas and the casinos, and Slash is just writing this, like, oh, this is what the slot machines sound like. And they just it was a pure joke, and they gave it to the label, and they're like, this is the best song, you know, you guys have. And and they're like, no. We're not releasing this. This is like a joke. But sometimes the point is that, like, these through these, like, initial, like they're just, like, gut instincts, and you treat them as that. You don't, like, you know, you don't put too much weight and judge them. They're just, like, these ideas that once you put them out, it's like, oh, actually, that's that's the brilliant idea. It's not the stupid idea. Right? That's the brilliant question that led you down the path, not the stupid question. So maybe, yeah, maybe it's it's best that we don't, like, put others' judgment into these things because that can just, like, stop us right there and kill the curiosity. Yeah. Exactly. And don't, yeah, don't let it die for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Do do you find that your community you've built, you know, a a decent a good sized following, about 40,000 times bigger than mine. But do you find that your community, leads you to new tools and new technologies? I'm sure you're out there kind of seeing things that are new on the market or people are sharing, but do you find that one of the benefits of having this community is people sharing back things that you then become curious about? Is that the feedback that you're getting from your community? Mhmm. Yeah. It's Or or are they just silent listeners? Definitely not silent listeners, but, I mean, I I think I do get questions sometimes about, like, oh, you know, like, have you have you heard about this tool? Have you tried this tool or something like that? And I think one downside, honestly, you know, because a lot of people reach out to me and they'll they'll say also that they were inspired by my journey to start content creation. It doesn't come without its downsides. It for sure. Like, one of the downsides that I've personally experienced is you lose a lot of time to actually especially if you're talking about, like, career growth stuff, more like soft skills, you lose a lot of time to dive into some of those, like, more technical, like, alright. Let me figure out, like, how, you know, Next. Js versus Vite versus Solid. Js, like, all these things, like, work. Like, the most, you know, that I can really do a lot of the time is maybe watch a video, you know, on some some person that's kinda already done that deep dive, and I can't really, like, do it myself. You know? So it is something that I wish I could, like I'm trying to sort out and actually, maybe, hopefully, like, if I can figure out how to use AI to save some time on some of the things that I do, then maybe I'll be able to get some time back on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Has sorry. I was gonna ask, did has the the high growth engineer, right, your your newsletter, has that led you to meet anyone interesting or inspiring that maybe somebody that you've looked up to or just someone notable in the community? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that would I would say would be, like, one of the biggest benefits. I mean, just like a couple off the top of my head, would be, like, Gregor, you know, the engineering leadership guy, Caleb, John Cricket, Wes Kao, the founders, like, at at Plato. It was like a mentorship platform. Through that, like, I was able to, get, an opportunity to emcee at a conference that they held in San Francisco. I they would have never known about me if I didn't write online or anything like that. And then through that conference, I met, like, a bunch of senior engineering leaders, you know, like VPs of engineering. I met a director of engineering at Netflix, Bruce, a a bunch of other, you know, people as well. Oh, one one 2 more quick shout outs too on people. Ryan Peterman, he's a staff engineer at at Meta. Ravi Raj Achar, he's, like, tech lead mentor. And he him and Irina, Irina Stanescu, they have also base essentially, like, participated in my course as guests, and they just, like, do it out of the goodness of their heart. Like, because we're, you know, connected, we help each other out and all that stuff, that helps like improve the value of my course as well. People love them, you know, when, when they're there, it's like super awesome to be like, hey Yeah. I I have like a past, you know, engineering manager and stat like staff engineer, like at Meta, Google, Uber, like all this stuff. And they're like, you know, they're just like their eye all the students in the course, like, their eyes light up and everything. You know? Yeah. That that really speaks to, like we we had spoken to someone else on this podcast, maybe a few episodes ago, but one of the key takeaways is, like, get out there, meet people, like, be a part of the community, like, shake some hands. Right? Because networking is something that's never gonna go away, and it's even actually increasingly more important to meet people in real life. So it sounds like you've definitely benefited from the, you know, the publicity or the or the the exposure that you've gotten online, but actually converted that into, like, actual handshakes, which is really impressive and, like, I think a great way to build your career, especially, like, you know, at at a at a younger age too. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's it's it's amazing. Yeah. And one one interesting insight that I've found about networking, especially because, like, you know, I guess within the creator space, normally, it's kind of about, when you help people, you get help in return. Right? Like, the you know, maybe you give someone a shout out and they'll be like, oh, wow. Like, I didn't even know about you before, but, like, you're giving me a shout out. That's super cool. Let me check out your stuff. Oh, yeah. I'll, like, I'd love to, like, add you as a shout out. And so it's kinda like cool that you've realized that networking really is about, like, giving value first and then, like, getting value back. And, it's not like, hey, you know, tell me about your life story. I'm here as, like, a person that you can talk to even though you know nothing about, like, you don't you don't know me at all. And then, like, after you tell me your life story, can I ask you, like, for a job? You know? Yeah. It's nothing it's nothing like about that. Sounds like the typical LinkedIn message. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But the the thing that I found particularly especially as I help other people is, like, it's a little easier for me to kind of do that giving value thing when I have something like, you know, my audience, my LinkedIn post, my newsletter thing, all that stuff. But I I could see it being difficult for someone that is maybe, like, just getting started in the industry or something like that and it's, like, you know, maybe they just, like, my my just view of it from from where I'm looking, it doesn't look like they have that much to give. But I also don't know, You know, if they like, that's the high level principle. If you can find something to give, then you're good. But I don't I don't really know, like, what I can suggest to them. That's part of the issue that I run into when I try to help people with that. Yeah. Do you so looking back at your quick journey from junior engineer to senior engineer and building this audience, you know, what do you did you have this where you're at now, did you kind of have this as a goal back 4 or 5 years ago? And then what is your goal for the next 5 years? You mentioned love the love for teaching, and you would do teaching if it was more, lucrative. But, you know, where do you do you wanna move further into leadership and become even more of a mentor for people who are both in your company but also external, or would you rather go down the content creation leader or teacher type, journey? Yeah. I I think the content creation, it needs to come from your actual experience. If maybe I wanted to write, you know, indefinitely about how to become a senior engineer because that's where I am right now, right, then I could leave my, you know, leave my job maybe and try this out. But, like, I you know, it would be, it would be, like, inauthentic of me to try to expand outward and say, hey. Here's how you go from senior engineer to staff engineer. Here's how you go from, you know, senior engineer to manager. I haven't tried those things out. So Yeah. I think one of the unique things that, like, I, bring to the table, like, as a creator is I do have, like, a wide range of experiences in a short amount of time. Like, I, you know, I I worked at Twitter as, like, internship. I got I got rejected, like, on my like, I got I also I got the return offer, but I also got rejected. So I, like, I know what that both of those, like, feel like. And I also, like, worked at a startup, you know, crypto startup, like, 3, 4 person thing, you know, like, while I was in university. And then, like, I did Gusto, which was, like, medium size. So, like, just in those 3 alone, I basically have, like, all the different sizes. Like, I have, like, super small, like, Gusto, like, medium size, Twitter, like, you know, bigger. And then now I'm kinda, like, in between, like, 0 and gusto size right now. I qualified. Yeah. So I think, like, if I could just keep on, you know, varying the experiences up and and, like, you know, just just add to the repertoire of different things that I've tried, then, it'll probably, you know, make me just be able to relate to pretty much anybody, hopefully, and and keep writing about, you know, things that that hopefully provide value to people. Yeah. No. That's that's such a great point is continuing on the the leadership to, you know, higher positions will naturally create that content that other people are looking for. So it's it's almost like you don't have to make that decision, yet you just kind of continue the path that you've been on, and both will come naturally naturally because it sounds like you're a hard worker and you're curious and that that from what who we've who we've talked to before for this podcast and just from our own personal experiences, that's the kind of things that it takes to continue climbing up in the ranks. And so that's such a good point that you don't have to make that decision. You just keep going where what you're doing, and both will naturally come. So Yeah. The inspiration for the content will seem to generate itself. Right? And then it's just, like, translating that experience into content. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like it would it would be, difficult to come up with ideas, you know, after you're, like, you know, not, you know, in a tech working environment for, you know, the 8 hours a day. At the same time, though, it is it is a lot of work, to do both. So so I don't know. I'm gonna try to figure out something, but, you know, for TBD. Yeah. Well, there's one position that it sounds like you haven't had, and that is founder of a company. So True. Yeah. Maybe if, you know, you are your founder of your content, but maybe you've been at a startup, but you haven't been the founder. So maybe that's in your journey eventually. Yeah. So so, you know, what have you learned over the years? What would be some good advice that you give to people who are listening? Pretend that the listeners are are you're their mentor? You know? What would you what advice would you give them from your experience? Well, so it's tough to give any general advice because every depending on the stage of your career, the advice is gonna be, you know, different. But if I had to give, like, something, you know, maybe to everyone, then I would say, one one really nice takeaway is if you accept that there will always be room to grow, then there you will never be afraid of feedback. And, you know, one way that that kinda sees itself is, a lot of time, you know, we're scared to ask our peers, you know, for feedback or say, hey. How did I do, like, in that presentation? Or, like, how do you how do you feel like, do you feel like I could have done anything better, like, in that meeting that I just ran? Or, you know, like, how was my how did I how did I do leading this project or something like that? Or, like, just anything like that. A lot of times, we're a little scared to ask. And understandably, you know, we all kinda put our we we put our best foot forward and we we we don't wanna hear that potential that we didn't do as best as we can. But at the same time, the the those two things, like, you can put your best foot forward and you can also always grow. So if you accept that, then you'll constantly seek out that feedback, and you'll also constantly be growing. Yeah. Wow. I might just put that phrase on my wall, you know, because that that's actually some really, really good advice. You know? So that's very good advice that was that was very generic for generic questions. So well well said. Hopefully, broadly applicable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So I guess, you know, we'll we'll wrap it up here. It's been a awesome conversation. But, you know, we've mentioned throughout the conversation some of the things that you're doing, but, obviously, we want people to be, followers of you because you're putting out good things. You're putting out good advice, good content. So where can people find you? You know? Where what is the courses that you teach? What is your newsletter? Just repeat that. And then if people wanna follow you in other places, where where are you? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, LinkedIn is the main place where I post every day, you know, updates on kinda everything. So just search Jordan Cutler on LinkedIn. The newsletter is called high growth engineer. And the course, if you're interested in that, I don't think I will be running that many more cohorts. I think I'm gonna explore different avenues. So try to get in either on this upcoming cohort, although I don't know when the podcast will be out Yep. Or the next one might be my last one. We'll see. And that one is called mid level to senior engineer, on Maven. Okay. Awesome. Well, any any last questions from you, Pedro? I feel like I just took over that end. No. That's that's amazing. Definitely excited to to continue following your journey as I'm sure most of the, you know, the viewers and the listeners are as well. And, yeah, so subscribe. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think the last word I'll say is I think it's really motivational. There's a lot of young engineers out there and and even older engineers too, so I don't wanna pigeonhole into young engineers who they're curious and they wanna learn. And so I think some of the articles that you've put out about, you know, being a go to in a specific, field or a specific piece of content or what it what may it be. But, it's really, encouraging to see somebody who's younger than me who puts in the effort and has had the success that, they can then share with other people. So it's been a fantastic conversation. Yeah. Definitely appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. It's been great, guys. I really appreciate it.","published",[135,146,155],{"people_id":136},{"id":137,"first_name":138,"last_name":139,"avatar":140,"bio":141,"links":142},"6057329f-2147-4f46-913f-d6b151dc1bf1","Pedro","Pizarro","7940df6a-db0a-4afe-81bb-a136ef93d229","Customer Success at Directus",[143],{"url":144,"service":145},"https://directus.io/team/pedro-pizarro","website",{"people_id":147},{"id":148,"first_name":149,"last_name":150,"avatar":151,"bio":141,"links":152},"9610ff1c-bcfd-4e59-9ab8-17ff5f567ccb","John","Daniels","5100c5aa-0455-48eb-bae3-4380bfd82ea2",[153],{"url":154,"service":145},"https://directus.io/team/john-daniels",{"people_id":156},{"id":157,"first_name":158,"last_name":159,"avatar":160,"bio":8,"links":8},"de5fe7dc-32a6-4721-94f1-58b0f37dea1b","Jordan","Cutler","881f711d-ff68-4f2f-a870-27d8f9a30e83",[],{"id":163,"number":164,"year":165,"episodes":166,"show":171},"814d854d-db03-4f92-99ba-d825df61fb36",2,"2024",[167,168,122,169,170],"5755bb0e-40d5-49c3-bc89-29fb576a4d37","e134329e-226e-4c35-a8a9-ba50fd7fdd62","b748cd39-d86b-44b2-a219-2d58a116a038","edffa3aa-a85e-4eca-bdc1-c05e1d8188e8",{"title":172,"tile":173},"Trace Talks","c3914dd2-0a22-4214-a2ac-8314b7a56c27",{"title":8,"meta_description":8},{"id":169,"slug":176,"season":163,"vimeo_id":177,"description":178,"tile":179,"length":127,"resources":8,"people":8,"episode_number":180,"published":181,"title":182,"video_transcript_html":183,"video_transcript_text":184,"content":8,"seo":185,"status":133,"episode_people":186,"recommendations":190},"scott-adrian","948811579","In this episode of Trace Talks, Scott Adrian shares his journey from professional piercer and musician to Senior WordPress Engineer. Scott discusses his early experiences with web development, starting with Myspace layouts for his band, and his first tech job at 1 Stop Internet. He highlights his transition to WordPress, leading teams, and mentoring junior developers. Scott also talks about balancing his career with personal projects, including publishing a sci-fi fantasy novel and developing a WordPress-based RPG game. Tune in for insights on career growth, leadership, and leveraging AI in development.","b6eb2819-3e45-4d1c-92fc-de0c6151a78b",4,"2024-06-27","Scott Adrian, Sr. Wordpress Developer","\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Always thought, you know, I'm gonna I'll I'll just be a rock star, you know, no biggie. You know, I'll just go through the school thing and then be be famous for that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Trace Talks. Today, we have Scott Adrian. I'm Pedro. We also have John here as well, who you may recognize from past episodes because we run this podcast.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Don't we, John?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yep.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Any anyway, yeah. Scott, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background. I know you are a WordPress engineer, have been for some time transitioned from different, you know, backgrounds. Like, many of the folks we talked to maybe started off in a different industry, and ended up in, you know, in tech and in in web tech. So Mhmm.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I'd love to hear about your career, what got you to this point, and, you know, what brought you from professional piercer to musician to, you know, maybe a career in technology?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Right. Money. Yeah. That's Yeah. That's what.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: He's a good driver.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Wait. There's money in tech?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Exactly. That was the only one that made it. Yeah. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Because, you know, when I, yeah, when I started out, I was like, oh, okay. So I'm gonna be famous. That wasn't a question. It's like, what am I gonna be famous for? My dad was a long time rock star and lead guitarist and stuff in bands.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So, I always thought, you know, I'm gonna, I'll, I'll just be a rock star, You know, no biggie. You know, I'll just go through the school thing and and then be be famous for that. And then yeah. Music was hard and I got into piercing, because I wanna make money at a young age. And, you know, back in 2,000, 2,000 ish, you know, 2,002, 3, Piercings were hot.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Right? Everybody everybody was trying to it was getting more popular tattoos, piercings, and and, it really helped that everybody underage had somebody else that was underage that could pierce them. So, yeah, I I, that's how I that was my first business. And then when I turned 18, I actually started working in shops because I'm like, okay, well, doing so well, you know, out, you know, an underground, go to a shop and there'll be gangbusters. But yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Yeah. You you learn early on when you start working in shops. I was in Hollywood for a couple years. It's called the Walk of Fame tattoo. And on top of being horrifying and tear terribly scary, you know, working long nights in downtown Hollywood, There's no money in piercing specifically.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I can't talk about tattooing. They seem to be doing well, and I I have long time friends that are still, you know, very successful tattoo artists. But, yeah, Pierce Piercing's such a novelty. And people that come to shops, you know, walk ins are are like, here, I wanna nose. I want my ear.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And, you know, you're getting $20 on a Saturday.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: And, yeah. Didn't didn't work out for me. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: So what so then what prompted that transition into, like you know, obviously, there was there's a bit more money to be made, you said, in in the web stuff, but what was sort of that initial catalyst to get you thinking about programming?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. So I I I'm\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: also really curious because I also you know, I I I wanted to be a professional golfer. I was like, oh, that's that's me. You need to be a professional golfer. And then there you know, I'd\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: You need to be good at golf for that, John.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Well, I I forgot about that part. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. But\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: but when I made that transition when I made that transition into web design or websites, I just had a friend who said, hey. I'll pay you $50 to build a website. So I'm just curious because that was what it was for me that kind of got me into web design and technology. So I'm kinda curious to hear your story about how you've gotten to tech, but also what was your first paying job for that?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Because, you know, I've been doing web development for, you know, closer to 20 years, on my own. Because originally, when I was in bands, we needed a website, we needed a Myspace, custom Myspace layout.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And so that's what that was my first instances of HTML, CSS. Just I\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: think I think for all 3 of us, that was probably probably a similar story. Exactly.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: So I knew I could do it. And, and, you know, it it was, you know, it's a skill I was gaining just for fun and just for my own stuff. Same with graphic design. I was making all the albums and shirt designs and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, the the catalyst, was really I got a job for 1 stop Internet.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>This was in 2,000, Yeah. Because I left I left in 2006 or 7. Yeah. So I was there for a while. I, I started working in the warehouse at 1 Stop Internet and they're, they're an outsourced e commerce company, basically large companies would be like, Hey, we need you to be our e commerce.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So they, they build the website. They house, they had warehouses, they'd store all the product and they'd handle all the distribution themselves and all their shipping and all that stuff. So website and fulfillment all in one. So we had giant names. I mean, we had Von Dutch, giant name.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>We had we had, you know, Betsy Johnson, you know, Vestal Watches, Lululemon, True Religion, giant giant, brands, that that were housing other stuff, and we were doing the websites. And I was picking items for the warehouse at first. They promised me a job in the photo studio. So after after a little while and that finally happened, I started doing high volume photo retouching. And that's when I got on a computer, and I finally was getting paid to do work on a computer.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It was photo, Photoshop and 1,000 images a day, you know, but, I ended up, you know, moving up and kind of running the post production. I was post production coordinator for years. And then, and I started doing little web work for them because clients would need like a slideshow to see the images that they were, that we were taking for them and they wanted to view them. So I'd make these little flash websites and and these little Dreamweaver based websites, with sliders and all that kind of stuff. And, it it kinda sucked because one stop Internet built websites.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Mhmm. Like, for these clients, giant giant ecommerce websites. And I never had a chance to work for that department ever, which is crazy. I I tried. I I tried to apply it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It's just like, hey, any openings and, you know, and they just had these very talented programmers working there, you know? So, so I left I left for, an e commerce company who took a chance on me to like run their website. And, it was on asp.net storefront, asp.net storefront, which was not a great first, website to be running and work on. But luckily, they needed a blog, and, we went for WordPress. And that's where I first kinda got introduced into WordPress.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And, so at that point, Piercing was side job, and, you know, I only did on the weekends or whenever the shop needed me. And, all all my income was coming from, you know, website work. And, yeah. And that's when I first started working in WordPress just with custom themes and plugins like everybody else does. And, and, eventually we needed some extra stuff and I would jump into the code and, Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>From there, I I, you know, to to gain more knowledge, I was doing a lot of side jobs, a lot of freelance work. I had a lot of time at this gig.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: I played a lot of video games and watched a lot of series of animes, so much, that, yeah, I ended up being able to do a bunch of side work while I was working there. And, it was yeah. Just Craigslist. That was the Alpha main got out 50% of my income was Craigslist jobs, building websites.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: What was the initial driver to WordPress? Was it the ease of use? I honestly never got into WordPress myself. I was a Dreamweaver designer, which\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. It was. The ease of use. It was really easy to pick up. And at that time, I was scrappy, so I was just pulling in third party themes and plugins, hard coding CSS to just make them look how they wanted.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know, I'd get something very close, 3rd party, and I just manipulate it. And, yeah, it was easy money, really. That that was how it got to that point. And Yeah. Do you do\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: you think, like, specializing on WordPress allowed you to do that? Because typically in, like, the industry, we see there's, you know, sort of a debate on having a broad set of you know, being a full stack engineering, having a broad set of of tools at your disposal to really focusing in on a niche and being an expert in maybe WordPress or some specific Right. Language, for example. How has that kind of shaped your career trajectory thinking, you know, that you started in WordPress and and continue to focus on on that as a niche?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. You know, it wasn't a conscious decision. I think like everybody else, I got pigeonholed. My resume started one way and it just kept growing that way. And then at a certain point, it was, you know, I was the WordPress guy.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So, you know, I started working for Beachbody's and, and working in their in their coaching department. We're developing a whole coaching platform in WordPress. And I was working some with some really, Austin Passi, big WordPress name. He ran the LA WordCamp a few years, and, they brought him in. And I I absorbed as much as I could because at that point, I was, like, the least experienced.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I I I could do whatever you wanted, but I would do it wrong because I was just using old old people's code and, you know, just piecemealing things together. But he he showed me like, oh, I can just build a theme. Oh, I can build a plugin, you know, to make this happen. And, and there was other guys on the team too that were really advanced. And, yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So that's what I did. I faked it till I made it, and, and then I And\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: you made it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: And I made it. Yeah. So I had that on my resume, moved on to more jobs, you know, investors.com, like, one of at the time, one of the highest trafficked WordPress sites in the world. I jumped on as a lead, and I was leading, you know, 4 or 5 devs, all WordPress based. And, we were just developing custom themes and plugins for them.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And, you know, I started working with they I forget the scenario, but they brought XWP in, which is a big name in the WordPress world as well. They they're the ones that did, like, a collaboration with Google to get, like, the Google AMP plugin and, and, other things. And, Thierry and some of the other guys, I would literally have them in my, in my office with me. And these guys were like core contributors to the max, to WordPress. And, again, I just absorbed so much.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I'm talking, I learned unit testing there. I learned sanitization and escaping. All the you know, I already know how to program, but I learned coding standards from from that company, while pretending I already knew them, you know, which was a big theme.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: And, Yeah. And and so, that's that got me to the expert level, really.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Mhmm.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: And I knew at that point, you know, any job I take going forward, I'm asking double and I'm, you know, and Yeah. And they're gonna, you know, they're gonna pay it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. What was that transition like into leadership leading a team of 4 or 5 devs when, you know, 10, 15 years prior, you're like, I'm a be a professional tattoo artist, You know? And now you're leading people as sort of, like, a boss almost. What was that like, that first leadership role?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. I don't I guess it was weird. You know, when you're in a place of authority, it's all about appearance. As long as they're they think you're the authority and they think that you know what you're talking about and you and you're not completely horrible at your job and and you're not completely talking out of your ass. I was very good at, figuring things out on the fly while I was talking.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So still am.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: So, yeah, I guess it wasn't that bad. You know, they weren't I mentored a couple people who are really junior in the WordPress world. So, you know, you learn the most when you're teaching, and that really helped, helped me develop them into the dev that I needed them to be for for what I was doing and what I needed them to do. So, yeah, it wasn't that bad. I was I wasn't too nervous about leading the team, but it was surreal.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know? Because I never really thought about the trajectory. I just thought I'm gonna make money being the doer, the code monkey. You know what I mean? And, but, yeah, I mean, I got old.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Yeah. You know? I got experience.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. Well well, as you've gotten older, you've maintained these side projects. You just released a book 6 months ago, so congrats on the book. And then I saw that you also you also released, like, an RPG game on the side or something. So as you've Sorry.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>As you progress Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: You're you're correct. Yeah. So, last in 2023, I first published my my first sci fi fantasy cover, you know, novel, called Orbum. And, another another great learning experience, knew nothing about the book industry, made a lot of assumptions, and, I just recently rereleased it because I did it wrong.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Amazing.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: In January 28th, I rereleased all of them properly.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Got\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: it. And, and actually book 2 is on preorder now, Myroupelia, which should be out July 1st. It's gonna be a 4 book series. Never thought I was gonna be an author. I read a lot of sci fi books at one point.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I was going through, like, 20 or so series. And I basically I have a really bad habit of if I'm spending a lot of time doing something that, that I'm not making money on, I feel, you know, that I'm not being productive. It's that really bad ambition kinda bug.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's it's definitely a really good timing this year. I think I think 2024 is a great year for sci fi having, you know, just seen Dune. And and all the stuff that's coming later this year. I think it's it's definitely a great year to be, you know, releasing that that type of material.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: I\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: wonder if that came from, you know, all the the free time that you mentioned that you had that you were watching all these anime and playing video games. Like, maybe that sort of inspired the the book as well.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. I mean, it the story structure's definitely inspired by tons of the anime I I was watching. You know, play I played a lot of video games when I was younger. I do not have time to do that, you know, in the last 10 years. But, yeah, the, I, I, I think I had a, I had a big, you know, childhood of media.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know, we always had a TV. We always had movies. We always had video games. And, so, yeah, everything's ingrained in my brain, and it's all just straight imagination. I don't, you know, the research I do for the books is are for the technical scientific terms because it's technically a hard sci fi book, because I do a lot of explaining of things that don't exist.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So, but, yeah, more more more or less, I don't plot the entire thing out. I kinda know where it's gonna go in my head to the very end. But, yeah, the main the main, driving force is I wanna know what happened next. You know? I wanna know what they're gonna say and to make people laugh because I I my natural timbre is snark.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know? Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Same. Same. Yeah. Do you think\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: that that draws, like, the sort of the the authorship and the tech world sort of draw a parallel in that sense of, you know, you're sort of creating something out of nothing, especially when designing, you know, WordPress sort of extensions or plugins or coding things from, from scratch?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. I mean, if, if you ever get a chance to read it, and being in the industry you're in and knowing where I came from, you're going to get a lot, a lot of the same, you're going to get a lot of the corporate world in there. A lot of the same terms, programming terms, and stuff like that. Things that maybe some people wouldn't, offhand know, like smoke testing and regression testing, you know, talking about his systems and, just little things like that, which, spill into the, the novel. Cause you know, these are scientists or they were all working for a corporation and then they all had to run away, you know?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So, it's easy to to to make, correlations there, but, yeah, I mean, it's all creative. I feel like as I get more into leadership, I get less creative outlets. So this is good for me, you know, rather than, you know, leading a team or managing a team. Like, I, you know, I used to be making things all the time, that kind of stuff. And, you know, and when you get to a certain level, it's a lot about maintenance and it's a lot about keeping things afloat, especially in the industry now where budgets are getting cut left and right.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Nobody wants to build a brand new this, you know, except for AI. Everybody wants a brand new AI tool. So\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. What's your, what's your take on that?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: What are we using AI for? Love AI. Right. I'm not against AI. You know, I've been working with OpenAI's API and using it for various things.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I use chat gpt all the damn time. I'm not a prompt engineer, but, man, I hate writing, you know, array building loops sometimes. So I'm just like, write me a function that takes this and moves the, you know, the key to the end and then move this key to the beginning and then merges them all the oh, dude. I just created a an object merging function. I I just don't have the patience to merge a bunch of objects together as long as they have true as their key value or whatever.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: So With your Love that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Do you do you explore other new tech? Because, obviously, AI is very popular, but any other new tech or how much time do you even have to explore new tech or interest?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. I don't, kind of both. I don't have interest, and I don't have time. Yeah. I don't know.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You think I I always say the the career is is for the money. Right? And then use the money to do things that make you happy. So I don't put I am very interested in the tech world. I keep up with, the general tech industry and general things.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I mean, I work with people that are like, Oh, look at this new API. Oh, look at this new endpoint. Look at this new, tool, this new whatever framework. And they keep me in the know. Luckily, You know, I'm not sitting there building a sandbox of, of the newest, you know, React threads or whatever.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And I'm just and we're like, look. It's like, oh, okay. Yes. I love that. What are we using it for?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It's I really have to learn by doing something that is being productive and and for a reason. And that's how I've learned my entire career. I think it's, you know, I think it's very valuable too when I find other programmers. You know, if I'm if I wanna hire somebody, that they have the skill set to just pick something up and learn it when they're doing it, and then applying it accordingly. And that goes to the whole philosophy of, you know, college degree versus the same amount of time as experience in work.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: You know, I don't I didn't go to college for doing any of this. I didn't I I did a weird trade school just to have a certificate on my LinkedIn, And, and it's never slowed me down or stopped me.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: So I don't care about that. If I'm gonna look at somebody's resume, you know, it it's I'd way rather you have 4 years working for, butt effing startup, whatever\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Company, you know, where they were making you wear multiple hats and you, you know, and you still have a positive referral. So Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: You know? And outlook on life.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: And you're still happy and you wanna keep going. Yeah. Exactly.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Right. Exactly.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Dude. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: That's probably the opposite of Pedro. I I probably get 4 or 5 text messages or tweets a day from Pedro telling me to check out new tech. And, like, I can't pay I can't pay attention to all of this.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: I'm the, yeah, I'm the tools fanatic. It's just like, what can make me more efficient so that I can go sit on a beach somewhere?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: I yeah. I I have a buddy, Scott Weaver. Same same exact way. I hate looking at his setup. Somebody give it give me that give me that that bash.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>What do you what do you he builds his own bashes for his own computer just to make setting it up quick. I'm like, give me that. He's given me it. He's given it before. Like, when you do a computer transfer from 1 to 2, I was like, oh, it's such a drag.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>He built an entire bash function that takes all the apps he likes and takes all the setups he does and it installs it all and just runs it. Wow. And I'm just like, you know, he has a repo for it, and I just take it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Incredible.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. But that's I know I know my my work style. I know my personality traits. I know my time, my multitasking and time structures, and, you know, it's just not me. I can appreciate people that do live that way.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>You know?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you are you still able to find any time to to I think you mentioned you don't really watch too much anime or play too many games. You know? What kind of a personal life do you have? I I think I I think I hear kids, so there's also potentially some kids who take up time.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Apologize for that if it's loud. Let me know because I got the headphones in. But, yeah, wife and 2 kids, 4 dogs. I have plenty of other things I need to do during the day.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Yeah. Plenty of time to spend with there and happiness that they bring. And, you know, my youngest, has autism and, she's the one that's usually around when she's not in in school. Yeah. And, so, you know,\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: I'm I'm kind of the the main tear\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: caretaker for her as well. I I handle all her therapy sessions and all the paperwork and all that kind of stuff. So that's that's also an extra time spent that I need to focus on as well. You know, I have documenting her progress and stuff too. Just teaching her to brush her teeth right now.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>She's 8. I'm teaching her to brush her teeth right now, and I have to, like, document it, you know, how how her progress going and stuff like that. So, you know, I do watch anime, though, still. I just caught up with 1 piece because I did watch all the way to the, Wano saga and then I ran out of episodes and this was 2014 or something, 2015. Holy crap.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Getting back to it. So I finished the Wano, recently, because because I'll tell you why too. It's because my other kid, my my oldest, she's 10. She plays Roblox and I kept seeing these freaking luffy 5th gear avatars. And I'm like, what is that?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And I hate spoilers and I hate not knowing. Oh, no. Especially if it's a series that I watched a 1,000 episodes already. I'm like, I should know what's going on. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Right. It took a really long time to get to 5th gear, man. Really Yeah. Fucking long. So, yeah, did that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So, yeah, I still like to keep it up every now and then. I I mean, I watch a streamer, Pirate Software, on Twitch that I really like, Yeah. Just in the background. And, and he's inspired me to actually start developing my game more and I'm streaming it now on Twitch. Oh, amazing.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Yeah. Twitch, it's just slash orb and mortar. I try to do it, every day, 10:10 to 12 or something like that where it's showing the development of my WordPress based RPG game that I'm developing. Incredible.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: And that will be based on the same, content as the as the novels?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. It's in the urban world. I'm start I'm using it, as a story structure for it. It'll have a lot of extra stuff, and I'm gonna have to tweak some things so he has more weapons and he can maybe use magic a little earlier than in the book. Spoiler alert.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Yeah. But, that's, yeah. So I already have an entire universe to build from, so now it's all about the mechanics. And it's all Yeah. All the content management, all the assets are WordPress based.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So it's, and vanilla JavaScript and SASS styling.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: That's amazing. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone building a a an entire game off of WordPress, but that we'll have to check that out. That's very interesting.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Feel it's it's it's been an interesting ride, and, I'm not using Canvas. So if anybody's listening and they're like, oh, he's using Canvas, probably.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I'm not. It's straight vanilla JavaScript and styling. Yeah. Nice. Very fun.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Well, yeah. Take I mean, taking a look back again at want from wanting to be a rock star and piercing all the way up to leading teams, you know, I guess, what have what's you know, do you do you miss the days of being purely just an individual contributor, you know, or or do you have you enjoyed the journey all the way to where you are now?\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: You know, I'm still an individual contributor in in a sense for what I'm doing. You know, when I worked for Disney for a couple years, I I was full on individual contributor until their their horrible timing structure of canceling contractors happened. And then, you know, Warner Brothers, same thing, individual contributor, and, those were all in the midst of different, you know, job structures and stuff like that, same for Universal. So it's like, I don't care at this point if I'm the builder or the one telling people to build. In the future, I assume that I'll just be managing giant teams and, you know, whatever, move up to a CTO role, the natural progression.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And I don't mind, you know, doing the whole recruiting, hiring, firing, meeting setup, collabs, all that kind of stuff, agile. You know? I know everybody hates it and whatever. I mean, I I'm not I'm not seeking it out to be a scrum master, but I can handle it. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Better than others.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: At some point, you'll become a CTO, and you'll be on stage talking to others. So you'll be on a stage, just not as a rock star. Well, you'll be a rock star maybe with somebody.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: And I still release music too. So, that's that it could happen. I could still be a rock star someday. If somebody Yeah. Somebody takes it up, and it's also some of the music is, Orban based.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So Yeah. Definitely Oh, awesome. Finding a lot a lot of ways to incorporate this universe for sure.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah. Maybe maybe, you know, to kinda wrap this conversation of every everything we've learned about you, maybe you could tell everyone where to where to follow along with you on LinkedIn or if you have any other social media. Obviously, where to check out the the book and follow your progress on Twitch would be would be awesome.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Yeah. Awesome. You if you wanna see anything Orban based or everything Orban based, it's literally Orban order, one word. I'm at that or slash that on all the social medias. Except for Facebook, I had to do the Orbum order because they flagged Orbom order for, like, a weird advertising bug, and it, like, closed I could not make ads on Facebook anymore.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>They thought I was doing something nefarious, so I completely closed that out. And it's it's the Orgim order on Facebook. But, yeah, I got a threads, Instagram, Twitter, x. I've, Twitch, and Discord even. The Discord is open for everything.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And, yeah, like I said, oh, and the YouTube too. So the YouTube's where you can see my music, it's being distributed through CD Baby. So I mean, it's everywhere. You just look up, The Orban Order is the band name.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Nice.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Amazing. And, yeah, you can find I I have, like, 3 singles out, that are that are fun. Just power metal stuff, and and, it's yeah. And, that's\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: it. Now you've had to go through a whole branding process, so you're also a brander.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Dude, marketing. Yeah. I didn't know how hard, book marketing was. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm luckily in a tech sector where I work for a lot of marketing teams. So it completely coincides.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>I mean, running ad campaigns on AMS, you know, Amazon, media services and running ad campaigns on Facebook ads and and, just handling I mean, I did all the typesetting for my book too in InDesign. I just Nice. I had to learn that. Because I'm I I know all the creative suite, you know, I do all my own video editing too. And, you know, just just from the years of doing stuff, and, the, you know, and I do on my own music editing on Garage Band.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>And it's, like once you once you can work one program, everybody copies everyone. Right? So it's it's you know, you could pick if you wanna do it, you could do it. Not the best at any of it, but Yeah. I can release it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, awesome. It it's so cool to hear, you know, we've we've talked to a lot of others who have this creative spark in them. So it's it's been great to hear everything in in your journey, and it's I'll definitely follow along and grab a copy of that book because I like sci fi books. I don't I don't like biographies or things like that.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>So we'll put your links and all the information so people can follow along, but we definitely appreciate the conversation today.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: Awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Scott. And\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 0: there's an audio book too if you guys don't wanna read.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Speaker 2: I like to read. I like to read.\u003C/p>","Always thought, you know, I'm gonna I'll I'll just be a rock star, you know, no biggie. You know, I'll just go through the school thing and then be be famous for that. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Trace Talks. Today, we have Scott Adrian. I'm Pedro. We also have John here as well, who you may recognize from past episodes because we run this podcast. Don't we, John? Yep. Any anyway, yeah. Scott, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background. I know you are a WordPress engineer, have been for some time transitioned from different, you know, backgrounds. Like, many of the folks we talked to maybe started off in a different industry, and ended up in, you know, in tech and in in web tech. So Mhmm. I'd love to hear about your career, what got you to this point, and, you know, what brought you from professional piercer to musician to, you know, maybe a career in technology? Right. Money. Yeah. That's Yeah. That's what. Yeah. He's a good driver. Wait. There's money in tech? Yeah. Exactly. That was the only one that made it. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, when I, yeah, when I started out, I was like, oh, okay. So I'm gonna be famous. That wasn't a question. It's like, what am I gonna be famous for? My dad was a long time rock star and lead guitarist and stuff in bands. So, I always thought, you know, I'm gonna, I'll, I'll just be a rock star, You know, no biggie. You know, I'll just go through the school thing and and then be be famous for that. And then yeah. Music was hard and I got into piercing, because I wanna make money at a young age. And, you know, back in 2,000, 2,000 ish, you know, 2,002, 3, Piercings were hot. Right? Everybody everybody was trying to it was getting more popular tattoos, piercings, and and, it really helped that everybody underage had somebody else that was underage that could pierce them. So, yeah, I I, that's how I that was my first business. And then when I turned 18, I actually started working in shops because I'm like, okay, well, doing so well, you know, out, you know, an underground, go to a shop and there'll be gangbusters. But yeah. Yeah. You you learn early on when you start working in shops. I was in Hollywood for a couple years. It's called the Walk of Fame tattoo. And on top of being horrifying and tear terribly scary, you know, working long nights in downtown Hollywood, There's no money in piercing specifically. I can't talk about tattooing. They seem to be doing well, and I I have long time friends that are still, you know, very successful tattoo artists. But, yeah, Pierce Piercing's such a novelty. And people that come to shops, you know, walk ins are are like, here, I wanna nose. I want my ear. And, you know, you're getting $20 on a Saturday. Yeah. And, yeah. Didn't didn't work out for me. Yeah. So what so then what prompted that transition into, like you know, obviously, there was there's a bit more money to be made, you said, in in the web stuff, but what was sort of that initial catalyst to get you thinking about programming? Yeah. So I I I'm also really curious because I also you know, I I I wanted to be a professional golfer. I was like, oh, that's that's me. You need to be a professional golfer. And then there you know, I'd You need to be good at golf for that, John. Well, I I forgot about that part. Yeah. Yeah. But but when I made that transition when I made that transition into web design or websites, I just had a friend who said, hey. I'll pay you $50 to build a website. So I'm just curious because that was what it was for me that kind of got me into web design and technology. So I'm kinda curious to hear your story about how you've gotten to tech, but also what was your first paying job for that? Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Because, you know, I've been doing web development for, you know, closer to 20 years, on my own. Because originally, when I was in bands, we needed a website, we needed a Myspace, custom Myspace layout. And so that's what that was my first instances of HTML, CSS. Just I think I think for all 3 of us, that was probably probably a similar story. Exactly. So I knew I could do it. And, and, you know, it it was, you know, it's a skill I was gaining just for fun and just for my own stuff. Same with graphic design. I was making all the albums and shirt designs and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, the the catalyst, was really I got a job for 1 stop Internet. This was in 2,000, Yeah. Because I left I left in 2006 or 7. Yeah. So I was there for a while. I, I started working in the warehouse at 1 Stop Internet and they're, they're an outsourced e commerce company, basically large companies would be like, Hey, we need you to be our e commerce. So they, they build the website. They house, they had warehouses, they'd store all the product and they'd handle all the distribution themselves and all their shipping and all that stuff. So website and fulfillment all in one. So we had giant names. I mean, we had Von Dutch, giant name. We had we had, you know, Betsy Johnson, you know, Vestal Watches, Lululemon, True Religion, giant giant, brands, that that were housing other stuff, and we were doing the websites. And I was picking items for the warehouse at first. They promised me a job in the photo studio. So after after a little while and that finally happened, I started doing high volume photo retouching. And that's when I got on a computer, and I finally was getting paid to do work on a computer. It was photo, Photoshop and 1,000 images a day, you know, but, I ended up, you know, moving up and kind of running the post production. I was post production coordinator for years. And then, and I started doing little web work for them because clients would need like a slideshow to see the images that they were, that we were taking for them and they wanted to view them. So I'd make these little flash websites and and these little Dreamweaver based websites, with sliders and all that kind of stuff. And, it it kinda sucked because one stop Internet built websites. Mhmm. Like, for these clients, giant giant ecommerce websites. And I never had a chance to work for that department ever, which is crazy. I I tried. I I tried to apply it. It's just like, hey, any openings and, you know, and they just had these very talented programmers working there, you know? So, so I left I left for, an e commerce company who took a chance on me to like run their website. And, it was on asp.net storefront, asp.net storefront, which was not a great first, website to be running and work on. But luckily, they needed a blog, and, we went for WordPress. And that's where I first kinda got introduced into WordPress. And, so at that point, Piercing was side job, and, you know, I only did on the weekends or whenever the shop needed me. And, all all my income was coming from, you know, website work. And, yeah. And that's when I first started working in WordPress just with custom themes and plugins like everybody else does. And, and, eventually we needed some extra stuff and I would jump into the code and, Yeah. From there, I I, you know, to to gain more knowledge, I was doing a lot of side jobs, a lot of freelance work. I had a lot of time at this gig. Yeah. I played a lot of video games and watched a lot of series of animes, so much, that, yeah, I ended up being able to do a bunch of side work while I was working there. And, it was yeah. Just Craigslist. That was the Alpha main got out 50% of my income was Craigslist jobs, building websites. What was the initial driver to WordPress? Was it the ease of use? I honestly never got into WordPress myself. I was a Dreamweaver designer, which Yeah. It was. The ease of use. It was really easy to pick up. And at that time, I was scrappy, so I was just pulling in third party themes and plugins, hard coding CSS to just make them look how they wanted. You know, I'd get something very close, 3rd party, and I just manipulate it. And, yeah, it was easy money, really. That that was how it got to that point. And Yeah. Do you do you think, like, specializing on WordPress allowed you to do that? Because typically in, like, the industry, we see there's, you know, sort of a debate on having a broad set of you know, being a full stack engineering, having a broad set of of tools at your disposal to really focusing in on a niche and being an expert in maybe WordPress or some specific Right. Language, for example. How has that kind of shaped your career trajectory thinking, you know, that you started in WordPress and and continue to focus on on that as a niche? Yeah. You know, it wasn't a conscious decision. I think like everybody else, I got pigeonholed. My resume started one way and it just kept growing that way. And then at a certain point, it was, you know, I was the WordPress guy. So, you know, I started working for Beachbody's and, and working in their in their coaching department. We're developing a whole coaching platform in WordPress. And I was working some with some really, Austin Passi, big WordPress name. He ran the LA WordCamp a few years, and, they brought him in. And I I absorbed as much as I could because at that point, I was, like, the least experienced. I I I could do whatever you wanted, but I would do it wrong because I was just using old old people's code and, you know, just piecemealing things together. But he he showed me like, oh, I can just build a theme. Oh, I can build a plugin, you know, to make this happen. And, and there was other guys on the team too that were really advanced. And, yeah. So that's what I did. I faked it till I made it, and, and then I And you made it. And I made it. Yeah. So I had that on my resume, moved on to more jobs, you know, investors.com, like, one of at the time, one of the highest trafficked WordPress sites in the world. I jumped on as a lead, and I was leading, you know, 4 or 5 devs, all WordPress based. And, we were just developing custom themes and plugins for them. And, you know, I started working with they I forget the scenario, but they brought XWP in, which is a big name in the WordPress world as well. They they're the ones that did, like, a collaboration with Google to get, like, the Google AMP plugin and, and, other things. And, Thierry and some of the other guys, I would literally have them in my, in my office with me. And these guys were like core contributors to the max, to WordPress. And, again, I just absorbed so much. I'm talking, I learned unit testing there. I learned sanitization and escaping. All the you know, I already know how to program, but I learned coding standards from from that company, while pretending I already knew them, you know, which was a big theme. Yeah. And, Yeah. And and so, that's that got me to the expert level, really. Mhmm. And I knew at that point, you know, any job I take going forward, I'm asking double and I'm, you know, and Yeah. And they're gonna, you know, they're gonna pay it. Yeah. What was that transition like into leadership leading a team of 4 or 5 devs when, you know, 10, 15 years prior, you're like, I'm a be a professional tattoo artist, You know? And now you're leading people as sort of, like, a boss almost. What was that like, that first leadership role? Yeah. I don't I guess it was weird. You know, when you're in a place of authority, it's all about appearance. As long as they're they think you're the authority and they think that you know what you're talking about and you and you're not completely horrible at your job and and you're not completely talking out of your ass. I was very good at, figuring things out on the fly while I was talking. So still am. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess it wasn't that bad. You know, they weren't I mentored a couple people who are really junior in the WordPress world. So, you know, you learn the most when you're teaching, and that really helped, helped me develop them into the dev that I needed them to be for for what I was doing and what I needed them to do. So, yeah, it wasn't that bad. I was I wasn't too nervous about leading the team, but it was surreal. You know? Because I never really thought about the trajectory. I just thought I'm gonna make money being the doer, the code monkey. You know what I mean? And, but, yeah, I mean, I got old. Yeah. You know? I got experience. Yeah. Well well, as you've gotten older, you've maintained these side projects. You just released a book 6 months ago, so congrats on the book. And then I saw that you also you also released, like, an RPG game on the side or something. So as you've Sorry. As you progress Yeah. You're you're correct. Yeah. So, last in 2023, I first published my my first sci fi fantasy cover, you know, novel, called Orbum. And, another another great learning experience, knew nothing about the book industry, made a lot of assumptions, and, I just recently rereleased it because I did it wrong. Amazing. In January 28th, I rereleased all of them properly. Got it. And, and actually book 2 is on preorder now, Myroupelia, which should be out July 1st. It's gonna be a 4 book series. Never thought I was gonna be an author. I read a lot of sci fi books at one point. I was going through, like, 20 or so series. And I basically I have a really bad habit of if I'm spending a lot of time doing something that, that I'm not making money on, I feel, you know, that I'm not being productive. It's that really bad ambition kinda bug. Yeah. Well, it's it's definitely a really good timing this year. I think I think 2024 is a great year for sci fi having, you know, just seen Dune. And and all the stuff that's coming later this year. I think it's it's definitely a great year to be, you know, releasing that that type of material. Yeah. I wonder if that came from, you know, all the the free time that you mentioned that you had that you were watching all these anime and playing video games. Like, maybe that sort of inspired the the book as well. Yeah. I mean, it the story structure's definitely inspired by tons of the anime I I was watching. You know, play I played a lot of video games when I was younger. I do not have time to do that, you know, in the last 10 years. But, yeah, the, I, I, I think I had a, I had a big, you know, childhood of media. You know, we always had a TV. We always had movies. We always had video games. And, so, yeah, everything's ingrained in my brain, and it's all just straight imagination. I don't, you know, the research I do for the books is are for the technical scientific terms because it's technically a hard sci fi book, because I do a lot of explaining of things that don't exist. So, but, yeah, more more more or less, I don't plot the entire thing out. I kinda know where it's gonna go in my head to the very end. But, yeah, the main the main, driving force is I wanna know what happened next. You know? I wanna know what they're gonna say and to make people laugh because I I my natural timbre is snark. You know? Yeah. Same. Same. Yeah. Do you think that that draws, like, the sort of the the authorship and the tech world sort of draw a parallel in that sense of, you know, you're sort of creating something out of nothing, especially when designing, you know, WordPress sort of extensions or plugins or coding things from, from scratch? Yeah. I mean, if, if you ever get a chance to read it, and being in the industry you're in and knowing where I came from, you're going to get a lot, a lot of the same, you're going to get a lot of the corporate world in there. A lot of the same terms, programming terms, and stuff like that. Things that maybe some people wouldn't, offhand know, like smoke testing and regression testing, you know, talking about his systems and, just little things like that, which, spill into the, the novel. Cause you know, these are scientists or they were all working for a corporation and then they all had to run away, you know? So, it's easy to to to make, correlations there, but, yeah, I mean, it's all creative. I feel like as I get more into leadership, I get less creative outlets. So this is good for me, you know, rather than, you know, leading a team or managing a team. Like, I, you know, I used to be making things all the time, that kind of stuff. And, you know, and when you get to a certain level, it's a lot about maintenance and it's a lot about keeping things afloat, especially in the industry now where budgets are getting cut left and right. Nobody wants to build a brand new this, you know, except for AI. Everybody wants a brand new AI tool. So Yeah. Yeah. What's your, what's your take on that? What are we using AI for? Love AI. Right. I'm not against AI. You know, I've been working with OpenAI's API and using it for various things. I use chat gpt all the damn time. I'm not a prompt engineer, but, man, I hate writing, you know, array building loops sometimes. So I'm just like, write me a function that takes this and moves the, you know, the key to the end and then move this key to the beginning and then merges them all the oh, dude. I just created a an object merging function. I I just don't have the patience to merge a bunch of objects together as long as they have true as their key value or whatever. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So With your Love that. Do you do you explore other new tech? Because, obviously, AI is very popular, but any other new tech or how much time do you even have to explore new tech or interest? Yeah. I don't, kind of both. I don't have interest, and I don't have time. Yeah. I don't know. You think I I always say the the career is is for the money. Right? And then use the money to do things that make you happy. So I don't put I am very interested in the tech world. I keep up with, the general tech industry and general things. I mean, I work with people that are like, Oh, look at this new API. Oh, look at this new endpoint. Look at this new, tool, this new whatever framework. And they keep me in the know. Luckily, You know, I'm not sitting there building a sandbox of, of the newest, you know, React threads or whatever. And I'm just and we're like, look. It's like, oh, okay. Yes. I love that. What are we using it for? It's I really have to learn by doing something that is being productive and and for a reason. And that's how I've learned my entire career. I think it's, you know, I think it's very valuable too when I find other programmers. You know, if I'm if I wanna hire somebody, that they have the skill set to just pick something up and learn it when they're doing it, and then applying it accordingly. And that goes to the whole philosophy of, you know, college degree versus the same amount of time as experience in work. Yeah. You know, I don't I didn't go to college for doing any of this. I didn't I I did a weird trade school just to have a certificate on my LinkedIn, And, and it's never slowed me down or stopped me. Yeah. So I don't care about that. If I'm gonna look at somebody's resume, you know, it it's I'd way rather you have 4 years working for, butt effing startup, whatever Yeah. Company, you know, where they were making you wear multiple hats and you, you know, and you still have a positive referral. So Yeah. You know? And outlook on life. And you're still happy and you wanna keep going. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Dude. Yeah. That's probably the opposite of Pedro. I I probably get 4 or 5 text messages or tweets a day from Pedro telling me to check out new tech. And, like, I can't pay I can't pay attention to all of this. I'm the, yeah, I'm the tools fanatic. It's just like, what can make me more efficient so that I can go sit on a beach somewhere? I yeah. I I have a buddy, Scott Weaver. Same same exact way. I hate looking at his setup. Somebody give it give me that give me that that bash. What do you what do you he builds his own bashes for his own computer just to make setting it up quick. I'm like, give me that. He's given me it. He's given it before. Like, when you do a computer transfer from 1 to 2, I was like, oh, it's such a drag. He built an entire bash function that takes all the apps he likes and takes all the setups he does and it installs it all and just runs it. Wow. And I'm just like, you know, he has a repo for it, and I just take it. Incredible. Yeah. But that's I know I know my my work style. I know my personality traits. I know my time, my multitasking and time structures, and, you know, it's just not me. I can appreciate people that do live that way. You know? Yeah. Do you are you still able to find any time to to I think you mentioned you don't really watch too much anime or play too many games. You know? What kind of a personal life do you have? I I think I I think I hear kids, so there's also potentially some kids who take up time. Yeah. Apologize for that if it's loud. Let me know because I got the headphones in. But, yeah, wife and 2 kids, 4 dogs. I have plenty of other things I need to do during the day. Yeah. Plenty of time to spend with there and happiness that they bring. And, you know, my youngest, has autism and, she's the one that's usually around when she's not in in school. Yeah. And, so, you know, I'm I'm kind of the the main tear caretaker for her as well. I I handle all her therapy sessions and all the paperwork and all that kind of stuff. So that's that's also an extra time spent that I need to focus on as well. You know, I have documenting her progress and stuff too. Just teaching her to brush her teeth right now. She's 8. I'm teaching her to brush her teeth right now, and I have to, like, document it, you know, how how her progress going and stuff like that. So, you know, I do watch anime, though, still. I just caught up with 1 piece because I did watch all the way to the, Wano saga and then I ran out of episodes and this was 2014 or something, 2015. Holy crap. Getting back to it. So I finished the Wano, recently, because because I'll tell you why too. It's because my other kid, my my oldest, she's 10. She plays Roblox and I kept seeing these freaking luffy 5th gear avatars. And I'm like, what is that? And I hate spoilers and I hate not knowing. Oh, no. Especially if it's a series that I watched a 1,000 episodes already. I'm like, I should know what's going on. Yeah. Right. It took a really long time to get to 5th gear, man. Really Yeah. Fucking long. So, yeah, did that. So, yeah, I still like to keep it up every now and then. I I mean, I watch a streamer, Pirate Software, on Twitch that I really like, Yeah. Just in the background. And, and he's inspired me to actually start developing my game more and I'm streaming it now on Twitch. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Twitch, it's just slash orb and mortar. I try to do it, every day, 10:10 to 12 or something like that where it's showing the development of my WordPress based RPG game that I'm developing. Incredible. And that will be based on the same, content as the as the novels? Yeah. It's in the urban world. I'm start I'm using it, as a story structure for it. It'll have a lot of extra stuff, and I'm gonna have to tweak some things so he has more weapons and he can maybe use magic a little earlier than in the book. Spoiler alert. Yeah. But, that's, yeah. So I already have an entire universe to build from, so now it's all about the mechanics. And it's all Yeah. All the content management, all the assets are WordPress based. So it's, and vanilla JavaScript and SASS styling. That's amazing. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone building a a an entire game off of WordPress, but that we'll have to check that out. That's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Feel it's it's it's been an interesting ride, and, I'm not using Canvas. So if anybody's listening and they're like, oh, he's using Canvas, probably. I'm not. It's straight vanilla JavaScript and styling. Yeah. Nice. Very fun. Well, yeah. Take I mean, taking a look back again at want from wanting to be a rock star and piercing all the way up to leading teams, you know, I guess, what have what's you know, do you do you miss the days of being purely just an individual contributor, you know, or or do you have you enjoyed the journey all the way to where you are now? You know, I'm still an individual contributor in in a sense for what I'm doing. You know, when I worked for Disney for a couple years, I I was full on individual contributor until their their horrible timing structure of canceling contractors happened. And then, you know, Warner Brothers, same thing, individual contributor, and, those were all in the midst of different, you know, job structures and stuff like that, same for Universal. So it's like, I don't care at this point if I'm the builder or the one telling people to build. In the future, I assume that I'll just be managing giant teams and, you know, whatever, move up to a CTO role, the natural progression. And I don't mind, you know, doing the whole recruiting, hiring, firing, meeting setup, collabs, all that kind of stuff, agile. You know? I know everybody hates it and whatever. I mean, I I'm not I'm not seeking it out to be a scrum master, but I can handle it. Yeah. Better than others. At some point, you'll become a CTO, and you'll be on stage talking to others. So you'll be on a stage, just not as a rock star. Well, you'll be a rock star maybe with somebody. And I still release music too. So, that's that it could happen. I could still be a rock star someday. If somebody Yeah. Somebody takes it up, and it's also some of the music is, Orban based. So Yeah. Definitely Oh, awesome. Finding a lot a lot of ways to incorporate this universe for sure. That's amazing. Yeah. Maybe maybe, you know, to kinda wrap this conversation of every everything we've learned about you, maybe you could tell everyone where to where to follow along with you on LinkedIn or if you have any other social media. Obviously, where to check out the the book and follow your progress on Twitch would be would be awesome. Yeah. Awesome. You if you wanna see anything Orban based or everything Orban based, it's literally Orban order, one word. I'm at that or slash that on all the social medias. Except for Facebook, I had to do the Orbum order because they flagged Orbom order for, like, a weird advertising bug, and it, like, closed I could not make ads on Facebook anymore. They thought I was doing something nefarious, so I completely closed that out. And it's it's the Orgim order on Facebook. But, yeah, I got a threads, Instagram, Twitter, x. I've, Twitch, and Discord even. The Discord is open for everything. And, yeah, like I said, oh, and the YouTube too. So the YouTube's where you can see my music, it's being distributed through CD Baby. So I mean, it's everywhere. You just look up, The Orban Order is the band name. Nice. Amazing. And, yeah, you can find I I have, like, 3 singles out, that are that are fun. Just power metal stuff, and and, it's yeah. And, that's it. Now you've had to go through a whole branding process, so you're also a brander. Dude, marketing. Yeah. I didn't know how hard, book marketing was. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm luckily in a tech sector where I work for a lot of marketing teams. So it completely coincides. I mean, running ad campaigns on AMS, you know, Amazon, media services and running ad campaigns on Facebook ads and and, just handling I mean, I did all the typesetting for my book too in InDesign. I just Nice. I had to learn that. Because I'm I I know all the creative suite, you know, I do all my own video editing too. And, you know, just just from the years of doing stuff, and, the, you know, and I do on my own music editing on Garage Band. And it's, like once you once you can work one program, everybody copies everyone. Right? So it's it's you know, you could pick if you wanna do it, you could do it. Not the best at any of it, but Yeah. I can release it. Yeah. Well, awesome. It it's so cool to hear, you know, we've we've talked to a lot of others who have this creative spark in them. So it's it's been great to hear everything in in your journey, and it's I'll definitely follow along and grab a copy of that book because I like sci fi books. I don't I don't like biographies or things like that. So we'll put your links and all the information so people can follow along, but we definitely appreciate the conversation today. Awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thanks so much, Scott. And there's an audio book too if you guys don't wanna read. I like to read. 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