Job vs. Career, Content Creation & Motivation with James Q Quick

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil and if you're interested in technical content creation, what the difference is between a job and a career, and what it's like to Be Your Own Boss, then this episode is for you. Joining me today is James qu quick, who's a developer speaker, teacher and content creator. I'll put all his socials in the description below. Check him out. And with that being said, enjoy the episode. One of the questions I got

recently was like now that you've started the podcast and you've been hosting, or even coming on as a guest here and there like, what is the main skill? That you've noticed that kind of carries on professionally, and I didn't really know a good way to answer that other than like, I'm really comfortable in, voicing my opinion now, and I'm a bit more direct with that, and I'm so much more comfortable in communicating that have you noticed that as well, or is

there, maybe? Like, even a third one you would add? Yeah, that's definitely big one for me. That's something that I've talked about as being kind of a Hack. And my career was, I started off in technical evangelism which wasn't specifically podcast but it was content and speaking and videos and that sort of stuff. And then I went to a more traditional software development role at FedEx and I didn't have the engineering experience that other people had. Yeah. But I like quote-unquote had

found my voice. Like I was very comfortable with my voice and exactly like you said being able to communicate, voicing my opinion and especially being able to communicate to less technical people up. Management chain which kind of helped get me some visibility and led to eventually. I'll skip level promotion to an architect because of the ability to not only be on top of the technology but also to be able to communicate that to people of varying different degrees of experience.

In fact, you have noticed that as well when you started off in,

kind of your first step as evangelist, then was it more so clear, what you had to do on a Content level because I think the term evangelist first and foremost has kind of morphed in either developer relations, or developer advocacy. These I don't think we see evangelist on the market as much, but even with a developer Advocate role, if I would get that now or in the future, I don't know if the responsibility of like figuring out the content strategy would be up to me or up

to a team or more. So already defined for me that just tag along. How's that for you? I think it depends on the actual team and company that you're joining and especially the how long they've been around. So when I did developer relations Deverell at all Siro,

that was Really Niche that. I kind of fell into based on my previous experience and interest in content, and I forget there was, there was a title that I ended up getting through a promotion that was something technical content, media manager or something. And it was basically like the vision and strategy for YouTube content specifically and we had separately content team for like blog post. So they were they have been around for several years and had full team and strategy and process.

And all that kind of stuff. And we were kind of building up the other part of that for video content. So I think it just really depends on like how how long the team has been around that? You're that you're joining. Yeah. With that kind of responsibility

and maybe even promotion in mind. How do you define like a Content strategy for a product company in a way than? Because there's a lot of, like, avenues for you to go at it. There's a lot of platforms to eat for you to be visible at, but I think one of the first steps would be like, figuring out where your audiences and then more. So tailoring for that. That be like a step 1. Yeah, I think, honestly, I think you should probably choose a platform of choice.

Like, I think it would be hard to go really wrong with investing in, in one platform, over the other, like, I think a couple of things that, that would depend on is like, maybe you have an idea of where your audience is already, but most likely I would think you wouldn't. Yeah, and then you also have like, what are the experiences and interests of the people on the team? Like some people will hate creating video content, they would rather write some people love doing.

In video content. Some people love doing funny video content, which may be makes more sense than something like Tick-Tock but still relevant to the brand and the industry. So I think probably the most, the more important thing is just choosing something and being consistent and having that then lead to learnings a few months down the road of like, okay, is this do we think this is paying

off? And if not, we can pivot to maybe another platform or maybe different styles of content on the same platform but I think the more, the more and most important thing is just establishing establishing that So that you can take your learnings and then adapt based on that. Going forward.

Yeah, I love that perspective. Looking at the people that you have and what they are either apt at or what they would love to do. And doing that already, kind of gets the ball rolling in a way and at least it helps a lot with kind of their ambition, enthusiasm doing the thing that they're going to do and down the line then checking back reflecting and even pivoting, if you've feel like you could do something different or better in a way or staying with the same

thing, because then you've proven it works. X. And then you can just chug along with that when it comes to consistency because that was

kind of the one key thing you mentioned, what I always get asked even with this podcast. And even other videos is like, how do you balance consistency and quality? Because you want to have like a base level of quality for you to be consistent over? But then if it drops below that, what you kind of choose not to be as consistent to uphold your quality? How do you balance those two in kind of the things that you've been doing?

Yeah, it's definitely a balance. I would say the more important one is consistency and I think I think the idea of something not being for, there's a, there's a big gap between not being perfect and being detrimental to your brand. Yeah. And I think that Gap is bigger than a lot of people think I'm not a perfectionist. And there are other people who are perfectionist and that holds them back from releasing content that makes their their

consistency not consistent. They lacked consistency because Trying to make it perfect, but I think we think the gap between perfect and detrimental is very small but it's actually like much bigger than you think and if you look at my content specifically this is something I want to do more of and get better at regardless but I don't do a ton of video editing like there's other YouTube channels that have a ton more editing and b-roll and zoom ins and text overlays animations.

I've never really done much of that. I do more now, but I've not done much of that in the past to maintain assistance e. So I think there's lots of those smaller details that you can sacrifice to accomplish consistency, while still not being detrimental to your channel. But the other aspect of that is to make sure we're as you publish stuff and maybe you are borderline detrimental that. You pay attention to the

feedback on the channel. So if people are commenting, I couldn't understand what you were doing because I didn't have context or overlays or it's edited poorly, or the audio was whatever if you start to realize those comments. Now, you're now you're needing to pay more attention to figure out what that Fine is of of quality while not being

detrimental to your channel. Yeah, but because you put yourself out there people, I mean people that care will comment and people that really care and disagree, they'll be like, well, you did this wrong or I should have got that, you should have done this and this. What do you because that's

something I wonder and sometimes struggle with, as well. What do you take with you and be like, okay, this is a real quality improvement, like I agree with this. Well, you can also be like, well, I fundamentally disagree with this, so we're not going to Do it like, where is the balance in listening to that feedback and still upholding your own vision of things? Yeah, I think two things that become important there that influence each other. Our experience and confidence in yourself.

I think I'm a big fan of advocating that all feedback should be considered regardless of if it's positioned in a terrible way and you get the stereotypical like disrespectful comments and stuff on YouTube and other platforms occasionally, I think I think you have to look at Hose and you have to take them for a face value of like people are just people which sucks some of the times honestly.

But then to try to dive One Step deeper and say, is there any actual feedback in this comment that I should make a change on or that I could make a change on or that I should should consider and a lot of the times it's the answer is no and I think the experience and confidence gives you the ability to decide no for those given pieces of feedback and just move on past them.

Like there's there's not really any point in going back and forth with them, you just get to a point where it's not worth time and Energy to invest in those responses. So, you just kind of cast those to the side and then there's the group of people that are actually trying to be helpful with feedback and that still doesn't mean that you agree with them. You can say, thanks for your

feedback. I don't think that's a change that I would make for my Channel right now, for this reason or maybe that is a specific feedback that is more specific to that one person than it is the rest of the people watching

the video. Yeah. And so you still have to gauge like even if it's presented well, even if it is valid feedback you still have the right to disagree and to decide that's not That I'm going to change and then you also have stuff that is presented well, and is good feedback and influences things that you do in the future. So I think every piece of feedback is valuable, I think the more experience and confidence, you have the quicker, you can cast aside the

ones that just don't make sense. And then for the ones that are relevant, you still have to make a personal decision to say, is this something I should actually make a change on and there's only so much time in a day so you can't make all the changes even if you think they are the right thing to do, you can't do them all. So then you have to get down. Into priorities and that sort of stuff.

But it is. It's a fun challenge to figure out how to filter through all of the messages and comments and feedback that you get when you grow a brand and become more and more public. And this is the you kind of touched on this, but the cliche idea is, people are much more likely to comment and provide feedback if they had a negative experience than if they had a positive experience.

Yeah. So for people that are new maybe just keep in mind that like sometimes those those comments Not going to be very fun but you have to learn to kind of move past them and focus on the ones that actually deserve your focus and time. Yeah, exactly. I think it's, I think it's a pretty unique experience to put yourself out there for others to judge because that's kind of what they do or even to allow them to voice their opinions in

that way, right? And there can be value in feedback in there somewhere that can be disagreements here. And there, or they can just be comments. They're just mean to be mean. Like, you also have those people, but for me, and I'm going to give myself an example, when I started this point, Cast. I had friends that came up to me and they were like, well, I've listened to the first few episodes and like, I have a piece of feedback.

You say this one word. Like every so often like every every few sentences, even when someone else is speaking, I was like, yeah, not anymore because I completely agree with that. Listening back. It would it would even irk me that I was like. Okay, I'm going to pay attention to that because I believe that that feedback was valuable to me and I think if I accommodate it for that feedback that the episodes would be better for it now, I've had other comments.

And there when it comes to the intro and of accommodated that do the intro is now very short as well.

Have you had any feedback throughout the content that you've put out, maybe even more so early on. That has really stuck with you when it comes to kind of your journey and your career path ahead. Yeah, there was an interesting. This is from a technical perspective, but there was an interesting situation I had, when I was explaining a topic in JavaScript and somebody basically said I was wrong on how I explained it. And so, I kind of, I kind of paused.

I was trying to take this comment seriously and I honestly over thought that response and and kind of like pushed myself into believing that I was wrong to the point of where I question myself. I decided I was wrong. I pulled down the original video posted a second video saying

Here's a better explanation. And after publishing the second video, realized I was actually right from the beginning, like maybe there was some specific verbiage that would have been a little different, but I was actually right.

And what I was saying and then published a third video to say like, all right, let me clarify, I really over thought this like I was honest about the whole situation, this is actually how it is. And I think the, the takeaway from that is 21 not given to quickly again, like being able to filter out like what feedback is valuable or not.

And when people have technical feedback, it's your responsibility To go and do the research to actually make sure that the stuff you're communicating, because as a technical as a YouTuber, that does technical content, you are teaching people out there and for however many people watch your videos. That's the thing that they're going to consider to be the truth unless you start to lose

their trust. Yeah. And so I think the big takeaway There Was, You Know, make sure that you're prepared technically to explain things not only at a high enough level but also at a detailed enough level to be

correct and what you're saying. But then also based on feedback, do your research Research to make sure that you're accepting the feedback and doing that research to be able to respond confidently, one way or another and and that could be being honest and saying, okay, I messed up here. I'm going to do another video to follow up. Yeah. Or it could be to say like I I'm

not wrong, I'm correct. And the situation and and explain why, and if it goes beyond that and I'm pretty confident myself, probably just leave it alone. Because there's some conversations that I'll just never go anywhere. But I think, I think the big thing is the big learning for me, there was To make sure when necessary to take the time to do the technical research. To make sure the things I'm explaining are correct and explained in a correct way as well.

Yeah, the explaining the correct way. Like, when some people don't understand the explanation, then they can say, well this is how it was explained to me in the past and therefore, you are wrong, but that is because they've gained either experienced or perspectives. Also, from other people which is really hard, right? Because then they're like, okay they put you in a position where you think you might be wrong and for me, that has happened on a

Professional level. But then the the benefit of that is usually you're not alone on a project, right? Usually you have your team that can either you have those discussions with and then you have like a shared outcome and I think a shared outcome is always better than kind of a single perspective, because as more people better discussions in

that way, more perspectives. But yeah, when you are kind of a soul content creator in a way, you have just a voice of comments out there and those can get to you when it comes to actually being right or wrong. And from your perspective, you just want to put out educational content. So then the essence of that being right is very important in there that you are truthful with the things that you're saying.

So I get out one. But then that must have been a hard experience, but I learned it was. Yeah, it was just an awkward one to be honest because I like gone. I did a publishing three videos and like, a day and a half or something trying to be correct. So it was, it was an interesting one. It was a learning experience. And from there, like thinking about being alone, there's more research that I can do on my own

right. But there's also I've got a whole community of people People and Discord and on Twitter. So I went and actually post it on Twitter. I think of like, how, how would you define? I forget exactly what it was but like, sure how would you define this situation and then taking those comments, kind of reinforce the fact that I think I was correct and the original explanation and then led me to create that last video

explaining that. So there is, it is a challenge being on your own verses on like a team of people that you can go immediately to. But that's where Community, I think comes in. When I have technical questions and things that I could use some additional Clarifications on. Yeah, I've said that before. I think the community aspect of kind of being in the technical, domain is one of the most awesome like benefits that is out there.

People are so open and willing to share it with what they know. And I don't know if you have that in other domains. I think the, the power of information there might be stronger, which leads people to, like, hold that hostage, in a way, but because we are trailblazing more on the technical domain. Whenever people find out like, a weird way to do something, they're like look at this. This is what we found. That's pretty cool. Cool, isn't it? And then other people like yeah

that's pretty cool. That's just is shares in an ocean of information there which I think is pretty interesting.

I mean you alluded to it earlier but I want a dog the beat deeper in kind of your early on Career Journey because you said you joined as an evangelist and I forget what it was I think it was Microsoft but in there you mentioned you found your voice. Like was that did that really have to do with what you were doing at the time when we did finding your voice even come out earlier? How did you find your voice in the first place? It was all about that.

First roll, to be honest. So I like I have a computer science degree, which I feel like I'm abnormal now. So many people in such a cool and amazing and inspiring way go through boot camps and self, teach and stuff to get into programming and development roles, which I think is amazing. But I have the traditional CS degree and for me, like, I really didn't learn the things that I should have.

At the time, I was more approaching it from a, get good grades perspective than I was of like, actually trying to learn what was Non-programming why? So I think my programming skills coming out of college were really poor to be quite honest and that showed in a couple of my interviews.

Thankfully, the Microsoft interviews were less technical, they were kind of conversational and they were about like my excitement for building stuff and learning not typical programming questions that you would get an interviews.

But anyway, I applied for a few roles at Microsoft that I got turned down for, and they, they had liked me enough to say, like, those roles didn't work out, we think you'd be a good fit for my Soft. And so, the recruiter came back with another opportunity, which happened to be technical evangelism. And, at this point, I've never, I've never been a content creator. I've never created any piece of content. I've never thought about content. I've never thought about public speaking.

I mean, I was just as terrible as everyone else in high school and college. When you have to do a two-minute presentation for the class or whatever like yeah, it's really bad. Like I've never thought any of this stuff would ever be part of my career and I got thrown into it. Hmm.

And that was I think probably one of the biggest that that role was one of the biggest influences on my career partially because of finding my voice, a lot of it was building my own networks like as as an evangelist coming out of college. I was one of the I think I was the only person that was in a territory by themselves. So I was in South Florida, I Mentor was in Tampa, which was

four or five hours away. All of the other people starting out of college were in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New York City, which all had teams around them in that specific location. Yeah. So I think that level of Independence that level of networking that level of going out and kind of building my own things on my own, really added to the ability to find my voice. And the other thing, I think that was really impactful was the people and groups that I was around.

So, I worked a lot with students and I worked a lot with startups, and I kept seeing, like, students in high school and college, that were, well, beyond my knowledge of programming, and well, beyond my ability to just build something programming wise, like they were already doing. Doing it. They were looking at the world as like an opportunity to go and use their skills to build whatever they wanted and they start ups.

We're going and raising millions of dollars in selling products and doing all these things with skills, that like, I didn't quite have that level of skill. I had some that I could build things. And so I looked at all of the, the people around me is real inspiration of. I talked a lot about this in in career talks but like taking control of your career. Using what your skills are to build, whatever it is, you want to build doing things.

That make you excited and that's what I saw around me. So in addition to being forced to be independent, to find my own voice, to learn how to communicate to create content to kind of scale out the things that I was doing. I also had this huge source of inspiration to look at careers and opportunities and things going forward totally different than I'd ever thought about it before because I had only seen

really people in my family, have jobs not careers. And there's, there's a very big difference in somebody that goes to work every day because they have to Just to make enough money to make ends meet versus the person who gets it. Do something. They enjoy every day, feels like they have the ability to have a career path to progress in their career, to make more money to make good money and to continue on and optimistic journey and their career.

So that was a really game-changing couple of years for me, at Microsoft for The Voice aspect and then the inspirational aspect of just the people that I was surrounded by. Yeah. I mean thinking about about the way you laid out the difference between a career and a job Think in my educational Journey, there wasn't a lot of like light on the difference there because in my thought it was going to be.

I have a job and that's what I'm going to do for the next 30 Years and that's never going to evolve or even grow. But yeah. Just just because you laid it out like that. I have a career path and it's going to be a path and it's going to Pivot here and there and I might have a step back before I do a few steps forward but it is a journey in and of its own and that I don't know when it changed but that mindset has completely shifted from me

throughout. Out and I can very much pain Point like important steps that I took with in my career.

I mean, for you, it was really finding your voice and getting inspiration from the people around you. For me, it was kind of the same finding something that I really loved being driven by those around me as well. That a lot of people say you shouldn't really like, compare

yourself to others. But that is internally, what I did a lot because I was like, man, once I found the people that were like, really good at programming, and that was what I wanted to do, because I came from an operations background as I get. This is Where I want to be but I also I felt like, man. I'll never be as good as these people as they've already been doing this for like 10 years.

And I don't know if that mindset has shifted because I still know those people in the still way better at their thing of doing things, but I find them, I found my own way to kind of add value and it's on a different level than theirs, because I am on a different career path there as well. I don't know if it's good to kind of compare yourself to others in that way. I think there's pros and cons, but yeah, for me, it was a big kind of most motivational thing

in that way. Yeah, that's actually one of my favorite topics is the idea of comparing yourself to others and most people do, especially for people that are early on, in their career. They're learning they're going through bootcamps are going through school. One of the biggest things that you will always face is imposter syndrome. And this is talked a lot about intact, but I think it's probably ubiquitous it's

everywhere. Yeah. But anyway, I think the other approach and the approach that I take is to actively compare myself against Others because if you only look at yourself, you only think you're capable of doing things that you've already thought about, or seen? Yeah. And so, if you haven't seen someone, go out and be successful and do the things, like, going back to your career versus job me, looking back at my family, all I knew similar to you was shop, like I go out

work, my job, it's gonna suck. I'm going to get enough money to get by and that's going to be it. But because I saw other people doing these other things and looking at careers differently and making a hell of a lot more money than I ever imagined based on my parents now, Mindset has changed. So if you only look internally, you're only capable of thinking about the things that you've already seen in the things you've already experienced.

But if you start to look around you, the world opens up a lot because the possibilities are endless because you see people in these different categories and different Industries and different levels in an industry. Doing things that you never imagined before for yourself. But I think the important part of that is to also do that with respect, self-respect, or respect for yourself, with grace for yourself.

Empathy for yourself because even if I can get inspired by someone else doing X, Y & Z, it doesn't mean that X Y, and Z is going to happen for me, and the same time frame. It doesn't mean it necessarily is going to happen for me at

all. So I have to have understanding and empathy for myself to say, like it may not work out like these people in the same time frame and the same outcome as these other people that I get inspired by but I at least know it's a possibility and I can at least look at the things that they're doing and try to figure out some of those steps of why they're becoming successful in that. And Imitate that myself actually really struggled with mentally.

When I was trying to grow my YouTube channel, I would watch. I've been doing YouTube videos for several years and had become focused on trying to grow. And I watched a few other people will come out of nowhere and grow channels, much, much bigger than mine in a much, much much shorter time period. Yeah. People like floor and pop and Jesse from the code Soccer Channel.

And on you Kubo, who are three of my favorite people in content creators in the world, but I would watch them and I would, I Any kind of struggle with like, okay, why am I not able to do

what they're able to do? And there's this like kind of Divergent path, like okay, I can use that and I can get really down on myself and I can give up the whole thing because I'm not capable of doing what they are or I could look at them and have respect and empathy for myself but use them as inspiration and use them as they this is at the very least possible and so I ended up hitting one of those major goals for myself, which is to make it to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, based on

taking what was around me and using that as inspiration. And knowing that that sort of growth was possible. And I think that was a again, I continued mindset shift for myself of now. I'm much more comfortable continuing to take advice that I just gave myself or that. I just mentioned of comparing myself to others but having the understanding that, it may not look the exact same, but at least I know that's possible because I've seen other people do it. Yeah, I completely understand

that. I mean, that's that's for me, always been the hard part, right? Being kind of lenient on yourself or you. I call it empathy and Grace and self-respect. Yeah I think those things maybe don't come as natural for me because when I would compare myself, exactly, those thoughts that you would have these. People have already done these things in the X amount of time, span?

Yeah, those things those are all the variables I need for me to be like, okay, it's not going to happen for me, but I like that, you can turn it around right and be like, this is a possibility and the time may vary, but the fact that it is a possibility

means I can do that as well. And sure I might not be apt at it, which means the time is going to vary or there's different ways of going about it, but the fact that is Apollo possibility that can be a lot of few in and of its own, like the fact that a lot of people are doing a lot of cool stuff out

there. It doesn't exclude you from doing so that can be many people doing these things, which is kind of the, the wonder of the world that we're in, not, just, on a technical level, but even on a Content creation level, I think YouTube has opened up so many avenues for a lot of people, which Why? I mean, I've been on the YouTube seen for a long, long time as a viewer.

And I've seen so many like Trends, I think you would call it trends, like come and go even when it comes to like YouTube Rewind and all the drama that comes with that as well. It's a lot of fun to look at and a lot of people thrive in it and that means it is an option for you if you want it. And the only time investment that you're going to have to do is the time investment from yourself, which I think is really neat. Yeah, I was wondering because

you mentioned you started out as an evangelist and you, you said you really happy with that because that allowed to file, allows you to find your voice as well as surrounded you with kind of driven people and allowed. You kind of the setting of things to build your network in a way that has allowed you to thrive, as well in your career path. But you then mentioned you stepped away from that. So you weren't an evangelist in the next row.

You went back to kind of a program engineer, not to say one is better than the other but it Different was kind of the what was kind of decision path that led you to that. Yeah there are a few different things that factored in the big thing. For me was my dad had gotten really sick, and had called me and told me that they had given him six months to live and I wanted to be home, my wife, and I had kind of thought about moving out of New York City

because I mean it's expensive. We had a dog and a tiny apartment and all those things we were kind of thinking about potentially moving at some point in the, my dad was really sick, so I kind of rushed everything to move home to Memphis, which

is where we are now. And during that, I was kind of looking for opportunities at Microsoft I and no way he wanted to leave Microsoft. There's more money in stock options than things that I would get at FedEx where I ended up, but I just didn't find a role that made sense. So I didn't really find anything that worked out and I had

interned, at FedEx in college. And so I reached out to my former manager said, hey, I'm moving back to Memphis any chance that you're looking to hire developers, and I actually

had an offer for them full-time. This is a different story, graduating college and decided to go with Microsoft, which again, I think it was a A good decision at the time, but she said, we actually just acquired this company and because of that we're hiring basically like eight different roles on on my team and so I had to wait a few months for that to work out and my wife was getting a little nervous because it took a like a month or two longer than we thought, but it all worked out.

And I think another aspect of this that was convenient is as a technical evangelist at the time, coming out of college with, not the programming experience and knowledge that I as I mentioned, I think I should have had or I should have had. I was missing that technical experience and I wanted to be able to add to that. And so, coming into this role, I didn't really know how I would fit in as a developer. Like I didn't really know how good of a developer or not.

I was or could be. And, and thankfully, I caught on really fast. And I like ramped up really, really quickly. Quickly, became a leader on the team, moved into the architecture role, because of the combination of technical experience and knowledge and being able to communicate that to different people. So I would say I was very successful in that but I think at that point in my career I needed that Hands-On real engineering production level experience on a day in day out

basis. Yeah. Because now that makes me a different person as a content creator because I have a different level of experience that I can pull from. When I teach people, From Concepts and I have so much more knowledge technically than I did before that role that I get to include in conversations that I have in content that I create Etc.

So, I think that, at that point, it was it was convenient because we were kind of making a change based on mostly family decisions, but it worked out because I just needed that type of experience at that point in my career. Yeah, yeah. I struggle with that myself as well because I think, and I've set this on the show again, I'm

kind of repeating myself. But for me, career-wise, I like to look at the options that are out there. And one of the ones that has really attractive to me is kind of the developer advocacy role that is kind of part, of where, my enthusiasm for doing this podcast comes from.

It's either going to be that for me personally or it would be an engineering management position where I see myself and what I would add a lot of value with the skills that I've gained both on a technical level as well as more of a soft skill level. But then I'm like, yeah, you step out of your developer role and things from a developer's sense can change pretty rapidly.

I'll just the tools that we use, but the way of working together and stepping out of that and still being kind of responsible or adjacent to that would kind of make me feel or that that perspective kind of makes me feel uncomfortable. Then I'm like, okay what my past experience be enough to kind of bridge the gap of the dynamic changing, right?

Because if you step out of something that dynamically evolves, it might evolve past to pass the level where you are kind of experience has ended, I guess. Have you have you seen that or how do you try to accommodate? Or that, or has that been a feeling in your past as well? Yeah, it's definitely, it's absolutely a concern. And I think it's something that as people consider going from just traditional engineering roles to Something.

In Devereaux, it's something for them to consider because you're not going to get that hands-on experience on a day-to-day basis that you would some companies. And some deverill team, specifically have more opportunities to contribute to sdks or to do a month rotation, every quarter or something on a development team. So there are opportunities. But I think it's like definitive that you're going to sacrifice some of your engineering chops is the kind of cliche phrase

that people use. So for me, like, I can't go out there and advocate for people that I'm the best engineer because I'm not, I actually am very confident in myself technically. Yeah. But I can't, I can't say I'm a better engineer than someone. That's actually done 15 years Hands-On engineering every single day because I just don't have that experience.

But I am confident enough to know that, like, I'm capable of learning anything and I'm capable of Of kind of adapting with the changes in the ecosystem. And I think the, the interesting thing about how quickly stuff moves, and the advantage that we have doing content with content,

we have the ability to try out these new Frameworks and methodologies and languages and things quicker and easier than companies do because companies aren't going to progress very quickly, like it's you see react and so kid and all these languages and Frameworks and tools and things.

And there are a ton of fun and they're really exciting and I love playing with them, but the reality is companies aren't Jumping ship and changing their stack, every year they just don't have the capacity to do that. So if you look at what companies are using a lot of that stuff is

pretty outdated. So the advantage that I have Is even though it's not hands on day-to-day production level code that I write I do get to see more of the modern Trends and experience more of those modern Trends which again, gives me a

perspective. That if I'm, if I'm teaching something I can teach people that have a lot more engineering experience, and I do something new, not because they're not capable of knowing it, not because they're not good Engineers, but just because they haven't seen that before. Yeah. So from a Content perspective, you have that Advantage but I think you also sacrifice the actual engineering skill set. Of doing that day to day.

And one of the things that I would like to do this is not on immediate goal for me this year because this year is kind of all about sustainability with content for me longer-term.

Yeah, but one of my specific goals is to build a SAS product of some sort some day and I've built a little small, tiny things, kind of like everybody else has four demos, but I would like to prove myself that I'm capable of building a real world production level product of some sort, no matter how big or small that people find Value in that people actually, Pay for and maybe build that into a business at some point further down the

road, but to get like to get that Real World experience as a teacher. I always tell people, the best way to learn is to build and so I have to like, I have to take that to heart too. So that's something that'll be kind of on my radar over the next several years of potentially building. Something taking it more seriously investing more time in it and try to grow that as a real world production level product. Yeah, it's really cool. And I really appreciate your

honesty in there. That that it is the thing, right? It doesn't matter. Are you move on to it? Might be a leadership position, a management position or to devrel you do a trade-off and the experience that you've gained is only going to like, it's going to be a stop time wise. You're going to take some experiences with you, write your technical knowledge and you're going to be apt enough to pick up those new technologies, but really Hands-On working in a team. That's not going to be you

anymore. You have to be able to accept that. And I love the perspective that organizations want stuff that is resilient, right? That is tried and true that has been proven and been Chopped up by the community because of a new framework pops up. Like it does like every day or every other day.

I don't even know, might be one today, but if an organization would adopt that and that framework all of a sudden doesn't get the time and attention anymore that one of the tried-and-true Frameworks does that. Yeah. That's a big risk for them because that would have to do a complete overhaul of their code base again and then migrate to something that is sustainable. And that is resilient for that organization.

So organizations large organizations especially are mostly not going to Be trailblazing and experimenting with new technologies, but people like yourself that are a bit more on the Forefront, trying things out and also educating other Engineers, you do get the time to do that because you can do that in more of a demo sense, you can play around with it and be like, listen, this is what I thought of it or this is what I think of it. This is what I experienced with it.

So this is also a perspective for you to take with you. When you try and like fit in your organization, it might be a good idea, but it comes with a huge risk and for people to make those. Surgeons. We need other people to educate us on that as well because otherwise like you can't have everyone be a Trailblazer that can only be a few Trail Blazers and their job is to done also educate. I feel the people that come behind them which I really love that perspective.

I mean, you mentioned one of go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say that was one of One of the pieces that I brought to the table conversationally, when I was talking to my manager at FedEx about wanting the thinking I deserved a promotion. But then also communicating like I want to I want to be looked at as a leader in technology one because of the communication skills that we talked about a

lot. But also the second piece of that is like, I'm actually interested and passionate about the stuff that we do. Which means I'm going to be more exposed to those different changes and those different Frameworks and things that come out to be able to bring those up as potential options for the Team while other people are like not as Ford Focus they're focused more on the execution. I can go out and look more broadly across the ecosystem of

tools. Yeah. That was actually one of the the conversation points that I brought up and looking to get get a promotion and then that turned into the skip level of promotion to an architect which I think was at that point the perfect, perfect combination of like the things that I was interested in the skill sets that are brought to the table. Yeah.

Yeah. That's amazing. I mean it, it's weird that at some point, you have to advocate for yourself. Self because otherwise in a team sensor, even your manager. Like if things are just a smooth operation, why change anything, right? But if you want to actually make a career path for yourself, then you have to advocate for what you want and it's then up to an organization to allow you to grow into that position.

And if they say no, you have to either accept that and give it more time or that's why people look to other organizations because there's also opportunities that other organizations, right? But it's your career path, those decisions are for you to take but you do have to Advocate and Allow the organization to know that you want them before. I feel before you look outside, right. That's kind of your I wouldn't I wouldn't call it a Roman soldier. Yeah, but it is kind of

responsibility. At least that's how I see it. Now, one of the things you mentioned very early on, and

I've been curious about this also because I mean, you do content creation of full-time, it's more. So work ethic, right? You came into this evangelist position at Microsoft and you mentioned being like, I don't know where your Mentor was, but they were four or five hours away from from you, right? So you started even remote without a team like around you. How did you get your work ethic up to a par? Was it has it always been like motivation wise and then even doing content creation?

Do you catch yourself working way too many hours and have you kind of gone around that or handling that? I think one of the central themes that I feel like I have more and more control over in my career, but one of the central things in my career has been just excitement and people talk a lot about almost in a negative sense.

The idea of passion for roles and I think they bring that up from a perspective of if a company is looking for a passionate person and Technology they interpret that as they're looking for someone, that's willing to work, 68 hours a week above and beyond, etc, etc. Yeah. Yeah, I so so the idea of passion actually. I feel like in Tech gets looked down upon from that perspective,

I think we miss that. Like yeah, if I like if this person is going to work 40 hours a week and I've got a passionate person who's excited about the stuff, I've got someone who's not excited about it, who are you going to hire?

You're going to hire the person that's excited about what they're doing and they're passionate about the topic and I feel like that has paid dividends for me over and over in my career this was not a requirement but when I was at FedEx, I was going home and creating content and Adding side projects and doing things where I would come into work.

And I would already know, like, oh, I just experienced this thing on my own now that wasn't because they expected me to that was just because I was passionate and excited about it and when we took on new challenges, I was excited and passionate to go and learn those new things. So I think the that's been essential thing for me is doing things that I get excited about and that helps me and content. It helps me from a technical perspective.

It helped me at Microsoft having that inspiration around me being around people that I was Excited to be around. That makes the job that much easier and that much more enjoyable. So, I think, again, that's been a central theme that I feel like I've had more and more control over in my career and that definitely is one of the biggest reasons for me going content, full-time is I get to pick and choose everything that I do every single day.

Every minute that I spend every meeting that I do or do not have. Yeah, I get to make that decision based on what makes me happy and combining that with, like, making money. But thankfully, those two things are fairly aligned if I get to make good money, doing the things that I enjoy. But on the flip side of that,

the the number one thing for me, I think in any potential role or opportunity that I would take or working for myself, as work-life balance, in my worst fear to be quite honest, is, is being in a situation job-wise where let's say only given year, I've got three weddings and there's a family reunions and my wife and I want to take a trip and whatever it is. Yeah, my worst fear is that I don't have enough vacation days

to do those things like that. I know this is the reality for like 95 or A higher percent of people in the general Workforce. Yeah, but how ridiculous is that there are sad just a higher level /. Like it's so ridiculous that you have to pick and choose to not be able to do these. Really like big moments or big opportunities or big experiences with your family and friends and that's my like or sphere.

So a lot of a lot of tech now has like a limited vacation which has mixed feelings depending on how well the culture and Company actually support that and I've been lucky to be in positions where it was very supported. Yeah. But I don't want to be in a position where I've got two weeks vacation and it's just,

it's honestly not very much. So that's always really important to me is making sure that I have the flexibility and the time available to do the things that are important to me in my life that are not work related. The other thing is, I maintain my wife and I maintain them together like all these hobbies that we really enjoy doing. So I don't I don't really run the risk of overworking because we do all these things that we really enjoy. We played co-ed soccer together for ten.

Plus years, we just ran a half marathon that was training for six months getting to that play basketball on a regular basis. We both like to be active as you can. Probably tell us, we do different versions of working out. Etc. We have dogs, we've got nephews, we've got two of our best friends in the world. Just moved into our neighborhood like two blocks away. Yeah, so we got all these things that like, that, that we get to do that.

We really enjoy and can separate ourselves from from the work stuff at the same time. There's also like Just the flexibility of working for myself where like, if we're sitting around watching TV and not really do anything, I could still answer emails and stuff and it's not taking away from family time because we're just kind of watching TV but when I want a need family time friend, time to get away from work, I have the ultimate flexibility to do that.

So that's always been. If you fill out any surveys about like how do you enjoy a job or what aspects of the job or most important? Number one for me always is work-life balance. Yeah yeah. The flexibility to pick up and let go of work whenever It fits you. That is does amazing. That is I think how a company can distinguish themselves in a compensation sense, right? You might not pray like number one prize like Netflix does when it comes to compensation.

When it comes to flexibility. That is actually I think easier for a company to offer, right? And it can be in a way of unlimited vacation days, but I love that you have a little asterisk there that says, it needs to be supported by the company in the culture, right? Because there's a lot of companies that say unlimited vacation day Is and no one ends up using any vacation days. Then all of a sudden you don't have two weeks anymore. Anyway because everyone's like

are you taking the day off? Okay yeah you don't want to have any of that but for me that's that's always been an important factor as well and it's something I've I haven't realized early on I hadn't realized it when I wanted my first job. It's something that has kind of grown on me write that work-life balance is an important thing and I think I've had to be in positions first where it wasn't there and then all of a sudden I was like, yeah, because I have a

huge family. This year, I had on last year, this year would be hard, but last year, I had three weddings. And I went to all of them was in Sweden was in Greece. When was in Amsterdam and we went to all of them. And I didn't have to think about having enough vacation days because I did, because there is that life work? Work life flexibility. Exactly that's the one for me.

It's also hard though because As you mentioned, if you're really passionate about that, something that has been confronting, is if I pick up the laptop and no one says, all right, it's time to stop working. Sometimes I can catch myself working and it's midnight and either I haven't eaten or I haven't gone out for the whole day. And there's a lot of things that I didn't take care of myself

because I was so passionate. And so in depth in this rabbit hole and I didn't want to get out, that is my choice, but that might also not be healthy. And I think that when you're working for yourself or you start, Your own company that is a greater risk because you don't have a team. You don't really have that Rhythm and routine or rather you have to reinvent yourself to kind of figure out your own Rhythm and routine. Have you have you had any of

that as well? Those experiences not really, to be honest. I think, I think I'm kind of naturally a little more cognizant of that than, than most people are, it's good. But again, I think I think it's like, we have so many things. To potentially do and that we do on a regular basis that it's, it gives me natural breakups from

from work. And also like I was kind of telling my wife yesterday we were talking about this, like, I end up doing, I don't know, like, yesterday, I went to the doctor because I've got a knee injury, and I was gone for like two hours and I went somewhere else during the day, and I don't know if I work 40 hours a week, to be honest, which is a great story to be able to tell ya because I do all these different things and have the that ultimate Stability and stuff.

But that also means like it's reasonable for me at seven or eight. If I, if I feel like I need to get some things done to go ahead and do it. And that's just based on the flexibility. If like, I took care of a lot of stuff away from work earlier. Now, I need to get some stuff done. Yeah, but yeah, it's not something that I've really

struggled with. I had a few, I actually was really into this because I've sometimes and super productive at nights, especially writing code and I hadn't done this in a long time, but I ended up working on some updates to the Discord bought that we have and the web. And I was having a lot of fun and I did a couple of streams from 8 to 9:30 or eight to ten or something at night, which is abnormal for me, but I was just really in his own.

I was really excited about it. And again, I don't think that was like, over working because of how much other things outside of work. I do during the day but it was kind of a different thing. I'm always had gone to bed and I didn't feel like again because she was asleep. I wasn't missing out on any like us time, but I don't know.

Yeah, I think it hasn't been something I've struggled with as much because And maybe this is cliche but because I enjoy spending so much time with my wife and I, and the hobbies and things that we have. I feel like I've definitely seen that more in people that maybe don't have, maybe you're single and I like that's a stereotype and that's not fair for everyone, but some of the cases I've seen are people that didn't have someone else to to go home to, which is like just different

points of wives. But for me, that's always been kind of a tether as we just enjoy doing so much time to or so many things together spending. So Much time together that it's easy to know that, like, there's other things to do that are important. Yeah, I agree with that. If I don't have people to take me out of that context, then it happens that I just don't, don't get out of my work context, right? Because no one takes me out of that.

In that way, I mean, everyone's context is different, right? And one of the interesting things, I love kind of reflecting back on right now or with my experience in mind is people that are coming out or that are early in career. Have a lot of choices to make when it comes to the Domain, right? We mentioned developer Advocate now is a role and you can grow in that and you can get better

in that. If you're really enthusiastic about content creation, finding the right product Market, fit or even talking more to your developers and tailoring to them for what they need. But that is one of the roles that wasn't really there as much. Now, it's more of an up-and-coming thing and companies are adopting it. More and more product companies

in and of its own. You still have the traditional software engineering job. But that has also specialized, we now have data Engineers or cloud. Engineers. Right? There's so many options out there on more of a day-to-day thing. What you're going to do and then you still have the type of organizations, right? Is it a start-up? Is it a medium sized organization is that a huge organization? Is it a consultancy or an agency or you have so many different

flavors? What would you kind of advise in someone that is early in career for their career path? Because they want to have a great career path? They want to grow as fast as possible. What environment with the kind of look for? What would you advise there? It's hard. It's actually interesting. There was a comment about this

on Twitter the other day. Someone saying I just can't understand why someone would go and work for a company like Google. When there's like so much upside to working at a start-up for Learning and all these things, and I kind of retweeted it with a snarky comment a little bit. But I feel like to say they wouldn't understand why someone would work at a company like Google, which is one of the biggest Tech names in the entire world.

It has Best salary and benefits, like, top-notch in the game like you say, you can't understand why someone would work there. Seems utterly ridiculous to me. I think I saw that. Yeah, it was one of, I don't, I don't usually like, quote tweet things, but that just, it felt it felt very dismissive. Yeah, like my point here is I don't, I don't think I have a recommendation for. Like, I wouldn't tell people to go and work at a start-up or to go and work at a big company.

Yeah, I think that changes that's very personal to people in their career and their goals, Etc. So I think I wouldn't, I wouldn't give To pigeonhole people like that if you want. If you're looking for, if stability is the number one thing for you, you wouldn't go work at a startup that just doesn't make sense. Yeah, if you if you are thinking about the upside of working at a small team because in that case you get more experience with more different things, that's great.

If you want to go more Niche and deeper on one specific topic, working at a bigger company, probably makes sense because they have the ability to break down into those different into those different Niche areas, because they have so many people working on the Team. So I think obviously there's like there's trade-offs and all of the above I worked at Microsoft, I work at FedEx, multiple 100,000 employee

companies. I worked at all cero when I started with 600 people, I went to planet-scale that was 80 when I started now work for myself and I wouldn't have traded any of those experiences for anything but they had different impacts for me in my career at different points in my career. One thing I will say like thinking about progression is you have to honestly really be open to Teams and changing

companies. And I've actually got a keynote talk that I'll be doing in from the time of recording now and two weeks at that conference and Texas and the, the idea or the title is feeling stuck in your career, dot dot dot. Now, what like, how do you, how do you recognize being stuck? How do you get out of being stuck, Etc? And a lot of the things that people feel stuck by is like title. They don't feel like they can get the promotion to the next level that they're looking for.

They think they're limited by the amount of money that they can make. They are limited by the technology because they're not able. To do the fun stuff that maybe they want to and those are all things where you're like, yeah, you're going to get to that point in your career and now it's your responsibility to start looking elsewhere. Honestly and I there's this balance of like the stereotypical Millennial is jumping from job to job every year and there's like there's

some truth to that. But also I think it's really this more impactful mentality of taking it taking control of your career and not being at the whim of your employer. Yeah. Because if employers pay people really well people aren't going to leave or they're not going to Leave as much as if they didn't pay them very well at all. And if they see the potential for career progression and they see the potential for leadership Etc.

They're going to be much more likely to stay and if not they should go and consider other things. So I just recommend to people like stay open for job opportunities. Like you never know someone may reach out with a job. You never know what that may lead to or not. Stay open to it. It doesn't mean you have to take it. It doesn't mean you have to go and do an interview but at least I have the openness to kind of see what's out there on different. Different times.

I think there's obviously a balance of like I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't leave a job every year. That's not, that's not my, that's not what I would you personally.

So every couple of years but you can be open along the way and networking and all these things, but I think a lot of it just comes from being willing to make the change and then communicate and we talked about this earlier to management and your team about what you want and to be able to stand up and advocate for yourself and that's where that having my voice. Voice comp being comfortable with my voice, became my superpower because I was able to go to my manager and tell her I

think I deserve a promotion. These are the, these are the reasons why these are the things that I think I can offer that other people can't offer and that led to something really good for me. And so I think it has to come. It has to come from ownership, from yourself of exploring opportunities, being open to things. Also communicating to the the people and team and management around you what it is. You're trying to accomplish.

Yeah, we like that perspective because I mean, I struggle with this because I also struggle with giving advice on this because there is no right path, right? You started in the way you did. I've started in the way. I did you just mentioned. You wouldn't trade your experience for the world. Well, I have the same feeling with that, which means that neither of our paths were right

or wrong, right? It's just right for the context that you're in. So then, I think figuring out what context you're in and where your value lies or where, you think your value lies. That's the only exercise you need to do. Then you kind of know the types of organizations And from there, it's just going to take time,

right? You're going to grow into the position that you're going to get the most enthusiasm out of that, you're going to be the most passionate about, well, that's data, science or Cloud, engineering, or programming or

developer advocacy. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter and you don't have to find like you don't have a have to hit a hole-in-one, you can pivot, you can try things and I think that's amazing that we have the opportunity to do so because I think in different fields and different jobs, you wouldn't necessarily have that.

So using that time and it Variants to actually experience what you want, make sure you're happy at the end of the day, I think that should be kind of the end goal and whatever you're doing career wide career was or job boys, absolutely and that that changes on a day to day, week to week month, to month, year to year basis, right? Like you being happy one day, doesn't mean you're happy the next.

And so that's something I've talked about, as well as being honest with yourself and giving yourself like real check-ins to see, do I still feel the same way that I thought I did before? Do I feel differently? And if it's, if it's Different in a negative way. Why is that, what do I feel like I'm missing? And how do I first start by

communicating? That that I would like to fix this thing by doing X Y & Z or again, to start looking at opportunities to help fill that void and I know there's a lot of their stigma and again, moving around from job to job every year or six months or something. It's not the that's not a habit that I would build. Like my my threshold is kind of

two years at least. So if I take a roll, I'm most likely invested in a couple of years on Something really drastically changes but I've also seen people take different roles and within six months of being at a job and I think that's it's not a habit to get into but if you just end up in a situation that wasn't what you expected and you try to communicate and things aren't changing and they don't seem like they're going to change. There's no reason to just stay

there and be miserable. You that's your opportunity to go and make a change for yourself again, not a habit. I would get into but it happens like we think we're going into something that we're really going to enjoy. Yeah, and we don't whether or not it's just something we don't enjoy whether or not the culture is not what we thought it was or

the text acts. Not what we thought it was or whatever, the circumstances there's there's no reason to just wait it out if you have the opportunity to go somewhere else and be happier. Yeah, I agree with that. It shouldn't be shooting me a rhythm or routine but it comes back to kind of the self respect for yourself and the empathy, right? If you really not happy in that position, why would you punish yourself and kind of stay just because of your pride or kind of your the general Kane.

Ation on how you think the world works or even others because that usually has a bigger Factor than your own sense of thinking. That way I really love this conversation.

James talk about your career path and even your advice in your take on everything in the tech sector more so early in career, early career related, is there anything that's still missing that you'd still like to share. I don't know, just content in general.

If people are interested in finding more of my content, I'm James qu, quick on most things YouTube, Tick-Tock Twitter also run a Discord community that I've kind of alluded to a few times called learn build teach, and the idea is kind of been a philosophy of mind for several years of, as developers. We spent a lot of time learning new technologies as we talked about things. Change all the time we use. What we learn to build stuff to build apps, and demos and

Software and all these things. And then I think the next step of that is to teach other people how to do it, because through teaching you're able to help other people. But also able to help reinforce the things that you've already learned or at some points. And I go through this as a content creator realize I didn't know the thing as much as I thought I did and use that as a an opportunity to go through that learn built each cycle again.

So, that's something that I'm particularly passionate about as a motto. As a framework for myself, also has become a Discord community, and if people are interested in finding that it's That learned built each.com. Awesome. I love that. We admire that thank you for coming on. James. I'm going to put all James's socials and the Discord service in the description below. Check him out. James qu quick. And with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you in the next one.