Q&A #1: Podcasting, Tech Layoffs and First Job as Developer & More with Patrick Akil

I'm gonna get the four questions. I'll get four questions in and that's it. That's a fuck. That's a wrap people. Hi everyone. My name is Patrick you who today's episode? We have a special episode qa1. I asked you all to send in your questions. You might have about me or the podcast through Linkedin, YouTube, Twitter, wherever you could find me and I've listed them. So we're going to get to them in this episode episode will be a little bit edited, edited edited

for those kind of things. Just so it'll be a bit more smooth than usual. So let's get to it. All right, I'm gonna blank some stuff out because they I shared some info, which I probably shouldn't share on the air but it basically boils down to this. I'm studying currently to become

a software engineer at well, XX University at XX country. Let's just blank it out right there. I almost have. The bachelor. Should I go for a masters? Now, this is an interesting thing because I kind of wondered that myself as well. I have my bachelor's degree in information studies and then I was like, okay I can do an information science information studies business information science or even data.

Master one of those. You can see I didn't do that because I barely know the names there, but I didn't end up doing that because I looked at the job market and everywhere was required work experience. One or two years coming straight out of University, one or two years already, and I was like, I don't have that I'm already behind like, what is a master's degree gonna offer me? That work experience is not so I told myself and maybe too soon you can see.

I make quick decisions sometimes like maybe too quick, but I told myself if I don't need a master's degree to pursue what I want professionally, then why do I need the Master's Degree? I'll start professionally and when I come up on kind of a job title or a position that I do need that master's degree in. I told myself, I'm still young enough to get that master's degree. But then, at least, I know what I want, because the whole problem for me was not knowing

what I wanted. So I would say, there's my advice, this is going to be a shorter question, I guess if you know what you want and Requires a master's degree, get that master's degree because that's what you want at the end of the day. If you don't know that yet, then I would say start working, right? But it depends master's degree from me was also a lot of money and money. I wanted to earn as fast as possible as well, but it's going to be your context in your

decision. Don't let me decide for you. I'm just saying what I would have done or what I did. But yeah, the choice is yours. What advice would you give in

getting your first job? In the tech market. Now that's a difficult one because it depends on what you want to do. So based on the podcast I'm going to assume it's kind of in Tech in software development in web development something like that. And the advice I would give is I mean probably also what I did is start interviewing and figure out what you're not good at and start interviewing and get better at that.

I learned by doing mostly I don't like reading I'm not a person that reads a lot, I read enough and then I seek experience to learn I'm from there might not be the best advice, might not work from everyone but what I did learn was based on the questions that they're going to ask.

It's going to kick off your thinking process and as soon as your thinking process kicks in, you're going to learn from yourself because externalizing what you already think internally is going to help you confirm some things either. What you want, what you don't want, and what, you know, and what you don't know, and based on what you don't know, you can take that next step. Learn from there, and do better in the next interview round. I might have gone through the

interview rounds. Maybe I should rephrase this. I maybe I should have picked organizations that I didn't actually want to go to, but I also picked organizations that I wanted to go to. Now we don't know if that's wise but I really wanted those positions. So I really put in the effort to get to those positions. I knew I wasn't going to get the more, it was a highly unlikely but still going through that rigor going through those companies and talking to them hone my skills.

When it came to it. Review because interviews in is a skill of its own. I suck at it probably now still because I haven't done it in a while when it comes to coding challenges and stuff like that. There's no better way than to actually start doing and practicing it and getting that seat at the table and having that conversation. So, that's my advice. Take it, take it or leave it.

Should I should probably preface like these questions and answers are very much based on my personal experience, take it with a grain of salt. But still enjoy, I guess.

Okay? Why don't you tweet more? Yeah if I had stuff to tweet about I would treat more sometimes it's just blank so that's why I don't really I love that one. That was pretty good. Oh, here's a difficult one. How do new engineers and

developers entering the field or studying to enter the field. Cope with the recent layoffs from Big tech companies. Now, I'm going to preface this also by saying, take it with a grain of salt because I actually don't know. I'm not new in the field right now, when I was new was about five years ago. So I think something like that. But here's my take on the whole thing. The, the big Tech layoffs, I guess they also happen, right? We've been In a really good marker in covid.

People getting raises out the Wazoo getting hired left and right and now there's layoffs. So you have that happen flow. And now it's going to be ab and soon it's going to be flow. We don't know when but it will return to less layoffs, most likely right now in a period of layoffs. Doesn't mean everyone is laying off, right? When it comes to organizations, you have to look at the different scale of things. Is it a small organization? Is it a start-up? Is it a medium size?

Innovation. Or is it a big sized organization based on the layoffs? You can see it mostly impacts big organizations but the people that are struggling with hiring the smaller organizations and the medium sized organizations. Now, all of a sudden can hire the people that have been laid off. So I think when layoffs happened, you're always going to

have options, right? Not just looking at the size of the organization, but also, the type of the organization we have consultancies, we have agencies, we have product companies, if product camp. Knees are laying off people and they still need the technical expertise of those people. They're going to go to agencies that they're going to go to consultancies. So those companies are still going to keep hiring it figures out.

I mean, I think at the end of the day, you'll find your way, whether you're laid off or whether you're struggling to enter and get your first job, it's a struggle for everyone at some point, you're going to land it and you're going to go grow from there. I don't know if I'm satisfied with that answer but that's kind of my take. I guess I'd is no golden answer. There's no Silver Bullet.

I can't give you what you're looking for, but I think there's Evan flow now there's AB because there's layoffs but soon, it will flow again and you'll get recruiters at the wall zoo and Linkedin. Yeah, maybe that's just said, there's no golden answer there. What's your favorite podcast

episode? So far? Now, that's kind of an unfair one, because I would throw people under the bus if I would pick just one. No, I I struggle with this because my podcast episodes are really broad, right? We have on the one side, more technically oriented topics, especially early on. WE focused more on that. And now it's grown beyond that. I've done episodes with regards to coaching and Leadership, and listening, and even startups in funding in.

And product Vision, right? So, those are wildly different than the more technical episodes in and picking between. Those is really hard to do. Now, having said that, I hope, and this is really my hope that each episode is better than the last one. I can always promised that happens. But I do think the way our conversation flows in the guests, I have owned in the value. They add are getting better and

better. That's not to take away from the people that have come on. I'm just enjoying the process more. Also, because I've grown One more and I'm learning more and I'm learning new things, new avenues. So with that being said, I like the later episodes more than I like the earlier ones. That's all I'm going to give you.

Hi, Patrick. Hi, I would love to know what the inspiration was behind. The podcast. Are there's like three questions back-to-back. Let me start with the inspiration of the podcast. It's very simple. I started the podcast with my colleague. Martin, a schmeyer. I think it's a schmeyer, not as sure Meyer, but I thought it was Asha Meyer. I started the boys to with my colleague Martin a schmeyer. He was new to the company and he said in an update called with about 50 Consultants.

Listen, we do a lot with regard to knowledge sharing. We do a lot with regrets and sharing internally as well as externally externally standing on stage doing blog posts and internally. We have knowledge exchange events, which we call XKE succeed Beyond knowledge exchanges. Every other Tuesday or every first Tuesday of the month, depends on which unit you're at. But through there it's kind of like going back to school.

So my prepares the topic people sit down and you have that interaction of someone explaining what they know sharing their knowledge in that way and people from the I would say public but maybe the crowd the crowd is, but probably a better word. So a lot of knowledge exchange has a lot of knowledge shared internally as well as externally. He said, it would be really cool to do a podcast in that way as well because of the knowledge that we already share and podcast is a cool medium.

I'm looking for a host to do that. He said, I have someone is called Frank, Frank, my colleague. I know him. He said he doesn't want to do it but if no one is a host, then he will do it. First of all, that's hilarious. That someone says listen. If no one does it I'll do it but I don't actually want to do it so let someone else pick up the ball. I think that's, that's really cool. I talked to Frank about this and he has no regrets because he loves what we've done with the

podcast. But with that being said, Martin also said, I'll give you all the support. You will need all the support you want and it's going to be your vision, your mission, whatever you want. We're going to do it if you want to do it. Dutch if you want to do English, if you want to do it once a week. Once a month, I don't care. Whatever you want to do, is what we're going to do. Now I have been listening to podcast for the last 10 years.

Probably started with PKA, listen to a lot of Joe Rogan and other podcasts in there as well lately. Trash chased which is pretty cool. But getting back to things that sounded like music to my ears. So the next day I hit him up and I said yeah I listened to what you said on the update call I want to be that host. I have an idea of what I wanted to do, what I want to do. So let's see if we can execute on that. He was like That's pretty funny because no one replied in the

update call. So you went to my manager and he said, give me a list of people that I can reach out to. And apparently, my name was on that list and it's pretty cheesy to say it was on top of that list. So, yeah, that's what he said. I don't know if I believe that, but moving on from there, we started brainstorming on, well, not necessarily ideas because I had an idea in my head. I wanted to talk about staff, not just coding, but stuff.

Around coding, you might say Beyond coding, everything having to do with coding and creating software. Humans creating software, that was kind of the phrase in my head that we had. So we started with that. And from there, we started, looking at the name of the actual podcast. We had actually, I should look this up. Maybe I can find them. Because we have some good names actually.

All right, I'm gonna give all the names. All the names of the this is the brainstorm that we had, my Titan me. All right. It's going to be vueling it with a F. I don't know exactly about that. One code, Logics code, build the death life, our life, encoding suits and hoodies, that that one made it to the top to, I'll put a image of me with a suit in a hoodie, that's our promo image, I'll put it right there.

Code and Suits didn't. Make it anywhere, coding business more than coding Beyond coding. Ding ding, ding the coders podcast. The full stack Life and Full stacked man, we have some great naming sense. That's hilarious.

Actually, I still have those. Yeah, so we picked the top two from that based on friends and family, which we call it, we asked around in our own network, then with the company and the people that we have, we did a poll suits, and hoodies versus Beyond coding, and Beyond coding actually, one. Now, when I went to Martinez said, I'd love to do the podcast, but I have a few prerequisites.

I think it was three or maybe four, let me, let me start with one has to be in English. I don't want to do it in Dutch. Such as to be in English. I want to reach out to people internationally overseas, not just in Holland but everywhere. So I has to be English next. If we're going to do this we're going to do it, right? Which means weekly episodes. I don't compromise for bi-weekly has to be weekly. We're going to do it weekly or we're not going to do it.

He was like whatever man it's going to be more work but also for you so deal with it. I was like hell yeah. Weakly then number three II, don't want any edits. That's a big one because I thought from my perspective, My English wasn't as good yet. I was saying a lot of arms. I was a lot figuring out what to say questions as well.

And I thought for me the fastest way to get that out of there, it's just not do it, which also means not edit them out because if I listen to myself and I listen to myself and I hate myself then I'm going to get better at actually doing the things and I'm going to like listening to myself. Either it's gonna fix itself in my head or I'm actually going to

get better at speaking. So yeah, maybe maybe I figured that out in hindsight but I wanted to do no edits, I wanted to do it as authentic as possible and so I ended up naming three. Yeah those might have been the only three then So yeah, with those with those prerequisites, in mind, we started, we had a name. We went to a fiver to get all fiver by your sponsor. Me fiver. Yeah, we went to fiver to get the intro and the little jingle with there as well.

And once we have the jingle, I already knew through my own network in the colleagues that we have here, where I want to as a full. As the first guest, it was going to be who's Peter, where's Peter to have his name? Because I always say painters and it's always paid their. We're später or Spader. Yeah, nailed it nailed The first time I added that up, nailed it on the first time. So yeah, we Dia I spoke with ourse. We figured out a main topic that we wanted to talk about.

We record the episode was one of the meeting rooms upstairs way behind me. Second floor, we put up two cameras and those two cameras needed to Halt at 30 seconds, and the micro SD cards needed to switch. And then we could resume again. So that was the first episode. I don't think that episode is on YouTube, cause more time did actually end up heavily editing that episode. So, yeah, we had to be like That was not what we discussed. But yeah, he wanted to really focus on audio quality or

whatever. So that video is gone. You won't find it on YouTube. Great first episode though, coming out of that first episode, I saw my other colleague says your Beaumont sitting there. I might do an episode with him in the future actually near future, but I saw him sitting there in one of the on one of the desks on one of the desks in front of one of the desks. English. I saw him sitting there in front of one of the desks and I asked her. I said to him. Listen we're doing this podcast

right now. I'm really happy with it. I really want to go do more with it. Do you want to be the first guest? You want to be second? Guessed doing me? Second guess. That's what I said. Use the gear. We'll do it next week as a gear and those the second guess, it's pretty easy. Now, with my first two episodes, recorded on, I talked to Martin and I said, well, no, we are airing this thing because I do

want to are those episodes? I don't care if their quality wise less than what we actually aim for. I thought they were great. I was loving it from the get-go, but obviously we were going to get better, but I didn't want to get better first and then start airing, I wanted to air the whole process even though I didn't like my voice.

Even though I didn't like some of the questions I asked for some of the dynamic there, I wanted to are start airing as soon as possible get feedback as soon as possible and start rolling with this thing. So, we decided once we had five episodes, we would are episode number one. And that's what we did. We started recording five episodes. We asked each and every guest.

Well, now that you've come on and kind of figured out the volume in the episode that we did, do you have other people in your network which might be a good fit for the episode and actually I've done that each and every single episode. So we really use the network of the network of It comes to getting guests and the ball just kept rolling from there. I actually figured out what my fourth requirement was. Maybe was my first, but I told my time I don't want to talk

about coding. I don't want to talk about coding at all. I don't want to talk about more technical stuff. I want to talk about everything that's around. Take I guess which also fits with the name Beyond coding because that's also where my interest lies, right? I still do consultancy 95% of the time, I get, like, 4 hours a week to film these episodes. So I use it to the The utmost of my ability and don't talk about coding. So that's a personal preference.

I get the most enjoyment talking to people about what they're passionate about and I just really love that. It's not about coding. Not to say, I don't like coding, I like programming still, but just programming and podcasting. I don't think they work quite well as a medium because song at some point. You need some visuals. You know what I'm saying? Talking about everything around that someone's history. Someone's passion what they believe in Mission Vision wise? That's way easier through

podcast. So that was number four. When it comes some came to my prerequisites there and you had a fourth one. What made you want to start the

podcast? And how did you decide on the topic now? I answered probably two of them. What made me decide? I probably said yes way too quickly looking in hindsight. I never knew all the work involved or any everything that I was going to do. I was listening to a lot of podcasts back then and I just really love the idea of having a seat at the table listening to podcast. Sometimes you would think figure out questions or think of questions that would remain

unanswered, right. And that's not really satisfying especially for the listener. So, I thought, if I would get a seat at the table, it's very very greedy, very arrogant. But I would love to ask those questions and not remain unanswered. At least for me because I'm, if I record an episode, I'm listening number one, right? I might be the host but I'm also a listener. So asking the questions that I would love to ask is really just a privilege, so, very greedily very quickly.

I said, yes, yes, let's do this. I would love to yes. And then all the other Work involved came later not to say that. I don't like it, but it is a lot of effort if I guess doesn't just appear magically. There's work and effort involved, Blood, Sweat, and Tears. I had to throw out episodes that I thought were not up to par through episodes, which had an echo, which I hated to do because they were great episodes. But here we are 80 episodes

further, curious to know what goes into creating a podcast episode. Now, we kind of had to refine this process. What I do is I find people on Twitter, I and people on LinkedIn. I find people through the people that I already have had on that say these people would be a great next guest. Now I reach out to them or I get connected to them through the guests that I've had on and I say, listen, we're doing this

podcast. It's about kind of The Human Side of creating software, would you be interested when they say yes? I'm like, okay, let's do a 30-minute call. Now, apparently that's already a bottleneck for some people, they don't want to do the initial 30-minute call from my perspective. If we can't do a 30-minute call, Usually if I've never met you, I don't want to do the episode might sound.

Stupid might sound short but I want to know the dynamic of the person that's going to sit in front of me whether it's in person or whether it's remote. I think that's really important for the actual quality of the episode. So I've had to say no to people that said no 30-minute episode. Can we just record the full episode? I'd had to say, I had to say and I still say no to those people that I've never met before to some people that I've met before I know, What I will have with them.

I know the dynamic that we already have. So when they say, listen, can we just record the first episode? Like, we know each other. I'm like okay we know each other. I mean he's fine or I suggest it but for the people that I've never met and they want to skip that intro call that's a no-go for me or a red flag in there. So once we have that intro call, we Holly over discuss the topic as I still want to keep that topic authentic.

We don't go in depth at all, usually takes about like 10 to 15 minutes, I asked what are you passionate about? That's usually the topic. Cuz whatever people are passionate about, if I've done my research or if my people my guests have done their research as well. Usually that's a shared passion, that's something I'm interested in something I'm curious about and something they can offer within the episode so that's what we cover as well.

Then everything from there, I discuss with them that we aim for 45 minutes in practice is about 50 plus minutes but that's fine. I asked them what they don't want to talk about and most people say I'm an open book, ask me whatever. And And I'll answer any question. Some people say I can't talk about this. I don't like talking about this specifically like some covid related things, which I appreciate and which I uphold during the conversation as well.

Do want to make anything or anyone uncomfortable in there, then we scheduled the episode. We record the episode, it's just a natural conversation. I used to say 3 2, 1 clap start. Let's go. We don't do that anymore. Makes the guests uncomfortable makes me uncomfortable and You just talk over each other. You Mumble a bit through the intro and then you actually start rolling.

What we do now is once again, guest calls in when a guest sits down in front of me, we make sure the recording is recording. I don't think that's. I say, we make sure everything is recording from the get-go. I explain that to them as well. We do a little chitchat and then I turn on podcast mode. Then we live not really live but we're already recording.

So we have that conversation and some guests have said to me I didn't know we were recording but I thought must have been already 40 minutes in so probably yeah, the cameras are rolling and they're right in editing in post. I'm like, okay, this is a good moment to start the episode.

Then we have the full conversation, that's what, you'll probably listen to. And that's then the episode, I put the intro jingle in front, I record the episode intro after the actual conversation we've had just to get a better feel of what we talked about, as well as what the people actually had to offer through that show. Through that episode and who they really are. I feel like I can better introduce them than as a host as well.

So, yeah, we do some editing, we make some smaller Clips subtitle, those, and share those on socials. And that's the full process of a podcast episode, as I do it. I know some people do it differently. Some people don't do. The intro call, they just straight up. Do the episode very strange to me? I don't know how they do it. This is my process. Why haven't you invited?

My favorite person X y&z on YouTube or like celebrity-type. Likewise. Yeah. I probably have but they never reach back to me. So if you feel like you want someone as a guest, tag me or tag them and we'll make it happen. But usually they don't reply, it's really hard. Reaching out to people that have like 100k subscribers or 100K followers, or what have you? They don't reply, which is fair, right? They probably have a lot of people tagging them. What's your favorite podcast

now? I used to listen to a lot of episodes, actually a lot more back in the day. And lately, I haven't been listening. Much one of those things, one of those reasons is because I have a girlfriend, I don't think she's going to listen to this. But yeah. When you have a girlfriend, you have way less free time. So let's podcasting second thing. I have a podcast. Listen to myself quite often when I need to edit. And yeah, that's kind of my point, cast appetite, then it's done. I do.

Listen, when I have a bit more time to trash taste, it's about anime. It's nothing about tech. It's about Japan and the culture, which I love, and sometimes here, and there, Joe Rogan's. Still, when he brings out an episode with an interesting guest, I used to listen a lot to pique. Pique has like six hundred episodes and they have a secondary podcast which has like 400 episodes. It's insane. But their first 200 episodes are

probably listened to them. And I probably listen to them like twice or Thrice because I used to listen a lot while I was gaming because gaming, at some point you're like, okay, I'm proficient, a gaming, I still want to learn some things. So I wouldn't listen to a podcast and still keep gaming whether it's like shooters or whether it's like strategy games. Online used to play a lot of hearthstone Hearthstone and that's a hard word Hearthstone.

Yeah. Used to play a lot of hearthstone and we just listen to podcasts day in day out during playing those video games. Yeah, I miss those days. Good old days. Really good old days. Now I'm old have to work after make money. Yeah, life is weird.

Have you ever been a guest on a podcast? Actually I have been. I've been on kenji's podcast. I've been on man. I don't have to name all the names now that's gonna be awkward after stall for time. Figure out the names, figure out the names. Figure out the name is Patrick new, Thompson's podcast. You got mornings. I actually, those are the two podcasts. I might go on three more, which I'm in the talks with which might appear soon ish.

I've learned that a lot more people have a bigger backlog than I have. So Neal's episode and I was like two or three months ago, and it just recently aired. So yeah. But I have been on the other side of the table. I like, coming on as a guest because I do almost zero preparation to host is all the thinking and asking questions and I just go with the flow sometimes ramble a bit too much guesting is Hard. But is it a vein to say I like episodes were having a guest in?

Maybe it is. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Scratch that off the Record now that's fine. Yeah. Like guesting as well, hosting is a different ball game. I read like hosting because I'm curious I get to ask questions and learn I guess thing is sharing what you know, sharing your experiences as well and who doesn't love sharing what they've experienced, right? Yeah, awkward wink. What's your take on hiring in

Tech? Now, I'm going to assume that you mean kind of a standard way of hiring where you get kind of a coding assessment. I guess the way I got this job. This job Xavier was also through multiple rounds first round with my manager as well as the recruiter in that way. Talk about the culture in the mission of the company in the values that it offers. And the second one was a coding assessment. Now is a take-home Sir sighs.

The exercise was quite large, actually, they said on an average, you would have to spend like eight hours on it, to complete. It only spend eight hours actually because if you need more, then you need more and we'll just have to discuss what you didn't finish. So I took that exercise, I ended up spending 10 to 12 hours on it and I was honest about that I said this is what I can if it's not good enough then this is not my ball game. This is too high of a level but can be quite confronting.

I like to take home. The size is more than a like live coding. I don't likely code exercises because those are usually not realistic and representable of what you would do when you actually land the job. So, when it comes to coding exercises, I think they can be fruitful. I think they have evolved do and more, and more companies are doing some sort of pair programming, some sort of talking through code, talking about code more so than actually solving an algorithm, which I

like. So, I like that trend. I think everyone, or every company rather than looking at what other people are doing, or what other companies are doing, should look at what they do on a more day-to-day and test for that. And I'm also of the mindset that if people can't do it, they can learn it. The right. People can with the right amount of eagerness and the right amount of drive. So look for those people rather than people that can just do a

trick and solve an algorithm. That's that's my opinion. Yeah, in my company actually, I'm working on an early in R program where we're going to train. A lot of people that are a bit more early in career when it comes to their technical skills. So we really went hiring focus on drive and motivation and we're going to train for skill. Which yeah, I think is going to help a lot of people and it's fun to train people that are really eager and driven as well.

So I can't wait. Do you hate your own voice? Yes. And no, at the beginning, I really hated my own voice because I hear them through these headphones. That's why I have them on. So I can better hone into a Station and actually see if I'm on the microphone, even though I suck at it sometimes. But episode number one, I was like, can we turn this off please? I don't want to hear myself when I'm talking. Luckily, it kind of merges and

I'm fine with it now. I mean it should be after like 80 episodes but in the beginning I was really struggling with it. So I just had to be like okay this comes with the job, just deal with it, just deal with it just don't think about it because I think a lot of people don't like their own voice. Now it's completely fine because of edited. So many episodes I've listened to myself. So it's just a voice. It's just another voice to me all other people, and this is going to sound really vain.

So maybe I shouldn't say this other people say that I have a. Quite, how do you say that? Other people say that, I have a good podcast voice, which I really appreciate. If you're one of those people, thank you means a lot to me.

How did you get into software development? Now? That's an interesting one because I didn't study computer science. Actually, I studied information studies or Information Sciences people call it, which is kind of on the fine line between business analytics business science, business studies, rather, and computer science. So, writing between there and we did a lot of stuff with regards to data analytics data science, but not necessarily computer science.

So, coming out of high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I thought I would choose very broadly and broadly was information studies. I had some other options but throughout my high school I had to pick some courses here and

there some Electives as well. And based on those courses based on those choices I couldn't do all the studies that I wanted to do. So I went with information studies because that was available to me or stand in line with what I wanted to do, which was a little bit in Tech, but still super brought for me to figure out what I actually wanted to do down the line. So, going into information

studies with three year program. After I was done, I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I like data science. I like working with programming languages, mainly We Learn Python and some web development stuff as well, but I didn't know exactly if I wanted to be a data scientist or a data analyst, something like that. So I started applying for jobs. I applied for probably a lot more jobs than I should have.

But I told myself I wanted to get better at interviewing because I sucked interviewing man, if you were to ask me what is like the worst? Getting a first job I would say, is the interviewing experience. I don't like sitting at a table with another person judging me, or, at least. That's, that's what I felt at the time.

My worst experience in there was it was a computer science role, Junior developer role and I was at I probably shouldn't name the name but it was some kind of Bank, some kind of Dutch bank, you'll probably figure it out but it was for a programming language, I never programmed in. So first round, I came to the office. Yes, and they said, well, well, we already preceded in some, some talks.

I had a really good first round. They really like me, I thought so, I was invited to the second round, which was going to be kind of a pair of programming or rather more programming situation where it wasn't a programming language. That I never had written in with a group of people which were

probably all seniors. Probably some meteors, but definitely no Junior. So I was the only Junior there and really confronting when they type something in the keyboard pass it to the other person, they know what to do. Then it comes to me and I just completely blank up. I had no clue what I needed to do. No clue about the syntax, they try explaining things here and there but I just completely shut down.

That was probably one one of the most horrifying experience I've ever had, but I'm completely derailed the question. See guesting on a podcast is way more difficult than hosting. Apparently, I'm going to get back to it. So I finally landed a job in operations at block or holding. If you check out my LinkedIn you can see all the the job history stuff. So I'm not going to get to all

of those. Those questions with regards to job history, but a job blocker whole I joined block or holding which is a holding company of a lot of the retail organizations in the Netherlands. Think about blocker into toys, say no, set the timeline Bakr as well and they came together with a joint venture in kind of centralizing. Their it systems making it a more smooth operation by joining forces with the knowledge they have. So they can distribute it and be better off it on a retail level.

So I joined that because First of all operations, you get to touch a lot of aspects but for me, I didn't know operations. I didn't even know left from right when it came to software development or operations and that way I just thought it's a super broad landscape. I'm going to get a lot of responsibility and a lot of freedom to touch on a lot of things and really learn what I like.

So that's why I picked that's why I chose that role and that's why I actually joined it ended up joining the company man. Getting tired at talking about myself to a microphone and a camera. But to give back to it. When I joined in operations, I learned a lot and I really fast-paced way. I got the opportunity to fail, fast, learn fast, and grow from there. And I basically had a great manager, which gave me all the freedom that I wanted, and the responsibilities that I wanted

as well. I could go up to him and say, listen, I'm comfortable, where I am more comfortable enough, give me more. What's the next step? I want to do this and he would make it happen. I wanted to do more database management and it would put me next to the database management teams. And I would learn from their them and they're just merge. Those words right there. Yeah, really fun time. Actually. A really fun experience in there

as well. But I was at the end of the day responsible for application Management, on the operational side from there, I could see what went wrong in production.

But when it actually came to fixing things, I wasn't responsible, I would have to kind of figure out what was wrong and then pass that to a different team that was responsible at the end of the day, which was also frustrating because throughout my history, I did learn a little bit about programming languages and software, and how it runs in, and of its own. So I could figure out, I could even browse through the code and figure out what was wrong.

Here and there yet, it was stupid because I didn't I wasn't allowed and I wasn't responsible to make those changes which I get if you're in a traditional organizations in operation and development is completely separated then yeah that those are kind of your roles and responsibilities there but to me I wanted to do as much as possible and have as much

ownership from the get-go. So After figuring out that I wanted to do more with regards to solve for development, I looked online, I saw devops was up-and-coming term. I'm everywhere. Development and operations. You build it. You run it in production as well. I was like this is 100% what I wanted to do. So I did two things.

I went back to my manager and I said, listen, this is what I want to do. I want to do more with regards to, I want to do more with the girls, the software development. And I also started looking outside just because I had been with the company for not even a year. I would say like nine to ten months and I thought if I can do this in this company then I have to look outside, right? I was very Driven very, young, very passionate.

So once I figured out what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to dab on my feet wet in, I went for that 100%. So I did both things. I started applying again apply that another big Bank applied it. Another few organizations just to get better at interviewing in there as well. Figure out what I really wanted to do because those are usually the questions you get and from answering those questions, really figured out what I wanted to do, really honed answering that as well.

But luckily, within the organization, My manager talked to another manager of e-commerce and they contacted me. And they said, listen if you want to do software development then you have to be at the e-commerce side of things I can make that happen. Now, he said that and he said that probably way too quickly because the next day we had a huge reorganization which means he couldn't make that happen

anymore. So we had another conversation and he said, listen, I can't make that happen right now. You're going to have to apply to either the retail organizations, over the e-commerce side of things, which was going to be its own entity. And I mean, I know you're I know the roles that are going to be available if there is a role for you in there, I'll contact you and you have the role and I was like well that seemed easy to cut it a bit more short because

I've been rambling. I ended up joining the e-commerce side of things not as a software engineer but as an Enterprise service bus developer. Now I didn't know exactly what that meant. I just thought I would learn a lot of software engineering fundamentals and work from there. You know you start somewhere and you just work your way up.

That was kind of my Mantra, but But in there wasn't a lot of work actually, there was one senior person and he worked there three days a week and you wanted to get stuff done. And the attention he gave to me was kind of a side thing. Now I appreciate the attention. He gave to me but three days a week. We're also doing something else and you're also have to educate one person. Yes. Not going to be a lot or even enough for me. So I went back to my then was a

new manager actually. He just joined one week and I already said, listen, this is not going to fly for me. I got this new role. There's no work in it. I don't get the attention and the love I need, but I still wouldn't do software engineering. That's what I told them. I said, listen, I know we do stuff. I know, we do really cool stuff. I want to do that. So he looked into the

organization. He saw we had software Engineers building the e-commerce platform and he said, listen, these are all Consultants. These are all external people. At some point, they're going to have to knowledge transfer that to the people that are internal is that we don't have a lot. We don't Have many people there, but you can be that person if you want to. I would say.

Listen, Patrick is new here. You have to knowledge transfer as much as you know, to him and you would be able to get up and running, whatever they have and contribute in your own way as well. So that sounded like music to my ears, it was completely Greenfield, it was going the back end, it was view on the front end and that's where I really started. They were like, okay, sit down. Okay, you know what it is I was like, yeah, kinda.

They explain the concepts, they explain the command line, they explained. I don't know the actual application because I ended up using the command line and We Roll from there. We picked up a user Story made the changes in a pair programming sense. I put my pull request. I was really proud until I got like 40, 50 remarks and I was like, damn, okay. These people know what they're talking about because none of

that stuff I thought about. So, rinse and repeat and learn from their, that's kind of how my software engineering Journey began. And, I'm really happy it started there because I got a lot of love and attention that I needed with regards to the level I was at, and the growth curve through that has just been extremely high. I think it has to do with me as a person but also the environment that I was in. So I feel really lucky to end up

there. I kind of stumbled and bumbled my way to that Spa, which I'm really happy about however,

comma, I think that is the episode. I think I went through all of your questions, hopefully all of the questions. If There's any questions that have remained unanswered, feel free to drop them in the comments Below on Spotify on YouTube. I think, on both those platforms, you can add comments down days, which is pretty cool. And with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.