Hi everyone, we are back. Q&A #10 We hit double digits, very proud of that. We got a record number of questions there about personal branding, a little bit about podcasting, a little bit about me, and still some career related stuff. So sit back, relax and enjoy. All right, question number one, we're going to hit off on all the content creation and more so personal branding questions first. Does content creation help you grow in your career, especially for beginners in coding?
I would say this is an interesting one. And I mean in your educational journey. This is what my parents told me and my teachers told me is whenever you read something or whenever someone tells you something, you can write it down and you might remember it more clearly. And for me, content creation is very similar, right? Because throughout your learning journey, you're going to perceive things as they are.
And if you create content and share that content, then it's going to help you gain a better fundamental understanding of what you're actually writing down. And then based on the feedback that you get, if any, you'll hone your craft basically. So it's a very interesting way of gaining knowledge and becoming better at what you do throughout. I think anything career related, but especially in tech since this learning journey is kind of
never ending. The only thing is that it can be a bit daunting, especially for me. I don't like making mistakes and that's an issue especially when you're in front of a camera with a microphone and you can just blabber on. And especially in writing, I can just go over and over and over on the thing I wrote until it's perfect and it's never going to be perfect. So I had to get over that initial hump and just produce. In essence, if my essence is fine, then the way I format it
can always be tweaked. So yeah, I would say try it. It's not for everyone. And what type of content you can create might also be related to what type of content you'd like consuming. If you watch a lot of videos, you might want to create a video and see what it is behind the scenes. I think the most is true for reading and writing. If you love reading, you might actually be a really good writer. And for me, I like listening. So here I am podcasting.
If someone would like to start a podcast tomorrow, what are the steps they need to go through to make it a reality? I would say there's a few things you need to think about kind of your topic and what type of branding you want to do. For me it was I wanted to have conversations with people in a one-on-one format because that's what I enjoyed. Listening to group would have also been fun but that's just harder to set up. So for me the easiest would be a
one-on-one conversation. I wanted to talk about things that are technical but not too technical, hence also be named the we coined the name Beyond coding, which I think is still very apartment. And then honestly, it's starting and trying it out. You'll never know if you don't try it out. So find a person that's interesting. Get kind of a minimal setup. Microphone wise, we had I think a quite elaborate set up because the audio quality is very good and has been from the start.
We've never changed microphones. You don't need an insanely good microphone, but you definitely need a good microphone with regards to a podcast. And then we also had a camera set up, which was just two tripods, which would only record for 30 minutes. And then we had to switch out the SD card. So I actually parked the conversation, switch it out and then continue. We've since upgraded, as you can see, but that was our bare minimum set up. We sat in one of the meeting
rooms upstairs. You need an isolated room. You can also do a podcast just by yourself answering questions or thinking about or speaking your mind. And then I've especially seen good audio quality for people that do it in their car because it's a really good isolating environment, very soundproof ish, but really good for a podcast setup, especially if you're talking about something bare minimum. Record a few episodes before you
start releasing. Figure out what your release cadence is. I still advocate for weekly at a minimum to get up and running to get into this rhythm and routine of creating content and podcasting and executing. And then see if you can optimize, see if you can experiment. Keep having fun with it. Try things out. If they don't work, it's fine. You learn and you continue. So yeah, editing is not that
much work. It depends on what type of format you want to do. If you want to do something very educational, very much like a newspaper, then you might want to have very fast-paced content and make sure you don't make any mistakes. If you just have a conversation, it's easier on the editing side because if you keep it a conversation, then pauses and UMS are just fine in the audio content there. So choose something that works for you. Choose something that you think
is interesting. Try and make it as resilient as possible throughout and honestly, just start and have fun with it. Sorry, I will start my own podcast now. Yeah, in my car. Your car. I think you could do it. I don't have. I think you have the personality for it. You can do it one day. One day I'll definitely start a podcast. All right. If you could record a podcast with anyone in the world, who would that be and why?
Yeah, depends. If it's this podcast, I want it to be kind of in the tech scene and obviously big, big idol is Joe Rogan, so that would be an honour. Elon Musk could be fun just because of the thoughts that go on in his head and trying to pick the brain of his, especially now that he owns Twitter and does seemingly a trillion jobs at the same time, which seems ridiculous.
So figuring out how that is possible On the acting scene, honestly, I've been listening to the audio book of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I just finished it. So that man has done so much, which would be very interesting to talk to. Other than that, a lot of YouTube idols. Mr. Beast would be fun to figure out what he has cooking. But then I'm not really unique because those people have already done a lot of podcasts. So yeah, those would be my initial first thoughts.
The Rock, interesting guy. Kevin Hart, big, big favorite when it comes to comedy. That'd be a lot of fun. So yeah, is the podcast still a part of your work or do you record the episodes outside of working hours? Luckily, I actually get time to do this. I get about four hours per episode. I don't know why I said about I get 4 hours per episode. It might not be enough, but it's good enough to do it during working hours. Everything else around it I do outside of work and I try and manage.
In the beginning, I didn't get any hours. I did everything kind of outside of work, which was a lot of work, and then we got the ball up and running to the point where I actually got time for this, which I'm really thankful for. Otherwise, I don't think we could have come this far, right? Because the four hours are usually spent for the recording, which takes about an hour, hour
and a half. I want to make sure that the people that come on here also have a nice experience, so if I'm really time managing, then that experience is just going to be ruined by virtue of me rushing through everything. I need time to find people, to have an intro call to do research on the topic, research on the person, record the episode, editing. I get help now, which I'm also very thankful for out of my plate.
And then it's making sure the episode is nicely packed with visuals and then released to the public. We don't do a lot of marketing. I think that's the only thing we can improve on very much still because hopefully we have interesting content now. People just need to see it. So yeah, that's kind of the format of the podcast and I'm very thankful for these hours. Don't, don't take the money. How do you investigate the main topic and guests before your podcast? I used to do 2 things.
So previously or very much early on, I had a list of topics and then I would find the guests and that's actually really hard. But then I have a specific topic already in mind. Now what I do is the opposite. I find the guests and together we brainstorm on a topic and I always do an intro call. So I get to know the person that's in front of me. I get to know their passion and that's usually in the topic. And then afterwards, offline, I just call the person.
I see what type of talks they've done, if they've done any other type of podcast to get a better feel of kind of what makes them tick. I'm experimenting with two prep questions which I sent them and they give me back the answer. It's mainly, if you were to share this with anyone, what would you want to have in the episode? That tells me a little bit about them as a person or what they
think is important. And then what is your opinion on something that might be controversial within the topic that we've defined? Which also gives me a little insight in how their mind works and how they think about certain aspects which might be different. And I think different sometimes is interesting for listening experience. So that's part of my prep for the guest side. Topic wise, it's the same as how
you kind of analyse any topic. I try and go deep enough for me to have a conversation but still be interested and not be anchored or biased in a specific perspective. I rely a lot on the experiences that I've had and I try and throw that up in the conversation as well and see if their experience is aligned or opposite. And we bounce off of that. And it's very much right now kind of second nature. I would say it's very much in the gut which type of questions we ask or I ask.
Basically, there's no we. I don't know about the person in front of me, but yeah, I think throughout this three-year of of experience, I've just gotten a better sense of how much prep I need to do. In the beginning, you might over prepare. I would never recommend over preparing, but that's also the type of person I am.
I like being flexible. I don't like being under prepared, but I am almost always in some form or way under prepared and that allows me to freestyle because that's, I like kind of free flowing conversation and seeing where it goes. So, yeah. All right, all right, all right. This is a very nice one. Patrick, you're the king of discipline. Thank you. That makes me really happy. How do you battle with procrastination and laziness when you do weekly podcasts? Yeah, I don't think I'm the king
of discipline. It's a huge compliment and I thank you for it. The only thing that really helped me was schedule, and I'm not the best planner, so this was really due to the help that I got early on in creating a few episodes. We always had a batch of five episodes parked and ready to go so that when I'm lazy for a week or two, I can catch up by recording two episodes and I still have 5 parked ready to go. Right now that's not the case.
I am on edge and sometimes recording and then releasing the week after and I need to do better. But that also means I'm actually not procrastinating. I think I'm just having a lot of fun recording. So then doing this continuously. I do have the discipline and the motivation to do this weekly because I think that's always been a bare minimum. And right now the motivation after three years is just to keep the streak going.
Like I love gamification and it's like a combo and a multiplier and we're almost at 170 basically. That's enough motivation for me to see how far I can take this, and I take pride in that number, the amount of episodes, even more so than the amount of views of the subscribers. For me, this is more of the personal motivation part of it. In the beginning, everything was new, and I think whenever you do something new that excites you, it's really hard to stop doing
it, basically. At least that's for me. I would have to have someone Take Me Out of my focus to stop doing sometimes. I would have to take myself out of it to eat sometimes. I would get obsessed, honestly, with podcasting, with statistics, with creating episodes, with finding people, with creating better content, with experimenting. And I think more so in the beginning than now, but still, I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Experimenting keeps it fresh and with freshness you can also keep your motivation up. It's kind of a mangle of an answer to be honest. Find what motivates you and make sure that never goes away. I think that is the essence of it. For me, it's the one-on-one conversation. I love learning through people's experiences. I love when someone is a really good storyteller and just listening. Listening has always been the joy, which is also why I think I
love podcasting. And nowadays, I like sharing more and more as well. So thank you for letting me do this. Q&A episodes and as well motivate themselves when there's no response in the form of likes, shares, comments, or any other metrics. That is how everyone starts out. If that is your only motivator, then you will not make it because you won't get over that initial hump and keep continuing.
So I think at the beginning you have to have a vision and the time is going to be the only variable. If you think you can be DJ or wait. This is not even the DJ question. DJ question was next. I'm getting ahead of myself. If you want to be the next Joe Rogan of podcasting, it's going to take time, it's going to take fame, it's going to take a lot of sweat and effort, basically. And if you're OK with that, then you just do it. And time is the only variable.
If I do this for 20 years, it might happen, might not happen, but as long as I believe in it and I keep doing it, it might happen. There's a chance. And however small it is, if my belief is strong enough, that is enough fun motivation for me to keep going. Honestly, metrics like view subscribers and watch hours, watch time, I think those are the biggest ones on YouTube as well As for a podcast because that feeds the algorithm and then your content gets recommended more and more.
Those are a little bit of a vanity metrics. Obviously they tell you about the performance of an episode, but if you like more of an easygoing conversation rather than fast-paced Tiktok content, then yeah, your content might not be for everyone. People need to sit down for it, go for a walk, their dog, go for a ride. And then a podcast is really good rather than this, let's say, fast food of media content that people, a lot of people consume in volume. I don't think a podcast is that.
I think it has its own niche. It has its own time and place, which means that the burn is a bit slower and the ramp up is a lot longer. It's a lot of long tail content that people watch. I think 50% of the content that people listen to with regards to my podcast is all from before half a year ago. That's the statistics YouTube gives me, which if you think about it, is ridiculous because I need to have that bulk of content. Six months is 6 * 26 * 4 is 24 episodes of content basically,
which is already half a year. And then people kind of ramp up maybe initially. So yeah, if you fixate on that, you'll never make it. Just have fun with it, do it for yourself and find a smaller group of people which is really, really enthusiastic, which really engages because that's better than a million people that don't engage at the end of the day. So, yeah, Have you ever calculated the marketing value of your reach for the company? Very interesting question. I have not.
I get a lot of emails or whatever. A lot of is subjective. For me, it's a lot because I never got these about sponsorships and I don't need a sponsor necessarily. I think it's interesting. So I might just dabble in the process to see and learn from it. But that's the only value that people have with regards to the podcast is about the breach. And they ask me for the numbers. What is your rate? How much do you charge per episode?
How much do you charge per long segment versus short segment versus multiple segments versus an integrated thing or just a something that you put in front or after the episode? I have no clue. Honestly, I think it's valuable, but it's very hard to quantify how valuable, right? When a podcast is used as a marketing tool for a company,
it's on the highest level. And at the end of the day, I'm really happy that the company doesn't really care on what the returns are because in essence, they care about the quality of the content. And then whatever outcome comes out of this podcast, they're going to be happy with it.
If someone on the street software engineer is looking for a new job, sees throughout YouTube, the algorithm, any of the marketing efforts that we do, some of the conferences or meet ups that we have this podcast and that that's a person that just started it within this company and therefore they apply. That's already gold, right? If another, because it's a consultancy company.
If a customer says, well, these people talk a lot about data in AI or they talk about Web 5, or they talk about IoT specifically, because I can see on this podcast, then this might be the consultancy company to actually start a conversation with and engage regardless if there's an assignment there or not. The fact that people then would engage based on the content that they see, which is very high quality, I think that's it. And we don't know what outcomes
have come. Sometimes I can quantify it because people that are new here tell me about it, but whatever outcome comes out of that, that's the trust that the company places in the podcast and in me, and I'm really happy with that. I don't need to quantify it necessarily. Whenever I do do a sponsorship, I'll definitely circle back and give you feedback because that's going to be an interesting learning journey.
But what it is worth right now, to me, it is this little piece of gold, this golden nugget, and it's growing more and more and I never want to let it go. For me, it's worth a lot. But that's just me because also it's mine. So yeah, not for everyone else, basically. What are your top three favorite topics to cover on the podcast? That is very difficult. I think if you look at the backlog of episodes, you can see numerous topics. Personally, what we've never covered is anime.
I love anime. That's a little bit about me. I love games, and I might do an episode with a game director talking about how they switched from software engineering architecture to more of a game director, which is very interesting to me. So that's more of the gaming side, but I've never done that. I like right now, like everyone, what the AI technologies kind of open up in possibilities.
I very much love startups and failures and success and grit and discipline because I think that's very inspiring. Any topic that can be motivational or inspiring. And then the people I have on to be unique in their perspective, in their storytelling. I like people that can tell really good stories, but that's more about the person, not about
the topic. And then whatever topic makes me better, either software engineer, product manager, or just person and consultant with regards to life and what I do in this career perspective. It's kind of a honestly, I just told you everything that we have basically. So yeah, it's really hard to choose. Don't make me choose. I don't know if that was a good answer. I will. I thought so. That was my answer.
This is the interesting one. How do you validate your brand identity when you don't have real people for feedback, like being an artist or DJ validating your brand identity? I think branding and personal branding is very interesting. And if you think about it, everyone has a personal brand. It's just within your own sphere of people that you connect with, within your family, you're known about a few things. I sometimes am late. I sometimes can be lazy or
procrastinate. If you ask my siblings, they'll tell you all of that. Basically, they know me the best. They know the personal brand. That is probably the family perspective. And then within my team and within my colleagues, people know me as to be responsible or reliable or sometimes still procrastinating and being very direct in the way I communicate and sometimes a no bullshit, very practical attitude.
There's a lot to unpack there. And different people see different versions of me. And then when you go beyond, the people that listen to this podcast have only a reflection of me. Basically, I have no clue how they perceive me. They perceive me as a host, as someone that might talk very eloquently, that is very curious and driven. Hopefully I'm a making a lot of assumptions. So if none of that's true, let
me know. But in any case, as someone that has created 170 episodes, whatever they think of that is basically my brand and identity. And some of that I have in control and some of that I have no control over because that's just who I am. And that's people perceive who I am. And the truth is almost always
somewhere in the middle. How my perception is versus how your perception is. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle when it comes to your brand, the only thing that you can do. Is do what you do best. So whether you're an artist or whether you're a DJ, if you want to be perceived in the outside world outside of your family or your networking career sphere, is by creating content and seeming like you are an authority on that subject.
And the seeming is basically impossible because when you start out, you're not an authority. You're just the person that creates content and that already is good enough. Do that over and over and over again. And just by virtue of you being really motivated and wanting to perfect your craft, whether that's an artist or DJ or whatever, you will get better and with better comes close to perfection. At least that's what people perceive.
And then all of a sudden they identify you with whatever you create. So if you're an artist, I love the people on Tiktok that create paintings or do awesome drawings and I just see them having a catalogue full of content and that makes a lot of sense. And then I think, OK, these people are amazing creatives. Whether they see themselves as artists or creatives, I have no clue.
But that's my perception based on the content that they've created as well as the legacy of content that is already out there. And somehow the recommendation algorithm just gave me the latest or somewhere one of them that is the most popular or one of them that might be in the style of an anime I like especially. That's probably it. So yeah. And identity is very interesting. You can already think of yourself, what you're known for.
It's basically reputation within different spheres of networks that you have. The closest one is probably your friends and your family. Then the next one is probably the people that you work with that are like adjacent to friends or actually you see them as friends or are close to being friends. People don't like throwing out the term friends. I like throwing out the term friends. I have a lot of friends.
And then the people that you might know, you might have worked with or just know you by virtue of being in the company or have seen some of your blogs or any of the content that you create, that's like very far away. They still have an opinion of you based on what you created and that is still your brand. Do things consistently.
If I were to talk about early on software engineering career perspective and only did that, probably my brand identity would have been a lot more concise and people would see me as the guy that only does that. So that is a brand identity that I have more control over. I right now do a lot of everything, which means my brand might be all over the place, but I don't really mind. If that's still my brand and that's what I like doing, then that's fine with me.
Don't make me spit. Do a spit take. Ah, not a question. I just think you're doing an amazing job with the podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. How do you handle guests? We're not able to communicate that well. Yeah, this is a hard one. If they make it to the episode, I don't know how they make it to the episode. There's only been one episode that was, quality wise, not good enough for me to air. And then I give the person the option. We either redo it because this
is my feedback basically. And I tried to be nice about it because this can be crushing if you basically say we do an hour conversation and then at the end I say it's not good enough basically. But it was also too long. I had a few reasons and we redid it and the episode is still there. Basically, it's a good episode. Second one went way better. That's the only one that was like OK, I cannot do it. I think the quality is below
whatever I want to put out. Other than that, I usually make sure that I do my homework with regards to who I'm talking to and the intro call allows me to filter out people that are not that great of communicators. And it might sound harsh, and in the end it is harsh, I think, but a podcast is still something that people listen to. If the person does not communicate that well, I have to really carry the conversation.
And it might not be interesting because I'm also having them on with regards to their experiences, perspectives, or expertise on a certain topic. And if we're not able to convey that well in the episode, then the episode's not great. So I make sure that that doesn't happen, to be honest, throughout doing research before I even reach out to people. Then when I've reached out to people by doing that intro call, it's non negotiable. Some people have said can I skip
it? I say no. And then we don't do the episode if they don't want to do it. That's it. Those are my boundaries basically. And then in the end, in practice, it doesn't happen on the episode itself. So yeah, do your homework. I think it's a good life advice for everyone. Make sure it doesn't happen. Best advice ever. How did you overcome disliking hearing your own voice? I hated it when I put on these
headphones. Episode one was being recorded and I hurt myself because you hear yourself with the delay. Now I would like them now because it isolates me. I can better zone in on what the person is saying and I can chime in when I need to or interrupt them without breaking the flow of the conversation. Better because I'm in focus mode and I'm in an isolated kind of sound environment. Now back to episode one. I was like, can we turn this
off? And the answer was no, I don't think we knew how to do it. I still think I can do it somehow. But we always kept it on. And then when I was editing the episodes or listening back to the content to try and improve what questions I would say or how I reacted, or honestly just try and see what my state of
mind was. If I was too tired, if I liked what I said or not, if I actually was listening or not, to see if I could do it better the next time, I would do that so often that it just sounds like my voice and I'm happy with my voice. What really helped was that people said you have a beautiful podcasting voice, which I'd never thought about, and that's very much vanity, but it did help. I think for me the biggest factor was just trying to listen to it and get over it.
And if you do it often enough, it sounds very silly sometimes. But what you don't like, if you do it often enough, it's just there and you don't really care for it. I don't really have an opinion, and I don't think my opinion on my voice matters that much. So yeah, don't really care for it. What are some surprises about your brand that evolved over time? Surprises about my brand. I don't necessarily know if
there were many surprises. I used to create content with the state of mind that I had a good idea of who the listener was, who the viewer was. I don't know what it was based on, to be honest, but I just thought I had it and it turned out I was completely wrong. People that listen to it are very varied and very diverse. Some people listen to it to help them get a better understanding of the English language because English is not their first language.
They like listening. They also are interested in these tech topics. They might be in the educational journey or they might be early in career and they might be later in career and they listen to it and they enjoy the English aspect of it. That's something I never could have imagined and the only reason I know is because they tell me in the feedback in the comments, which I think is
amazing. I still think people are there for the educational part of it. Whatever topic we cover, if we talk about Web 5, someone might be interested in what Web 5 is or it might trigger them with regards to let me just figure out what this is about or it sounds interesting or I might actually like it in so much so that I want to pursue something with regards to a personal project, side hustle or actually
a career path. Now those are very, very big bets that I'm making right now and the smaller bets turn out to be true. Honestly, it's people like me, people that are very curious, people that have a broad set of interests, people that don't mind necessarily switching or trying things out for half a year or a year that takes everything with kind of a grain of salt and are very flexible in how they set themselves up. And yeah, I don't know if that's how it evolved to be. I don't know.
I, I definitely didn't think that was it at the start. And also I think I can steer with the content, what I think my brand needs to be or might be more effective to be or might give me better and more vanity metrics, subscribers and views and stuff like that. But I just don't care for it. So I don't do it. And my brand is whatever it is, which is probably a lot who I am as a person. And that was very introspective. If you could start over, what
would you do differently? Yes, I hate these types of questions. I don't like saying that I would not make the mistakes that I did. Like, for example, we don't do any remote episodes anymore. Why? Because I did that. The audio issues were numerous. Even recording, we had challenges with it. So I decided I don't want the headache. I don't want to do it. I could say I wish I never did that, but then I never had the learnings of going through it and then now knowing what I
know. So it's not going to be based on failures or mistakes or I like all the learnings that we did. I like the consistency that we did it. I like the fact that it's English and non edited, non negotiable. Basically. What do I not like? I mean, all the learnings that have streamlined this process I think would be very valuable. I think I I think I could have experimented more early on.
At some point it was very formulaic ish and with it being static, the formulaic part, The only difference is the topic and I really needed to find motivation in the topic. And some topics were not interesting but I think I thought it would be indeed contribute to more views or more subscribers or more likes or comments or whatever. Right now I don't really mind and I really enjoy doing it for me and I'm really happy that people still think it's valuable
to them. But those are all learnings based on what I did in the past. So I I wouldn't really change the thing. I would experiment more. And earlier I think Q&A's for me have been a really, really fun journey. And this is number 10, which I think is incredible. We could have been way, way further, and I think that would have been just as incredible and it would have had just as much fun. So probably that I did this earlier, that I maybe started
the podcast even earlier. Even though he was not comfortable in front of a mic, even though I was way more early on in career, even though I probably wouldn't have offered as much of A perspective I can now, I think I would have had just as much fun. I think I would have been even better because I, if I would do it earlier, I would just have more years under my belt, which means probably my execution would be even better. So that's the only thing that I
would change. Start earlier, start experimenting more often and just start. I have a real hard time starting. So it's a miracle that this thing started. And I, I'm really good at keeping things going, which is what we're doing right now. When you're in Amsterdam, what do you do beyond coding to reset your mind? I know you like to surf surf, but I assume that's not possible in Amsterdam. I go through phases and I get these obsessions with things and I do them obsessively.
Started with skateboarding, which was years ago, and I didn't really want to be a trickster skateboarding. I just really like going fast on those four wheels and going from point A to point. BI loved it. I would take my skateboard. People at the office would say and make fun of me and say that's the skateboard. I did not care. It would even be people at a client, which, yeah, at the end of the day, I didn't really
care. And luckily they did not care enough basically to not like me. Because of that. I think it showed personality. I got into a really big cycle of bouldering, and I haven't bouldered actually for a long, long time, but it was very much there last year. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out different things. Klein I had learned that I am not flexible, which I know, but that it's a big, big issue with bouldering. And I tried getting flexible. It's really hard, still not
flexible. And now the surfing phase was definitely in Sri Lanka. I would wake up, surf, do it all over again the next day. I loved it and I wish I could do it, but this is not Sri Lanka. So I get these phases. What I do consistently, I would say to just take my mind off, mainly work is spend time with friends and family. I think that's my joy. That's never going to go away.
I like taking walks, I like eating, I sometimes like cooking, and I like watching different types of medium, whether it's YouTube, whether it's anime, whether it's listening to a podcast, reading a manga. I think all of that are like little joys. And then when I don't have this obsessive hobby, sometimes it's gaming. Right now it is a bit of a gaming phase. Yeah.
It just that goes away. And I found something else and I get obsessed with it and my YouTube recommendations blast me with it and I consume all the content and I execute whatever I want to do, whether it's bouldering or thinking of getting into arts and crafts and stuff, because I think that could be fun. It's been podcasting for a really, really long time, very much early on, more so than it
is now. I still have thoughts of being a video content creator and actually just buying a really good camera with a good mic and just start vlogging, talk about food and anime. So yeah, I have these thoughts and sometimes I actually do it and I get obsessed with it and it's really interesting. I don't think obsessive behaviour is a good thing, but it helps me take my mind off and actually decompress. So yeah, sometimes I'm a couch potato. I don't do thing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not this hyper productive person, I never will be. I have phases and I think that's fine. What soft skills are in your opinion, crucial level up from junior to more advanced developer? Specifically soft skills.
If I were to pick one, and I'm not going to pick one because I'm a greedy person, one would be when it comes to you and how you're perceived by others is how you break down something that is technically complex and make sure that everyone in the room can understand it. And you also check in with them and you ensure that they understand it because some people just nod and they don't actually understand.
Breaking down something that is complex in simple terms makes people perceive that you actually really, really understand it. And I think that holds true in a certain essence, but that is the soft scale of communication. Basically, if you really understand your craft, whether it's technical, whether it's something else, and someone does not, and the topic is complex, it can be complex in numerous
ways. The way you communicate it and break it down, make sure that you actually know your stuff, and that's how it's perceived. That for me would be kind of #1 whenever it comes to team effectiveness right now as APM, I'm very mindful of team productivity. Basically, if everyone is in the room and we discuss something for two hours and we don't have an outcome, then I wasted everyone's time for two hours, right?
So if you can set up something with a specific agenda and a goal and you can execute based on that, you get more stuff done. And you can get a lot of stuff done as a junior. But just by virtue of you executing more people might see you more senior in that aspect. So that's being more mindful of your own time, everyone else's time, making sure that when everyone gathers, it's effective. It has the outcome that you wanted it to be or it has a outcome whether you agree or
disagree. And just by virtue of me saying that, I think that's a really good thing to not be fixated on. You can be wrong, and I think you need to acknowledge whenever you're wrong and it's OK. It is very OK to disagree and commit. I've heard that term more and more often. Let's just disagree and commit and test and reflect and shift gears. Be flexible. But that's more of an execution thing. That's not really the soft skill
thing. Break things down, explain them, practice that, get better at it and you'll do well. What is your process when starting a new project and can you give examples for reference on how a senior dev would start a project compared to a junior? What are the key differences that defines then a senior and a junior in starting a project? Big, big disclaimer, I don't start new projects very often. I don't have many side hustle projects.
I'm thinking about doing one and again, I'm very bad at starting. So I've been thinking about this for a while and I need to start but I haven't started. So that's one of my flaws there. I think it's picking and choosing and not falling into
this information. Analysis paralysis has been one of the biggest strengths that I've seen other people be really good at it. I don't think I'm good at it myself, right, When you have this big, big overview of what a software engineer needs to do and what they can do and what they can be good at. I'm not good at starting.
So I think if you take the starting part, I might be very, very junior at it. Actually, I have not done it often, but when I did that and I was in a team with people that had done that numerous times, what I saw them do was take non functional requirements, take things with regards to team size and the cost of ownership, break a whole slew of options down in just a few, and then just pick. And they did not do what I thought they would do is compare all the options and then pick.
No, they just picked. They said, gut feeling. This is what I already used. This is what I could get fastest up and running. We pick this. And then it turned out to be wrong. And it did not matter because with those learnings, we pivoted, we shifted and we integrated something else. Sure, they had the knowledge to make sure that we would push hard enough with this one solution and then see what the bottleneck was. And they still were flexible
enough to switch. That's more of a mindset way of working. They also make sure that the code, the software that we created was architected in a way that would that it would not ruin everything else that we created. But we just plug and play your software architecture can help with that think. Oh my God, that word is hard. Hexagonal architecture for example. We just honestly removed one of the databases which was no sequel and we created a sequel.
We used the SQL database, everything was on cloud for example. We had everything serverless as well. So it was very easy and it took a day or half a day for this person to actually shift out and create what we had with another database. I was like mind blown honestly. Speed, the decision making and flexibility. They did not care that whatever they created turned out to be wrong. They took the learnings and they continued and the execution
power is incredible. I think once you've done that a few times, you'll get better and better at it. You'll make sure that other people don't fall into this analysis paralysis. You'll make sure that decisions get made because at the end when you're starting, the decisions count. But not every decision counts, right? And you need to spend your time and effort in the decisions that count. And it might be very few decisions that count at the end
of the day. So honestly, that's been the biggest differentiating factor that I've seen in people being very, very good at executing early on in a project. I also think that that's a skill.
So the skill of starting something is very different than the skill of picking up something that is already live, making it more effective, seeing what is honestly noise and AB, testing your assumptions and making sure that whatever you have is effective to the T. That's very different than starting and getting up and running and doing that fast and getting fast feedback and creating something that can go live, in essence, very different.
And you'll learn what you like. And you might not be good at the whole thing, but that's also why we work in teams. So have fun with it, enjoy, practice, experiment, learn. Good times. So cheesy, but it is good times. What would you do for a living if you could not be a developer or as of now, a product manager? Yes, with my current skills, it's very limited. I would love to be a full time podcast host. I would love to do YouTube content full time, and I think I'd be good at it.
I think I'd have a blast with it. I think I could do it for a long, long time. What else? If I were to do everything all over again and I would not have the option, let's say, to do software engineering or anything in product. I'm I'm going to be very biased and influenced by the show I'm watching, which is The Bear. I would love to own a restaurant and be really good at cooking. I never did that.
I think I can still do that. I just haven't done it because I'm really bad at starting, but I would love to be able to do that. I did that in the past. I worked in the service industry. It was a lot of fun, very tight knit team, a lot of bonding, very fast-paced environment. Executing, making people happy with food like that just warms my heart. It might be my upbringing, the culture and my parents are Turkish. Like food is a big thing
culturally. So yeah, I could see myself doing that and really, really enjoying that, helping others through food, man. That's the tagline Alternate reality. That might be me. Fetrick Descher. Fetrick Descher. My name is Sheer. Yeah. All right. What is your take on starting a side hustle slash volunteering at work versus outside of work? Side hustle, volunteering in work, outside of work,
volunteering. I actually get a day off to do volunteering work, so I can do that with work or outside of work. It depends on what fulfils you, right? Some people I've seen volunteering, they do that and that's their day and they love it, right? It fulfils them. So they make their work out of it. They do it inside of work, outside of work. It's incredible. I'm not that person yet. I think, I think I could be, I'm not that person yet.
I'm not that my heart is not made of gold, which I think those people do have a golden heart. So I tried to find a balance of doing things in work and outside of work when it comes to a side hustle. A lot of people I've heard that spin that off and create a start up and continue with that said they did it within work ish.
So in work outside of work, when things were when you had not as crucial of a project, not just not as urgent of features that you need to deliver downtime here and there, they would create a side hustle basically. But that's also probably because they have the motivation, the ambition to do it. They probably didn't really like their job, so they didn't really want to push for the career ladder. So then it might be possible. Would I advise that? I mean, it depends what you want, right?
If you really want to do this, then probably the best way to do so is to start doing. And you can only do so much in a day. So if you work, if you really choose to not pursue this career ladder, some people call it the corporate ladder, I don't really care. I am pursuing multiple things at the same time. Then you can choose to spend your time working on this side hustle, right? And test your assumptions and don't basically shift your life and throw away your job and
start from scratch. No, start gradually. I think you can do it in your job, but if your motivation is high enough, you're not just going to do it on working hours. You're going to do it after working hours as well. And it's going to move gradually to something you want to do full
time. If that's not the case and you only want to do it during working hours, I honestly think it will never succeed because then you're that person that only works nine to five in your startup environment as well. And I don't think that, I don't think I know anyone that's made
it with that kind of mentality. If you get obsessed about this thing that you want to create your side hustle and you want to make it your main thing and do it day in, day out, then you need that obsession to execute and to make sure it succeeds. Otherwise, you're just trying things. And in the end, trying things is not a bad thing, but it might not be for you if you really don't have that motivation for it. Yeah. Do you miss coding in your current position as APMI?
Think I, I think I covered this last time as well. Yes, I miscoding, I miss the part that is executing basically. And there's a lot of fulfilment that is there when your feature goes live, when you see people use it, when it actually delivers the outcome that you had in mind or that the team had in mind or from a product perspective that everyone had in mind. If that's not the case, then you learn from it and you continue.
And now that I'm APM, I'm very mindful of the value that we deliver because from my stance, we can do a lot of things and that is a big, big problem. So the things that we do, we need to make sure that we don't optimize to AT because optimization, right? They always say that your execution, you can do 90% quite quickly. And then the last 10% might be just as much effort as the 90% from my perspective is not worth it. And that might be a new learning from the product side.
So, yeah, but I do like the coding side of it. Executing, delivering. It just fulfills me and it's always fulfilled me and I miss it. Or was I? I lost my questions. Yeah. To follow up on that, what do you like about coding? Coding, not the coding in and of its own. I do love when I'm in a really good flow, when I have my music on, when I'm just standing there typing away, when in my head I know what I need to do and I execute really quickly. Honestly, that's a really good
feeling, the feeling of flow. And then at the end of the day, making sure that it goes live without a hassle because sometimes you're in an environment where that is mind blowing, where you deliver something quite quickly and it goes live without any bugs or issues. I don't think you can prevent any, any types of bugs. I don't think that's the perfect environment. There will always be issues and you need to be resilient. But when that happens, Florida State and people are like, damn,
that's nice. That fulfills me. Which is like the the vanity side of it at the end of the day. Then people using it and knowing that that is something that I created or that was something that was my idea. Yeah, I'm part of this bigger machine then that is something that people use. And my small part and my contribution is what fulfills me. I only have a few questions left. I'm going to round this off
soon, all right? If I want to pursue a career creating Devtools, how do I get involved in this Devtools specifically? The audience of developers is a tricky 1. And luckily when it comes to dev tools specifically, a lot of the stuff is open source. So for me, that will be the starting point with what I know now. And I recently had this conversation with Leo, who works at Dino. He contributed to open source because Dino is open source and it landed him a job. And he says it's not an easy
path. It's quite a hard path. He wouldn't even recommend it actually, but I still think it's valuable to gain that experience and if that's really what you want to do and pursue, I think it's very interesting that you want to do that. It's very niche, very admirable, and honestly lucky that you know that you want to do this, or at least you have this inkling and try it out. Open source is then the best part.
I think you can contribute to different parts, maybe in your favorite language, maybe something that you use on a day-to-day as a developer and contribute to that and see if you can make it better. See if you can create this feature that you miss or that you think could be valuable. Test those assumptions with the people that are maintaining that
open source and start. And honestly, once you've found your groove, you can apply maybe at those, if they have a company around that open source software, you can apply with that. Or in any case, you have just built up this legacy of contributions to open source tooling, dev tooling, which then if you apply to a company actually more formally, not throughout your network, maybe they will see that and they will probably admire that because I
think that's very cool. Movies, YouTube, TikTok, audiobooks, podcast, all mediums to convey information. What do you think the future of sharing information and storytelling is going to look like? And this is like one of the broadest, biggest questions, but very interesting. I think. I mean, all medium kind of has its place, right? Because only a medium is established. A medium is only established by the virtue of the people that consume that medium specifically.
So YouTube found its footing. I don't know. It's been 20 years, 18 years, 15 years ago. I was I was there very, but looked ugly as hell. But it was a way for people to create videos, publisher, and for others to consume and see those videos. And it started out with just entertainment. I think the biggest topics were very early on actually just gaming tutorials, walkthroughs and stuff like that. Maybe I think that because that was kind of the space that I
that I was in basically. But it only took off, even streaming nowadays, it only took off because people consumed it and found value in it and it was entertaining enough for people to stick to it. Streaming is now up and coming. I think people gaining live insights and having someone that interacts based on your feedback builds community in that way, and I think we're going to see more and more of that.
I think there will be a medium where you can see things, live with people and interact with each other on a level which maybe not text based. Maybe it's not even something that we speak, maybe it's something that just happens in the brain automatically. I think it'd be really cool to break that language barrier and not have something that is spoken, but just understand someone automatically by putting
on headphones or doing whatever. Still don't know what technology is going to fix that, but at the end of the day, the mediums that are there are going to stay established. I think there was that one tool which was like Vine I think, which was six second videos. I don't know why that died. I think it was like a maybe bad business decisions or anything
like that. Tiktok is very similar to it or like Shorts on Instagram followed after maybe Instagram killed it. But yeah, there was also a medium that was there and that was just consumed and then all of a sudden it was not. It's like very shocking. It's the only one that I can think of that died so abruptly, at least in my view. Everything else will probably
stick around. I do see this trend of going to more fast food media like Tiktok, but then also people that despise fast food media and go to the ultimate opposite. And that's just following someone that's like a bodybuilder in the gym and he streams for four hours and then puts it on YouTube, which is the complete opposite of fast food media. But as long as people have an appetite for it, there will be content to satisfy that
appetite. And I don't see any type of content going away currently because people are diverse and I think it's a good thing Create content for people that want to find the content. Horrible closer. Horrible closer. Yeah. Now, last question, probably the biggest of them all, and I'm going to try and keep it brief. How would you build a SAS company and launch it? How would I build a SAS company? Big, big disclaimer. Sometimes I have to do that.
I have never actually done this from scratch, right? I've been in teams where an organization already had an idea and I had to execute and put it live. And it was mainly, my biggest experience was in e-commerce. I would say IoT was a really, really fun project, but there the things were already more clear. I think with software as a service, it's a very broad market, so you have to find out if whatever you're building is actually solving the problem that you think it's solving.
I don't like this sunken ghost fallacy of development. I don't. I have a really hard time starting and maybe that's part of it because once I start, I do need to have the motivation to execute and I don't like big bets. Maybe I'm very risk averse in that aspect. I need to make sure that whatever I'm building, I actually have a good valid understanding of the problem that is there and the solution
to this problem. Now from the product side, I'm more and more thinking about, OK, what problem are we solving and can we solve it in this way? And is this actually the way that we solve it or can we solve it in a different way? Or in the end, if someone gives feedback and we already have something that solves the problem, then do we really need to incorporate the feedback, which is complete visual design? No, not waiting. I just went on a Segway there
and rambled. But in any case, I need to make sure that whatever SAS product I'm building, if I'm in this imaginary world where I'm doing that, or maybe in the future, that it's solving the problem that actually needs to be solved. Now, I'll never know. You'll never know for certain, right? You might have done enough testing of your assumptions through interview, through research, through qualitative data. Quantitative data doesn't really
matter at the end of the day. But let's say you have that feeling that whatever you're executing is going to solve that problem. Now the second part of it is making sure that if I'm creating it, I'm going to do it with my favorite technologies because I don't like working with technologies that I don't like. Yeah, I lose motivation if a language is just in the way of what I'm trying to execute.
So I'll probably stick to a tech stack that I've used in the past that is more established that I'm comfortable with and that I can deliver with. Basically, that's on the tech side. And then honestly, I need to figure out with what type of version I can go live with. And I like going live as fast as possible, even though it might
not be finished. Whether that's just honestly doing a mock up and not even starting any coding, but having a mock up which you can click through and walk through, that would already be enough for me to make this big bet smaller and smaller and smaller at the end of the day. And then when we talk about the technical aspect and having it gone live, I really liked the part of the project where I was in where I could AB test seamlessly and actually test assumptions by quantitative data.
I don't think there's enough projects I've been in where that was the case and I really enjoyed the project where that was the case. So I'd make sure that I can do that seamlessly because I think that's very powerful. Whenever I'm in a project, people are like, oh, I think so and so, and I think blah, blah, blah.
And honestly, sometimes the opinion does not matter because we don't know unless we actually build it, ship it, and then test it. And the building shipping can be faster if at the end of the day, we test it and we can just throw it away. All right. And if people actually use it and you turn out to be right, then we can make sure the quality is in place so we can
use this for the long term. And the only way to do that is AB testing and testing your assumptions with actual users rather than just this meeting that never ends. People's opinions are valuable, but at the end of the day, whoever's using your tool, their opinion matters a lot more, especially if it's a larger quantity, because then you have volumes of people apparently not acting the way that you think
they will. So I'd make sure that was in place and then incrementally build on top of that, however it evolves because I really think it's hard to isolate a problem, make a solution that solves that problem. I think your problem definition will evolve. I think the thing that you're building will evolve. And then whatever outcome is going to be there is going to be completely different than you imagined.
And I think that's very natural. So I would also expect that to happen and I try and be fine with it because it's really hard probably having been in the seat that someone has never done it. But that would be my kind of vision in a nutshell. It's easier said than done, don't get me wrong, and I admire everyone that does it. I love thinking about it and I would definitely love doing it someday as well. That was it. Those were all the questions.
Thank you so much for sending in your questions. I was honestly mind blown with the amount of questions that we got this time. Very fun talking about podcasting, personal branding, things that are still career related and that people face on a day-to-day and some of the personal questions that you had for me. Thank you so much for asking them again. If you have questions for the next round, feel free to drop
them in the comments below. Let me know what you think of this episode because I love feedback and we'll see you on the next one.