Code in Her Veins | Multithreaded Income Episode 24 with Kailee Hamre

It was great to get you scheduled and get you on the podcast because we were just talking a moment ago, you definitely do not come from a traditional tech background, and I think this is exciting for a lot of our listeners who are really passionate Interest in getting started in tech or development or whatever you want to call it. And they're not coming up through those traditional means, but let's start with just kind of introduction of yourself.

So Kaylee tell us about yourself and what do you do now? Let's start with the now and present.

What have you, um, it would come into my hands next and whatever results you get back were looked at by me before that got released. And then, um, I'm also in rural Michigan, so I would also draw your blood. So kind of a, kind of the whole circus.

Um, I was exposed to COVID, which, okay, so what, you know, like a lot of my coworkers would say like big deal, you know, you're not special, but then that patient also ended up having tuberculosis. So that was like super scary by itself. I was like, man, that really sucks. And, um. Um, you know, going into labor and everything, that was just like a, a really kind of not fun thing. And, um, yeah, I just, like, I remember I not to be like TMI.

I, I had my kid, I pushed my daughter out of my body and I was like, I'm done. I can't do this. Like, it was like a light switch went off. I'm like, I can't, I can't live like this anymore. I was working third shift. Um, and then also coming out of that field, I did, I had to do an internship that was unpaid. So it was just like two years of, and it was. during COVID. So it was just really, really tough. Like I never had a normal experience.

And like a lot of people, I'm sure a lot of my coworkers would look at me and say, well, if you stuck it out, you know, things are kind of normal now, but it's like, no, they're not like RSV flu COVID. Like there's like, we have three different things going on now. You know, so it's like, it's just, I, I went to my doctor like two months ago. She had a mask on. I went two weeks ago. She didn't have a mask on, you know, like, it's not, it's not normal.

I never worked a shift where I didn't wear a mask. You know, I had, I had to be trained on how to use PPE, which is like Spanish flu, you know, like that's crazy. Like that's not what I signed up for. It was marketed to me like CSI, cool, you know, don't you don't have to talk to people, which like I never minded drawing blood until I was exposed to some of the things I was exposed to, you know, MRSA, all the scary things you hear about I was regularly in contact with.

I miss Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Year's partially taking it because, you know, I wanted the. The shift differential, but like, it, it just, I'm like, I'm gonna have to work at least two of these a year and I can't do that. Like, that's just not, that's not for me.

The kids my age will probably recall either Neopets or Myspace or, you know, forums, or sometimes you'd use like HTML tags and it just kind of snowballed and through one way or another, I ended up, um, doing some WordPress websites on the side for cash in, in high school, um, going into community college, I got burned real bad a couple of times where, uh, contractual obligations were not met or, you know, things happened and I had to pay people back money, which, you know, being in a, you know,

A situation where I was a community college student, it was just like not going to work. So I, I stopped doing it. I focused on my studies. That's how I kind of got tossed down the biology and medical lab rabbit hole. And then, um, we were on a drive and my husband actually suggested to me, he's like, why don't you. Pick up programming again. Um, he has a friend who is, has been a mentor to me, who is a very successful programmer.

And, um, you know, I kind of talked, I floated the idea of doing a bootcamp, but you know, bootcamps are super expensive. So I was like, uh, I'm just going to try to do this for a couple of months, free code camp, you know, code academy, whatever, and see, see what I can do. And now here I am.

Yeah, that's my awful cat. Um, and all throughout college, I worked in a help desk. So, you know, it's tough because when I see a lot of these posts, you know, kind of advocating for, you know, what, what do you recommend or, you know, having conversations about like how to break out of whatever you're doing now into tech, you have to do something.

And so I just had the benefit of having been in a help desk role, which then got me, you know, originally it was advertised as like a help desk technician. But, um, I took on additional duties and they were willing to bump up the title to the junior systems administrator, which looks good, you know, I'll take what I get and then I do program on the side.

I do a lot of freelance work and, um, you know, I've, I've had some success with that, particularly in just learning, you know, In, in being able to gain a mastery of frameworks and things like that, that has been very helpful

Something I would be proud to deploy and they hated it and so we just didn't end up deploying it which happens, you know, and I walk away from that going well, they didn't feel like they had the time to give me to fix the things they wanted to work on if that makes sense. So I was like, well, yes, you gave me some money and I built something really cool. So, and I know more react now than I did. Six weeks ago or whatever. So I'll, I'll take what I get. Um, but yeah, like three or four usually.

Most of them, I just moved them over to like GoDaddy and, you know, charge them the hosting and an additional, a small additional fee to have me do that work. And then some of them have turned into actual like clients where, you know, there was some maintenance that needed to be done on the website and it just ended up. Where I was charging them hourly and I'm like, you know, if we just build something new, like we don't have to do this.

So, um, and then I've gotten other clients through, one of them was through a friend. He's, I, I got a guy in California and that was like from a friend. So very far from, from Michigan. Um, And then some clients I've got through quite honestly, just spamming people. Like I went to the chamber of commerce's website and I looked up all the businesses and I sent them an email and I was like, Hey, do you want a website?

Hey, do you want to, and I, you know, would stop, you know, on the B's or the C's or the D's or whatever, and maybe rephrase something or rewrite something or try, you know, maybe I'm going to try. This way or, you know, something like that, just messaging people on Facebook, um, you know, I, I have floated the idea of like business cards and stuff. I don't, I don't feel like I'm there yet, but you know, just, I, I hate the word hustle. Like, it's just such a, it's Gen Z probably like cringes.

I'm, I'm on the border of Gen Z millennial. So I kind of cringe like that hustle culture, you know, but seriously, like, I just, I just bother people. And so, and a lot of times it works out. Yeah. You know, for the times that it doesn't, it's like, well, I was going to sit on Facebook anyway, or I was going to waste my time doing something anyway. So, you know,

I have these skills. Can we make? Can we make a match? And yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Eventually, you'll just get so busy that you won't have time to do that anymore because the works all coming to you.

And, um, yeah, I, my very first clients and even clients now, you know, truthfully, I. I'm probably just breaking even like with the amount of time that is required of me to put in because I'm new, because I don't know what I'm doing. And I make a lot of mistakes and you know, I, I spin my wheels a lot on problems, but part of me at one point just said like, Hey, I'm not particularly interested in this product I'm working on.

Like, I'm not super stoked to do like a website for this, this business, but it's an opportunity. And if they're paying me to learn something. Even if I'm not making like buckets of money, it's better than nothing. And like, especially being a new dev, like, I don't know. I just had a hard time coming up with stuff. Like I did not want to build a to do list. I did not want to build tic tac toe. Like that stuff is cool when you're learning syntax, but like, I can't memorize how to do that.

Like that, that I'm not the university I went to, um, for my lab science degree, I went to Michigan tech. You know, if anybody's here go Huskies, whatever, Um, it's mostly an engineering school and I went in there originally as an engineer and I felt super stupid because I was, I, I quit that field because of programming, because I didn't understand, because I wasn't keeping up as quickly as everybody around me, you know, everybody around me was super smart.

And I just, I didn't feel like I could keep up and I had to take a bunch of, you know, they, they give you like this test and then they place you in a class for, for software for programming. And they put me in like the, the lowest one. So I would have to work for two semesters to get college credit, you know, so I, I looked at it and, you know, I, Switching around my major a bunch. I did take a couple of programming classes and I was like, man, I'm really bad at this.

Like it takes me way more effort than anybody else. I don't understand things as quickly. So to me, you know, a lot of tutorials and instructional videos and books and stuff, they're great. But I have to literally do something 10, 000 times and screw it up and break it and do it again. And, you know, I have, the way I learn, it just, I think it kind of lends itself towards the way I've been doing things. So, I mean. Teach their own.

If you get off on tic tac toe, you're like, able to learn on that. That's awesome. Like, if you're understanding these concepts super fast, that's great, but I didn't understand props until I built, like, my fourth website in React. Legitimately, I did not understand what they were. I was like, I don't know what this means. And then I used, like, a call to action twice, and I was like, wait, that could be the header is a prop! And I felt like such an idiot.

Like, in a good way, I was like, man, this whole time That's all that is. It's, it's so nebulous. Like, especially for somebody like me, when you're, you know, dealing with like blood is blood, there's red blood cells. And then like, what is an API? Like we made that up people, we made that up. We, we gave it, you know, here's, here's a rest API versus a not rest API. Like that was, all that stuff was super hard for me. And then coming from a field where like the rules are predefined.

And so to, to enter into tech and programming, it. It was a, it was a huge shift for me. And like I said, even though freelancing hasn't necessarily been like a gold mine for me, I, it's better than not doing anything. It's better than sitting around waiting for somebody to hire me.

Like anyone can step in, pick up this skillset and really go off and be successful with it. Um, but you know, to that extent, we're making the rules up as we go. And like, you're making a great point, but things with, it's not, it reacts a great example. You're. You're going in and you're learning this concept, and it's one of those things that probably makes a lot more sense if you were there 15 years ago, realizing we have a problem. How do we solve this problem?

Well, we have to do this thing in this thing, and that's how our anglers come around. This is how our reacts come around our views and so on. We're just continuously. Solving a problem, but then making 15 new problems and having to solve those as well. Uh, and I can see that as super frustrating. And I still have that frustration myself going into something new and it's just gonna actually used to be easier.

Um, there seems, especially on the east coast, there seems to be some C sharp job opening. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll pick that one. And I, a local opportunity popped up and I went in for the interview and I was like trying to learn some quick C sharp, which sounds like absolutely ridiculous. And looking at it, I was like, Oh my God, this is like, this is like big kid stuff. Like, React is literally just do whatever and it works. Like, you can litera like, you can just pump out garbage.

And it works, usually. Like, haha, Next. js is kinda That was another thing, you know, right when I started learning create react app, like officially got like, no, you shouldn't use this anymore from Facebook. And so I, you know, in addition to react, started teaching myself next and like, that was super helpful, but man, to look at like an actual, I hesitate to say actual programming language, but like, you know, JavaScript is so nice. It's like very polite.

Where C sharp is like, there's this huge barrier to entry. Like you have, like, I work on a Mac. So like getting my VS code environment, like download these 13 plugins and then follow which, which kind of project would you like to create? And I'm like, I, the one that works, you know, like, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah.

It's called the Nick again, you know, shout out to anybody who's watched that. It's an incredible show, but it's like when doctors first started doing like surgeries and like washing their hands. And like, I imagine like, that's where software development is now on the in, in the whole of human history, you know, like we're so much farther than we were, um, When I was born, like 20, we're far, we're so much farther than we were 26 years ago and like as AI, you know, comes over the event horizon.

It's like we have like, this is, this is about to pop off. You know what I mean? Like this is about to blow up and I want to be a part of that. And like when I joined, when I joined, when I was a medical laboratory scientist, you know, coming off of publishing a paper, I felt like so cool about that. I was like, okay, you know, my name is on something that nobody had written before.

Yeah. You can't take that away from me and like to then become like a cog in the health care machine, which I could go, you know, to ad nauseum about to go from that, that high of my life where like, like this guy I did the work with a community college professor. Told me about this guy, you know, this, this author of a book and then come to find out the guy I got my publication with worked with that guy. It was like, wow, this is so cool.

You know, like, this is, it was called Evo Devo evolutionary developmental biology. Like that feels so cool to work with. And so. To then feel like reduced. I don't want to say reduced, but you know, it felt like this big dream. I had given the circumstances of where I have to live right now. Just, you know, as we, as we get our ducks in a row, you know what I mean? As we financially sort things out and make it viable for us to leave this area, you know, it just felt like.

I don't want to say a downgrade because like the coworkers and the people I worked with, like good work happens here in, in rural healthcare, America, like good work happens there, but it's not, it's not what I had planned for myself. And like, I, you know, everybody has great big dreams planned for themselves. And that's, you know, you have to constantly weigh the scales and balance that.

But, you know, I just, after I had my second kid, I was really like, man, this is not in addition to all the lifestyle things. I'm like, I don't want my to see me like just I don't want to say give up, but like, you know, here, cause going into the field, I wanted to be a doctor, right? I coming into this, I was like, I want to be a doctor. And you know, I went through some of the motions of that, taking an MCAT, which is a medical school entrance exam, studying to do that.

I realized like, man, this is really hard. And I'm a, I'm a first generation college student. So my parents did not go to college. So I had like no. Support, like emotionally speaking. So it was just so hard for me to, to accomplish that dream.

And then, you know, I'm looking back at that Kaylee or that person and then, you know, fast forward to now I'm, you know, grandma is swinging on me because I'm trying to draw her blood and she's blowing a point to, you know, like it was just such a, it was so hard for me because I just wasn't happy and like. That, that's kind of what I have a hard time with. It's like, I'm not saying that the people who do this work are beneath me or, you know, I don't, I'm smarter than that. It, that's not it.

It's just, it wasn't, I feel like part of my brain isn't being used, you know, and I want to, I want to solve problems. I want to be able to work for a company that's got this big complicated thing and say like, wow, you know, I can, I can tell you how that works. I can tell you how this tangled mess of cords or, you know, I can, I can explain how it works or I can, you know. be a, be an outlet for that.

And like, as far as systems administrating goes, you know, it's, it's been great, but I don't, I don't see my future there either. You know, it's just not, I don't really want to write PowerShell. I don't like PowerShell. That's super controversial. I just don't like PowerShell. I don't like, um, like Linux or Unix scripting. It's just not like, oh, cool. You're in a directory now, whatever.

Like, I know you can do more than that, but I, I get a lot of joy out of like creating things and that's sort

You can, you know, jump through whatever series of hoops you'd like and you can go work for somebody like that's not in my, you can't do that in a hospital like 20, 30, 40 years ago, you could, I had coworkers who did not have degrees, but they had just built themselves up, you know, drawing blood and then all of a sudden they're a lab scientist. Like, yeah, you could have done that in the 60s, 70s, 80s. But now, now it's like, yeah.

That the only place you can do that as tech, really the only place you can do that as like software development, like, you know, looking at other system administrator qualifications. I was like, man, you know, I am not, I am not a systems administrator. Like that's my title, but truthfully, like I don't do a lot of scripting. I don't do a lot of that. So, you know, just cut my ramble short. I'm just, I'm just Ram.

It's extremely fair to say you're allowed to change your mind if it's not what you want to do, and I want to wish you all the luck in the world moving on and getting that. That first, just, uh, you know, the salary job as a, as a software developer. Um, yeah, I know you have a, you have a family. How do you deal with some of the work life balance of, I guess, working your day job and working your, your side gigs and then having a family on top of that.

So, you know, it's, it's really tough, but you know, I'm, I'm very lucky to have a good husband to have, you know, our babysitter's pretty cool. Um, we don't live by family currently, but that's, you know, part of the motivation too, is like, I want to get out of where I'm at and get closer to where my family is so that we maybe can call on them for a little bit more support. But you know, finding supportive people in your life is very.

Mission critical, I would say to like, you know, figuring out what you're going to do or like how you're going to do it because like, you know, if, if I didn't have my husband, I have no idea what I would do, or, you know, if he was just like a deadbeat, I'd be like screwed, like it just, it would not work out, you know,

And like, you know, I hate to, especially with the recent controversy, I hate to be this person, but like chat GPT. Like, seriously, if it wasn't for ai, I don't know that I would be as far along as I am. And I mean, if, if AI has, has explained it to you 7,000 times, then do something else. I don't know. You know, like I, I have resorted to writing code down in a notebook to try to make myself understand it. And if that's what you have to do, like just do it.

Because truthfully, I, I've seen this so many places and it always comes up at the right time for me, is like, co you don't have to be inherently talented. To be good at programming and there's different schools of thought that disagree with that. And truthfully, like if you're forcing the square peg in the round hole, like, like, obviously, if you feel super upset and you don't want to do it, like, don't do it.

But if you're feeling defeated because you feel like everybody in the room is smarter than you or better than you or whatever, like, just don't don't let that be the reason you stop, you know, just keep trying. And just keep doing it because eventually you will know what props are or you will realize what something means. And that moment is like very powerful because you can be like, okay, I have to keep going because if I understand more of this, somebody will pay me for it.

And like, that's nobody can take that away from you. You know, I, I, I have also followed a hundred devs, Leon, you know, and he always did the story that really got me in the beginning, like in his first couple of classes is, you know, being super poor and then somebody paying him for a website and he bought groceries and that like, even as somebody with an active. Medical lab scientist certification. Like that really stuck out to me. Cause he was like, nobody can take that from you.

And it's like, I have the certification, but, and nobody can take that from me. Certainly. But I, I don't care. I don't want it like it in, in the market of today's like healthcare, you know, you have people who are indentured into like, you know, these first shift jobs or, you know, positions that. Yeah. Are inherently desirable and then people like me who are newer or don't have the experience we get Slotted into third shift and second shift and that's just some people don't mind it.

Some people can survive it It wasn't for me If you want to get into programming just do it and if you find yourself stuck try to get somebody to pay you to do something because This is our you know, like i've done work for people like on shopify Like i've gone into which they had the the custom shopify code is like oh my god people People really make money to write that, huh? Liquid, whatever that is, God love you.

Like I can't, I, I've broken into, you know, the back end of Shopify stores and written like JavaScript inside of Liquid to like get something to work. You know, I've, I've picked up whatever I can. Um, I've done like freelance work for ad agencies and marketing agencies and to Varying levels of success, but I always say, like, even if it's not exactly what I wanted to be doing at that moment in time, it's better than nothing.

And if you're, if you're not getting any momentum, you're going to want to stop. And that's what I think my husband's friend who has been a huge mentor to me, uh, shout out to Sal. Um, he, he's like, just keep going, just keep going. The only way you're going to get better at code is to write more of it. That's it. That's the, that's the whole thing.

And it's like some, somehow very depressing to me, because it's like, you know, I can't just, I'm not just smart, you know, I can't just conjure up a whole Microsoft in my head and like, no, you can't, you have to write and write and write again. And like, it's just, that's what it is. And if you write more, you will be better. And if you stop, you're going to stop where you're at. And that's like, that's the way the cookie crumbles and you just got to keep going. Just keep going.

That's what, that's what I would say in, in, in a summary, just keep going.