Beginning a Career in Tech and what it is like working at Intuit as a Software Engineer - Samuel Tsokwa, Jason NGuessan and Peter Ojum

All right. So we had a few difficulties there but um Jason's back. So Jason, the question I was asking Sam was there was a chase right after college and university and helped you land a job even that probably helped you get the next job. But would you say that the chase is still there? So by chase, do we mean like chasing the the money or chasing the like the first job?

Well, it wouldn't be, I think it's the idea that there is something more for you, whether that's financial or you are fulfillment, a different type of job, whatever it is, but you want to achieve, there's something for you to accomplish or achieve. So I actually do believe the chase for me is still there just because uh just because I do wanna get to like a higher level, right? But by chase, I mean, like I wanna find work that's more meaningful, right?

So when we finish, when we finish school, the chase was just getting that first job, right? Because it was very competitive, right? Junior positions are very saturated, right? And um you just want to get the first job. So, but afterwards, you wanna find a, a job that's you know, meaningful to you, right? That's not just about the zeros as Sam said, right? But it's more so about how do you feel? Right? Like do you have work life balance? Are you able to, how's your mental health? Right.

Are you able to go to gym? Are you able to spend time to spend time with your family? Right. So, so that's the chase for me right now. So that chase is still there from the market perspective though. I mean, like we're seeing a lot more applicants for positions, right? And it's an because because in the old times, right, employees had a lot of power now, it feels like that part has been taken away from the employees and more so for employers.

So I would say like the chase is coming from a lot of ends, right? It's coming from the employer side. It's also coming from us, right? Like what do we want to achieve in our career? Fair enough. Thank you. I think you're right. So my understanding from the both of you is the chase is still there. It does. You know, if you're a driven person, you're a driven person, it just changes direction and now it's not about, oh, can I get my foot in the door?

It's about how beneficial is this job going to be for me in the long run? And that leads me to the next kind of topic, which is so far, what have you learned at work? Character wise? What are some of, you know, what's the story that transformed you at work or changed? Changed you a little bit like? Oh, ok. I won't do things this way anymore and that has probably led to you having a different mindset for that chase.

I'll start with you, Sam. Ok. So 1st, 1st off, I like the line of question that we're going with. Um in terms of character change, I think for me coming out of again, a lot of my experiences based off of me just coming out of university and being a, you know, relative, relatively new to not relatively but new to the industry. I think there's an initial want to not show off but like show that you belong like, hey, I'm, I'm a capable engineer. I can do this, I can do that. I can tackle this.

Give me this, give me that like my thought process, especially when I went through my co ops was I never want to be the person who shies away from the tough task. Like if there's something difficult, I like, I give me that. I want that. I need that. And I think as I've grown, I've, I've come to understand that while that's a very, in my opinion, it's a good way to learn. It's a good way to give yourself visibility. But what are you doing it for is it just a hey, I took on this difficult task.

Ergo, you know, show me some love or is it actually, hey, I took on this difficult task because I think it's an opportunity for me to learn. I think it's an opportunity for me to add value. I think it's really an opportunity for me to do something that will benefit, say the team or organization or whatever the case may be.

So I think over the last couple of months and particularly the last year now that I've been entrusted with more responsibility, you know, to drive like drive projects end to end or assist with driving projects end to end or um being responsible for a massive component of, you know, whatever project we're working on, it's become more apparent to me that it's less about just the visibility of, hey, I did this and I did that and I did that.

But you know, you add to that the quality of work, it's not enough to just take on difficult tasks to say you did. But it's, you know, how well am I going through the process of understanding the requirements, how am I going through the process of implementing it? It shouldn't just be a race to implement. I think this is another thing I might have talked about or maybe not.

But another thing that I've been trying to work on is don't just try to be the first to implement, you know, think about the issue holistically, like, ok, if an engineer comes, uh, you know, maybe 23 years in the future, do they understand what I'm doing? Do they see the merits of why I've done it that way? And is there value going forward? Is it, you know, something that's gonna pass the test of time essentially?

So, slowing things down for myself, so that the very best of my abilities can show forth has probably been the biggest character change. All right, I mean, lots and lots of important things there, Jason. Yeah, like I kind of agree with what you said. Um Sam, like being able to think more about the long term, right?

Like how is like thinking about the long term and how is what I'm doing right now going to be gonna benefit, not just me because that's like things we used to think before, but how will it benefit the organization, my colleague? Right. And if I give them this work, well, I mean, is this work being it, are they gonna be able to take this work and feel confident, right? That they can not only built on this code, right? But also maintain it, right?

Because previously for me, at least, right, I would just do the work as fast as possible, right? Because I thought, well, ok, the faster I do it, the better it is, right? As opposed to thinking, well, ok, let me just sit down and think about the multiple ways I can do this so that not just I can understand it, but my colleague can understand it. My student can understand it, right? And it can be maintainable and the organization sees value in whatever I just uh built.

OK. So I totally understand where you guys are going with this. But do you have an example at work that made you think that? Yeah, actually, yeah. So more recently, I've been uh tasked with working on a high visibility project. It's uh you know, it's company wide and so there's, there's, you know, tight deadlines and uh there's a ton of expectation and you're working with, you know, cross functional teams, you're working with teams in different time zones, different countries and all that.

Um And I was a point person or I am the point person for the project. And, you know, it's, it's only I partially volunteered, but I was kind of vol and told, you know, one of those kind of situations. But anyways, I was more than willing to take it on because I, I saw it as like, hey, this is a difficult ask, I want to be the person to drive it. Uh And a month in, I started not regret, but I started to like take a step back. But, you know, I, I could be doing so I could be chilling a little bit.

But, you know, now we're really in the weeds of things and I think adding to the point that I was, I was trying to make at this time, it starts to dawn on me. OK, like you're given an opportunity, it's high visibility. It's, uh, it's important, it's important work. How can you do your very best work beyond just the visibility of I did the work? Like, how is this going to like Jason has alluded to, how does this transcend me?

Um And that really gave me some, you know, an opportunity to do some introspection. And, you know, I sat down, you know, got saddled was thinking through the entire process and I think that's been my biggest growth point in the last year. And something that II I talk about with, you know, my mentors, managers like, hey, what can I be doing to be better? And they're saying, listen, slow it down, you know, I'll give you guys, I'll tell you guys about this anytime you watch.

Like if you're into football or NFL, something that guys talk about a lot is the game has slowed down for me. Basically, what they're trying to say is like, it's not the speed of the game is not an issue for them. Now, they're able to see the game at a slower pace.

But what that also means is they're able to anticipate, which is big for me now because now that it's starting to slow down for me, I can anticipate things that could go wrong and I'm able to pre empt that and write software that is more maintainable, um, that I, like, I, like I talked about software is actually gonna stand the test of time. Um But that is a little example.

I think it's more recent example, but there's been a couple of other, um you know, key moments in the last year or two where I, you know, it dawned on me like, hey, you can slow it down. It's not always a race to get it there. But how well are you doing it? So how do you deal with, with pressure from higher ups? Right? Because that's something a lot of us have struggled, right? Like we want to implement the work, but a higher op are telling us, well, we need this delivered by, right?

That's such a good question. Like I love that question because that's when I had to, I'm still navigating. It's not, I don't think there's a science to it. I don't think there is, hey, do this and this is how, but one thing that I'm learning because I'm also working alongside other experienced developers, something I'm learning is tapering expectation.

Like a lot of times when you're talking about a high level project, there's a lot of different entities, you know, there's a tech, there's a development people. So engineers who have a better understanding of, hey, this is how much time it will take to develop. But then you're also working like product managers, right? Who might not be software savvy, but then their job is to organize the project and understand the requirements. You might be talking to like business analysts or designers.

There's so many moving parts for your own part. I think the best is the best uh policy that I have seen or I have employed is taper expectations. And don't, um cardinals trying to sell that you can deliver something before you can. I would never like, I've done that in the past. It would always come back to bite. Like I'm because I'm always thinking, hey, you know, if I put in a couple of hours overtime or if I work through the weekend, but that's not the way you should approach work.

Like if it's not work you can do in your regular hours, you just can't deliver it at that time. You know, that's just the reality of it. Like you're not a robot, you're not, it's not a mindless effort like development and I know I'm going on a little tangible like development really is a tasking effort mentally. So, you know, you have to taper expectations. Look, I mean, just, I love the fact that you said taper expectations.

I was about to say, you know, manage expectations, but you're like, no, I'm not managing it. I'm tapering it. Sorry, Jason, go ahead. No, like, yeah, I was more so leaning towards a transparency route, right? Like because because in my, in my opinion. Right. People come with deadlines for a reason. Right. Maybe there's some, like, companies are racing to each other. Right. They're racing. Ok. Well, who's that? Who's gonna, who's gonna get their first? Right now?

We all, we all know that like going to market first doesn't necessarily mean that you will get the market. Right. But we do know that the company, the higher ups, right. Like they want to get there first because they have their reasons, right? But in my opinion, it's more so gonna be about being transparent, right? Because like you said, we have designers, we have this is analysts, we have uh developers, right? We we have all the all the all the the van dagger, right?

But being transparent and telling that telling, telling them that, OK, well, if I, I can, I can push this right? But I can do it two ways I can do it half, half, right? Like half bad, right? Or I can do it properly, right? And if you want us to do it properly, you're gonna have to do us more time, right? So being more transparent with like being more transparent and being um and tell them the reality of the work that you have to do, it's probably the best way for me to manage pressure at least.

So. So both of you have talked a little bit about managing expectations and I don't even know if I mean, I same boat with both of you this week was probably one of my hardest weeks in a long, long time, maybe this entire year. And that's because I'm managing multiple projects and they have deadlines and I've got pressure from the clients and, you know, I have pressure from my management to get certain things done and each, each senior leader wants their own stuff done.

And, you know, I let them know, like, look, I'm with you on this. You know, let's, we want to turn this RFP and we want to conclude this project. We want to, you know, deliver on this.

But I'm also doing XY and Z. So I'm not saying no, I'm just letting you know what's on my plate and you know, you always hear the things at work about how you should say no, you know, be, be comfortable saying no, be comfortable saying no. But really a lot of people are when, if you hear that advice from someone, sometimes it's, it's easy, it's easy to tell, it's easy for me to tell you Sam just, you know, it's better, you need to get better at saying no,

but I'm I'm actually telling you to get better at saying no to other people not to me. You know, like if I tell you to do something, Sam, you know, I want you to get it done. But to other people feel get comfortable saying no. So I always like it when a leader is cognizant that it's not so straightforward, right? Like I get it, you know, you need to learn how to say no better, but I understand it's not that easy, it's easier said than done. Um So that's always a good thing.

So even for you guys and for anyone who's listening, who's in a leadership position, it might look like a junior staff or even a senior staff is not good at managing multiple projects because they're always saying yes, but it's, you need to be able to also understand that sometimes it's just not easy to manage expectations.

Some people are, are a little bit more intimidating or some people you have such great respect for like this is your chance to prove that you're that guy or you know, or you know, that this is important for the company. And Sam you talked about working over the weekend. I have done that a couple of times, not because I want the praise from the company, but I put myself on the line.

I have said I will, I can get this done in, you know, if I give myself three hours on Friday, I can get three, no multiply that number by three, you know, like it's never really exactly how many hours you think it's going to be, it's probably going to run over into a couple more things. So thanks for bringing up that example.

I, another thing that I'm happy that we're talking about is and let's keep doing that through the podcast because some people want to understand what it's like to do your work. And you talked about cross functional teams, right? You're, you're working with technologists, developers, management, leadership, uh clients and they all intersect and you have to be able to know how to and they're all in different time zones as well.

Which is, it was fun at first for me, but now it's, I am, I'm awake super early in the morning. I'm I'm also at work later in the evening. It's it's crazy. But this idea, I wanna pivot us into growing within the company. What methodology have you used? And how has your character development helped you grow so far? And how do you think it will help you grow? So how did I like, how do people manage to grow?

Like how I managed to grow is by actually being a yes person and and unfortunately, like that's still the case, right? Like because if you want to grow within the company, right, you have to take in our projects to build trust, right? Because the more projects you more projects you accomplish, the more trust your team members have in you, right? So by taking on more projects, you'll eventually grow from the company, especially if you don't know anything.

It's very to take up projects because you like to be exposed to a lot of different scenarios. The problem might be again delivering expectations, right? You don't wanna say yes and then failed the project because you didn't match expectations, right? And that does not look good for the company and for you as well, right? You also wanna make sure to, there's a kind of like a social game, to be honest, right? There's a, what's the company culture like? Right?

Some company cultures are like, go, go, go, go, go. My company is like, you're not allowed to work out. Like I try to get if I try to get an hour extra, they there it's like, OK, you have to sign this form. No, you cannot work more in X hours, blah, blah, blah or why were you pushing this code at 6 p.m. when work is done at 5 p.m. Right? So there is like the company culture, they wow, that is, I've not, that is, that's amazing. I've, I don't know, I've heard of stuff like that.

I've heard of work like balance, but I feel like that is, that's a little more it, it's it's extra like you don't like II I personally try to push my juniors to try for the company culture. Like I know you want to push her Cooper Cooper's work at 8 p.m. right? But I will be the blame, the director will know the director might know, right, and so on, right?

So being able to be able to deliver projects on time and understand what the company culture is like is really important to growing within the company. So Jason, I want to just, I agree with the yes man thing. I was definitely like that story and it helped me get visibility, right? Obviously, you can't sustain that. You just want to show that you're competent, but I want to change the terminology to be more of an initiative taker, someone who takes initiative.

So you look at a gap and be like, can I fill this gap if yes, then I take it and, and when you take that, you, you keep looking for other gaps that you should, that you might be able to cover.

So you analyze it before you say yes, we have a group chat in my company, at least in my department where, you know, a leader or someone would be like, hey, I need someone to do XYZ and some people, sometimes I see some people go like raise your hands or, you know, give it a heart and like, you know, I'll do it and I'm like, OK, I've seen you say this, I've seen you say yes, like to like four or 5 L right now.

I don't know if you have the bandwidth for that, but like sometimes I'm like, I can do that and I can do that very well. And so I type in, hey, you know, let me DM you real quick because now I wanna shine and shine properly. So it's like a weird balance where when you start, you should have that yes mentality and initiative taking mentality. But you also want to, as you grow, you want to make sure that you take on more things that are geared towards your strength.

And so that's why I don't want it to be like go say yes, it is like instead find the gap right and cover the gap as opposed to like a bleed going. Hey, you know, this water bottle needs uh cleaning. And then you say yes, you can, you can be like, you know, I want to go buy us more, buy more water bottles for us. It's like, oh yeah, that's a great idea. We haven't actually thought about that and that's something within your skill set, but maybe cleaning the water bottle is not your skill set.

And just as a, as an example. So that helped me more than just waiting for the project to open up. And then I say yes. All right, Sam, your turn. Oh, I think Jace. Jace wanted to add to that. Yeah. Yeah, she did. So the initiator part, yeah, you should definitely be initiator. But he also said take something within your strength. But if you don't work shrink is good, but if you don't work your weaknesses as well, like you're pushing yourself to. Ok. How, how about this?

What if we just said no to things that are, that will not help our growth but say yes to the things that will help our growth and ma expectations. Because if we just work on our strength, we'll always be good at this thing. But your weaknesses, like, maybe your weaknesses are actually strength, strength, but you didn't really work on it that much. Right.

You shouldn't, we should always kinda, let's not what if we just didn't forget about the weakness a little bit and see how can we turn those weaknesses into. Right. I agree. I just think that for my personally, if I have a weakness, I wouldn't lead the project, I would shadow it, you know, or I would, you know, I've done that before where I reach out to, you know, another because I'm doing a lot more project management and there was a time I was doing more programming stuff.

So project management and programming initially were lower on my totem pole of strengths. And so what I did was I reached out to people saying, hey, I've heard about you doing this, can I shadow you? Can I join your meetings? So now I'm taking initiative but on my weakness, but I'm not the face of the project because I don't want, you know, that, that's my perspective, man. I gotta say y'all have brought up so many good points that I, I wasn't even thinking about.

Um So I, I, I'll piggyback off off of some of the stuff. The first thing I wanted to talk about was just around the issue of OK, you're, let's say you're a junior again, engineer, you're a junior engineer, you're, you're new to your role. You're, you know, young technologist, you have no cachet.

Like there is not anything that, and now this is from like the perspective, you gotta think about it, from perspective, whoever is gonna be in charge of promoting you or, you know, advancing your career, like you have shown nothing that's just a flat out there isn't any like, obviously you're, you have the capabilities. That's why you're hired, but there isn't anything to point at your ability to advance. Yeah. So that's why being an initiative taker, that's why being a quote unquote.

Not a yes man, but like being open, I mean, I feel like once you're a little bit further out and you're more senior, you have more cache to push back on certain like requests.

But as a junior developer and, and you know, to avoid even like a toxic culture where you just shove everything to, you know, junior developers as a junior developer, even as a co op or as a, you know, junior engineer, my mindset is had always been, listen, how do I show these people that not only do I have the skill set, but I have the willingness, I think the biggest thing, the willingness to learn, there's been like I talked about,

there's been cases where I'll take on a project where I know like, hey, this is not high visibility as in like if I don't know how to do this, like the world will end. But it's challenging enough where at the end of this, I'm going to learn something, whether I like it or not. Like I'm, I'm going to have to learn it. So that's one thing like definitely at that start of your career, you need to be. And this is from my perspective, people need to know you as the person who is willing to do stuff.

Like it's not that you're doing everything. But if there was a request, you're like, hey, yeah, I can, I can take a stab at it or if it's something I don't know, let me go look for someone who knows how to do it and work alongside them. I could shadow them or, you know, and again, it's not even, I feel like we're making it bigger than it is. Sometimes it's little things I'll give you an example.

I so like I've done application developer development my entire like career infrastructure and software infrastructure, something that had been very, very new to me. And sort of like uh Peter said it's on the lower parts of my, my strength. I would even call it a strength. Stop that Peter. Uh I wouldn't even call that like a strength of mine, right?

But then there's been cases where we need to deliver something or let's say everyone is busy, all the people who are so we actually have like uh infrastructure engineers, let's, they're occupied whatever the case may. So we need a junior developer to, you don't need to know how to do it. But maybe instead of like uh the senior doing all the work now they can show you how to do it and you can take some pressure off of them.

And there's been many, many situations where I, like, I get off it, like whatever time of the day, I'm like, ok, well, this is, that wasn't, that wasn't difficult. Like that's something that I could easily, you know, see myself shadowing a couple more times and I'll get a hang of it.

So my advice from what I've learned and like how I'm progressing is be willing to do stuff and, and by do stuff, I be willing to take on difficult tasks, not that you're gonna deliver all of them, but you're going to learn. And the biggest thing is just honestly, people knowing that you are willing to take those tasks on sort of like Jason said, there's also a social component to it. Like it's harder to get promoted if people don't know you.

And I know that's terrible to say because it really should be about your work and it is about your work. But there is the soft skills and the non technical, technical aspects of our, our, our jobs. I think more often than not people here like engineer or a technologist and they think, oh, just nerds and all they do is, you know, they crunch behind their computers and they're doing the, the da da da.

But, and, you know, for the most part that, that kind of is true but there's other part of it where, you know, we are social beings. There's a part of mentorship. How are you helping say co ops to, to learn. How are you helping new hires to learn? How are you a part of that on boarding process? You know, are you visible outside of your team? Like are you doing uh inter team? You know, there's a ton of like engineering stuff you can do or work in projects.

There's a lot of way to show your visibility and your sorry to get visibility and show off your skills that doesn't have to, you know, lay in the confines of your team. So that's another important part, obviously being accessible. I feel like it's harder for people to like you. And again, it's not a case of people liking you per se, but it's easier to promote someone who you have fun working with or who you enjoy working with.

If somebody is a grade a, you know, it's harder not saying that that should be a major factor, but it's like, you know, you're not as incentivized to like push it forward and be agitated for that person. So I, I feel like finding the right balance between like your technical skill set and obviously your soft skills is, is very critical as well. Just copacetic man. I 100%. I wanted to pivot us in the direction of all right, these are all good. This is all good advice.

But if someone were to come up to you and say, actually, I'll say this first if someone were to come up to you and be like, hey, I'm messed up at work. What do I do? I'd like for both of you to answer that.

But before while you think on your answer, I want, I want to point out something to people who are entry level uh juniors in companies and looking to get visibility is you also, you talked about willingness to, you know, we, you know, we talked about initiative and we talked about different things. I want to add the, this is something that can be taught at different companies and can be taught at school.

But the ability to learn quickly and what I mean is OK, you know, someone, it's like, hey, I want to take this off your table. I want to take this off your plate. Ok? If you're going to take the plate off of someone or take something off someone's plate rather now you're on your own, you're handling this. There is so much information out there.

The one thing I've noticed is sometimes I see some uh you know, new people in some companies like ask questions all through the way when that was an easy Google search. Like, I mean, if you put that, that sentence, you just asked me in Google, you know, you would find it and you know, if you, if you, my point is, well, you're taking initiative but also take initiative as, as to how can I, how can I find what I'm looking for without um by myself first.

That way when I show up to Sam and say, hey, Sam, I couldn't find, you know, this thing you asked me to, to, to do, I couldn't get it done when I say Sam, do you know Sam will be like, did you, did you Google this? Like, yeah, I did. Here are the links I checked, did you check the SharePoint? Uh Did you check github? Yeah, I did, I, did you check the repo yet? Did you check our on drive yet? Like you can actually go through and it's like, OK, good.

All right, Sam's like, OK, share your screen, right? Sam feels more comfortable. All right, like, OK, you've done your do, do I think that's the right word doing your due diligence? That's what, that's where I was getting at? OK. OK. So it can be, it can be a hand me out. I mean, me personally, I will probably just do a hand, hand me out because like I'm too lazy to go through. Oh, did you do?

I'm just, you know, I'll just give the thing but I'm more impressed when, you know, you've done this and this and I feel it's the same way with me. Good point. Yeah. It's just something that I think will be impressive to people around you when you, you've done all your due diligence. All right. So messed up at work. Uh I was supposed to, you know, I, I was supposed, I was supposed to what, put this in production or put it in the DEV or whatever it is and something broke, it's my fault.

How do you handle that guys, Jason, you wanna take this one? I'll start. Yeah. So like we mess up, everybody messes up, right? We all mess up whether you want to always by accident, right? We don't want to mess up, you always wanna look at, right? But eventually we do mess up and we need to set, especially our mentors, right? Our mentors have to be positive, right? So when you talked about before um taking initiative right now, we're going on to uh messing up um the, the project, right?

Or like a subset of the project, right? If you mess up and um your mentor is uh making you think it a bad thing that's not proper because messing up is actually a good thing. So we need to kind of shift our mindset as being like, ok, well, messing up is bad to actually messing up is good. Now, how, now what do you do after that? Right, because I had a story in my work field. Whereas so many deleted, like, have you heard of a keyboard or like a safe? Right. They like a save of passwords. Right.

There were maybe 20 passwords. I just told him, you know, can you just move, can you just, can you just move, can you just move, um, this password safe to that password safe? Right. Just copy and paste it, move it somewhere else. He accidentally deleted the, deleted the safe via code by accident, right? It's very easy to do that through our code base and he freaked out right now as opposed for me being ok. Well, hey, you know, hey, you know you did this right?

Klein is Klein is using this safe right now. How is it gonna work? How is he gonna push his code with all the passwords for his API keys? Right? So he was freaking out for maybe a good four hours, probably the whole day, right? And then we had to talk to our, our lead and we had to talk to me and then he was trying to hide it like how can I resolve this? I can resolve this, right? Asked him, hey, did you do some Google search?

He's like, yeah, and it was just softly something enable like soft delete, meaning we need that like, ok, well, if you delete it, you know it's recovery, he check is like, no, there isn't. I didn't know what that was. But now I do. And, uh, but he was kind of like sweating, I could tell by his voice, right?

But essentially what we, what afterwards, what we did is we said, ok, you, how about you reach out to clients and tell him that you actually deleted this and by being by, by telling him, right, the client worked with the, the client worked with the student. I said, ok, well, you know, can, can you just do XYZ for me and can you just help me find the secrets? Right? Eventually be eventually what he messed up was, it was pretty big, but it wasn't as big because it was resolvable, right?

It could have been done. It's just a lot of work, right? So like not like being ok that messing up is fine and having like he took the initiative, right? But he kind of messed up a little bit. So being ok that messing up is, you know, it's not bad. And that the, the thing you have to focus on is how can I recover from that messing up? Like, I think that's like what really shows within the scenario had he recovered? Yeah, I, I totally agree with that.

Uh To add my two cents, I think it starts from a culture place. So how does an organization handle uh mistakes now? It's very important to note, to note that in our field things happen all the time every time. It's just part of life, you know, it's something is gonna happen, but I don't want to call it the beauty. But the positive in something happening is you're able to prevent it because now you're getting a learning opportunity. Sometimes it's a very expensive, admittedly.

So sometimes it isn't an expensive learning opportunity. Sometimes it's not, sometimes it's something as simple as, OK, we're just gonna do X and X and it's done. Um But it's something that I really appreciate that my company is basically, do you know a little bit of uh introspective thinking? So if, if there's an incident or whatever, we'll set up time, it's first and foremost, there's no blame. That's, I think that's the biggest thing.

You can't really blame, shame somebody for making a mistake because everyone makes a mistake at some point, right? So it's really at that time, how can we gather resources and resolve it? Because the most important thing is customer impact. How are we making sure that regardless of what happens because customers don't care about who in your company did what their thing is like, I'm not able to ask, I'm not able to do this on your product right now.

That's a pro that's a, you know, company issue I don't care about. Oh, this intern or Sam did that like no, what, who did what that means? Nothing. And that's the beauty of a company with great culture. They understand that for customers that's unimportant. So something happens. How do we gather? You know, we'll hop on a zoom, call, whatever it takes, we'll all get together. No blame. Ok. What happened? Why did it happen? How do we resolve it? And then we communicate? That's the first thing.

The second thing is when the smoke is clear, we're going to have a meeting, we're going to fill out a form and basically force ourselves to think about why it happened. You know, because one thing to say, ok, it's resolved, we're gonna, you know, I feel good. Now I can sleep well at night, there's one thing to sleep well at night. But then how can we make sure that not just the person or whoever is responsible, but going forward, how does anyone in the future avoid? Is there?

You know, it could sometimes honestly, you can reveal a, a fault in your process. Maybe you guys are not doing something, maybe you're missing out on some level of validation, you know. And so we're gonna think about what happened and why it happened and how we can avoid it going forward. I think those are honestly the two biggest things. So first and foremost, a culture of no blend shaming. And then second of all, let's all get on board, let's try to fix it. And third, how can we prevent it?

Now if somebody came to me and told me that's what happened to them, I'll tell them, listen, take a breath, the sun is gonna rise tomorrow. I promise you. It might feel terrible right now, but take a breath. Let's work through the process. Let's see how we can fix it. Yeah, we're all, oh, sorry, I don't want to interrupt. Go ahead. Yeah. Like we're all a team. Like Sam said, like if somebody broke something, your park, your park is not working well, I don't care if he, he, he broke it, right?

Your company, you fix it, right? We're all a team here. And one thing we also have to do is like, be proactive with key. Well, it failed. Why did it fail? Maybe we should add some monitoring in place, right? Like how can we monitor? Maybe? Like let's, let's, it's a machine, right? It's a server, right? For some reason, a server went from 0 to 100 right? That's why I feel. Well, can we add some things to monitoring tool be like, ok, what's 50% let us know, then we can be more proactive, right?

So fill up a form, having a meeting, like why? And maybe taking some next steps as to preventive steps and then, yeah, taking preventive steps. That's it, preventive step. The, the, the thing I'm gonna add and then I'll, I'll pivot us again is if you're a junior staff of any, I honestly, we're all junior until you're like, you know, VP you know, or whatever the case is. But wherever you are, it's always important to have a good working relationship with one or two people who are above you.

Like someone that you can, it could be your manager, it could be someone else, but I always like it to be natural. I don't, I don't want to hop up to someone like, hey, you want to be my mentor. Like it's kind of, it's equivalent to me seeing you at a party and shaking your hand like, hey, you want to be friends. Like what? You know, like it needs to, in my opinion, it needs to flow naturally.

Like we find that we, we talk well with one another, we support one another, we have like minds then you know, that that relationship builds. So why I mentioned that is because if something happens at work, you can a go to them to vent and they'll, they'll listen because they care about you and you guys are now friends outside of work. B because they've been at that job longer than you.

If there is a resolution, they could probably help you get the resolution done before your actual project manager or your actual lead on that project even hear hears about it. And even if they do, you can show up and say that was my fault. This is what I need to do to resolve it. I already did my due diligence. And my point is having someone else that you can go to who's like I've been there. I actually did.

I made that same mistake five years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it is, this is what I did to resolve it and you can quickly run back and fix things or start fixing things. So my point is just building those relationships at work I think will take you a long way in terms of preparing yourself. You don't want to have a mentor because you want someone to help you when you fall. But it is a benefit.

My, my question here is since you have both started, have you felt a little bit of a shift in, in your career, in the sense that you've always wanted to do this or you thought you wanted to do this? But now you started working and you see, oh there's someone at work who does this and I kind of like that or if I could merge that position with that position cause that's happened to me. And I'm like, all right, where do I wanna go again? Because I start, it's the same thing.

It happens with everything. You know, you're so excited about the iphone 15 and then the iphone 16 shows up and you're like, that's kind of cool. So it's easy to buy a Bentley today and you're excited about it for five months. And then you realize, oh you know, the Cadillac actually has this stuff that I like. So how was what ha ha have? Do you feel as though you're like, this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. I'm there already.

I, there's no morphing or you know, this is it or do you feel as though how has that changed for you? Do you feel as though perhaps there is more to, to this thing? Uh you know, there's more to the buffet that you want to work on. So let's start with Sam. Ok. So on the question of, have I seen my sort of career aspirations change or maybe even more specifically like a positions like technically, do I want to do X as opposed to what I'm doing now, I'd say for me, I'm not there yet.

I really, really, really enjoy being a product developer, like getting some type of, I like the holistic process. So we identify a, a shortcoming in the market, we want to fill it that goes through an entire phase of business planning, then it mutates the product design where you actually get mock ups and you get a fig and you do all this and do that. And then it gets to me and I get to bring it to life as sort of like, you know, a part of this long planned project. I really enjoy that.

And I think even outside the scope of just work, that's something that I honestly love doing. I love business. I love to identify areas where we can, you know, where business and technology intersect and how we can be a part of making profit, not just for ourselves, but also adding value to whatever customer base we're targeting at the time.

So for me, I love that, I think I'm still in that mindset, but as the years have gone by, I found myself enjoying other things that I completely shut off in the, in the past. So a very good example for me is arch uh sorry infrastructure. So Dev ops, I absolutely hated anything to do with Aws or Google Cloud platform. And I, I know I know I'm terrible for saying that. But for me, I think it started from just the part that it's just something I never knew and I didn't have interest to learn it.

And so I just always and somebody else to do that. So I don't really care about that. But in the last couple of years, I've had to also get my hands dirty with some of that. And it's been like an eye opening experience appreciating. I mean, obviously I always appreciate it, but it was like, I appreciate it from a distance. Like someone else can do that and love that, but that's not for me, but in the last couple of months not.

And I'll give you guys an even more concrete example when I try to work on my own individual projects and I try to work on my own start up. I need to wear different hats. And I don't have, we don't have a dedicated or this is our intro person. So I've got to do that. So I've, I've been forced to learn that and it's given me a deeper appreciation for, for people who specialize in that.

And so I think as the years go by, I'm probably gonna keep adding more of these different, you know, the, the craze right now is, you know, machine learning and artificial intelligence. And for the longest time, I was like some of this is gimmicky, but I really, as I started to use it more and more often, I'm seeing so much value and it's opening my eyes to more opportunities. But I'd say for the time being, I still really love being a product developer.

Your job is very interesting prior to Walter and see like I think for me. So how it started for me is because like it was a tech lead and he used to do mobile and a bit of cloud and I was inspired by that, right? So the because in mobile, right, you're just mobile, but it's normally like the web people and the cop and normally the web that is the front facing, right? That really gets the clients and the mobile is just like the nice to have, right?

So I was inspired by the way he was working, he was also talking to the customers too and it really made me like, OK, well, I wanna be just like him, right? I wanna learn mobile and I wanna learn cloud and I want to also talk with clients, right? A small cup. Now I'm like, ok, well, I really like what I'm doing. I can see my, I can see myself doing this for maybe five years, right? Because it's really interesting. However, I do wanna also work with, I want to work more with the clients, right?

Like I don't wanna just be in tech, I want to be able to talk to them and maybe see what's missing in the market so that uh I can relate it to bas and I can talk to Uiux and I can talk to all those plethora of uh company, all those plethora of people in the company so that we can get something working.

But I feel like I have not been exposed to a lot of things like call about me for example, or support engineer like I, I feel like we, I feel like I need to expand my wings a little bit more and we all do so that we find where we should be because we're also growing too, right? We're always growing um as individuals like I, I did not want to do anything with Azure. I was like Azure. Nah, it's always TCP I with, I don't want to hear anything about Azure, azure.net.

I don't want to hear anything about.net. I don't like C# I don't like dot I don't like any of those, but now I'm like, ok, well, you know what a address is pretty good. It does a lot of things great and you know, a Dallas is really nice actually and has better documentation in my opinion than Aws from. So now I'm like, ok, pro but if you had told me I've been doing Azure like four or five years ago, like, nah, I'm not doing that nonsense.

So, so that makes me, that makes me want to ask like, what is you just talked about Azure? So maybe that is your answer. But um for both of you, Sam and Jason, what is this specific technical thing that you have picked up this year? Like, like like a specific thing, technically speaking, architecting, architecting. So what do you mean by? So like let's say you have a cloud, right?

Being able to like see like create diagrams like OK, well, I'm going to create this database that's gonna route to this hub, right? With networking and the firewall, right? Being able to kind of architect things and being able to show it to my team so we can build it, right? So that's one thing, I've learned a lot this year, Architecting and Ryan code for operations.

Yeah, my company, we use mirror um for architecting and I've, I've enjoyed mirror because just the ability to zoom out and just have a whole lot of diagrams for architecting. Um has been a huge thing. So, yeah, thank you. That's a good thing. That's something that a lot of people, it seems it looks like a nice drawing when you're done.

But people don't realize the amount of work that goes into architecting and, and just the thought process and experience that you need to have to know what component of, of this container is talking to my database. Exac exactly what component is doing that and what are the limitations for that component? And how you know, how is it communicating if we're talking hybrid, you know, cloud and on premises and things like that?

And is this even the updated version of this, of this particular technology? So I agree with you there in terms of architecting? Really cool. Yeah, for myself, probably Google cloud platform, like I talked about anything related to infrastructure in the past was just a no, no for me. So I decided to ferry into, you know, something I then obviously that you have a choice of AWS GCP Azure and what have you.

So I went with Google cloud platform and I'm still in the process, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit here and act like I gotta figure it out. But um like I said, getting more of an appreciation for just the capabilities is insane how much you're able to do. Uh So yeah, Google cloud platform, that's, that's what I'm on this year and hopefully I can, I can be competent or I can get to a competent level. Google Cloud is amazing. It really is, honestly.

So you guys are actually inspiring me right now to look because I'm, I'm an, a Microsoft shop. You know, that's, that's been my, my game for, since, since I got into this whole thing. So that's pretty much all I know. I mean, I did, when I did my masters, they, they made us do Aws and they made us work with uh GCP. But they also helped us, they also asked us to, to work with Azure. They wanted to explore open our minds.

So that that was the only time that I actually really um ventured into Aws or ventured into. But the nice thing is that a lot of the, the good thing is that a lot of the concepts carry over, there may be different names. It's a different, different locations, but it's like, say you go to someone else's house, it's a duplex. Uh There's a kitchen somewhere, it's probably downstairs.

You know, this is, there's a living room, the TV is probably in the living room, you know, it probably looks different, but there's probably a guest bathroom downstairs and a bathroom upstairs. So yeah, it might be completely different. But there's that similarity.

So that made me feel when I did that in my master's, I didn't feel like I was missing out so much like in the sense that if I needed to actually do something today and in Aws, I just follow the same mentality I work with, with Azure, which is where's the documentation, right? I I because documentation is king, right? Like youtube videos, documentation, I use that a lot and just follow that step and I should be able to get to where I need to get to.

And another beautiful thing is the commu I don't know, I'm sure that other in industries have strong communities but infosec oh my gosh, like Reddit, Twitter, even community uh tech community for Microsoft medium dog, I'm medium all, I'm reading medium articles for fun.

Honestly, it's the, it's, it's makes me look like if you open, if I open 10 tabs in five minutes, I can learn like what, you know, uh uh uh two hour youtube videos because people will comment and be like, hey, don't use this because when I did it, you know, I tried like they were giving specific examples and that is the beauty of user led reviews or user led journalism, so to speak, where the person who is using the product is, this is not a review website, this is just Reddit,

this is just medium. Like we're just out here even linkedin sometimes has some really good insights into how to use specific technologies. Um So I agree that uh so I'm just saying that if you know one like you're doing GCP, I can bet that if you, if you get the basics there. You can get the basics quickly at uh Aws or, or Azure. I haven't. You looked at a B M's Cloud yet? But I'm pretty sure it's similar. I heard IBM Cloud has like some nice A I like, like A I tools.

But yeah, one of the things we wanted to talk about was a, a artificial intelligence because that's the craze. And like you said, some of it is gimmicky. Some people call some things that are not artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence. Um because it's a key buzzword and that annoys me because people who don't know will think it's artificial intelligence. And now they have overvalued a product or overvalued a process.

But there are some things that are really, really truthfully generative artificial intelligence. So you both, we th three of us are in technology, but both of you are specifically more in um writing programs. And I have done that at my job a little bit. I'm more of a senior consultant.

So what I do is depending on what the client needs to do with Microsoft, I should be able to pivot to get it done, whether that's implementing Microsoft defender for the entire company or migrating to Microsoft's Cloud or working with, you know, containers, whatever it might be, I need to be able to skill up and get that stuff done or manage the project depending on, on the project, depending on the kind of client we have.

So it's a lot why I like it is because like you talked about wearing multiple hats. I'm not doing only one thing sometimes. Now that I have a little bit more knowledge of who's who in the company, I can go to them and say, hey, I see this project is coming down the pipeline with this Fortune 500 company. I don't think like if it's possible, I want to play a PM role on it instead of a dev role on it. And I like that ability to be able to see the different sides of it. All right.

So where I'm getting at is how has artificial intelligence impacted your role right now today at work and for us, they banned us, we're not even allowed to use. They were like a whole article like email saying like, oh no, you're not allowed to use A I to generate because it could be like compliance issues. Like they like more resource blah, blah, blah. I like I see A I as like an enhancement, right? Like github copilot, it's amazing.

You can just, we can nearly generate code like on the fly and I think it will only like enhance our work. It will not like, do you think it will, do you think it will, it will the compliance issue I get if you put your, your company's code into chat GP T barred, whatever it has to be saved somewhere, it's not working locally.

Security Copilot with Microsoft and I'm not trying to sell them particularly, even though that's my kind of like what we do, but from what I've been told it's, it's your business. So if your company uses security copilot, that program that's generated is yours. It doesn't go anywhere else. No one else has insight to it. It's not being stored at some other great but open source.

You know, whether it's open A I or, um or Bard or Chat GP T I can understand how the company can be like, hey, you're gonna be putting confidential code in a public repository. No, you can't do that. I get that. However, do you not? Is there a slight fear that github copilot? I've used it like, it's like having another, it, it is a copilot. That's a great name. Like someone who actually knows how to program is sitting next to you. You need to know what to type though.

You need to actually understand how to read code to, to make the most use of it, but you're talking about it enhancing you don't, you, is there a fear that it will replace you at some point? It's really good. Actually, the fear will be until the point it's ever able to write like a whole diagram and it actually is able to actually, but the fear is like, if it's able to talk to the client and make some tweaks and like have like a human aspect to it. That's the fear.

But yeah, but it doesn't need to get there, Jason, it just needs to be able to write the code in one person put in the prompts, make the tweaks like we don't need an entire team anymore. So if there's five people on your team right now, Jason and this thing is able to constantly produce good code, of course, it's not gonna be 100% but we just need one guy who's tweaking it, reading through it, making sure it works with the client. I don't know, man, it's four people gone. What do you think?

Maybe I should learn A I and then, well, then what are your thoughts? So for me, I'd say it's a two part, two part answer. The first one is, I don't know that I would ever use stuff like copilots because I love writing code. Like it's like self driving cars. I think it's Ridic. No, no, I don't think technology is ridiculous. Maybe you say you're getting up there in age and you know, you want a chauffeur that I totally get it. But part of driving at least is it's an enjoyable experience.

Or for me, coding is an enjoyable experience. I do it for fun. I do it to relax. So I was like, what's the point of me using Copilot if I'm not gonna write the code? Like coding is therapeutic for me. And so I enjoy doing it. So that's my personal opinion from that perspective. The second one is about replacement. Do I think that A I is a serious contender to basically cut our uh workforce short. Possibly never say never. First and foremost, you never know what happens in the future.

You don't know how sophisticated it gets. But I just don't like in its current iteration, it's not possible to fire half of your team and say, oh, they're gone because something can write code because you know, that's what happens when you reduce software engineers to just mindless robots who write code because there's so much more, OK, like there's things that OK, first and foremost, for folks who want to know more about artificial intelligence,

like everything that every capability that uh artificial artificial intelligence enables us is coming from a place of learning. It has to learn to know what to do. So it's learning from people's work to be able to do whatever to write code. It's literally looking at millions of lines of code to be able to do that. Now at a company, even for human beings, there are certain people that have that.

They're basically the, they're the only source of truth for a certain thing like that knowledge is in their head. It's not a case where, oh like what do you even train the the artificial intelligence on like this knowledge is only in that person's head? So, so, so, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back on you for that. And not because I don't agree with you, but it makes good conversation and it's good to be able to see the other side. So, I agree. Current iteration.

Yeah, definitely cannot even, can't cut the workforce, can only enhance the workforce if used properly. But security Copilot. Um So, no, not security copilot, github. Copilot was trained on the code that all of us have uploaded to wear github.

And, and so yeah, there's someone in your company who has, he's, he has a tacit knowledge, you know, it's that guy we go to but there is millions of repositories, millions of lines of code that has been organized into language style benefits, et cetera that it can pull from cause you're asking like where can it learn? It has already learned and is continuing to learn. So that guy who knows where the bug it was two years ago and how he fixed the bug. Github.

Copilot knows that he uploaded that program to github four years ago. So you could get a new job and show off his skills and, and now github will fix it, the Copilot will fix it and add comments, right? Like that's how crazy it is. So I'm just pushing back slightly, you know, that's a very good point. Maybe you know what, maybe I'm in denial. Maybe I want to believe that our jobs are safe.

But I guess the point I I was trying to make was more so around as of today, like as of today, heck, maybe three years. I don't, I think it's still so far fetched. The point I was really trying to make is long term. There is interesting knowledge that goes beyond code is, I think the point I was trying to make was even beyond just like actual lines of code.

There's, there's operational things that go into, you know, maintaining a product is beyond just, oh, we wrote this line of code, da da da da whatever. Um There, there's a, at least in my experience there's so many moving parts that if all of the artificial intelligence is able to do is generate code, that's such a, not, not an insignificant, but it's only one part of the larger puzzle as a software engineer.

Now, if this was like, if we were just in university or college, heck yeah, because all it's doing is writing code. But then when you become a software engineer and you're in a, you're charged with maintaining an actual product. There's so many moving parts and as of today, of the major capability is around just code generation and code improvement. Well, I'd say it suffice to say it's not enough to warrant, you know, cutting your workforce.

But this is me just being optimistic that we're not going to be obsolete. But who knows fingers crossed. What if? Like what if, because you know how to Q A and do bug testing Right. Like the use of A I is to be able to find bugs. Right. Right. Like, what if A, I got to that point? You know, the other thing is this, like, I think as software engineers, just because it, it's, it appears as something that is challenging our place and our understanding of who we are.

We're not really, or at least for me, for the longest time, I wasn't really able to appreciate what it could be used to do. There's so much efficiency and effectiveness, uh, uh, improvements that artificial intelligence can bring. I'd love to see a world where we co coexist. But the problem is when you have one part of that, um, relationship that is near perfect and doesn't cost as much going forward, you can't help but feel like you, you become the, you know, the needy partner as it were.

But I don't know, I feel like it will get there just when I look back at even 10 years ago, what we're able to accomplish. I mean, even look at your phones, your, your, your mobile phone can compute things that maybe 15 years ago where it, it seemed like a dream. I mean, you're talking about, there are times where to run a computer. You needed an actual room and you need to have heating and ventilation to run a computer and you, I'm not even talking about a computer that did like model training.

I'm talking about a computer that sent texts, you know, between, we're having a, we're recording a, we're having, we're, we're literally browser via a browser. We're in how many time zones, you know what I mean? And like we're able to accomplish that. So it's not outside of the realm of possibility, honestly. But I think just the optimist to me is hoping that there's a way for us to coexist and actually provide uh I think we will coexist. I think there will be a coexisting point.

There will be an en, there will be the point where it enhances work it does right now. It has enhanced my work in certain places. And I'm, I'm always conscious of the idea of compliance, right? Like I'm not going, I'm not throwing in my program here, read and know everything that my company is doing and then tell me what to do it. It's like if there's a certain bug or something that needs to be fixed.

Um And, and it's, and these, you know, chat GP T or generative A I security co pile is more than just for programming now, right? Like it helps with even um steps that you would need for, for launching something in Azure or working with Microsoft Defender for office or working with sentinel threat detection, you know, uh uh red teaming or blue teaming, things like that. Like, there's actually, you can actually give insight into that. So it's, it's beyond, it's beyond just writing code.

That's, that's another thing. But I think the enhancement is there, it will become, I think we'll get to the point where you can coexist where we're doing this really good coexisting thing after that, I don't know what the future holds. But one thing I do know is that humans adapt right before people were driving horses and it was a big business. You know, you're in New York. Hey, would you like a ride?

The couple hops on the the carriage, you know, you go on a horse and you take them to where they go. You know. Thank you, madam. Thank you, sir. You get paid. Then taxis came along, you know, horse riders were like, you know, no, you know, the driving horses is the right way to do it. You get to see the scenery, it's basically cost effective.

There's all these benefits, we're not burning gas and then eventually people are like, nah, cars are faster and then people start driving cars and people adapt, but people still need people to drive the cars. And then you know, my point, what I'm getting at is that factories needed factory workers. Now there's a lot of robots, but we still need people to maintain those robots. So there will be work for humans. In my opinion, we just how we will adapt is difference.

Iii I guess because, you know, Amazon stopped having bookstores, basically it's all online then all of a sudden now I there's hundreds of thousands of jobs for drivers. My point is humans will find there needs to be a human component and I think humans will find a way to adapt but like you said, never say never. There, there are some jobs that have gone completely obsolete, right? Um Traffic lights, we don't really need traffic men anymore.

I mean, in Nigeria they, I still see these, you know, some people like, ok, you know, go this way, come that way. But traffic lights just that job is gone in the U SS. I have never seen someone directing traffic in the United States. So anything else you guys want to add on that before we start wrapping up, we'll just need to adapt like iii I know what you mean, like as human societies, we want to evolve, right? And A I seems to be like the next step on evolving, right?

But yeah, some jobs will be lost. The question is who will adapt, right? And who will be left out? So now that we're kind of like wrapping up here, the last thought that I wanted to two last questions. One. But actually no, Sam, you're the only one working from home, right. Well, you're working from home and I'm working from home but Jason isn't, yeah, I'm working from home but like it's a hybrid. Oh, hybrid. Ok. Sam, are you hybrid? I'm about to be but for now. Ok, so I, I, I'm remote.

So when it comes specifically to, to technology and working in information technology, information security or just software engineering in general, like for, for USA, what has been the advantages and disadvantages of working from home? How has that been for you? You know, I get asked this question a lot and I have to preface it by saying this is my only experience. My only experience is working from home.

And if I had to pick, I take working from home every single day of the week because I it's just so convenient. I feel a lot more productive. I've been to the office a couple of times and you know, I'd say there, it's also a culture thing.

I think a lot of companies, I have found that in the last couple of years with more people working from home, it's harder to build a company culture when everyone is behind a zoom, especially for some of the newer folks who come and join the company and they're, they're not remote, they go into the office and there's just not a lot of people there or a lot of people who uh contribute to building a company culture are just not around. Uh So I see value from that perspective.

Me, I don't really care that much for me. I just wanted to get in there, get my work done. Um You know, and, and get up there. But again, I was younger, naive and now I see, there is such a value to creating interpersonal relationships. Because listen, when artificial comes for our jobs, you, you're gonna want to be somebody that people can talk to, you're gonna lean on your human connection. That's one thing.

But on a more serious note, there is a human aspect that you simply cannot get from working from home. But if you're just talking about the work, I think the quality of my work is best enhanced when I'm in the comfort. I mean, you're in the comfort of your home. Like you can't beat that if I'm hungry, I'm just walk two seconds and I'm grab a snack or whatever the case may be.

If I wanna take a walk, I'll take a walk, I'll come back like I was telling Jason um more times than not, I end up working longer just because I'm only like, hey, I'm at, I'm at home. I don't have to worry about commuting. I don't like I can give away this time just to do some extra work if I feel like it or I can start my day a little bit earlier. Um wherever the case may be and I don't have to worry about commuting, you know, all these other, other um quality of life index points.

Uh that, that really, I think it starts to degrade when you have to go into the office more and more. But it also dawns on me. This is, this was the reality like four years ago. Like, there wasn't a work from, like everyone was going to office and nobody complained because that was status quo.

But I feel like now that people have experienced something that could be better, like, I don't really feel like going back and like me, I don't feel like going back, but, you know, that decision has come from up above. So what about you, Jay Z? Uh like I have to go back to the office twice a week. I'll probably be decreasing it to more, maybe three times, four times, you know how they are like that. But yeah, I'm not a fan of it. My I am more productive at home, right?

I feel like my mental health is better. I feel like I save three hours commute almost every day, including dressing up, right? I feel like I can go to the gym. I do go to the gym but I can spend longer time in the gym, take a shower in the gym. I feel like I can get up at 920 start my work at 930 right? Be in my pajamas. So like a lot of advantages, but you do lose that company culture aspect, right? Like Sam said, but at the same time, do you really care?

Do you really care about the company culture or do you just wanna spend time for family and friends? Like a company is not to be rude. It's second and the first priority is your family and friends. Right. So, personally I just want to get my work done and I also wanna be able to make my customers happy. Customers don't care if we're going to work in the office or not as long as their thing is not broken. Right. And they, they deliver it on time. So that's just my two cents. Don't like it.

I will go, I will push, I am pushing back. I'm pushing it back, but I'm not a fan of it. I agree with you. Um, I once again like III I, the biggest thing for me is the commute because it's not just, it's not just the time that's being burnt, it's money my guess. Right. And I gotta get dressed, which means I'm gonna have buy clothes and which is fine.

I mean, I, I like to dress up slightly for work even though I'm home all the time just because there's when you dress a certain way, you feel a certain way you, you, you shower, you brush your teeth like I like to do that to just get myself in the mood and it helps me feel more comfortable and more confident for the day. But that idea where I have to be at 10 all the time or 100 all the time throughout the office. And then, and when I leave the office, I'm done work. Right.

I like to be able to give a little bit more like Sam said, where it's like, all right, it's late at night, but I'm bored. I don't want to watch a movie. I don't want to do something else. I'm going to go do work because I like the work that I'm doing. I actually like what I do. And so I don't feel like I am under some kind of bondage. I feel like I am. I get to be able to do this, right? I get to be able to work from home.

And another thing is maybe it will change, maybe the status quo will revert back to what it was or something else. Maybe hybrid will be the new status quo, whatever the case is, I just want to be grateful for this time to be able, the fact that I'm living in a time where I have the privilege of doing a job that I like doing it with people I enjoy working with and doing it from home, which is something I've always wanted since I was a kid, right? Um And it may not last forever.

So that's my perspective on it. And I understand that companies also, there are some jobs where it's harder to gauge productivity without eyes. And if you were the business, you'd want people to come into the office more often than not. And there are some jobs where productivity does not need to be gauged, what needs to be gauged are the milestones and the deliverable. And so having people in the office makes almost no sense, forcing them to be back in the office.

So, different companies, different needs, et cetera. But, yeah, I think, I think that in software engineering it might stay hybrid for a while just because it's one of those jobs where it doesn't really matter the time zone and now that the world is a smaller place, I'm working a lot with people.

like I have a project with uh with the French company, meaning I got to get up really early for their calls and have, you know, projects with some companies and in, in Asia and I have projects with people here. And because of that, even if I were to go to work, what about the meeting that happens at 2 a.m. What about the meeting that happens at 4 a.m. Am I gonna drive to the office for that? I could do that from home so I might as well just stay home.

But before we wrap up, we started off talking about the chase. Now, what are some of the things you both can give to listeners and viewers who are starting their careers or they're already, they're like where we are, where we're definitely not senior level management. I'm not, but we are not junior employees anymore. We have gotten to a place where we understand what's going on in the company.

You talked about Cache, you talked about, you know, building that social collateral where people know that you can get things done. What can you help? What can you say to help people who want to achieve more? Um you know, visualization, vision, I think not visualization, you can use visualization to help you to get to your vision. But what can you say? What are some quick gems you can drop for viewers in terms of vision and goal setting to grow?

Cause that's what this is all about the chase in getting there growing. Do you think you wanna, you wanna go? Yeah, I think it's more like a mindset, right? Like wherever you wanna go, if you have the right mindset, you'll eventually get to where you wanna be. Like, I'm reading a nice book right now. It's called um If you think you can, you can, right?

I forgot the name but the author, but it's a nice book and it's really just about like, well, if you wanna get to the promotion, you definitely think you can definitely get to it right with the right mindset and perspective. If you wanna get a job that's probably work from home, you definitely can right with the right job. Um Maybe with maybe create your own business.

So there are like a lot of different ways to get to where you wanna be if you have the right mindset to it saying you wanna go for sure. Biggest piece of advice I have is don't there? I I feel like just far too often people put way too much. Obviously, it's good to have expectations and to have, I, I think we've always had at least myself and Peter like something we always bonded on was there's this sense of internal pressure, like we want to be great and want to accomplish certain things.

And that burden of greatness really has been what has driven, you know, a lot of uh decisions and you know, ethic and whatever the case may be. But I also think you get to a point where you have to re evaluate, you know, what am I really striving for and what does that add to the world around me? So for me, honestly, it's become more of a philosophical question beyond just, you know, what is this job? You know, what am I gonna get out of this job?

But how does me being this job affect the world around me? Like how am I adding value to it? But yeah, like just let go of the, I feel like there's just so much pressure. Um let go of that pressure and, and start to see things a little bit clear. So have a goal. OK. This is what I want. Honestly, that's probably the biggest thing I have a goal in mind. Um and just work towards it. I think it's, it gets easier to just be, oh I should be doing this or other people are doing this and da, da da.

Like, that's, that's cool. That's their time, that's their season. But you have a goal in mind and it's a lot, a lot more peaceful when you're working towards your goal as opposed to what you think you should be doing. My favorite definition. Thank you, Sam. My favorite definition of success, I believe.

I don't know if it was Earl Nightingale that came up with it, but it says the person who has a goal and is taking specific steps towards that goal, that person is successful, it's not that you've gotten to the goal. And that's how I look at things for me. What I would say in terms of goal setting and growing in a company or growing in life in general is to have a vision, take time to create that vision, that vision can change, it can morph it can grow, but have one. Write it down.

I always tell people write it down, write down the vision, make it plain. That's what the Bible says. Write it down. I, you know, like what is it that I wanna do? And you can write down some steps that will allow you to get there. You may not know all the steps. A plan is not a strategy. So write down some steps, go into a little bit more detail. A lot of people don't write, we text a lot, we don't write and writing allows you to cognitively process what you're thinking up here.

That sounds good. Think seems good. But when you start writing it down, you're like, ok, what exactly am I saying? That's what happens when you have to process what you're saying? So, for instance, if you were, I've tried to use voice for typing versus when I use my fingers, it's a lot harder to use voice because sometimes you're like, I don't want to use that word and then you've already said the word or I don't want to say the sentence that way.

But when you're typing, it allows you to still connect and process it before you actually put it on the page. Same thing with writing. So I'm just saying, take time to write these steps down. It may not be perfect, but it's good for you to have a, a vision.

Uh Another thing I wanna mention is that in life, life is like driving some roads are straight for a long time and then some roads are a little bit whiny and some of the roads are hill, you know, hills ups and downs at some times in life I believe. And I'm a strong believer of this is you need to put in 100% maximum effort and maybe it's just what I think maybe I'm wrong here.

But I believe a lot of college students, it maybe in the US particularly have a certain level of like feelings of I deserve to have X maybe. But that doesn't mean you'll get it right. So, whether it's in the job hunt or like, or the promotion, there's a, it, it, it's, it's worth it to be able to put in that effort and that energy to something that you enjoy to get the reward.

So to sit home and expect to get your, to have your farm blossom with fruits and farm and beautiful flowers and you didn't plant anything is not really the right mentality. And so I think maybe it's because, you know, we all come from immigrant families. And so we know we, you know, we have an idea of hard work and knowing that hard work pays, I think it's still important today. People will recognize your hard work, put in the hard work, it's not easy, it's not always easy.

But there are times that will come where you can cool down, you know, and another time will show up where you might need to ramp up. So I'm not saying burn yourself out. But I would just say write down the vision, make it plain, make it very clear, write down your steps or your strategy and put in the works, just start putting the work. If you do that to me in my books, you're already successful and I can guarantee you, people will see that effort. All right.

So in closing, I want you Sam to say a few words in general in terms of maybe anything you think you missed something that you want to add. Um Just imagine this was a call, someone else was at the table and they're about to leave and you just want to tell them, thank you for listening. But you know, go home with this and same thing with you Jason and then we'll wrap up the call for sure. So first and foremost, I appreciate you having me on call again.

It's, it's so good to reconnect and just have a part two to our, our first conversation. And honestly, it's even better this time because we have Jason on call as well. Yeah, I don't really have any nuggets for y'all. The only nugget I'll leave it, leave with you is just stay the course, man. Like continue the process. And I was talking to actually, I'll leave it at this. I was talking to uh sort of like a mentor situation. I got going on with, uh with this student who goes to Waterloo.

You know, he was talking to me about just the co op job hunt and he had actually seen one of our, our previous, uh our previous call. You know, he was talking to me about how difficult it is. And I just told me at the moment, like, listen, if I had, there was one thing I wish somebody would tell me when I was going through the same thing. It was just to stay the course, like stay through the process.

It's difficult and sort of like Peter said, there's times where you need to give 100% and that time is right now, you know, it's not gonna be no one ever says gonna be easy. It's never easy. There's a lot of, I think far too often when we tell a story, you know, we talk about the, the good things and you really don't appreciate some of the difficulties. There are some very, very, very tough, tough times but stay the course.

You know, there really is a process and you just gotta stick through it and you know, hold on to some people, you know, for them, it's faith, for some people, it's, you know, finding other outlets, whatever the case may be, but stay the course. Um Trust, trust the process. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Trust the process. One thing I wanna say to like for me, the thing that really hit home was the the pressure one, right? Because in our society, we put so much pressure into ourselves, right?

Like, oh, I gotta get this job. I've been applying 400 times. Still no answer, right? Um Well, I wanna be at this goal but I'm not there yet. Even though making the steps to get there, I wanna say like, like it's not a race, it's not a competition, it's a journey, right? And so we need to be able to evaluate like where I wanna go. But I also understand that it's ok if I you know, don't get there right now. I kind of need to like, blame myself and put myself down because I'm just a human being.

Right. So I just like, I wanna just leave and say, well, just be counting to yourself, um, and keep, stay the course and be level headed. All right. Well, thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your time here. Uh, we didn't go to talk too deep into technology stuff, which is fine. I think anyone who listened to this, whether they are new in the technology world or they have been in the technology world all their lives and they've worked with all types of technology.

They would hopefully get something from this podcast for those of you listening. Uh It's been a lot of fun and uh what has happened for us is that we have come to the point where this podcast is going to end. I finally get to use this little DJ thing to, to play our outtro. But really please go ahead and subscribe if you're on youtube. Um, this podcast will also be on Spotify. I'm gonna have little clips of the podcast and reach out to us if you have questions.

Um, you might be able to find us on linkedin, but really, you can just uh reach out to us and put your comments in the chat and maybe your comment will be used for the next video I want to say thank you to Sam and Jason, you guys are amazing for taking the time out of your Saturday to do this with me. I hope that we'll have you more on the podcast going forward. So thank you for everyone joining us today. I hope you have a great rest of your week.