Hello, everyone. Welcome again to the V podcast. My name is Peter O and ah, today we have a very interesting guest. A friend of mine that I met in Canada. Uh we worked together, we had fun together, we had lunch together, we went to university together and we even studied together. And it's crazy how life works and how things move. Recently, I reconnected with Emmanuel who's on the call with us today and it wasn't just any kind of reconnecting.
We kicked it off just as though there was no time that had passed and our lives have brought us to work in the same industry and uh our paths have crossed again. And so we discussed about using this opportunity to talk about our journey, specifically Emmanuel's journey and see what it is that we can give back to the community to those who are looking for a career in technology.
I say this because Emmanuel is currently a software engineer at Apple and there's a lot that we can learn from his journey to that position. Beyond that, beyond the corporate world, there are lots of challenges that he went through that would be inspiring to you listeners. So, with all of that said, Emmanuel, welcome. And I want to ask you to introduce yourself. Tell us who is Emmanuel, who are you? And what are you doing today? Uh Thanks a lot, Peter. Um Hi, everyone. Uh My name is Manuel.
Uh like Peter mentioned, we reconnected recently and I was, I was reflecting on that and it's very funny how, you know, life has done a good 360 on us from going to school to, you know, go our own ways. And now, you know, coming back together, reconnect and catching up on life, catching up on work and family and it's good to see, you know, a friend, you know, succeed and excel in his own field.
And also being able to, you know, have that intersectionality of, you know, where he is or where I'm at and also being able to discuss about those things, which is great, you know, looking back at our time, even in school, I don't think one could have, you know, like projected or anticipated, you know, where would be or some of the challenges we face in between, right? Uh which is, which is incredible now wi a man.
Well, you know, after finished school, studied computer science or I studied computer science and then major in software engineering. And after I finished school relocated, started initially with a background in school, I wanted to go into data mining. I did a lot of coursework on data mining machine learning. And, but in the course of doing that, I had an internship in school in is development, which is completely far off from what I was important.
And I was just looking at my internship to begin with. And yeah, and I was like, oh, I can do this, like just give me a few weeks. I'm gonna wrap up, I can do this. I don't know how I got this job. Um, and, but fast forward four months, I realized I actually really love doing this and this is what I actually want to do with my career going forward. So fast forward that, you know, transition to working with the organization part time while I was in school.
And then, you know, after school, I just, you know, kicked off that part. Right. You know, and fast forward few other organizations afterwards I was able to join my current uh team at Apple. You know, it's interesting how, I don't know if you were in, I don't know exactly if you were in the audience and I don't think you were at that time.
But someone actually said what you just said at the computer science, there was like a gathering where they bring all the students together and they're talking about co ops. Well, it's called Co Op in Canada, but in the United States it's an internship and we're like, you do these internships and, uh you might realize, I actually like this stuff or you might realize I do not like what I'm studying and that is really truly the beauty of internship.
So I'm really happy that not only were you able to, I'm glad that you're not, not only were you able to find something in your field, but you were like, this is what I want to do for my career. I actually enjoy this. I can wake up every morning to do this. So if you're listening and perhaps you're in high school or college, an internship is not a bad idea if you get the opportunity. So thanks for sharing and telling us a little bit about your journey.
Do you want to give us some insight within reasonable range as to what it was like on your journey to Apple and what it's like at Apple today? Like the day in the life software engineer specifically because, because there are many positions right in Silicon Valley in tech in general, there's so many things that you can do. And that's one thing that I actually like to point out, you don't have to be a software engineer.
You don't have to be programming in Java or C or, or any other language full time to be in tech, which was something that I didn't realize in this at the very beginning in college. I kind of thought, I don't think I can make it if I can't if I can't program. So tell me about that journey to Apple and, and what it's like today, my journey to Apple. Uh I think it was very interesting, slightly unexpected, you know, prior to finishing college, I joined an organization in Canada Law Laws, Digital.
You know, I was the I OS engineer there starting off my career and you know, that that organization in particularly focused on the grocery space. So that really allowed me like really own some of my skills early on because, you know, they are pretty almost like a start up culture, but they're massive organization in Canada. Uh So I was able to quickly own some of I OS skills there and grow rapidly and you know, push some balance quickly.
So going from there and my background in college, I transitioned slightly from that role to another role at Octa. Now there it was is development but SDK development in particular and I was working on an open source SDK. So that means you had contributors external to the organization, you know, contributing, filing pull request, you know, just filing issues. Yeah, on the SDK and I, you know, working on SDK, it was an identity platform.
So that kind of translated from my background with Love Digital because prior to leaving Do Love Law Digital, I worked on an SDK. So it was just natural to transition to an organization. I just focused solely on an SD A. Now while I was at opt out, I had my linkedin all set up, you know, that linkedin is a whole another thing, right? I, I advise everyone, you know, you pay attention to your linkedin.
I treat it like a resume and I had my resume all set up and a recruiter from Apple reached out to me. I, I thought it was a joke and, you know, you get those emails, right? You get those, like, I don't know if you get them, I get some of them sometimes and you get a lot of, you check the company and sometimes it doesn't check out or it doesn't, you're not sure about the veracity of what you're reading. But go ahead. I understand that hesitation.
Yeah. And, and, you know, I looked back and I was like, oh, how did she even find me? Like, what, what's the thought? And she reached out to me. I was like, oh, hi. I just wanna talk to you about a few roles, right? She presented me with me with three or four roles. I could have, you know, kind of pick and choose which one I wanted to kind of interview on. I could have interviewed in multiple roles and kind of going on from there.
I picked my team, which is our point and I interviewed for that team and I was very lucky and fortunate, you know, the process went smooth and I was able to join the team. Now, there's a lot missing in that process. Now within Apple, you know, I joined the product marketing team. Uh so within part of like the WWTR so worldwide developer relations team as a software engineer within the team. So it's very important to think about software engineering in a very broad scale, right?
Even with software engineer, engineering, they also different types and different like categories of engineers, right? Um you have production engineers, STK engineers and engineers that are like me myself who are also working to develop a relation space, but I also work with engineering as well. Uh So that's kind of, you know, a little bit on my role between Apple. Now, what is it like working in Apple?
Um or at Apple. Um Now I think, you know, coming in, I I didn't exactly know the scale Apple operates. Now it's very easy to, you know, from the outside looking in, have different ideas how teams that I for because of the number of customers has, but you also have to think about customers also involve developers. So now that kind of increases the scale, right?
So you don't just have, you know, end users like use, you know, various Apple products, you have developers that develop on Apple platform. So now that that is different. So coming in, I didn't actually have a good idea of the scale Apple right now while I joined Apple, you know, it was a whole new reality because within Apple, you have different organizations. So now, that's different worlds. Um now and within each world, you have different groups.
So you have to think of your role as I'm working on something that is going to impact millions of customers at the end of the day. And you have to take that as a privilege because at the end of the day, your impact is felt, millions of customers are going to feel your impact within the organization and even outside the organization and users, developers are going to feel your impact, right? So, you know, that's kind of what it's like in Apple, you have to really think about some of these things.
You also have to think about how your role impacts um other teams. What what are you doing that is impacting like cross teams. Um How can you really push kind of push the bounds in whatever you're doing? How can you, how can you take a problem and try and provide a solution that skills um but not just providing the solution that fixes the problem.
Um How can you take your knowledge and have a good depth to it, of whatever you're doing, but also have enough breath that you'd know how, what you're doing impacts, not just your scope of work, but but the width of other things that kind of touches across, right? So, you know, that's kind of what's like, you know, within Apple, you have to really think about some of these things. So just to reiterate what you said. Right.
Apple is like the milky way and there's a lots of different planets and if you're on earth, there's countries, there's nations, there's continents and you need to think about it on a grand scale. How does my work in the United States affect the rest of the planet and even more so affect the galaxy that we're in because other planets are going to benefit from the level of work that I do. Does that sound in terms of the orgs and groups and the entire company as a, as a large global company?
Yes, I think that's a good way to summarize it. Now. Apple being a big organization, I think you would be surprised when you boil down to it. Operate very wheel as well. So even as much as it's a large org, you're still able to find the information you need. So even as you know, think about, oh, it's this milky way with different things in it, you're still able to navigate that and still find, you know, the information that you need, which is, I think something that's even very unique to.
Yeah. Yes. And why for those listening and wondering why would that be unique? I should be able to find what I need. Lots of large organizations are siloed and Earth does not talk with Mars and Mars does not talk with Venus, et cetera and even on Earth, the United States has no very little if any relationship with Canada. Right? And, and so if you needed something that only Canada can provide, no, nobody knows what to do to get in touch with someone in Canada to help you do your job.
So you're kind of stuck and you have to invent the wheel. And so for a company to be lean and have processes in place to make sure you're sure that if you need to connect with Canada or you need to connect with Mars, there is a process and a way for you to do that is not very common, right? Would, would you agree with that? I actually want to see, go ahead, actually, go ahead. I wanted to add to that. Now, now this is true, but also it can be very unique to each in each individual, right?
So which leads me to. The second thing I want, I wanted to add, you know, something to think about in these large corporations and large oil orgs is they could also operate li but your experience could vary from your colleague, right? It all really depends on your idea of your role, how you take your role and how you kind of network with people in the org because that's how you're going to find information. So for myself, it could seem very lean and it could seem very easy to find information.
But for x individual, it could not be in the same case. So your experiences could be, you know, very unique and divergent. It just depends on how you, you know, navigate that space. Um So, so would you say the opportunities are there? It depends on how you're able to take care of the opportunities or, or, or is this dependent outside? I just want to know whether it's connected to you as a person or if it's beyond your reach like you have, this is something that is not your fault.
If you can't get information. Well, the opportunity to get information, uh it just depends how you go about getting the information. I know, for example, you know, taking deliberate conscious action to in a network of people within your organization or outside your organization. Yeah, but, but what you're saying to me sounds just like and I may be wrong, right? I don't work at Apple but asking the right questions.
If you don't ask questions, even if your company is hyper lean or agile or, or, or even siloed, you'll have, you'll go nowhere if you expect it to be on your table. That's my philosophy. At least like if you expect every single package that you need every permission that you require to do your position to do your job, to be on your table, on the platter of gold, then you're probably not going to get as much done. That's my understanding.
However, you know, I want to pause for as I can end, rewind because we didn't really cover much about your journey. But if you could succinctly put it into a few sentences as to what would make because there are many people who want to work at Apple, right? So you are in essence a specimen and not just that an inspiration to so many people who have this as their dream.
I mean, you have and customers who their dream is to have an Apple product and they they would line outside, outside the, the the store to get the newest iphone or whatever the device may be. So imagine people who actually even wants to work there, they're putting in their time and effort and energy. So what would be your advice? And I could, I could extrapolate from what you've already said, right?
You worked at a couple of different companies, you honed your skills, you um you studied and you had your linkedin all prepared. There's a lot of things you said. But if you were to bring it down and give some good advice to someone who's out sitting on the outside going man one day, I'll work at Apple. What would that advice be? And you could specify to software engineering or keep it vague. I think maybe the first now say is on your graft, right?
So try an on your craft, whatever it is you do wherever you are, um whatever level you are, I would, I would just suggest you own your craft, you know, try and be good at what you do on that level, try and push the bounds in that level, but also don't be afraid to try something different and something new somewhere else.
You know, I think when you take those two, you know, with a mixture of networking, with a mixture of, you know, advocating, like self advocating for yourself in, in whatever space you're in. I think that's a good start like to the journey, right? So, you know, on your craft, big, you know, advocate for yourself, definitely working in your, on your linkedin and don't be scared to try new things.
Don't be, don't get comfortable in that space that you're in because of the fear of, I don't know what's out there, you know, I can't control that, right? Um I think that's, that's always good. Tell me a little bit about owning your craft. What does that look like to you? The, the others are quite clear, but on your craft can mean a lot of things. So if you can put it from the perspective of a software engineer, what does that look like for, for Emmanuel only your craft?
I maybe the good example I can put it is you have two engineers, right? You have engineer a that goes about doing his job, you know, which, you know, could be, you know, the standard stuff, the regular stuff, you have a task to do the task. That's great. That's not, there's nothing bad about doing that. But you have engineer B that doesn't just do that but asks the questions like, why are we doing this tax? What, what impact does this tax have to our end users to our end customers?
What's the impact of this? How can I solve this problem in such a way that we don't encounter it anymore? Also, how can I share the knowledge I get in solving this problem to my team so that they know how to solve this problem? Um How can we document this somewhere? How can we solve customer uh problems or issues for our customers to just make it easier for the for the for them to interact with whatever we're doing? Right?
So you have two engineers, one which you know, just does his job, does his task as I have another engineer that asks the questions of why am I doing this? What's the impact of this? What's the scope of this? Um How do the end user interact with what I'm doing? Uh Also, you know, you start thinking about not just in the confine of your task but also with the with the breath of, well, how does my task um interface with other things? Right? And that's part of own aircraft, right?
So you own the technical aspect of your skill as an engineer, which is the ability to solve problems. Um But you also own the other aspect of it, which is the people side of things is to ask the right questions to the right people, which is, which is also, you know, it's not, I don't think it's talked about enough, but it's also part of your craft. Uh You can't, you can't own the technical side of it without owning, you know, the people side of it too. Self skills. Yeah. OK. Thank you.
That was very good. And that was, that was what I wanted to hear in terms of the level of depth and insights because owning your craft, like you said, could mean just being good at what you do. But that's not enough.
You talked about the other side of it, which is connections, networking and people management, which is not always fun for people who maybe, maybe introverted or that's really not their space, they just, you know, but when it comes to working, we tend to, usually it's why it's called work, right? Not, not something else. And so we tend to get into places that are slightly uncomfortable for us. So I appreciate you sharing that.
Now, we've talked a little bit about your journey to Apple, what you're doing at Apple. And um you know, advice for people who, who want to get into Apple or really your advice was really for people who are looking to get into tech in general, but it's not just for Apple, but here's something I wanted to find out from you, which is what is one challenge, you know, you can give me a story here or something to that level.
But what is the challenge you faced on this journey, whether prior to Apple or in Apple, probably preferable at Apple. But a challenge you faced and what are some of the skills that you used to overcome those challenges? Because when we give those kind of examples, whether it's a project or, or or something of that nature, it helps to bring to life, what is, what would be generic because we can say work hard. OK. What does that really mean? Right. I, I did my best, you know, OK.
But when you were able to kind of, so I'm looking for one of those challenges because we all face challenges at work and work goes up and down, right? Sometimes it's really difficult and sometimes it's like this is the best thing ever. Mm OK. A challenge up and I'll break it down into two parts. So you see one side of it and then you get to compare to the other side.
Now a challenge I face, you know, prior to joining the Apple was I think in the tech space, you have, you have this big fear going into an interview, what that interview would be like, you know, for everyone, for most I wouldn't generalize, but for most people going into, you know, interviews for tech positions for software engineer, you, you, you're very aware of the culture around this.
So, you know, you have multiple rounds of interview, very technical and, you know, there is fear and how do I, how do I, you know, would I be good enough in this interview? Would I be able to answer these questions? And that's something I had, uh I give in mind, I done a few interviews but I still had this, you know, it's, and, but you have to like overcome that first. So, and I was kind of very nervous, you know, going into like the interview, the team at Apple.
And I think maybe I was lucky, but 11 thing that kind of rough, but, you know, one of the interviewees said to me was just, you know, take your time, just take your time. We're not going anywhere, you know, and that kind of put me at ease first of all because initially I thought, oh, I'm gonna screw this up. Yeah, but no, take your time, you know, gather your thoughts, we're not going anywhere, you know, we get through the process and I think that's huge.
So, you know, for anyone out there, you know, kind of having that fear in interview. I just, you know, you know, when you are in that space in that call in that interview, just take your time, tell them I need some time to gather my thoughts. You'd be surprised how far that went. And, you know, I had initially had that challenge, but also we also have this culture and the technical in technical interview space and given, you know, in my previous role, I was on the interviewing panel.
So I was kind of aware of kind of this challenge. I'm trying to kind of shift this the space is, you know, you have these interviews that can be very um random. They can seem almost like interview questions are very random, call them lead coach questions. And you know, there's this culture where you know, they just speak this random questions at the test.
You are keep that in mind that that is just to, you know, get over the initial huddle because you can imagine there are x amount of candidates pilot for a role. So they have to have a way to filter of the candidates right now. Just think about it as you know, I just need to do this to get to jump back even though you might not like the approach, right? But also I think it's very important for candidates nowadays to actually ask, what will this interview process look like?
Yes, what should I expect from this interview process? How can I be best prepared for this interview process? You know, you'd be surprised. It's the job of your recruiter to prepare you for that interview. Ask these questions even in the interview if you don't know something, I I find this is huge.
See, I don't know, but I'd be happy to learn or you know, I'm very curious to learn, say, I don't know, say, I don't know, as bad as saying something that just doesn't make sense because people know when you're saying stuff that don't make sense, just, you know, say, I don't know, you know, but I'm very curious. Can you explain this to me? Right?
Make the interview process, you know, as interactive as possible because then it's more memorable for the interviewer when they're going to give that feedback. I think that's huge. You know, sometimes you get it, sometimes you won't get it. Keep that in mind, right? But you know, you know, take away from each experience and each interaction that, you know what I did my best here. What can I, what can I learn? Even at the end of the interview, ask, ask for feedback at the end of the interview?
Yes. Yes. You know, what are things that I could have done better? Or actually, you know, if for example, if you're given a technical problem and you didn't get a solution to this act, you know, actually, can you explain this to me and in that way of them explain this, you can actually share your thoughts because you know, really, that's what they want to get it out of that interview. They want to get how you think about problems, how you go about digesting problems.
You know, I remember in my interview in time has given and I was actually really fortunate because something that I was given, you know, it was kind of a take home and I didn't understand the question. But, but I just did something anyway. I was like, I just wrote my f sound with the answer down. I didn't exactly have that sound the question and there were some other questions I didn't just even attempt it because I didn't.
So there are some I attempted because I, you know, I was like, oh, let me just attempt this, I can understand it. But let me just, there's some, I just didn't even attempt because it was just out of my breath, you know, and I said that and, you know, and the team go back to me. It was like, actually, why don't you answer these questions? You know, and I should have told him, look, I, I, you know, how to tackle these problems.
I didn't want to just start and not know what I'm doing or copy my answer and then it's not able to justify what I was doing. I didn't know what I, I didn't have a good amount of knowledge in with this problem. So I decided to just focus my time and effort. And the problem is that I know and these are the problems that I know of, right?
I feel like, ok, that's, we really appreciate the honesty there, you know, actually take some time on the standard topic and solve those problems and I was like, OK, I can do that, right? So being honest, you know, I'm being open to the depth of my knowledge helps and in that case helped, right? So, you know, that's one aspect of it, the interviewing aspect of it. That's only the challenge I faced.
And keep in mind, you know, you might be a software engineer, you might have x amount of experience, you might go into this interview and you might not do well, you know, you just have to take these things as they come. So that's one challenge that I faced in my own story. You know, now the other challenge I faced was my background from my previous role, right? So previously, you know, I like to call myself, you know, kind of like a specialist.
I I really like enjoyed the space of like SDK development. So taking like taking, for example, just an idea, a thought, oh, we want to develop this, right? We want to be able to do this in a generic way that is scalable for X amount of teams just taking that and actually ID A T on it, talking to product manager, talking to the teams, what they need on the understanding requirements and then going on to be building this thing.
I really like thought about myself in that space and I really enjoy that space being a specialist. And you know, but I remember when the recorder at Apple reached out to me and she presented me a few options for roles that I could interview for similar to my background. But there was one completely in my own position that I'm currently in, that was completely completely different from that. Um We do the pr and I was like, OK, I'm gonna try this one. It's completely different.
I want to see how this fits in the overall picture of my career because this is a space I haven't touched before, right? I want to grow in this space, right? And I was like, OK, you know, I'm gonna give this a try and you know, I went through the interview process, I got the job, I need need the job.
It's a constant learning process because it's not just your technical skills that are needed, it's actually your people skills, you know, in my role, I get to interact with developers on a daily basis, both internally and externally, I get to see problems that external developers are facing in their codebase, but also see the challenges internally in their code base.
The unique thing about kind of these challenges is I'm also, you know, best equipped to help both parties, you know, best equipped to help the external developer, but also best equipped in internally to say, OK, these are things that we could take back as feedback on what external developers are currently facing challenges they're facing.
This is kind of a general theme of a problem externally, people are facing developers are facing and how can we solve this for all developers where they don't have to think about this problem. So, very different space from my previous role, right? And I think, you know, initially it can be very challenging to adapt to change.
But I think it's very important as a software engineer, you need to be able to adapt, you need to, you need to be able to learn new things, you know, you need to be able to test yourself in different circumstances, not just in the space that you're best comfortable with, right?
And I even like you too, perhaps you can also share, you know, even in your current role, transitioning from what your background was to the current role and how, how you see perhaps the challenges that, well, you didn't anticipate it anticipate.
So for example, with a company with a background in, you know, computer science, but in your current role, you can see that maybe like, oh, I wasn't actually expecting, you know, this level of non technical aspect playing in, you know, you know, really being needed in this role, maybe you can kind of share, share on that.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you, you, you were on a roll like you have, you know, there's always those students in high school that the teacher says write an essay on XYZ and they just do a great job. They, you know, o on answering that question and I think that's what you did. You, I'm just trying to reiterate some of the things you mentioned. But talking about the interview process, I had a few thoughts on that.
But I wanted you to really get to where you were going and you got there and you talked about the importance of feedback and being honest, all those things. I hope that I know, I don't just hope I know people, I believe people will take a lot of value from it because it's not just for Apple, this is for any major, any corporation, in fact, and I've been in those interviews as well and saying, I don't know, is painful, especially when you've prepared so much.
But sometimes you just have to, to be honest and let the ego out of the way and say, I really don't know this, but I'm open to learn. So I want to thank you for sharing all that information already. So I appreciate that there's something I'm going to go to from when you were talking about being involved with developers that I want to transition to. But I'll respond to your question about my background and the challenges that I faced. So currently I'm working in the security space.
So I do mostly cloud security specifically for Microsoft products and I interface with clients. So I work mostly with large corporations in the United States and around the world as well. And the one of the biggest skill set that is unspoken of is the people skill set because you can come into those meetings and you have an executive director in front of you, of X corporation saying, ah, we were using this security product before and now we want to move to this security product.
These were the issues we had and this is what we're looking to solve the problem. We need a solution to bridge these gaps. If you just only know the technical stuff, you probably won't convince them to spend the enormous amount of money that you're prepared to spend. You have to be able to here between the lines. What really the company is struggling with because sometimes it's not even that they're struggling, it might be more of an economic thing.
They're not necessarily struggling with a technical issue. They're actually really telling you that the previous product was too expensive or they're telling you that this seems to be the sentiment of the board and they want to just move in that direction. So you wanna make sure you can hear, listen through the lines. And then when you respond, you want to respond, saying I get you, I hear what you're saying between the lines and this is what we can do to help that situation.
So for instance, sometimes we go in saying, well, Microsoft has the E five license, it's a very expensive license. Uh and it's gonna cost X amount of money when you implement it, we can use Sentinel as your, as, you know, as your scene tool or so tool. And if you want to implement Defender for office for your entire organization globally, this is how long it's going to take, but that's not really what they're asking.
You can go in and be like, OK, you know, I hear what you're saying, we'd also have the F five license, we have the E three license, we have these other licenses that could get you this, this and this and it's not going to be the E FIVE license, but it will solve. If I'm hearing you correctly, it will solve the situation. You're, you're going at, you're not having a technical conversation at this point. This is diplomacy and I, you know, but my role is a technical role.
Do you see how my skill sets in computer science, technology, it and security is not what would have gotten us that, that deal, it is the ability to listen and regurgitate according to what this director is asking for. So that's one of the things that I quickly found out and I started to be very, very mindful of that. So that's, that's one of them. Does that kind of answer one of some of your questions? It does.
And thanks for sharing because, you know, perhaps in early stages of someone's career, you really need to own the tech, your technical skills, you know, like in your early stages of your career. I'm a strong advocate, you know, own your technical skills, know your stuff. But I think as you get, you start getting to your meat level, OK, you, you start realizing very quickly. Uh, this is very unspoken in the early stage and it almost becomes like, um, like a quick sharp reality me way actually.
Well, as much as I've owned my technical skills, there's this other skill sets that I need to own and it's in that point, you know, it can come as a shock. So having these conversations early on, I think it is prime and is important, right?
I think even even within the organization, you know, having the level of conversation with your colleagues, networking with them, not just about what they are doing immediately that affects you, but also what they are doing that are, you know, with other teams. Mhm And what they are doing in the broader organization, the product people, the design people, networking with these folks. Because that way you're also, you're, you're also able to share your technical knowledge to them.
You're not just because what's more appreciated I find is sharing technical knowledge in a way non technical people can digest. Thank you. Uh Really what sets you apart? Yes. And that's really what a non technical person say. Actually, this person is a great engineer. He was able to explain it like, you know, a mind blowing than you owning your technical skills and your own silo. Well, no one's gonna be able to appreciate that just right. Right.
So, I, I think that's kind of a, an unspoken part of it. Yes, I agree with the networking part with your colleagues and no one, you know, I've been on. So II, I give this story. So we, we were doing recruiting and I was part of the recruiting team.
We're going, you know, and I was talking with, you know, II, I tried to find time to talk with someone who is senior very senior in my, uh in the, in that and that we had, we traveled somewhere to, to do this whole recruiting thing event and him and I were just having lunch. I mean, I, I saw that he was having lunch by himself, went to meet him, talked to him. Next thing, you know, I'm asking him what he's up to what he's doing in the office.
And he told me about this, uh this great opportunity that he's working on and these people he's talking to. And the next thing, you know, he asked me, hey, I'm looking for X person who has ex skills that can help with this new opportunity that we're, we're, we're producing it. It's a big opportunity too. And I just, I fit like 90% of that skill set. Maybe not all of it.
I was like, hey, well, interesting enough, I've worked on a project that was like, this and he's like, ok, well, well, I mean, I'll let you know. Right. And that's the idea of network and it's just people are, you talk with them, you break the ice and you find out what you genuinely care about what they're doing. Right. You're not just talking for the sake of talking.
It's not, I want to get something from you just, how are you doing, what's going on and then from that you build a relationship and they will remember you if something is necessarily needed, right? But even beyond that, where I'm actually getting at is that you might realize that there's another position or there's another variant of your position somewhere in the company that you could, your specific skill sets could fill. I'll give you, I kind of told you this before the call, but I do.
My position has nothing to do with the marketing in my company. Nothing but from talking with people, I realize we're working on this product, we're building this, we're building that. And I was like, hey, you know, would you guys like for me to make a quick video on this idea that that's brewing. It's like, yeah, sure. Are you sure you can do it? So, yeah, I used to do this a long time ago and I still do it today so I can help out.
OK. Now I helped out, I made the video, they loved it and that opened up a whole new broadened position for me, you know, that I am now fulfilling in co in conjunction with what I already do, right? That it broadens my sphere of influence, it broadens the people I connect with the people I know.
And also lets people know that there's a certain level of visibility just because I was able to realize from conversations that there is a skill set that I have, that is outside our scope of work that can fill out, fill something up in the company. So when you connect with people and talk, you realize what I can do, I can help with that, you know, and that gives you that visibility and helps, you know, that's my perspective on it.
No, I think that that's really interesting that you mentioned that influence. I think something that's very important is the more, the more you broaden your knowledge, the more influence you have, the more influence you have, the more valuable you become, maybe something we should probably talk about is the different career path.
But you know, software engineers have so you could go like the technical route or the managerial route and that difference because I find, I think really my career, I'm starting to have a lot of these conversations with people. Yeah. And I find it very interesting, right? Because I find there's also this is natural progression for an individual to start as an like an individual contributor. And, you know, kind of want to work their way to a managerial role.
However, I also find that, you know, sometimes you don't exactly need to be a manager, right. So having a greater influence as an individual contributor, I'm being able to have responsibility, you know, within our position and can say actually, you know, he's responsible for this makes you very invaluable. Like you don't exactly need to go through that managerial route to get that, to have that level of influence. You reach your contributor, you can and you can really grow in that space.
There are many I CS that, I mean, I know quite a few I CS who are, I mean, people listen to them as though they're managers because they, they body that role so well, but they don't want the responsibilities that they, well, I don't want to use the word responsibilities. They don't want the extra baggage that comes with the actual title of being a manager. That's not your personality.
Um So they prefer the IC role, however, they do very well in the space of mentorship, advice, counseling, in owning things and explaining things to people. And so you see them really blossoming that IC and I'm very happy that a lot of companies have recognized that not everyone wants to be a manager. Some people really love the technology and that's what they want to do, but that doesn't, that should not stunt their growth, you know.
So I actually wanna ask you about developers and products, right? So you're working in Apple and you're working with developers, your, your ears on the ground listening to their concerns as well as the issues you may have in your code base. So I want to give an example, let's say you, there's, there is a company that's looking to create an app and I or, or let's just say there's a young young guy who's trying to make an app, put it on the app store.
And let's say this app is like, uh do you know the uh what's it called, the Autotrader app, for instance?
Yeah. Yeah. So uh basically something, something like that seems like a start up, I think Carvana, I don't know if they have an app right now, but basically they're trying to do something that will change the industry, something that wasn't done normally before, what is some of the advice you would give to them that would allow them to actually be able to get to that point of deploying their application in the app store?
Ta Let's start with this as for example, as a beginner, as we begin our programmer or beginner entrepreneur that is also a beer and you're developing on Apple's platform, there are lots of resources available for you to get go that you can, that you can leverage on.
So for example, you know, being stuck on a technology, not having a good amount of knowledge on a technology or just having to troubleshoot an issue, you know, with uh with the developer program, you know, you you accredited, I believe two T si so that's a technical support incident, right?
And that really gives you an opportunity to actually talk to an Apple engineer about a specific issue that you're facing and they can really guide you through that and provide you know, technical cult level of support, right? And that would unblock you from the get go, right? Where did you say this resource was? So in the Apple developer program, right? So for example, when you are, when when you are uh you'd have to look this up on, on on the website.
So this Apple developer program is a paid membership for developers. You know, when you're about to deploy your app to the app store before you do that gives you some of them a certain level of um entitlements software you're developing on the platform, right? A paid uh membership, you know, also includes uh this technical support component of it, two of which you know, comes credited with your account.
A lot of Apple developers are familiar with it with the Apple developer program, but I'm not familiar with the technical support that comes with it. So most times, you know, you you don't even use that technical support because they're like, oh maybe I don't need this. So, but actually, you know, it can help unblock a lot of your issues and it can help, you know, get you going.
So for example, as a beginner, if I'm trying to learn something or if I'm developing something and I have an issue with that, I can just follow one of that. I get to speak with an Apple engineer directly via email and you know, they can provide guidance and best practices to unblock me right now. As an entrepreneur, I'm familiar with this program, Apple runs is you know, the Apple Apple entrepreneurship camp, right?
So this is where you as an entrepreneur can come with whatever product that you're trying to build. And it's also a way for you to network with all the entrepreneurs. Uh but also it's also a way for you to talk to Apple engineers about some of the challenges that you're facing in your code base or, or talk about specific technologies that you're trying to implement and get firsthand best practice guidance uh in unblocking you. And I think that's huge.
You know, I talked to a lot of developers in the entrepreneurship camp and learn about what the various ideas they're trying to do, help unblock them. Um And I find, you know, develop uh developers in the community, really love that being able to interact with an Apple engineer, being able to get, you know, that best practice guidance, being able to talk to some of the challenge facing life.
So those are some of the resources as well as what what, what is the name of the resource for the for the entrepreneurs? It's an apple entrepreneur camp. Now, I believe you have to apply to the camp and there's kind of a selection process that goes on, but it's out there that, you know, not, not a lot of folks are familiar with, right? And then all the resources that I think are great are the forms uh the developer forums. I find the films is great because there are actually a lot of it.
You can think about it like an archive with so much resource in it because there's just so many questions that are asked in the film that have been answered, right? So you can just start from whatever issue you have and you probably find the answer or you can ask the question and best believe that you know, an Apple engineer somewhere is looking at that and trying to figure out how best they can assist you with that.
So that's another resource for developers out there with, you know, a host of tutorials, but on the API doc pages and what have you. And if you find that, oh, actually, I think a specific tutorial might be beneficial for the community at large. You can always submit like a feedback report, you know, actually for like an enhancement that you would like, you know, tutorial on this and you know, Apple engineers will consider, you know, for consideration no promises.
But at least I would get out there that, you know, actually, you know, the developer community wants more tutorials on this, more cyber projects and this and that that helps.
OK. So right now you've given some insight on, on resources on the other side of it when it comes to entrepreneurship and developers, you know, back at school, there were, there's always like a group of three or four guys who had an idea they wanted to launch and a professor would come alongside them and maybe use it for their capstone, whatever the case may be. What is some of your experience in terms of going through the hurdles of entrepreneurship?
Because I've been in that space before and I know how difficult it can be. So you know that you are able to kind of see it from a different angle. What are some of the things to keep in mind for new entrepreneurs and new developers, one of which I think is important is prototyping your idea. It really fast as an entrepreneur, you want to be able to demonstrate the product that you're talking about at some point. So I think prototype is important, rapid nutrition is important.
So you know, a framework that really allows you to do it, do this in as a developer on a platform, Swifty Y right. Swifty Y it's almost a a beta framework where it allows you to rapidly hoh rapidly prototype, you know you are and really speeds up that development unlike traditional or like, you know, the previous alternative, which is uh UIK, right? So you have UIK and I, these are U I frameworks, right? Um You, I just allows you I it on a pro right? Same code that you can have in your kit.
That might be, I don't know, 300 line of code might be like 20 line of code in. So that's huge that lets you develop faster, that you sample stuff faster. That also lets you mark your data without actually developing it without actually deploying it to a backend server really fast, right? So for example, you could prototype mock your data, you know, if you want to do a demo and kind of share that idea. This is actually how it works. So you allows you to do that fast and quick.
So that's you know, so many developers should think about when you're developing maybe an app. For example, the IO application is, you know, you know that you think but you IIK AJ U framework, right? When you think about what would get me to an MVP faster, that's something developers need to think about. And also not I find this a lot even as a as an engineer, not not getting too bottled in some of the need, need greedy details of implementation, right?
You can always go back and fix stuff but you always want to I personal philosophy is first of all, have the ugly implementation. They each rate on the ugly implementation. Right. At least I'll get to something nicer than having no implementation at all. Right. And I think, you know, it's kind of the theme with engineers is you always start for perfection, but I, I would always advise, don't start from perfection, uh, start from the imperfection and more to perfection. Right.
So, start from uh, stuff that isn't great stuff and stuff that isn't optimized just yet and optimize that you, that I think that's very important, right? Don't get too bottled on implementation. It's huge. Yeah. Don't overcomplicate stuff. You know, even as an engineer, I find that it's easier to, you know, think of complex architecture because you want to make things look elaborate, but it's actually not functional, right?
Um You would have, you know, you have this different architectural patterns that's out there right now, but you need to be, you need to think specific to your project, you know, what's functional, what's uh what's gonna allow me to move fast? What's, what's going to make the cold more readable and digestible and you can always go ahead and optimize that. So those are some of the things to think about.
Well, you know, you've talked about it, architect, architecture and that's partially what I do for the most part actually is a, is a huge part of what I do. So that makes me want to ask you a little bit about security I mean, um I'm big on the importance of security in, in the, in the world we live in today because data is so easily accessible and a lot of people are not aware of how to protect their data. And we put a lot of data into our applications every day.
What are some of the things that developers need to keep in mind so that their customers can actually feel comfortable to put in sensitive data into these applications that are on our phones today now? Ok. Right at the back, I'll just say, you know, take this with a grain of salt. This is my personal advice, my own opinion, you know, as a developer, when you're thinking of security, III I do believe you, you need to think about what's best for the customer.
How can I provide privacy for my customers? I need to think about, I need to go to the approach of list access required. So is it a request in all access? You know, go with the list, what's the list I need? You know, what's the least privilege I need? What's the least exposure I need? What's the need? Right? And always give the the customer the option to decline, right?
Tell them what you're trying to the what what you're trying to use the data for, but also give them the option to decline and also handle gracefully when they decline, right? So give them that option, tell them you know, I give them the option to decline now instead of going to the route of trying to get the data without the customers complete. Right. Because I think once the customer finds out there can be a brick and trust, um, I, I didn't know this application was actually using my audio.
Um, and I didn't know I give them permission to do that. Right. And then it's a brick of trust. I actually, I don't, maybe I don't want this app to use my audio, but then they end up dealing in the app, right? That doesn't do you any good.
Um So always, you know, go with the access, go with the mindset of, you know, this, this access required, you know, how can I implement this future without, without prying without being, you know, invasive and how can I, you know, protect the customer's privacy? So either it's en encryption, either it's um having a secure database either it's, you know, having some, you know, multifacet multi factor authentication, all right, even even in the approach to, you know, implementation as well, right?
There are some implementation details that, you know, don't exactly follow security best practices, right? So having thinking about all of these things is important, right? So you talked about multi factor authentication, which is great and you talked about uh encryption um which when it comes to, if you don't know the answer to, that's fine as well, let's say, you know, how banks have access to very personal data.
If you know what are some of the encryption techniques that's or other kinds of security techniques that we need to keep in mind when it comes to building these applications or we talked about a secure database as well? What are some of the I just wanted you to go a little bit low level before we wrap up. My personal preference with encryption is try to encrypt everything on device. Once the leaves the device without being encrypted, it's not secure.
Once I can impute a set of numbers on my device. And I'm sending that data on encrypted to some backend server. It's not secure anymore because somewhere between me entering that data and that data being transmitted to a backend server, there could be a man in the middle. So I II I would always say, you know, secure everything on the device first, you know, send encrypted data to the back end. You can now decrypt the data with some algorithm on your back end, right?
This this automatically provides trust um that actually my data from the get go on devices and encrypted. And also I'd always say, you know, try as much as possible to have everything on device. Uh because no, the device is almost a containerized environment. There's little that could happen on device that could break security. But once it leaves device, you, you expose it to an amount of factors automatically that can make that data unsecure.
Whereas on device in a particular app, there's a certain level of security that you can enforce. Oh, I don't want my data to be shared across different apps. I don't want my data to be shared across apps from the same develop, you know, in the same app group or whatever, you know, or, or I don't want whatever data I entered text field should be accessible in the copy and paste system, right?
So you can, you can enforce certain level of security on device that might not be possible once you start transmitting this off device, right? So I think that's, that's the way, you know, you know, developers should start thinking about security. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, you definitely. Thank you. I appreciate it.
You know, sometimes it's easy, not easy, but it's nice for us, it's great for us to talk about high level stuff, the journey, the procedure, but we're in a technical field and that's something that I'm working on. We, we, you and I talked about it a little bit earlier, but we will have some more technical facing podcast and discussions where we go a little bit deeper.
But I also don't want to alienate the audience that is looking to the student who wants to get into, to a tech company or the entrepreneur who just wants to get their mind around what it takes to build an app, right? Before we start talking about an actual code base or SDKS, we don't want to alienate them because they can look at it and like an interview like this is out of my breath. I'm just, I'm not even interested.
So I need to make sure that that's why I try to be careful as to not jump into that level of detail too quickly. But we will, I appreciate all the answers you've given me. We have a few more minutes left and I have to talk about this because it's the buzzword of the year. What is your thought or what are your thoughts on artificial intelligence? And what are your experience so far with it to the best of what you can tell us? That's the best of all I can share.
Yes. Yeah. The buzzword going around the buzzword that making every star shoot to the moon, you know, uh I find, I find nowadays a lot of start up slap the water A I and they get funny. It has been around for a long time. I think what's, what's more in circulation now? That's really talked about it. All these large language models, right.
And even the, even those, I, I've also been around for a little while, you know, I think the main paper was released in 2017 or there about so these have been around for a while. They are not eat right. I also like, think about a, I really as a combination of multiple things.
Not just, you know, not just all, not just the, the language models, let's even break it down a little bit, you know, a system that can take a certain, you know, conditionals and based on the parameters you give, give you an output. Sounds a lot like what they're calling A I right now. Now there's a lot of things underneath, but really that just sounds like a program, something you can give it an input and it gives you an output. And there's stuff that happens in the middle, right?
That just seems like a computer program to me. But I think, you know, these uh language models are really going to revolutionize how we interact with data. So uh and how data is being interpreted, right? So I, you know, you know, you have GP T three GP T four Gemini Gemini that just got recently barred. Gemini has been introduced to bar. So you have this, you know, language models that take some impute, understand this imputes in terms of context. I think that's very important.
They are able to keep context to say to these imputes and these parameters and you know, elaborate on this context and you know, fine tune this context into keywords that, that they can query and build, you know, next outputs around um really go to rev revolution. That's how we interact with data. Even for example, you know, we like chatbots, but also you know Gemini that just got released has um you know, different like multi models where you right where you have images uh text a speech.
It's crazy. You know, think about you can give, you can give an image can be an impute and you can fill a context from an in there no way to say, you know an image 1000 words. So context that you wouldn't exactly just being able to immediately point to. Now these systems are able to, you know, interpret this image into context and give you know context that and give output based on whatever input parameter you want, right?
I think that's huge, you know, I think about this for example, and and I think this is the next facet that is really going to, you know, have uh enterprise value where you are able to integrate this like language models into applications.
For example, let's let's take an enterprise, for example, a company, right, you're able to in integrate these models where now maybe I want to build some sort of system in my company that interacts with the data within the company and allow employees to query this data or you know, I want to build a marketing marketing campaign based on my customer base and these are the parameters of my customer base. This that's the real enterprise value of these things.
I think now only for example, even to end users, right? Think about if you had some sort of integration with your phone. And this this model is able to understand context of what you use on your phone. So almost like your own personal assistance. And we've had this around Siri and uh Google and Alexa. But being able to integrate with the whole ecosystem, your contact, your messages, your pictures, your other applications and seamlessly, you know, interface with these things.
It reminds me of most people have, well, not most people, but a lot of people have seen Iron Man, right? So Jarvis was not Siri, right? That was Jarvis was really if you think about it, a large language model that was multimodal, that could see and understand Mr Stark's context and give him the best advice or at least carry out the tasks he needed specified to his customized requirements. Um So you're right in terms of the level that it's going to.
And I think that's it will also, I mean, Microsoft has github Copilot now, which really helps with programming. So imagine if we had that in college, I mean that all those exams and all those not even exams, the homework. My goodness because you know how um I know that there was, there were times where I would go to Sam for instance and be like, look, I need help with this in this, in this homework et cetera and it's not always easy.
But now with help Copilot and you were talking about the enterprise value there's a security copilot and a couple of other integrated large language models that if you have, I believe either the E five license or above, you can actually and put it around your company where it's stays within your data, stays within your company. But let's say you, you missed a meeting, you can ask what was this, what was summarized in that meeting? And it gives you a good context for your job, right?
Like this is what you miss and these are the tasks that they ask that you would, you should do. And there's a lot you have your SharePoint or your data repositories and you can, you can look for context like, OK, we have so many documents in this folder. Um I would, I'm actually looking to find out whether Emmanuel had had purchased X item, you know, in the last couple of years. And how can that inform me about whether he will purchase more items? This Christmas, right? That's pretty amazing.
And I don't know how much you've interacted with them. But what would you say that people who are looking to get, how can people who are looking to get into the tech industry optimize these tools that are available to pursue their dreams and then we can wrap up on that. That's a good question. I think you can really leverage, you know, like please models chat G BT Bard but to really to help you almost like, you know, how do I put it, give context to your resume.
For example, you can take a text and a rewrite this. Fix the type. Yes, that's one way you can also learn new things from these technologies. I find, for example, I give you an example, I was playing around with Bart last night and you know, Geminis introduced into, I was like, you know, let me kind of quiz this in a little bit if I, I set it up with barbers, you know, give me barbers around my area and I also bar it's like, it's like give me barbers around like this location and it did OK.
What's the price of this barbers? And it did? OK. I was like, hm, interesting. Let me take this a step further. Hm I was like, OK, construct the swift I view to me. Um that has a button, right? It did. I was like, OK, you know, keep this part in this parameter, explain. And I took it a step but I was like, oh, explain what's happening in this view to me and how this view can have memory issues. And it did. And I was like, OK, I I can actually learn something here, right?
And I was like, OK, how do I verify this data? And this is what I found interesting about, but you can actually compare it with search results in Google. And I was like, OK, this is very neat. So that's another avenue. Like you can use these tools to learn new stuff too because think about it, it's a repository of correlated knowledge that is fine tune. Well, you just ask it and it will return. So you can almost. Exactly.
And you just talked about Swift U I. Instead of going to learn Swift U I from scratch, you can actually query Bard or Chat GP T and it will give you some kind of stepping stone to start pursuing your prototype for your app idea, right? So there's that and um I will say that we still need to verify just in terms of the technical part because I've worked with some of these things to, you know, give me this program that does this so I can or, or debug this code or whatever the case is.
And A either he doesn't fully understand the context or B it uses something that should work but does not work, right? Like there is no such thing as this particular parameter, but when you look at the parameter, it looks like it should exist. And so you got to be careful to go over your, your what you what is A I generated, right? And I think it's very important for people to understand what this large language models are. They are very much predictive tools, predictive tools.
They're trying to predict the next word based on a large repository of fine tuning and data sets. They, they predict. So I think it's very important. It doesn't, when I, when I say context, I understand the context, it understands the context of the, of the imputes. You give it, it could break it down into different structures for it to interpret and give you the data.
But however, the way it's calculated the data, it's in a predictive way all x what, what was the most likely word to go next position? So very predictive, it doesn't exact and to some level of to some degree of accuracy, it's really good, right? But in no way or form should you take? What Bart Chachi says, as y you should uh you know, do your own research, understand this stuff and, and this is why I think this is why I think like the traditional search engine is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Yeah. Well, that's good. I mean, we can talk about A I for another hour, but thank you for the insights you gave there. So we've come to the end of our, of our podcast here and it's been a pleasure to talk with you Emmanuel. You hear your journey, how you got to apple some of the challenges you faced.
And I really believe that listeners will be blessed and you know, they'll gain value from your journey and I hope to have you again and you know, sometime soon and we can talk about some other aspects of the tech career system and what we can do to improve our quality of life and actually be able to enjoy what we do because, and I wrap up with this, it is one thing to want to have a job in the tech industry. It's another thing to wake up every morning happy that you are doing what you're doing.
And I really hope that for everyone who's listening, that even when you do get your job in tech or tech adjacent, it doesn't have to be necessarily in tech, but it could be tech adjacent that you enjoy what you do because that's most likely where you'll do your best work. So with that said, thank you Emmanuel. And I hope that the listeners will be back for our next conversation and I appreciate your help today. Thank you, everyone for listening and uh we'll see you next time. Bye for now.