An Interview with Interview Expert Ian Douglas
Tags: beginners, codenewbie, career, podcast
Published: 2022-03-10 13:57:29

[Ian Douglas](https://twitter.com/iandouglas736) is a Senior Developer Advocate at [Postman](https://www.postman.com/) and is live-streaming his learning in public [on Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/iandouglas736). He loves developer education in all forms and is a strong proponent of accessible content and diversity in tech. He has about 26 years of professional experience in the industry as a developer, manager, director, DevOps engineer, business owner, freelance developer. 

This season, we’re helping you level up your interviewing skills! Each week [Lauren Lee](https://twitter.com/LoLoCoding), [Danny Ramos](https://twitter.com/muydanny), and industry experts will offer advice on navigating career progression within tech.

Do you have ideas about how we can make our show better? Or would you like to be a guest on an upcoming episode? Reach out to our #devrel team at devrel@newrelic.com. We would LOVE to hear from you with any questions, curiosities, and/or feedback you have in hopes of making this the best show possible!

👉 Give us a follow: [@LaunchiesShow](https://twitter.com/launchiesshow)

{% podcast https://dev.to/launchies/an-interview-with-interview-expert-ian-douglas %}

**Topics Covered On This Episode:**

- Ian’s Background & Expertise
- Progression From Coding To Teaching
- [The Tech Interview Guide](https://techinterview.guide/)
- Tech Interview Accessibility 
- Common Interview Questions
- Demand For Specific Languages/Tech Stacks 
- Tech Interviewing Resources
- Working For [Mitch Hedberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg) 

**Links:**

- [techinterview.guide](https://techinterview.guide/): Free Technical Interview Advice from Ian Douglas
- [Streams](https://techinterview.guide/streaming/) - Thursday and Sunday - [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/iandouglas736)/[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/iandouglas736/)/[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/techinterview.guide) 
- [Vets Who Code](https://vetswhocode.io/)
- [Pramp](https://www.pramp.com/)
- [HackerPen](https://www.hackerpen.io/)  
- [Interviewing.io](https://interviewing.io/) 
- [Free Daily Email from Ian Re: Interview Prep](https://techinterview.guide/daily-email-series/) 
- [Ian’s Interview Prep Discord Server](https://discord.com/invite/VK58ZKcz9d)

**CTA (Call To Action):** Join the [New Relic Community Slack](https://newrelicusers.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-dh3gka4g-hxFc2GZ4PTXnarex27ZbUQ?utm_source=launchies#/shared-invite/email) and…

Build your board of people. Find three people in your network, friends that are also interested in tech, or people who are in tech now, and have them give you feedback or schedule one or two mock interviews. Tell us how it went!

👉 Follow [Launchies](https://twitter.com/LaunchiesShow/), [Lauren](https://twitter.com/lolocoding), and [Danny](https://twitter.com/muydanny) on Twitter! 


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**Transcript:**

Danny Ramos: Launchies is a tech podcast dedicated to helping early-career developers or soon-to-be devs.

Lauren Lee: We'll share insights on how to navigate these early opportunities and bring on experts from the tech industry to give advice on general career progression.

Danny: In the first season of our show, we focused on how people launched into their tech careers.

Lauren: And now, in Season Two, we want to offer advice on your career progression.

Danny: The next 12 episodes will be all about the interview and landing your first job.

Lauren: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Launchies. I am so excited to be here today with my co-host, Danny.

Danny: I feel like we always say we're excited. Let's say something new.

Lauren: You want a better adjective?

Danny: Yeah. I'm, for one, nervous.

Lauren: Are you lying? [laughter] I'd rather be authentic. Like, here's the thing, I'm a pretty enthusiastic human. And sometimes people...like, I'm going to push back on that. I am excited. And you know what? Fine, maybe I need a better vocabulary. You're right. I could find some thesaurus.com moments. But let me be stoked about this interview that we have coming up.

Danny: No, no, absolutely. You know what? Please be stoked. I'm just nervous. Can you please let me be nervous?

Lauren: Sure. [laughter] I'm [inaudible 1:32]

Danny: Because our next guest was actually my instructor when I was learning to code.

Lauren: Okay, so that actually was something that, I mean, I was so thrilled to do this interview because I think that dynamic is fascinating for me to watch. [laughs] There's something really wonderful about teacher-student relationship. And it was fun to be a fly on the wall to watch the two of you reconnect now that you are in industry. You've landed the job that you wanted to get and that he helped you find. It was just very full circle to hear you two swapping stories and also reminiscing and just sharing. I mean, he is a treasure trove of resources.

Danny: A super, super smart guy. And yeah, I was really happy to be able to get his information, just really just hear from him again. Not only that, but also just for him to agree to be on the show and share his resources and share his knowledge was really cool. And I honestly was going back into school mode. I was just sitting and listening. I was like, should I be taking notes? [laughter] 

Lauren: I can understand that. I think that's a fair...it's almost like a muscle, that memory that you're like, "Oh, wait, you're the expert here. And he is; he's an absolute expert in it. And yeah, I'm really --

Danny: Excited?

Lauren: Nope. 

Danny: [laughs]

Lauren: I am happy that the audience gets to listen to this conversation today. It was, for me personally, pretty fascinating to think about his trajectory into the role that he's in today, having done the opposite. I went from teacher to coder, and he went from coder to teacher. And so when we were talking about the guilt that one feels leaving the classroom, too, my first couple of years in the industry was plagued with that. 

And it was why I needed to find developer relations because I needed to feel like...I wanted to feel like I was giving back to people and making a difference in people's lives. Being an engineer at Amazon, I was not making an impact [laughter] Tell you what? I didn't move the needle there. And so yeah, it felt really cathartic almost for me to hear that he struggled with that also because, I don't know, once again, that message of you're not alone that he talks to really, really hit home for me.

Danny: I love that. I love that. I was going to say I completely understand but in a different way. I understand those feelings. I wasn't going to say that I completely understand because I've never been a teacher. [laughter] I guess I've taught improv one time, but that's not one and the same.

Lauren: Hey, I can appreciate a moment where someone feels empathy, though. So thanks. [laughs]

Danny: Look at us. We started getting angry at each other in the beginning. We laugh together.

Lauren: I know.

Danny: Now we're going through the emotions of maybe sadness right now.

Lauren: Is this friendship? Is this what it is? [laughter]

Danny: I don't know. I think that's what this is. My God. All right. Well, you know what? I think that's the perfect segue.

Lauren: Without further ado.

Danny: That's a perfect segue into this friendly interview that we have with our friend. 

Lauren: Enjoy. 

Danny: Enjoy. [laughter] 

Our guest is a Senior Developer Advocate at Postman and is live-streaming his learning in public on Twitch. He loves developer education in all forms and is a strong proponent of accessible content and diversity in tech. He has about 26 years of professional experience in the industry as a developer, manager, director, DevOps engineer, business owner, freelance developer. This guy has done just about everything. And he loves a good dad joke. [laughs] 

He also livestreams twice a week to give people free career advice for getting into the tech industry. He also said maybe throw in software teacher in there in the list of jobs because he was actually, in fact, my instructor while I was learning to code. Everyone, please welcome Ian Douglas.

[applause]

Ian Douglas: Because of love.

Lauren: When you're listing it, I'm like another one, another one. That's a lot of jobs, Ian.

Ian: He's done this, he's done this. Yeah, cue the Jurassic Park music too. It's like, this guy has been around for how long now? [laughter]

Lauren: I love it. It's a great suite of things. And I think that's going to make you just the perfect expert to be talking with today.

Ian: I guess, yeah. [laughter] Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this chat for a while. So thanks, I appreciate it.

Danny: Mainly because it's us, right?

Lauren: Sure. 

Ian: Yeah, of course. 

Danny: [laughs]

Lauren: I mean, student-teacher dynamic. I love that we get to play into that today.

Ian: For sure. I'll give you all the dirt on Danny. 

Danny: [laughs]

Lauren: Exactly. Thank you for...yeah, I mean, that's the goal for me. That's what I'm here for. [laughs]

Danny: Please, Ian, give us an introduction. We've always been starting with tell us a little bit about yourself because that's the most amazing question to hear in the interview process. But who are you? Who is Ian Douglas?

Lauren: [laughs] Maybe your background?

Ian: I was born at a young age. So I'm originally from Canada. I grew up in Canada and, went to high school and college around The Great Lakes, lived in Ottawa for a couple of years. And I started out in a little town that was literally 1000 People, moved to a town that was like 100,000 people, moved to a city of like a million people. I'm like, this is too many people. I can't handle this many people. 

Danny: [laughs]

Ian: So, of course, I moved to Los Angeles, which is just a ridiculous amount of people. And within six months, I'm like, I hate California. I'm moving back to Canada. And that was right around early 2001 when the first .com bust happened. But I ended up in a job at a startup where we were processing credit reports. And our business went through the roof as everybody else's businesses were collapsing because people were buying houses with stock options that were suddenly worthless. 

And so our business took off as everybody had to refinance house loans and car loans and everything else. So I'm like, I guess I got job security. I'll stay in California for a while. I met a fantastic young lady who ended up becoming my wife, and we started having kids. And it's like, I guess I'm going to stay in the States for a while. So I got my citizenship. And yeah, I've been here ever since. It's been great.

Lauren: I love it. I'm so curious to learn about how you navigated the switch from being a software engineer in that space to teaching. Tell us about that, how you navigated that, I guess. 

Ian: I think at a certain point as a software developer, as you gain the ranks within a company and become a senior level developer, you're really leaned on not just hey, can you write better code? But also, how do you mentor the other people around you to level them up to where you are?

And so one thing that I learned is becoming a software teacher just having experience doesn't make you a good teacher. You still have to know how to teach people. You still have to know how to mentor people and how to make it engaging for them. When you're working with someone on your team, and you're doing something like pair programming, it's easy to stay engaged one on one because you're like, this is how I do the thing. This is my process. You get into kind of that driver and navigator kind of workflow. 

But when you're getting into a classroom environment where suddenly I've got to teach 30 people or more, it's a lot different story of how do I keep everybody engaged? Because everybody's got different skill levels. Some people are coming into a coding bootcamp where they've got a little bit of experience, and some people have never touched a computer before. And how do you keep all of those people working on things where one group of people is not zoning out because you're way too advanced or another group is not zoning out because they feel like you're condescending your knowledge to cater to the people that need to get caught up? How do you differentiate those? 

And so there was actually quite a lot of learning curve for me to become a teacher. My first six months at the Turing School of Software & Design were actually pretty rough around, like, I'm coming in, and I'm so excited to be their teacher.

Danny: Same here, actually. [laughter]

Ian: Of the seven-month program, six months were rough for you?

Danny: For six months, I was like, wow, this is not going well. [laughter]

Ian: And then the last month, I'm like, "Danny, you're graduating." He's like, "Phew."

Danny: Yeah. I was like, wow, weird. 

Lauren: I've made it.

Ian: But yeah, I think getting to that point as a senior developer where you're mentoring other people around you and then moving into a management role where you have to learn to find joy in the success of others I think helped prepare me to be a teacher of now I've got this classroom of students and just being super excited about oh, they get the thing. They're going to go do something awesome with that. 

And so that really led well into a developer relations kind of role or developer advocacy kind of role where now you get to teach things on a much larger scale and much bigger audience, perhaps global impact, where you can share some kind of idea. And you watch those light bulbs go off and go, oh, they're going to go do something really cool with that. And so to get to work at a company like Postman, where we got 17,18 million users or something like that on the platform now, is pretty fantastic because the tool is well-known, and I actually taught it at Turing. 

Lauren: That's cool. 

Ian: It felt like a bit of a cheat code going through their job interview process where it's like, "Tell us about yourself." I'm like, "Well, here's a video of me teaching your product to students. I taught API design." And they're like, "Would you like a job here?" I'm like, "Yes, I would."

Danny: Immediately, they're like, "We'll take you."

Lauren: Yes, please. [laughs] That's so cool.

Danny: Yeah. Was there a part of your life where you were like, okay, you know what? I just want to be a teacher now. You had been teaching as a senior software developer and had been doing that mentorship within a company. But was there a certain point in your life where you were like, maybe I just want to take a step away from working within companies and just focus more primarily on students? 

Ian: That's a great question. I think I got to a point where I had been in the industry for so long, and I had been in management and been back as a contributor and was dabbling with getting back into full-time management again. Then someone that I worked with at SendGrid reached out one day, and they're like, "Hey, you like running these meetups, and you like helping people, and you like making sure other people around you can learn and grow. There's this coding school down the road called Turing. You should go talk to them about being a mentor." 

And I think that's really where I picked up from an external point of view of like now, and I'm not just doing it within a company, but now I'm impacting other people. My dad was a college professor for a little while. 

Lauren: Oh, get out.

Ian: Yeah, he actually taught industrial woodworking. And my mom was always big into helping teach people things. And so I had a lot of good influence just within my family around help other people out in some way. And it was usually behind the scenes like, didn't want a lot of spotlight. And so just learning that humble nature of like, I'm just here to help. I'm not doing this for recognition, prestige, anything like that. I'm just here to help people. And so that really rubbed off on me. 

And that's something that I've still held to very closely today where it's like, I got this website techinterview.guide, and I do live streaming around that, around interview prep, and how to get into the job industry. And it's like, I don't do this to make money. I'm not doing this to be world-famous. I'm not expecting thousands of followers or anything like that. I don't monetize anything I do. I'm just here to help people. And honestly, just hearing stories of like, "Hey, I followed some of your advice, and I got a job." It's like, that's all I need to hear, right?

Danny: Yeah.

Lauren: Oh my gosh, it's the best feeling. But I also think that that's what establishes trust, and it allows people to feel like that they can really learn from you. And it's this authentic relationship that people can build. And, as you mentioned, with Postman, you're impacting so many developers now versus in a classroom. I can certainly relate to that as a prior teacher. It's like, okay, I have my 30 students in this space, and that one-to-one is so impactful. But now, this one-to-many relationship that you have going you could have massive ripple effect and in a positive way, which just feels really exciting. So I'm stoked for you.

Ian: I would often tell the students at Turing it’s like, the chances that I'm going to go invent something that changes the world are super tiny, but I can change the world by changing your world. Like, I taught Danny, and so now I get to watch Danny impact his world and the realm around him and watch the ripple effect of that and know that I had a small piece in that and all of the waves that happened because of Danny and what Danny is doing. It's like, I helped that a tiny bit. It's a team effort. It takes a village.

Danny: I can tell you right now, you definitely got me my job. You were obviously my instructor for Mod 3? Was it Mod 3?

Ian: Yeah.

Lauren: What does that mean as a non-Turing listener?

Danny: So the seven months are broken up into Four Mods, and each mod is five weeks, if I'm remembering correctly.

Ian: Each module was six weeks, and then there was usually a week or two in between, usually one week in between.

Danny: Where you would cry and rest. 

Ian: [laughs]

Danny: Well, actually, no, less crying. You would just look outside. You would go outside and see sunlight for once, and you'd be like oh --

Ian: Catch up on your laundry. Remind your family what you look like. [laughter]

Danny: Maybe try to get a haircut. I don't know and then --

Ian: Find some new music that we can play on your birthday, you know? [laughs]

Danny: Yeah. Oh my gosh. That was so fun. Lauren, just inside story, Lovisa was very active in Turing Slack. So she had reached out to Ian, and there was a song I was obsessed with that I would listen to all the time that's a Cumbia song. It was my birthday, and Louisa had reached out to Ian and got someone else within the Mod. I think maybe it was Madeleine to photoshop pictures of me, and everyone made it their background.

Lauren: Oh my gosh.  

Danny: And then Ian played the song in the morning, and everyone's saying, "Happy birthday to me."

Lauren: Aww.

Danny: It was really great and then in the middle --

Lauren: Is that our call to action is that everyone listens to that song? [laughter] Can we put a link to it in the show notes?

Danny: It's El Dipy.I guess I got to find out what it's actually called. I can't remember.

Lauren: Okay, we'll put it in. I love it. That's so sweet. 

Danny: Yeah, it was very sweet. In the middle of COVID and everything, that was so special. 

Lauren: Yeah, when you're feeling isolated, that feels really good. I don't know; I think coding bootcamps that can establish, yeah, that sense of community during it that's an indicator of a powerful cohort. And just that support is so necessary when you're in that. It can be tough, yeah. 

Danny: Was it difficult to leave Turing, Ian? Or were you just like, this is my time I got to go? 

Ian: Oh, that's a good question. It was -- [laughs]

Lauren: That's a tough question.

Danny: Turing is so strong. The community there it's like --

Ian: The community is huge. 

Danny: It's huge.

Ian: It was tough going remote, to be honest. I had a hard time going remote. I really thrived on that classroom energy of just being in the room with people, not because I'm at the front of the room talking and people are paying attention to me. It was never about that. But it was just you get to really engage with the people in the room. 

And you can spot the person that's maybe having that off day. And while you're taking a break, you can reach out to them and be like, "Hey, I noticed..." you're like, "What's going on?" And just have more of that one on one connection. As soon as we went remote, we kind of lost that. There's nothing impromptu anymore around, "Hey, let's just have a quick chat." We got to schedule everything, like, hey, let's get on Zoom, or let's get on Google Meet or whatever and have a meeting. And now it's like, oh no, my instructor wants to meet with me. What happened? 

Danny: [laughs]

Ian: And it's like, "No, I just want to check in with you, see how you're doing kind of thing." And so that actually became really hard. And when Turing announced, like, hey, we're going to stay remote 100, that was when I started thinking like ah, I really wanted to be back in person someday. And so that that got me thinking a little bit about do I want to stay teaching remote? And yes, I did want to keep teaching. 

And there were also, like; I had my own ambitions about I want to teach deeper engineering principles. I want to get more into scalability and security and deeper API design things like that. And Turing just wasn't the place for that. It's meant to be a beginner-level school, and it's meant to teach the basics and get you out into the job. I was happy to play that role and play that part, but I wanted to go deeper. I realized that to have that opportunity; I was going to have to kind of pursue something else instead. And so it was a tough choice, for sure.

Danny: Was the techinterview.guide was that always...because I don't remember that when I was at Turing. Did leaving Turing inspire you to create that website?

Ian: So the content of that I had actually had around since I started mentoring at Turing. So I started mentoring there in 2014, and within a month of like, hey, come be a mentor to our students on the back-end program and teach them about Rails and APIs and things like that, it quickly became like, hey, do any of our mentors know anything about resumes and tech interviews? And I'm like, yeah, I've been a manager. I've looked over tons of resumes and know all about interviews. 

Lauren: Let me help. [laughs] Cool.

Ian: Yeah, and so I became the resume guy for a while. And then I realized, okay, well, that's what students were coming to me for is like, how do I get a job? What kind of advice do I have? Can we talk about negotiations? And so I started running just evening classes on this is what the tech interview process is going to be like. This is what you're going to face. This is what you should be studying. This is the general sort of what the interview flow is going to feel like, and here's how you can navigate each part. And I wanted that to be more scalable. 

And so I started writing it out as a whole bunch of Google Docs. And it turns out when you give somebody like a 50-page Google Doc, that can be a little overwhelming for them to go find specific information. But I was basically compiling FAQs and stuff and just building up this big document. So while I was at Turing, now I got to teach it live, which helped with the scalability to some degree. But I'd say about halfway through my time, at Turing, I actually started building it as a website. 

I thought about actually publishing it as a book, and then I'm like, well, but then as soon as you publish it and it goes on the shelf, it starts to become out of date because things are just constantly changing in tech. And so, I wanted some way of putting it online where I could continually update the content and get feedback and continue to learn and grow myself in the tech industry and what's going on. 

And I just went through a job hunt to get this job at Postman, so being able to kind of relay more modern kind of stuff. I wanted a way to update it, and so I built it as a website. I went through a couple of different domain names and then decided on techinterview.guide. I've got a little changelog on there so people can go in and see when I'm updating content or adding new content and things like that.

And then, when I left Turing, I realized I still really like the idea of teaching and sharing that knowledge. And verbally, I can get a lot more content out there. And so I started with live streaming. And Jonan Scheffler from New Relic was really instrumental in getting me set up with that and helping with audio, and how not to do it on a Mac. [laughter] My poor little MacBook at the time sounded like a jet engine wanting to take off every time I tried to stream. [laughter]

So he helped me navigate into a Windows system and get all that stuff set up. And so, I really appreciate Jonan's time to help me out with that. And now I do that twice a week. And just this last session I did...so I stream on Sundays and Thursdays. I'm like, all right, I'm going to keep it to 90 minutes. It’s like, over two hours later, [laughter] I'm like, I guess I'll wrap up for the night. 

Because there's such good engagement in chat, people coming by, and they're like, "Well, what about this scenario? What about that scenario?" And just getting to share my thoughts and perspectives has been really helpful. But I also love having people on the stream. They can share their perspectives, especially those that don't agree with the same thing that I say on the stream.

Danny: Like a healthy debate or something. 

Ian: Yeah, and it's really helpful for people. And the number one thing I tell people is don't ever just listen to my advice. You have to listen to advice from lots of people in order to gain the perspectives to make decisions on this is how I'm going to approach things. So don't ever just listen to my advice on how to build a resume. If I'm hiring for a job and you're sending me the resume, then yeah, by all means, follow my advice on building a resume. But how I build a resume is not how Lauren is going to build a resume. It's not how Danny is going to resume.

Lauren: 100%
 
Ian: And everybody's going to look at and go, "Oh, you should do this differently. You should do that differently. Everyone's going to have an opinion." And you have to listen to a lot of those opinions in order to form your own and say, "This is how I'm going to build my resume and go forward from there."

Lauren: Build out like a board of people that you can go to to get that feedback from and then know that not one is more important than the other but just collect it all and then see what fits for you. Also, total side note, Danny, are you having massive imposter syndrome right now that Ian should be hosting this podcast in general?

Danny: [laughs]

Lauren: Because I think he should [laughter]. I mean, the techinterview.guide, we’ll, of course, include that resource in the show notes and your Twitch stream as well so that folks can come and listen in on those nuanced debates. I think that's a really important thing to shout out. I'm curious, actually, what are the hot topics in the world of interviewing that people are getting polarized over these days? Is it like on the whiteboard interview? Is it that sort of stuff? 

Ian: To some degree. Some people are like, oh yeah, LeetCode is fine. Go grind on LeetCode. 

Lauren: Got it. Got it. Got it.

Ian: And a big proponent of LeetCode needs to burn in fire.

Lauren: Hell yeah. [laughter] Bye.

Ian: But also, how do you put a resume together? How do you negotiate on things? And why do companies hire junior devs or not hire junior devs? How do we change their minds? I just ran a great panel last week on why companies don't hire junior devs and how they need to. They need to get them shaped and molded up because as other people leave the company and take that domain knowledge with them, you got to fill that gap with somebody. And there's a finite number of senior-level devs. And if we don't train up the juniors, there's going to be no senior devs, right. So it was a really good panel on that. 

But I had a guy on my stream a couple of weeks back named Jerome Hardaway from Vets Who Code. And he and I didn't agree on everything that we were talking about. It's like, someone would raise a question, and we'd have different answers. And we'd both say, "Hey, it's okay for us to disagree here. It's totally all right that we have opposing views." That's why I have people like that on my show, not show, on my stream just to show you can have healthy debate. You can have disagreements and not be really hateful toward each other or whatever. We can have friendly conversation and disagree. And it's okay. 

Lauren: I love that. We should do a quick shout-out. If you're a veteran or have served at some point and are interested in learning to code, Jerome has an incredible community, Vets Who Code, so we'll put that also in the show notes.

Danny: And you said that you stream on Thursdays and Sundays, you said. Is that on Twitch? Or I've seen you be on LinkedIn recently?

Ian: Yeah. So I started streaming on multiple platforms. So I stream primarily on Twitch. But I started in February I started...or actually in January, I started streaming on LinkedIn and Facebook simultaneously. And so it actually goes out to all three platforms partly just to try it out to see what it's like to stream to multiple platforms but also just to reach more people. And so, I don't get a lot of engagement on Facebook right now. But I've started getting a little more traction on LinkedIn. So my idea is I'm just here to help people. But I don't necessarily need them to come to me. I want to go where they are.

Lauren: Exist where they exist online. 

Ian: Yeah. And so, just this week, I've started looking into Twitter Space because that seems to be a really popular spot for just going and giving advice. And it's more audio content like we're doing here.

Lauren: For sure.

Ian: Where it doesn't have to be a visual where you see all my blinky flashy lights in the background and stuff like that. 

Lauren: We love those. [laughter]

Ian: But I mean, the blinky flashy lights are fun. You can write Python, and you could like -- 

Lauren: Oh my gosh.

Danny: Whoa. [laughs]

Lauren: Dear listener, he just turned on really fun lights in the background that were very eye-capturing. Oh, thank you. That was fun.

Ian: Having that kind of stuff on the live stream is really fun for engagement, but I want to go where the people are. And I just want to be there and offer my ideas and perspectives. So whether that's joining someone else's Twitter Space, or hosting my own, or going to LinkedIn, or Facebook, or wherever people are hanging out, wherever the kids are these days, that's where I want to be [laughter] and just be there to offer support and offer advice. 

Not that I just want to be like another white guy in tech muscling in to shove my opinion in anybody's face. That's not why I'm doing it. I'm genuinely here to help people out. And I really appreciate the diversity of the folks that have agreed to be on my stream just to hear their stories and hear about their journeys and things like that. A little shout out to both of you; you're going to be on my stream in a couple of weeks. So I'm looking forward to that. 

But just having differing perspectives and differing viewpoints and hearing other people's journeys, I think, is a lot of what helps the most when it comes to how do we get through this scary job interview navigating all the stuff and juggling all the things? I think it's important just to show people that you're not alone in this. It's a hard struggle, especially for that first job in tech. And there are people out there that want to help you.

Lauren: Absolutely. Yeah, the community is everything, and you just got to find your people. And we want to help. [laughs] 

Ian: For sure.

Lauren: No, I think that's awesome. And I'm so excited that you're a resource for our listeners because, as you said, it is really scary. And I think the more that we acknowledge that and empathize with folks, it's just a reminder for everyone listening that we're going to get through this. You're going to get this job. We are going to figure this out.

Danny: Oh yeah, like an example of being scared little young Danny when I was in school...Ian, if you remember this, I scheduled a time with you. You were like, "Hey, I'm just hanging out in Zoom if anyone wants to come hang out," and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to ask Ian some questions." And I logged in, and it was just you and me. And I think you were just eating seeds or something. You had just kicked back, sitting back and just eating seeds, just chilling. [laughs]

Ian: I always have a giant bag of sunflower seeds on my desk. It's a horrible habit.

Danny: Ian just picked up a giant bag of seeds, everyone.

Lauren: And this is what Danny loves to do is paint the picture for the listener so that we can be there while he's storytelling.

Ian: For sure. 

Danny: Oh wow. I've been complaining about how bad my memory is. And I just literally remembered exactly what Ian looked like.

Lauren: Unlocked. [laughs]

Danny: Yeah, unlocked a core memory. And I was like, "I think I really want to get into DevRel." And you're just eating your seeds. You're like, "Hmm." And you just sat there for a moment. And you're like, "DevRel is kind of a hot topic right now. Yeah, there are some new people going in." And then you're like, "There are some young people, but usually it's people who have a lot of experience." 

And I was like, "So do you think I could go in as a junior?" And you're like, "Hmm, you probably could. You probably could. It's going to be really hard, but it's possible." And I was like, "Okay, cool. Do you think I should do that?" And you're like, "Yeah, just whatever makes you happy, man." [laughter] 

And I was like, "Okay, okay. Yeah, I think I'm going to do that." You're like, okay, "It's going to be hard, but yeah, I think you could do it. Just find a company you like and just get to know their software." And I was like, "Okay, cool. Well, I need to still learn how to code, but I'll do that."

Lauren: [laughs]

Danny: And you're like, "All right, sweet." And then that was that. And I remember thinking, and I was like, okay, I just needed to hear one person tell me.

Lauren: Encourage. 

Danny: Yeah, just be like, yeah, you could do it. It's a lot different than what we were focusing on at Turing. The interview was so, so different. It was so different.

Ian: Absolutely.

Danny: But it was luckily something that involved a lot of things that I had previous experience there. But yeah, I guess my question to you is just when you get people who come to you for that seems a little bit out of their realm or comfort zone, do you have any immediate words of wisdom that you could provide? For you, you're like, well, just be aware that this might be out of your skillset. This might be out of your skill level or your knowledge. But just focus on what you want and what they're looking for. Is there anything else that you try to suggest?

Ian: That's really the heart of it. When they get into that interview, and they say, "Tell me about yourself," or "Why do you want this job?" or "Why should we hire you?" They're really all asking the exact same thing. They're asking you to explain how your background and your skillset is going to make them better. What are you bringing to the team? That's really what they're asking. And the subtext of that is and convince us to hire you as part of that. 

Lauren: [laughs]

Ian: And so when I was having a chat with you, it's like, okay, well, what is it about your background that's going to help in developer relations? Like, yes, you're learning how to code. That's going to be an important part of the job. But the fact that you did stand up and you're used to being up in front of people, and just being vulnerable, and knowing your jokes may kill, they may bomb. 

Danny: [laughs] Yeah.

Ian: And being okay with that. Like, just get up there and be yourself. And I think that that can really play a big part as far as that authenticity and just being genuine. That buys you a lot of credibility in developer relations, in developer advocacy of just knowing like, hey, I'm human. I'm going through this too. I may not have all the answers, but I'm going to help you find them. And so it's really about how do you talk about your background and your experience in a way that shows the company the value that you bring to them?

Lauren: Yes, yes. How do you spin it so that they see it as an asset versus a detriment and that they are stoked to have you on the team? And that you're going to be diversifying whether it's how you approach a problem that the team is trying to solve with the software? Just that new perspective of like, hey, I know you all with your CS degrees may be looking at it from this lens. Have we considered from this perspective? 

And being a stand-up comedian would allow you for that unique POV, if you will. And just really owning that in the interview, I think, is awesome advice because companies are wanting that. We just also have to help make sense of it because it's a little different than what they're traditionally seeing when they're doing these interviews, I guess. 

Ian: Yeah, for sure.

Lauren: I'm curious because, Ian, I know you've done a bunch of interviews recently. What are trends that you're seeing? A key demo for who we want to really connect with for this show are folks that are in the interview process or wanting to level up and get skills and tips and tricks when they're about to go into the tech interview. Are there things that you can share with our listeners after having gone through all of this yourself?

Ian: Yeah. My number one tip is really showing them the value that you bring. Whether you're communicating it verbally or putting a resume together, you need to just be quick and concise and to the point. Don't beat around the bush. Don't add a lot of fluff. Just get down to it. Companies really want the hiring process to be over. It's a long-drawn-out process. It's expensive to hire people. Don't spend more time than you need to. Just get to the point. 

So I usually tell people build a resume with everything on it, put every project, every skill, every library or framework, or whatever you've ever used. Just make it a massive resume. Give me lots of bullet points about your job. But when you go apply for a job, go reduce that down to one page by trimming out everything that that company doesn't care about for that role. 

And it goes back to a riddle that I learned as a kid of how do you make a sculpture of an elephant? You start with a giant block of stone, and you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. And you want to do the same thing with your resume. You want to start with a really big resume and then trim away everything that doesn't make you look like the best candidate for that job at that company. So trim out the languages they don't ask for, trim out the libraries they don't care about. 

If you need to fill up room on the page later, you can fill in that other stuff. But you want to start with just the minimum of like, this is what I bring as value to this company for that role. And then again, when they say, "Tell me about yourself," you want to do the same thing. You want to tell them, "This is me in a nutshell. This is the value that I bring to the company." And don't highlight what you don't know. Don't highlight that you're new at this, don't. Don't level yourself. Let them level you.

Lauren: Don't give them that self-deprecation, exactly.

Ian: Yeah, don't do that for them. Let them figure that out as part of the interview process. And then just be your authentic self. Just bring your best self to that. And it does come down to practice. And so I often tell people if you're doing mock interviews, that can be fantastic, but make sure you're doing mock interviews with people that can give you valuable feedback. 

Doing a mock interview with a parent or a roommate or something like that that can be fine. But it'll be better if they're in the tech industry, and they can actually tell you what was good or not good about specific answers. And so finding somebody that you can mock interview with that's actually going to make you better at interviewing is the way that you get better at interviewing. 

You can also just go do interviews to practice interviews, not that I really recommend like, oh yeah, just go find some company and get their hopes up and interview you and think that they're going to hire you. But it is the best way to actually practice interviewing is to go do a real interview and see what companies are asking and things like that. 

So when it comes to trending, yeah, the LeetCode problems are not going away anytime soon. I really wish they would, or at the very least, I wish companies would pick LeetCode problems that are at least on par with what they do as a business.

Lauren: Applicable to what you would be doing or to simulate that a bit. Gosh, retweet totally.

Ian: Yeah, some of the best interviews that I did over the month of December and January were very in line with this is what you're going to do on a day-to-day job. Go use whatever language, whatever library you want. Go pull this API and go build some stats on the data that you get back or something like that because that's what you're going to do day-to-day. As opposed to oh, go build this recursive depth-first search backtracking algorithm. It's like, but you don't do anything like that here at this job. Why do I need to know this? 

And I get it. The company needs to see you demonstrate your skill, but I think that there are better ways of doing it. And I think that companies need to do a better job at how they present those kinds of technical challenges and how to get you to demonstrate your skill that is more indicative of the day-to-day job.

Lauren: Yeah. Google, are you listening? [laughter]

Ian: All the FAANG companies?

Lauren: Yeah, all of them. I guess I'm thinking of my Google interview where I passed out because we were traversing a tree, and I couldn't. [laughs]

Danny: You actually passed out? 

Lauren: That's a story for another day. [laughter]

Danny: Oh no.

Ian: I want to be there for that story.

Danny: Yeah, that's actually another call to action. Right the ending of that story, everyone, please. [laughter]

Lauren: There is a resource that you unlocked memory-wise for me that I just Googled while you were speaking about it; it's on Pramp. Did either of you ever use that? It's you get peer matched with…some of it is you self-select what level of interview you're doing. And then they send you each a question, and you can become a bit of an expert on it. And then you ask each other it. It's like you're paired for maybe an hour or so. 

Danny: Oh, cool.

Lauren: And I really loved stuff like that because it gave me that human-to-human interaction. And you could also then talk through how to approach this problem. And they're strangers on the internet, but I think they do a pretty good job of protecting you, I think. That was an interesting resource when I was navigating that particular...mock interviews it's a muscle you have to learn to flex, and yeah, you just got to do it a lot.

Ian: Yeah, Pramp is a good platform. The downside of Pramp is you don't know who you're getting paired up with. And so you don't know the quality of the feedback that you're going to get. So it's better than nothing. It's better than just grinding on LeetCode by yourself because you're not going to get feedback. So it's better than nothing. 

There's another resource that I'll shout out called hackerpen.io. And it's an up-and-coming mock interview platform where you can actually sign up as a mock interviewer. And you can set up a calendar of, like, letting other people sort of book your time as a mock interviewer. 

And then interviewing.io, where, for transparency, I'm a paid interviewer on their platform, but you know the quality of the feedback you're going to get from them because you're paying for it. And they're getting actual industry experts and industry interviewers to actually give you a mock interview. And they're going to give you quality feedback. And you can also book like FAANG-level. Like, I want to get a job at Google so you can book an interview with somebody at Google kind of thing so that you get Google-level feedback.

Lauren: That's cool. I was just feeling nervous that...because it's great advice of make sure you're doing these mock interviews with folks that can give you the real feedback and resources. And I was feeling nervous that a listener might feel like I don't know anyone like that. Because I was in that camp that was...at my bootcamp, they called me technically unadjacent, meaning I didn't have anyone in my world that was a software engineer that I could go home and ask questions to at night. 

Or I was always just really envious of the people that had partners sitting nearby them in the evening when we were doing our homework that we could say, "I don't get this. Can you help explain this concept to me?" [laughter] So you know what, Danny? You would have been my nemesis. I would have been like, oh--

Danny: I had straight up just like a cheat code the entire time. There would be times when Lovisa would be like, "Go ask someone in your class." [laughter] And I was like --

Lauren: Because it is a good practice to get help from other people too, right?

Ian: True.

Lauren: But I think I realized, too, that all of us are available as resources for people if they wanted, and you just provided some great other ones. So we'll link all of that. But yeah, reach out, folks. That particular part is really, really hard to get even the courage to do the mock interview, I think. And so let us be a resource for it, and let's do that together. Because I hear you, it's scary. 

Ian: Yeah, it is hard to ask questions too. And one thing I really encourage on my live stream is people can reach out to me to ask anonymously. You can DM me on Twitter. You can DM me on LinkedIn. So you don't have to be on Twitch and put your name next to that question where you're feeling particularly vulnerable. 

Lauren: Oh, I love that.

Danny: That's cool.

Ian: So I really encourage people; if you want to ask anonymously, I will give you a means to do so. And I've actually had a number of questions come in that way that I get to address on the stream and be like, "Hey, by the way, I got this anonymous question that I want to address." And that way, they know they're getting an answer, but they don't have to be as vulnerable. They had to be vulnerable in the first place to ask the question. But hopefully, I've built up enough credibility and trust that they know that if they ask anonymously, I'm not going to say, "Hey, Danny sent me this DM on LinkedIn with this dumb question."

Lauren: He doesn't know how to do this. [laughs]

Ian: They know that I'm not going to do that because I genuinely care about helping them out. And so it's like just trying to find as many avenues as possible to let people ask a question to where it helps their comfort level and know that they're going to get an answer.

Lauren: I mean, just gold star of a human all around, Ian, geez.

Ian: Thanks.

Danny: Gold star. Gold star. I already knew you had gold stars but more gold stars. Is there a common theme regarding these questions that people struggle to ask or just want to ask more anonymously? Have you noticed any type of questions that come up again and again, again?

Ian: Not in an anonymous level, no. I would say the biggest trend that I see in the live stream is just how do I get that first job in tech? How do I stand out? How do I differentiate myself from hundreds or thousands of other entry-level devs trying to apply for that job? And a lot of that comes down to networking, and being discoverable, and finding a way to set yourself apart, that's meaningful to that company. And again, it comes down to showing them your value. 

And so I often tell people if there's a company that you're interested in and they have an API, or a library, or framework, or a product, find some way of using that in a project. And then, if you can network with them over time, when you reach out, you can say, "Hey, I'm not just some random person with technical skills. I'm actually a user of your platform. And this is why I love the platform. And this is why I want a job there, please." 

It completely changes that introduction from just some random person with technical skills to oh, this is actually a customer of ours that wants to come work here. It makes a big, big difference to the company to know that you're that passionate about it, that you want to be a part of the team to help with that experience for others. 

So if they've got any kind of tooling, library, API, anything like that, go build some kind of project about it. It's not going to be like, go spend an afternoon, and then they're going to hire you. It'll have to be something that you build over time. But it makes a big, big difference when you can apply there and say, "Hey, I've been a user of your product for a long time," or "I've been getting to know people on the support team through asking them questions," or "I've been contributing GitHub issues," or something like that. It makes a huge difference when they know your name.

Lauren: Oh, absolutely. Or to see that you've opened pull requests. Like, oh, I recognize this person from GitHub. And it's the same example you gave for Postman. Like, oh, yeah. Hi, y'all, want to see a video of me being wildly enthusiastic about your tool and teaching other people on it? [laughter] I just think that passion can really help you stand apart from other applicants. I appreciate that advice for sure. Wow, this has been such a joy, Ian. Thank you so much.

Danny: I was going to ask one more thing.

Lauren: I know. Go ahead. Go ahead. 

Danny: All right. Okay, sorry. [laughs] Ian, please tell us...because I love the story, hearing about it all the time. Tell us about working for Mitch Hedberg. 

Ian: [laughs]

Lauren: So related completely. [laughter]

Danny: Completely off track. This is just for me, everyone. You can log off. 

Ian: It's all good.

Danny: I'm @muydanny,@lolocoding, and iandouglas736 on Twitter.

Lauren: Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop it. [laughter]

Lauren: The show is not done. There's more.

Ian: So after Mitch Hedberg died, I was a fan of his, and I just went to his tribute website just to kind of pay respect as a fan. I actually got to see him live in Southern California. At the end of the show, I'm walking down the hallway, and he's standing right there, and I'm like a total fanboy. And I was like, "Hey, great show." And I just kept walking. I wish I'd stopped and got an autograph or something. 

After he passed away, I went to his fansite. And it was a PHP-based forum, and it was just littered with spam. And so I reached out to the person running the website and said, "Hey, I'm a developer. I work in PHP. I know this forum's software. Can I help clean up the spam and put a little spam bot detector kind of thing in place?" And they're like, "Oh my gosh, that would be amazing." 

Well, next thing I know, Mitch Hedberg's wife, Lynn Shawcroft, reaches out to me via email to give me access and permissions and get me in touch with the sysadmin actually running the site. So yeah, I just got to stay in touch with Lynn and then just working on the site doing some site updates. 

And they came out with an album after the fact. I think it was Do You Believe in Gosh? album, just working on the website with that. And she reached out, and she's like, "Hey, we're going to do an album release party. Do you want a couple of tickets?" I'm like, "I would love tickets." 

Danny: [laughs]

Ian: So I'm sitting at this table. I brought a bunch of friends. And while I'm sitting there, I have to rotate 90 degrees to look at the stage to my left and 90 degrees to my right at the other end of the table. This elderly couple sits down with Lynn. And I'm like, "Oh, hey, Lynn, what's going on?" Well, turns out it was Mitch Hedberg's parents. 

They had traveled to Los Angeles to attend this release show where it was like, Tig Notaro and Chris Porter, and I want to say Norm Macdonald was there. A ton of people showed up to pay tribute to Mitch. And I got to meet Mitch Hedberg's parents. And over the course of getting to know them, we had our first kid. And Mitch's moms sent us a care package of onesies and like all kinds of stuff for our kid. 

Danny: [laughs] What?

Ian: And I'm like, what? This is amazing. So yeah, it was really fantastic to work on the site.

Danny: That's so cool. And I think there's something to be learned here is that go to comedians’ websites because they don't know how to update their website and offer to work on it, learn something. And then when they become famous, you will be their right-hand person.

Ian: The subtext of this is Danny is looking for somebody to maintain his website. [laughs]

Lauren: I was like, is this a call to action for Danny?

Danny: The call to action is DM me. I need someone to work on my website.

Lauren: Should we look at his website? [laughter] Do you have some URL like dannyramoscomedian?

Danny: Spam. It's full of spam. It's just spam.com [laughs]

Ian: Hey, Danny. What's the difference between a well-dressed man on a unicycle and a poorly dressed man on a bicycle?

Danny: I don't know. 

Ian: A tire. [laughter] 

Danny: You heard it in the beginning. Ian does love dad jokes. 

Lauren: Did we count that as a dad joke? [laughs]

Danny: Oh, well, Ian is a dad. And that was a good one. [laughs]

Ian: You know when a joke becomes a dad joke, right? 

Danny: When? 

Ian: When it's apparent. [laughter]

Lauren: Okay, I like it. I like it.

Danny: Well, I think that's it. I think that is--

Lauren: We end with that.

Danny: That's our show, the big punchline at the end. [laughs]

Lauren: I mean, genuinely, Ian, what a perfect person to have come share their experiences and their insights. And I think it's so neat that you will continue to be a resource in the future for our listeners as well. So I'm excited to equip them with you [laughs] and all the things that you're creating that exist out there on the internet.

Danny: Even if they have to put up with my bad jokes, right?

Lauren: Yeah. 

Danny: [laughs] Trust me, everyone. Ian is such a great resource. And I just want to tell you, thank you so much, Ian. I have a job because of you, and like you were saying, the impact that you have just for teaching students this is one example. And I'm sure there are hundreds and hundreds of other examples. But I just wanted to tell you I really appreciate you and thank you for --

Ian: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that.  

Danny: Dealing with me as a student. [laughter] We didn't get into our time at Turing.

Ian: You weren't that bad as a student.

Danny: No, I was pretty chill. I just would ask questions. [laughs] 

Lauren: That makes for a good student.

Ian: It does. It does. And honestly, to segue back into the live stream, it's the same way like having people show up and ask questions helps people that want to show up and want to ask a question, but they're scared to, or they don't know how to ask, how to frame the question. Having other people come by and ask questions shows them like, hey, I can ask questions too. And so I love having people come by, and the chat just blows up with question after question after question. 

Lauren: That's so great.

Ian: I've got this huge backlog of questions that people submit privately that I don't even get to on the stream because people show up in chat, and it's full of people that I want to help out. So I do have to be better about my time management on the stream for sure. But it's so fun just getting to share my perspectives and ideas and stuff like that. 

Lauren: Oh, I love it. I love it so much. Well, I suppose then listeners will see you on a future Ian's Twitch stream. [laughs]

Danny: If people wanted to reach out to you, Ian, where would be the best places for that?

Ian: So I use the same username on Twitch, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And it's my name iandouglas736. So the 736 is just a shout-out to my wife. It's how we met online. 

Danny: Aww.

Ian: And so I use that username as much as possible. I've also got a link tree under the same name where I link to the techinterview.guide website, a Discord server that I have where people can come in and ask questions and do resume reviews and things like that. 

Lauren: Love it.

Ian: So yeah, you can reach out to me as iandouglas736. DM me anytime. I love taking questions and helping people out. And if I can't answer right away, know that it's going to get on the stream at some point for me to answer as a question. And any questions submitted to me that way is going to be kept anonymous. It won't have your name attached unless you want it to be. But yeah, I love just being available to help people.

Lauren: You're incredible. We are so lucky to be able to speak with you today. Thank you. 

Ian: Well, thanks for having me.

Danny: Thanks, Ian. Appreciate you.

Ian: No problem. What do you call a beehive that has no exit? 

Lauren: What?
 
Ian: Unbelievable. [laughter]

Danny: I hate that.

Lauren: Oh well. That was a wonderful conversation.

Danny: That was amazing.

Lauren: Holy cow.

Danny: I love that guy. I love him.

Lauren: I'm feeling emotions of love.

Danny: [laughs] I can't say it. But I don't know if I want to say it, but I feel --

Lauren: Well, I don't know. It's the IRL versus –

Danny: You've only met him online.

Lauren: Right. Have you also...he was your teacher. Oh, because you did your program.

Danny: Oh my God. I've never met him in person either. [laughs]

Lauren: Stop.

Danny: I spent every day with this guy, and I've never even seen him walk around.

Lauren: You've never even given him a hug. 

Danny: No, you're right. But I knew he ate seeds. I knew he ate seeds. That was unreal, the giant gallon bag of seeds.

Lauren: Honestly, I missed it because I was cringing over the fact that you were telling the story again the way that you were, and so I --

Danny: I'm a storyteller.

Lauren: I think our audience is...here's the thing, I think they'll either love us, or they’ll hate us. We'll check the reviews this week, but keep your fingers crossed. 

Danny: Seems like they hate us, but we have so many other schedules. We got to keep going. [laughter]

Lauren: We should be open to feedback. We'll check out the reviews, see where we can have some constructive criticism moments.

Danny: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lauren: And learn and grow from them. But yeah, okay. Let's see. Thanks, everyone, again, for listening to another week, another episode of Launchies. Be sure to go give us a follow @newrelic over on Twitter to engage in the discourse there.

Danny: Yes. And be sure to follow us or join our New Relic community Slack at bit.ly/nrslack. 

Lauren: Yeah, come have a chat, and we'll help you get started if you're feeling curious about all the tech that we have at New Relic. It could be kind of fun. I don't know, sounds enjoyable to me. I would love to have you there. That's where I spend a lot of my time, but yeah. And then our personal handles on the interwebs it's @muydanny. I'm @lolocoding. And Ian, as he said, is @iandouglas736, which we didn't get the story to. He said it's a tribute to his wife but --

Danny: Right. Is that 736 like an old chat room or something?

Lauren: I don't know what the 736 is. 

Danny: We'll get that info and share it with the resources. [laughs]

Lauren: In the show notes? You want to put that in the show notes? [laughter]

Danny: Just a cute little story. By the way --

Lauren: It's like a deep, intimate story that he would never share. We'd blow up his spot. [laughter]  Oh my gosh. But go give us a follow. Go say hi. Our DMs, all of us, are, as we've mentioned on the show, our DMs are open. And we want to be a resource. We want to help you on your journey of interviewing and applying, and finding your job in tech.

Danny: Yes, and if you're currently looking for a cool, fun conference to submit --

Lauren: Exciting.

Danny: Exciting, happy, nervous, [laughs] these are words we used. You can submit a CFP to FutureStack, which is currently open right now. And FutureStack is planned to be May 17th through the 19th, so submit that CFP.

Lauren: Yeah, in Vegas. 

Danny: In Las Vegas.

Lauren: CFP is a call for papers just in case we're using an acronym that you don't know. It's when you submit a talk idea, and you get on stage, and you tell other developers about cool stuff that you do.

Danny: Actually, thank you for sharing that because I didn't know what CFP was for the longest time. And did we even mention a call to action?

Lauren: What's our CTA? [laughter]

Danny: Our CTA. We just speak in acronyms only. 

Lauren: Shoot. That's funny. Write a sentence in acronyms. That's not the call to action. Do we have one?

Danny: I really liked the idea of when Ian said to have a...it might have been a combination of what Ian said and what you said to have a board of people that will give you feedback and have mock interviews. So I would say our call to action could be build that board of people, find three people in your network, friends that are also interested in tech, or people who are in tech now, and have them give you feedback or at least schedule one or two mock interviews and tell us how it went.

Lauren: Yeah, and tell us and tell us who your board is. I think it's always fun to give that kind of public appreciation to these people that are helping you navigate this space. And so I think it's important to pause and say thank you to people, and it was really cool to see you do that with Ian today also, by the way. That was really lovely to watch. 

And I use my board personally. I know what each of them will help me with. So that is kind of my tip for the day. I know I can go to my friend when I have a specific question about negotiation. I know I can go to him and be like, "All right, how are we getting this offer to the next level? What do we do? How do we phrase that?" 

And then I have another person in the Rolodex that I go to that is always, always my person that helps me tackle the cover letter and what are we particularly pulling from the job advert within the cover letter and resume? Because I think when you go and ask for help from people and from mentors specifically, it's important to have asks like their time box there. Can you help me with XYZ? Versus hey, can you help me? You know what I mean?

Danny: Yeah, actually, okay --

Lauren: It looks big. Yes. Oh my gosh, I just got pasta delivered to me in bed. I love being pregnant. [laughter]

AARON: I love you too. [laughter]

Danny: Aaron's like, oh okay. 

Lauren: Thank you.

Lauren: I will not eat this while we are recording. But how delicious does that look?

Danny: I didn't see it at all.  Oh, wow. That does look good. Dang.

Lauren: I know, no kidding. 

Danny: Okay, Aaron. Wow.

Lauren: Okay, wait. Whatever, I think I made my point.

Danny: Asking for help. 

Lauren: Specific. Yeah, being really, you know, it can be not overwhelming, but when someone's like, "Can you be my mentor?" Often we will say yes, but what does that really mean to you? Do you need help with the resume? Do you need help doing a mock interview? If you can really allocate that to people, it likens the chance that people will say yes to those requests. I don't know.

Danny: Exactly. Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah, so build that board of people, do some mock interviews, share who they are, thank them. Tell us how the mock interviews went. And yeah, just do that on Twitter or our community Slack or really, wherever you feel comfortable.

Lauren: In our reviews. I'm telling you, I think that that is the place. So give us those five stars and respond to the call to action there because that could just skyrocket; I mean, y'all realize that we have a boss that we have to report things to. [laughter] 

Danny: Metrics.

Lauren: We exist in reality. Metrics.

Danny: Metrics.

Lauren: Help us keep this show going. That would be so helpful. We love you so much. 

Danny: I got to feed my family. 

Lauren: Help me; I'm poor.  

Danny: [laughs]

Lauren: Whatever. We appreciate you all so much for listening, and thanks for being a part of this community.

Danny: Take it easy, everyone. 

Lauren: Yeah, I'm going to go eat this pasta.