there. Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome, Jason. Oh, hi. We are hanging
out this morning, holiday edition style. missing. Yes, I
love this decor. I know, isn't it cute? It was inside of
restream and I was like, Oh, look at that. Love that for us. I
know. I dressed up for you. Yes, you did. I couldn't find my
Chewbacca Christmas sweater. So sadly, I'm in just in plain black,
but not a very chewy Christmas at this point. Not a chewy
Christmas. Oh, that's unfortunate. It's great sweater
too. I am so excited that you're here. I'm excited to be here.
Yay, good. We had talked about not doing this date, like, are
people going to come, whatever. And I think that at the end of
the day, there are a lot of us right now, if you are still
working, right, anyone who may still be working, you're sort
of like checked out. This is like the last day that you're
probably working. Maybe you're only working half a day and
you're just like, I'm checked out. Or maybe you were checked out
last Friday, and now you are spending time with family and
you'd love to get some time away. That was our theory anyway.
So hopefully, that ends up being the case. So someone's in
the chat already. Ryan, hello.
Hey, it's Ryan. Our buddy. Yes.
Me and Ryan worked on a fun project this past week by fun. I
mean, it wasn't. It was like, really complicated. Tell me
about it. We found a lot of headaches and pain points in a
specific product that we were trying to build a project with.
And their docs need some work. It's, yeah, it's, it was, it was
a challenge. I don't want to get too much into it just in case
it comes across someone's desk, but their docs need help. So if
anybody's interested in doing some doc work for a company, I'll
just pass me a message and I'll send you their info.
Okay, so follow up question. We don't want to roast someone
because we've all been there, right? Where we've had rough
docs, we just either it's earlier things have evolved, right?
Yeah, we did. We did. It was Pandora's box when we, when we
got into it, but we figured it out. We ultimately we did get
our project put together. We wrote a blog post about it. It
was very positive, but we all collectively decided that once the
contest is over, we will give some feedback on everything. So
so that's what I would love to hear as you and we're going to
get into this right. So actually, you know what, before you
answer that question, why don't you introduce yourself? Let's
tell everyone who you are, where you work, sort of what you
do. Yeah. So hi, everybody. I'm Jason Torres, community
evangelist at torque.dev. I work with one of my homies that
some of you are probably familiar with Taylor Dessen. It's
my boss. So so weird to say. Great dude, though. He's building a
team of superheroes around his concept of DevRel for recruiting
or like the talent side of the industry. Oh, hey, look at that.
There he is speaking. Hey, Zeres must have been ringing. But I
am super proud of everything he's putting together there and
allowing me to like just be myself in the position and
growing this community. We've had just dumb growth in the last
couple months. I mean, we've almost tripled at this point,
the the size of the discord signups for the platform have
been through the roof. So everything is moving on the
uptick positively. It's just been fun. It's been fun. I have a
background in film. I spent 15 years in the film industry and
then transitioned over to tech where I started to started to be
a self taught developer and decided that I like to code. But
I also like being language agnostic and that I'm still
touching tech where I am. But I can play with any toys I want. I
can build with whatever I want. We just did an astro project.
Like that was my first time and thankfully Ryan was able to
help because I had no clue what I was doing, but it was fun. It
was fun. Like I love that font to like to still have the
enjoyment of doing it as opposed to like being an engineer
every day all day every day and hating it. So I feel like I'm
really in a great spot. Yes, that's me. That's me. I love
that so much. I have like a couple of follow ups there.
Awesome. I am so excited to hear about the results that you're
seeing and not at all shocked by it because like I told I told
Taylor when we were at commit your code, I was like, you are
killing it. You are literally killing it at DevRel and how
you are approaching this angle and what you're building over
there and um told him how smart he was to hire you. Obviously,
we all know that though. He is smart for you. Obviously.
Obviously. Um but the thing is is like y'all are winning and
y'all are succeeding because you are investing in that
developer community and you're not just putting money towards
a sponsorship. You are literally showing up doing the hard
work building meaningful relationships and making sure
that you are truly engaging with those relationships and
that's like how you do DevRel in my opinion. I in you know um
in for anybody that doesn't know, I mean I've known Tessa for a
little while. We just met in person though fortunately which
was awesome. Um had a lot of really great conversations but
I think her and I align on that concept of how you build
communities and develop. It doesn't even need to be we say
developer communities because this is the industry we work in
but at the end of the day like these are transferable methods
uh across any industry as far as engaging with people and
and networking and building communities and it is. It's about
the people. Like I'm not at the end of the day. I want
everybody to get something out of their contact with me. I
don't know what that is. I I can't tell you but it it
ultimately it it should be something positive. Like
that's that's paying it for that's building in a positive way
because that impact is then going to positively impact
somebody else and so on and so forth and again that's like
growth. So um I totally agree with you. I I love what we're
doing. I love the energy um and and I hope that it keeps
going but we're we're doing really crazy things and we have a
big plan for 2025. Um I'm excited to see what happens. So oh
my gosh. I love that so much. So I posted this quote over the
weekend. Um I was watching Klaus. If anyone has never
watched Klaus on Netflix. Amazing show. It's about this
kid. He was spoiled rich kid and he needs to go build a post
office in this awful town. Um and so there's this guy right
and his name is Klaus and he ends up sort of they end up
sort of mimicking and building and it actually makes me
question is this how Santa came to be? So check it out.
Klaus is a great movie. Um one of my 16 year olds favorite
holiday movie honestly. Um but yeah I know right. He has he
has maintained it through all of his childhood and still
really well. That's impressive. Yeah. The I've seen I've seen
the trailer. Interesting wreck though. Or is this sponsored
by Netflix? Are we being sponsored by Netflix right now?
No, no we're not but hey maybe but what I wanted to get to is
what I posted. So what I posted was a true act of
selflessness sparks another and I think like Jason
honestly if I really had to speak to this over the last
year I would say that you would be the person that would
really truly shine bright in my ecosystem in my network of
like someone who really is like who is handing out those
acts of selflessness and not even thinking about yourself
whatsoever really just handing those out and I think that
that is the beautiful thing about what you're seeing the
results that y'all are seeing what you're doing and so
you're it's just going to keep going because of your very
beautiful acts of selflessness. Well, I appreciate that. I
and it's funny you you mentioned that because it's like I
don't know. I don't I don't think about how it's going to
affect me except for like the I guess the karma aspect. Um I
was just at low so like right before we got on um I had a
couple errands to run and there was a couple that was
outside. They were looking at these like $20 trees that
were out there but I had to pick up point setters so I ran
inside and I bought a gift card and I gave it to them so
that they could buy the tree. It's like I don't know these
people but it was like hey if that little moment right there
made their day like I don't know what happened to the
tree. I don't know why they need it but who cares? So
hopefully again that that pays that forward uh for somebody
else. Okay so you and I need to hang out somewhere and like
do some crazy like you know Mr Beast level stuff where we
can get some like sponsorships and then just give stuff out
because I'm doing stuff like that. Same my husband and I
will go around and do this as much as we can and I will say
like this Christmas I'm getting a little teary eyed but only
because of like this beautiful holiday spirit you know.
Yeah. Like it was a hard year like starting a business is
hard and it wasn't that it was like ridiculously hard but
you know like nonetheless difficult right and normally
we give and give and give and actually we take our kids
shopping so they can buy stuff for other kids and then we go
give those gifts to those children or bring them to the
church or whatever wherever it is that we're doing it is
it's usually our church and we just we did not have the
privilege of being able to do that this year and it was
just sort of broke my heart a little but I think at the end
of the day like these these little acts and these little
actions whether they're big or small really just help people
feel like that and someone bought me a coffee the other
day and like I'm normally the one doing the giving and the
buying and so I was like you know what I really like really
really needed this and so it was just this absolutely
beautiful thing so no I love doing stuff like that and I
mean this year we did the stuff for work but I guess the
background on that like me and my brother in person here near
near where we live we would do a big like event for the
open door mission and we would get with a bunch of
companies they'd give us a bunch of things we'd give them
away for for raffles they could buy raffle tickets to win
stuff every day but with the pandemic and everything we
stopped doing that so I had message Taylor because I was
like look I'm going to buy with my own money like a bunch
gift cards to give away in the torque stuff just to like do
an event and he's like no I'll you know like we'll we'll take
care of it but I like I ran out of gift cards like I gave
them all away and I felt guilty so I bought a bunch of other
gift cards to give everybody else that didn't it's like
some of the people got Starbucks gift cards I had to buy a
couple extra Amazon gift cards but I didn't I know he's
going to give me crap about that but you know I don't it's
just money like I can't take it with me yes that was like a
catalyst for some positive for somebody especially around
Christmas it's like I don't know it's it's a no-brainer so
yeah I'm the same way I'm the same way yeah okay so we got to
we chatted quite a bit about you I know right Taylor yeah
sorry dude that beautiful heart okay so you were talking about
kind of bringing it back you're in trouble yeah that's why
why didn't tell you yeah because he's like no you don't need to do that
anyways I get it as a manager like I get it okay so you were speaking
about how you and Ryan who's in the chat
love you Ryan glad you're here um we're working on a project over the weekend
and then the documentation is really difficult so I think let's actually
talk about that because you know there's lots of different questions I dive
into what are you building you know how did what does your day-to-day look like
and I think that you can actually shed a great deal of light on
why did they suck like what happened in the documentation what were you not
able to do and if you don't want to give away sort of all the you know bits and
nuggies to sort of unveil who it was totally understand but you know was it
oftentimes it's like you go in it's like one one person recently for example I
was looking at a getting started guide and I started doing the getting started
guide and I literally couldn't even get forward in the getting started guide to
actually get to the thing that I wanted to do
so I would love to hear what were your issues what were kind of the struggles
and maybe what do you think would have been a better path for them to take to
resolve it sure so I think you and you kind of hit the nail on the head and
the way I look at documentation sometimes like I will never say that I am an
advanced developer by any means like I think that documentation however should
have tiers like a new user should be able to comfortably come in and
spend something up without too much complication then there should be a tier
for more advanced users that want to really deep dive the infrastructure and
like do whatever they need to do and be able to find something like if I
specifically get an error message that is related to your database your
framework or whatever it is I should be able to search that and be able to get
information about it in your platform
we had to enlist the help of another person that you know very well
chris and wiki because neither of us are right now
Ryan and myself aren't super familiar with back end and we brought chris in
and chris could not figure it out and that like again that's a pretty big
testament because you know how good chris is
yep he struggled being able to figure it out too
fully believe in tiered document yeah saying it for years I totally agree so
we ended up having to because we could not connect our query to
the database the right way something with regex
we ended up having to pull the database uh up to the client side and do the
search on the client side so we ended up having to add additional script
to do that as opposed to just running a call to the database for the specific
like query um should not have been that complicated
right again way out of my wheelhouse um they are also glad to help
edges I was that as that chris I don't know I feel like it's swift
it might be chris swift oh chris if I had to make a guess
whoever it is the linkedin user I know it's we can only see linkedin user so I
can tell you who it wasn't it wasn't taylor
it's true because he's connected yeah um but
I think again like people uh any any any sort of org should have
documentation that on that first page somebody should within five minutes be
able to start using a product I agree like I got so confused and again I'm
asking for help and three of us could not figure it out and ended up having to
go with an alternate method because we couldn't even determine whether their
database was able to do what we wanted which again
shouldn't be a problem yep so you know again adding all these extra steps
does not optimize efficiency on a website either
so um yeah that our speed thing because I um wrapped our thing in a container
versus else got like a speed check oh you can watch the um the processing on the
site it's like a c at this point because we're just it it's not clean code
it's yeah it's just it's bad so um moving forward I
think that that's going to be some of the suggestions uh that we offer as far as
like maybe efficiency and being able to find like
troubleshooting tips again like if you're dealing with a specific problem with a
specific product you should be able to locate that and maybe it's
something that people haven't seen before so there should be a better workflow
for somebody that does have an issue like that as to how they can address it
um I agree yeah but something that probably should have taken us a couple
days between the three of us that literally took us all week and that's
also issues with time too because this was just for fun
um yeah but it's done it's hard to dive into some of those issues
when you're doing projects like that for fun honestly so like
I've been I've been trying to like you know start installing some things and
dabbling into some different projects and I'll spend you know half an hour
whatever sort of diving into something um and it's not enough time right and so
when when you don't code all day or if you don't get the privilege to say hey
I'm done with my day job right I get to go just play in code
um it can be really painful because you're sort of stuck in this issue and
then you're like okay well let me just write down what I was doing at the
last moment that I was thinking about this in some capacity so you can come
back to it which honestly never ever ever works never works no um so Ryan
added a comment in the docs or sorry in the chat about the docs that we were
just talking about and how they were wrong and I just wanted to
for anyone that might be listening when this isn't a podcast version or might
be listening now I think that's one of the really
sort of key things and so since we're talking about devrel I'm gonna kind of
just drop this really quickly because I wanted to sort of sort of share this
wisdom a little bit but um there's four buckets that I
look at when I look at devrel and they all sit on top of one very
important bucket and that important bucket is problem fit understanding
what pain points developers have and that your solution solves those pain
points but who has them right and who will pay for them
is sort of what I consider that problem fit and then there's these four you know
look at it like squares right this and on top discoverability credibility
aha moment advocacy advocacy is not developer advocacy that's customer
advocacy so discoverability and credibility is very much what we see
in the developer advocate type of role they're out driving awareness they're
out building credibility building a brand name reputation
that's those two boxes these bottom two boxes are aha moment and the customer
advocacy did the customer get to the value that they wanted are they out
there talking about your product and using it so someone actually in the chat
talked about how they joined torque they didn't find it before
that's customer advocacy right that's the end result that you want from devrel
you want them talking about what you're doing but what you were just referring
to with that documentation is that aha moment bucket and whatever platform
you are using they are lacking in that aha moment bucket and that is
honestly one of the most important although all four are very important
developers have to find you then when they find you they have to trust you
do you have credibility then they have to reach that moment of like oh my gosh
I know what I'm going to build I know how I'm going to build it and the docs
have to paint that picture so what I wanted to share briefly is how much
and how important it is to spend time on those documentations your website and
your homepage can be crap your marketing messaging can be crap but if you
have good docs and a good community platform where developers can go ask
questions and engage with their peers boom slam dunk you can leave that
marketing website as trashy as you want for likely a very long amount of time
if you are nailing these other cases because most developers come to a
website they go to the documentation then they go to integrations because they
want to know do you partner with what I already build with and is it going to
be easy for me to get started and they want to find a getting started guide
I could not agree with you more and I feel like
everybody over in the chat at least like I saw Nick Taylor's here Ryan
Chris everybody they're very doc heavy they're very technical they want that
but documentation too and again to speak to what you were just saying
all of those tiers they have to have multiple levels of them because again
you're going to pigeonhole yourself into being like only for for senior devs like
your your content's too technical like you're cutting off a huge part of the
market by not having content that get or documentation that gives that a ha moment
for a newer developer yep I'm not going to want to go and use that product again
exactly I will totally say that so you know again that's not that's not
necessarily a knock against the product but as a newer user a newer developer
I want products that have the documentation that I can have that a ha moment that you
spoke of and I definitely did not get that
at all I got a lot of ah shoot not shoot though exactly exactly and I will say
too just to add just like a little layer onto what you said because you
basically said sort of this is that there are sort of I'm going to say there
are two approaches but honestly there's a million approaches but I look at it in
sort of two different ways that you're building out ecosystems for developers
one way is self-serve right devs need to be able to go on their own get the
documentation do the thing read the things understand them and build which
is exactly what you're referring to yeah then there's sort of this other
approach right where you're going after those enterprise developers you're
going after those senior levels maybe you're going
after fintech and healthcare companies and so it's always a sales demo it's an
enterprise sales motion and you're going to have different
documentation but here's the thing about that if you are in this enterprise
sales motion bucket you are still going to have developers who are like jason
who are like ryan who are like no wiki who are like myself who are going to come
in and who might need additional contacts or additional information and
they're not going to fall into that same skill level that that you think that
you're covering right and so that documentation whether your target
audience is highest enterprise devs at
extremely regulated companies you still need some form of self-serve
documentation even if it's behind a login wall if that's what you have to do
but it has to exist so the developers can come in and find those resources
I don't mind setting up an account like I don't mind doing the steps
at all but I get super pissed if I set up the account and I start to do
something and then I hit a wall right because now I just I'm
I know I'm going to get your marketing emails you have no problem sending me
those but you seem to have a problem getting me to
actually use the product like functionally for what I need so
not cool not cool not cool man okay so let's dive into you
at torque obviously you're doing a variety of different things and so what
is your day-to-day look like honestly it kind of varies
and it looks like it's probably going to change a little bit going into the new
year too just because we're you know kind of changing things up I think
we were we were feeling out a lot of the process in the end of this year
seeing what worked seeing what didn't so typically
Mondays we'll do like a team we have a team meeting
do our stand-up I'll just get into work it's a lot of planning to and it's also
a lot of engagement I am in the discord all the time writing my own content
we'll be getting some blog posts out so a lot of it's just like sitting right
here and and talking to people in the community
and then I will do a stream I think I'm gonna kind of shift the schedule of
that a little bit next year but we do like a Monday Wednesday Friday
Mondays it's just casual we talk about like current events and stuff like that
things that are going on and then again that's engaging with the community and
topics will come up and we'll get into that we've been talking a lot about like
jobs and planning 2025 for yourself which again is super important
we've done like resume stuff portfolio stuff just things to help people kind
of progress and you know we've been very Taylor and I have been very candid with
any discussions we have like 10% of the people on our platform that sign up
will qualify for one of the roles that I have it's just it's the numbers but
that's incredible honestly and it really is and we actually have had a ton of
people get picked up even in the last week because we get updates all the time
yes which yeah which is awesome but we want to be able to provide a place for
you for other resources so that's what our community is really driven to is like
I want to I want to have educational stuff I want to have stuff around the job
just general community networking and that's that's what our Fridays are for
we do a stream on Fridays the lunch networking thing everybody drops all
their socials in there we're just we're engaging we're talking about stuff
and again building I mean we've seen like 300% growth on everything because
you know I don't have a product to sell you I'm not pushing that and I think
that really also helps me because I don't like doing sales
so I can just organically sell just being a part of something where
everybody's picking everybody up everybody's helping
and yeah it's been awesome and it's nice not having like hours so it's like I'll
do a little bit of work at night you should go down and help my kid with
his schoolwork because we homeschooled Jack
and yeah do some meetings we always have team meetings
but I think that's good too it's because you want to be aligned on everything
in our Slack we do morning check-ins every day
which kind of breaks down what everybody's day looks like
a lot of one-on-ones me and my associate who's like my dot my my Mexico me
hema is we're trying to get some content to do
together very cool so we've got a lot of planning
coming up but yeah it's you're gonna see a lot of torque a lot of torque in your
face next year which is good that's beautiful
yeah that's how it's supposed to be and I think you know what what y'all are
doing is like it's beautiful right it's like
there are there's a variety of people looking for work and right now is a
really really hard time to be looking for work um depending on what your skill
that right there are some really great opportunities out there right now
but at the same time we're seeing a lot of office work and I think that that's
making it really difficult for people who have chosen to become remote or to
work somewhere else and so I think we're definitely seeing this huge flux and
sort of where the job market is going and where people are
both physically existing and also you know intellectually
you know contributing and all those things torque in your face yeah I know
as soon as I said that I was waiting for somebody I was like god
no I have I struggle with sometimes like I I'm like why why did I just say that
I immediately know when someone's gonna be like oh geez
um good friends right good friends because you've built developer
engagement literally everywhere you go no and and that's the thing like
I that's what I want everybody to feel like yeah I want everybody to feel
welcome and feel like we're their friend because we are again I don't
my goal again I'm not selling you anything I don't have a product that you
can buy it is us it is being part of the community and if
somebody ends up getting a job or somebody just feels welcome
um Taylor's been kind of he always is like trying new catchphrases and crap
like that like you know you know like they um but uh what is it's like uh
you're you're not alone right like yeah we're a community to help you through
this process um because it is hard so you know we have some people that are
struggling with some stuff and they come in and they talk about it and we try to
give them some direction it sometimes they're not there for direction they
just want to hear like ah that sucks but yeah let it out right so I think your
Friday networking is really interesting too because oftentimes um you know
developers and I will say we didn't get this essence that commit your code but
we can kind of get to why that is in a second here but oftentimes you know we've
we have all these different sort of personality you know archetypes or
types in the developer ecosystem and people like to say that we're anti
social but at the end of the day we are actually the most social human beings
around um it's just that we don't really care for people who aren't like us and
we don't do that in a mean way it's just we like to talk about the technical
problem-solving space right we want to dive in and we want to talk tech with
our friends we want to talk about what they're building and what they're
doing and anything in the ecosystem and really just someone that we can relate
to right and I think that's very normal we all want to hang out with people who are
like us right and but I think that also in our ecosystem we can find people who
are who are shy or who you know don't necessarily uh find it easy to come out
of their shell and I think that that's a really beautiful way to do that I think
commit your code as I was saying is also did a really beautiful job at that
because most times when I go to a conference and I don't necessarily
know everybody I can actually find myself sort of like dissipating back into
the distance and I'm a very outgoing person right you've met me in person
many people have met me um but it's just like the sort of like okay it's a lot
it's overwhelming um and I think conferences can be a beautiful place to
do that but yet can also sort of be a very darkening place too if you don't
find that little crew um and I think that commit your code and the networking
sessions that you're doing are different right they're bringing
developers together and I think this this community goodness of really like
authentically getting to the roots and saying like no seriously
it's the Pac-Man theory here like we don't just close these circles
everyone is always welcome in these circles um and I just think it's beautiful
I think that that is exactly what our ecosystem means especially right now
with everything that's going on economically in our world but also in the
job market right how do you feel like I mean obviously like sort of um
you know your role coming in to torque it's like it's a little fresh hitting
all these events have you sort of noticed the same essence at some of the other
events that you've been going to or um what do you think on that yeah that's
yes and no I mean I think it really depends on the the event specifically
um you know we were at all things open and that one felt a little different
because again it's everybody kind of runs in packs
in things like that where this one without necessarily having like the
massive hallway track where everything is separated it felt more intimate so it
feels like everybody was like there together as opposed to just there at a
conference with other things even render render is massive
it's hard to get that sort of a vibe that commit your code has or anything where
it's like you know everybody's a lot closer it's quieter
yep so the energy is just very different um
not that that said it doesn't mean that there aren't positive takeaways from
the larger events but again something like commit your code was just like
perfect for networking and being like face to face with people
I love doing the the virtual meetups too because I feel like it's like a real
good gateway for people to like get a little bit of confidence to do something
in person we're gonna try to do some meetups around
conferences coming up in 2025 as well so I'm hoping again like the
build-up of the community virtually will get more people to these meetups when
we come to the different conferences which is gonna just give more people
like opportunities you know there's only so much that you can do
here on the screen like that next step even and again you don't have to be
extroverted you don't have to be like outgoing but
there's so much more for these people to gain by just being able to go out and
do stuff and if we give them that opportunity of
doing the virtual things on Fridays or doing this and that like
helps them build up the confidence to go out and like go to their first
conference and maybe find a new job find a new friend like there's again
that's that's how it pays pays it forward for me
so I want to be able to give that to everybody
I love that absolutely love that about you and that's why you're so great
follow-up sort of like thought around that you know I think it's actually
interesting in what when you at commit your code
torque brought together a lunch networking event the day before the
conference started yeah and I thought that was really really really cool and
I think you know when you start to think about that those are actually like
the most beautiful events for people who are a little bit
shy or maybe just like don't come out of their shell as easily or just don't
have a pack right as you said that they run with yeah in normal times and I
did meet someone at commit your code who was like that and he's like I don't
really know anybody and I was like hang with me you'll know everybody pretty
soon right yeah and so it's just not everybody but a
lot of people and so it's just like doing those things and your events are
actually building that beautifully and so that is actually something to sort of
like raise awareness to like as conference organizers or even event
organizers are there sort of pre virtual things that we can do to let
people start to meet each other maybe it's just a couple days beforehand
before people are traveling hey I'm so and so kind of icebreaker
networking give them this chance to like use the
the keyboard and the screen to hide behind but yet meet people
and then be able to come and engage and that is very much
you know what y'all are doing and I think it's absolutely amazing
yeah I like that as the kind of the the precursor to events you know building
up and like making plans with people we did that in the
100 devs discord as well you know because this was an opportunity Leon was
going to be at come at your code and a bunch of us
were also able to be there so you know again we've a lot of us had never met
so we set it up in the discord and built built that momentum and the excitement
and then we all you know I don't think actually I don't think we ever got all
like hung out like we were planning on but we did
get a picture so that was that was cool and it was hard because I was only there
for the one day anyways but yeah yeah I think that that's such a great idea and
I Ryan had mentioned that wasn't the first time Taylor's done that either and I
think that it's it's really a great way again for people to just meet in a I
don't want to say safer but like just it is out of the conference yep
away from the conference because the conference is very different
yeah especially again at the bigger ones all things open like render
that energy and try like my brain goes nuts like I
can handle it but some people can't so it's like
yeah it gives them a step away where they can still
engage and meet yeah I like that he does that and there'll be more of those I
think that that's going to be one of our initiatives going into 2025 is not
even necessarily sponsoring events but like just
holding more meetups for opportunities like that yep yeah
I am okay I've got two more questions I want to ask but the one thing I wanted
to sort of apply on here for anyone because we've been sort of talking about
a little bit of this and if anyone is kind of listening with eager
ears to to learn all of this I'm bringing together sort of a
actually it's going to get published here in the next day or two but it is a
untimely a little bit late but hopefully not everyone's on the same fiscal year
an mvp dev to a market budget right like what do you absolutely
what do you absolutely need inside of your budget
and a lot of that comes down to meetups right and so one of the things that I
share in there is if you can't sponsor these big huge giant events
can you attend the event can you volunteer can you bring people together
can you do what y'all are doing in different ways to bring those
developers together right okay so I think there's I just wanted to
speak on that real quick I think that there's tons of ways to be able to stay
within a budget on that like I got offered a ticket to an event in
England and I like I could go but again that cuts the expense down
so like there's speaking events too it's like if you get accepted to talk
that's going to offset the budget for the your company to get you there or if
you're paying your own dime and then you can still host a meetup
or do something off-site or whatever like there's so many different ways around
it to like build value but maintain a certain level of like expense
um so yeah I love that idea I'm gonna try to do more of that too it's like that
gorilla event planning we just show up and then you're like hey we're here
let's do it so you're hustling hard you're just you're doing all the work
right you're doing all the hard work to build the relationships to bring all
those people together yeah okay so I know you have to go soon so let's uh
let's do one really good last question that I think is usually very insightful
when you're stuck whether you're stuck in a code problem like we talked about
whether you're stuck in uh hey what tool should I use type of a problem
what is kind of your hierarchy of steps that you take to get help when you
feel like you can't move forward uh first thing I ask clog that's a good one
I I do I mean I'll I'll go to AI if I can't understand what it told me
and I will defer to one of my phone friends I have a very select few people
that I can bounce ideas off of because I mean I think we can all agree we've
run into that person in tech that is the person you would never ask a question
again um so I I do try to avoid that it's like if I'm not understanding the
error if I can't troubleshoot this myself run it that which actually I use
pieces I have the desktop app I keep all my stuff in there but I typically use
Anthropics uh LLM um sure yep so that if that doesn't make any sense to me and
it's not like within 10 minutes I'm like hey Ryan have you ever seen this error
message or like what going on um or you know again a couple other people if
they can't then figure it out then we are escalating it to somebody that
usually does not have the same responses as as a friendly Ryan um but I
I mean I I don't have a problem asking for help but I also understand like if I
can figure something out on my own I feel like I can gain more from that so
that's that's how I do it and it doesn't matter what it is I mean again it can be
a coding problem or just a life problem Google
all right you can honestly you can ask AI life stuff it's
some so many people don't realize it's not just for coding
like you can just ask it stuff so you absolutely can if anyone's looking for
some tips on how to leverage clod and sort of think about that there's an
episode from last week with Alex Standford and he actually um talks about
what he does and he uses clod and chat GPT and sort of goes back and forth and
actually like has chat GPT interview him so if that
intrigues you at all and it sounds like beautiful results I would go listen to
that episode and just hear his kind of tips and tech
sneaks I love that and I think so here I actually
would like to just shed light on one thing really super quickly so you would
say something about asking people um you're going to get different types of
results and asking yeah what I am assuming or that you're alluding to is
asking a far more senior engineer something who you
don't really like to tap into that resource because you know that they're
busy and they're at this level right um I am going to openly say this that I
feel like and this is me making an assumption I feel like people put me in
that bucket and so people reach out to me but not like
they used to and I think that if I can speak for the senior
devs it actually kind of makes me sad because then I'm doing all the
outreach to reach out to somebody else which is great but at the same time I
don't have the the time very similar to sort of the other
you know senior dev um and so I think there is sort of this like
very very interesting dynamic of like who can I reach out to and ask time for
but at the same time sort of feel like it's it's um
you're burdening them so I think I just ask the people because honestly people
don't ask me for stuff anymore and it kind of bums me out and I'm like I
would I will so happily help and I realize I'm busy
but I'll even take the path of replying publicly right so if
you want insights from someone who you feel like you don't want to
take their time in air quotes there um do it publicly ask me directly on
twitter tag me and say tessa what do you think of this because then
you're not wasting my time because then I get to come in and
help you answer your question but then all the rest of the people that get to
see it also get the answer and so if you're able to do it publicly I would
recommend that otherwise just go ask the people
they are I think asking public is something a lot of people do say
also and I think when it's asked that way
they assume that you're gonna ask the question the right way I think that
there's like people don't have time for for banter or chatter
um you know if you have a question ask it yeah if the person needs more
information they will ask back like that's how the flow should be so
instead of just you know hey what's up had a question
then you wait for the response like no just just ask if they don't have time but
again put it in public because you're not going to post that in public you're
not going to be like hey how you doing had a question can you get back to me
you know you you ask so I think that that does make sense
um I've had Eddie uh jowl say like we have conversations pretty often but
it'd be like oh you should ask me that in public because then other people could
also benefit from it exactly exactly and I'm like no just
answer the goddamn question no what the hell no um but no he's he's a good
dude but I see the benefit of it besides just for you and again that's like
paying it forward to the building and learning in public opportunity where
everybody can benefit from the question so yeah and that person who gets to
answer it has scaled their time right yes they invested time to go and answer
the question but it means that they got to help more than just one person answer
that question um and and what you said about please
don't DM me and say hey how are you like literally please don't say hey how are
you hope you're well then dump what you want um that was an
absolutely amazing call out so that is a great tip for anybody right
um it's beautiful to come in and groom that and make sure that you're courteous
about the situation but to require them to write back so that you can ask a
question means that they're not going to write back when you need that answer
and then there's still yet another delay to get in the answer that you need
yeah over time you can develop that relationship with people like that's
fun yeah but I get a lot and I'm sure you
had them as well of those just like hey yes I'm like what hey what
hey what like Ryan can say hey to me at this point like you can message me a
hey but even still I'll usually just be like hey
hope you're doing well just checking it yep there's the there's the question
there's the the statement is in the the first line so
you know life short and I don't think many people even if they have the time
want to spend it in those types of situations so it's like do
yourself a favor too yep absolutely okay so to wrap up the
show where can people find you you're an amazing human being everyone should be
your friend so they need to go find Jason Torres
where can we find you I am all over the place I'm on LinkedIn as myself you can
find me uh or Tayson Joraz on Twitter the Jason
Torres was taken and the guy told me to kick rocks when I asked him for it so
I will never be Jason Torres I am Tayson Joraz if somebody actually did think
was my name at one point too not it it's not it I love what you did there though
well thank you everybody should follow you as well you are such a beacon of
positivity and you've always been there for me and I
appreciate that and I hope that you and your family have a great Christmas
yes you too um and that's just us right that's what we do
we do those selfless acts because we know that they're gonna come back and if
they don't come back to us they're gonna come back to somebody else and that's
just how the world turns so yeah there it is all right y'all this has
been so great thank you for everyone who has joined us Jason any final words
uh I will give you my my final call for the year this will be the last time I
say it it's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice
oh I love that well on that note I will see everyone later
Merry Christmas Merry Christmas