Hello, everyone. I am super pumped to kick off this week's episodes. We've been going
for about three weeks now with the 99 Dev Problems live stream. We started it over the
holidays, knew that we'd have a little bit, you know, lower attendance in that space.
And I'm really excited to hit the ground running this week and chat with the awesome Tim Banks.
Tim, I would love for you to introduce yourself.
Hello, Tessa. I am Tim Banks. I am a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, five-time Pan American
champion, three-time American national champion, three-time Silver Madison World Championships.
I'm like this close to getting my black belt, like this close. Probably happy this year.
And I also do tech work to pay the bills. You know, and we'll talk more about that later.
But also I was a chef, also was a construction worker. I've done a lot of stuff, a lot of
fun stuff.
Ooh, okay. I love that.
You know I was a chef?
I didn't know that honestly, but like I feel like based on like your username and other
things you've dropped out, I should have picked up on that. So yeah, that's really cool. Okay,
I can't wait to unpack all of that. What are you doing today? Because those are really
impressive, awesome things. So how does that play into where you're at today?
So today I'm a solutions architect at Calent, who is a professional service provider that
specializes in AWS. And I'm also an advisor at Expans0, which is the company that brings
you Bacalhiao, which is a distributed compute over data solution. It's a workload orchestrator
focused on distributed compute. So I'm doing some advisory work there as well.
That's really cool. What's like one of their use cases?
I'll tell you the biggest use case is like if you have a lot of people, if you have data
in disparate places that you need to run ETL on or anything like that, a lot of people
use Snowflake. Amazon just introduced Aurora DSQL for that. But if you can literally run
any job anywhere you have compute, right? And you can do that with Kubernetes. And it's
a lot like shooting a squirrel with a bazooka. But if you just need to do simple orchestration
of simple data transformation jobs, you don't have to necessarily pay to bring all your
data into one spot just to do that. It is both expensive. It takes time. And then also
you're consolidating compute for no reason. So you can run jobs where your data lies to
do ETL stuff to do any kind of thing you need. And which you've always been capable of doing
if you want to log in and do it. But the orchestration of those jobs is difficult. So anytime where
you have data that you need to run any kind of compute against in a distributed manner
and you want an easy way to orchestrate it, that's when you're going to want to use Expansion.
Interesting. Okay. I'm not going to side tangent on this too long, but there's some working
on sort of building out a SaaS app, right? I'm taking some of the services that I offer
and starting to productize them. And I am like so anti this, I'm going to say this with
a grain of salt and then I'm not anti it because there is a reason why you need it.
But I was talking to a developer and he's like, well, you're going to have to get, you
know, Kubernetes and everything set up. And I was like, hold up. I don't think I need
that giant cloud infrastructure to actually power my app. And like honestly, and I'm not
saying that I'm against it because I've had a career in it too, as well, working inside
of some of that industry. But for me, it just seems like overkill. And so I've been on this
like sort of tangent of like, how can we build this technical stack that doesn't require
cloud and Kubernetes and this, like you said, shooting a squirrel with the bazooka, which
is a perfect analogy of over, you know, infestrating over, over creating infrastructure, right? Overbuilding
something that is overkill. And so this is very interesting to me. I'm definitely going
to have to check them out.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's worth a look. Please go kick the tires. Let me know where, you
know, we, we're in a stage right now where we, we want people to try it. We want us to
tell you, if you love it, that's great. If you hate it, I definitely want to hear from
you.
Yeah, for sure. Well, data is a huge part of what I'm doing, right? There's a lot of
insights and sentiment and sort of information that goes into it. And so there's a giant
amount of data that will need to be stored and sort of referenced as the, you know, as
you're interacting.
Yeah.
So yeah, I absolutely will. Very cool.
So I, one of the interesting use cases around that as, as our devices and everything we
use become smarter and smarter. Like, you know, like if you're, if you have like great
examples like vehicles, right? If you have a vehicle fleet that has any kind of compute
in it, do you need to send data all the way back to some place to run some compute and
then send it back? Or can you just run that job on the compute that you have available?
Yes, I have so many clients in this space, not so many, because I only have a handful
of clients generally, but three out of,
That was a perfectly good lie. You could have just ran with that. I have so many clients.
So I'm sure I want you to know, I'm cutting out some precious time to do this because
I have so many clients. I would have gone with that one. I would have just seen so many
clients.
Okay. Either way though, where I wanted to go is in this exact situation, right? In
this edge use case, in this on device use case, in the sort of robotics in bringing
technology to sort of the edge scenario. And I think it's really interesting because like
we talked about in pre-show, I think it's a direction where where tech is headed, right?
And like, how can we start to function? One of my previous clients I had, I'm only going
to derail on this for a second because I think it's just really cool, is about like
essentially reproducibility, right? So if you're going to deploy out to those different
platforms, like you need everything to be exactly the way that it is supposed to be,
right? And then like you said, bringing that data back, why are we, why are we bringing
data all the way across something when you can communicate with the data right, right
where it's actually at? So really intrigued by Xpansel. Okay. Really, really cool.
So check it out there. And I feel like it's one of those cases where as more people use
it, more use cases will pop up.
Exactly. Exactly. That's like AR, AI, that's kind of everywhere that we're at, right? And
it's like the more that we can start to experiment, the more we're going to learn.
Absolutely.
Okay. So with all this awesome career history and amazing strength and agility, what's,
what does your developer education look like?
Oh, I am, I am one of the, I am, I am a classic example of the unmedicated Gen X 80s kid who
learned the program on a Commodore 64. And I learned Microsoft ROM basic so I could do
animations and stuff like that. And then, and then I did that, didn't, didn't have any
other computer other than that, other than like a Sega until I joined the Marine Corps.
And then in the Marine Corps, I was an avionics. I was a C-130 flight navigation systems operator,
which means I was a flying avionics technician. So essentially I did calculus in midair. But
we worked on Vietnam era level navigation systems, which use inertial navigation units,
right? But you had to be able to do everything from use it to do i level, which is intermediate
level maintenance on it, which means I'm doing testing test benches of a guy I have to diagnose
down to the component. And so as part of that school, you basically got what was an associate
on it, associate's degree in electrical engineering.
Yeah.
You learned binary, you learned hex, you learned all the things like that. You knew how solid
state, solid state transistors and, you know, silicone essentially work. And then I used
that to kick out to the civilian career of being a system admin and an operator for manufacturers.
And then everything was self taught from there. So I have never taken a formal programming
class of any kind.
Dang. That's, that is a very cool.
And very interesting path into technology. I mean, obviously we hear sort of all walks
of life when I ask that question. But I think getting sort of that experience in the Marine
Corps and like really like having to sort of like you said, make those calculations as
you're flying, that really forces you to like learn the systems and learn everything that's
happening within them. That's very, very, very cool.
What I think is really interesting is like you got folks like me and I feel like I might
be on a good, good day, like a D plus level internet celebrity, but you've got folks like
Kelsey Hightower who's self taught. You got Ian Coldwater who's self taught. You've got
a lot of names who are doing a lot of important work around these communities who are self
taught and people. It's not that people don't realize it, but people don't understand how
difficult it was to do that back then versus now.
And I feel like we should be overemphasizing the ability for people to learn themselves
without having to go to college for all this. And I will not get on my modern college as
a business racket soapbox today. But I can simply say that the more and more people and
more and more types of roles have to be more and more comfortable with technology and the
principles of technology. And it needs to be as accessible as possible. We have all
this information out there that many mega corpse have trained AI on for free. And yet
we still have a hard time of making it freely accessible and easy in a standard way for
people to learn themselves. And I think we can do better at that.
Well, I agree. I love that you have a soapbox around this. I am also self taught, tried
to go to college three times for criminal justice, business management and programming,
dropped out all three times. The programming one I only dropped out because I did that
towards the end because I felt like I needed a degree. Just like you said, right? I felt
like I needed that degree to be like, Oh, I'm capable. When at the end of the day, I
was, I had freelance work and I was in a huge project with a really big agency that was
very well known in Minneapolis. And I'm like, wait a minute, why am I paying for schooling
when I know these skills and they're teaching me like how to build a website and tables?
Are you serious right now? So I agree with you. I also had like what W three schools
back when I tried to learn or when I was learning to code is they have a Z and W three schools
was beautiful and great and really helpful, but it was like source code and you literally
had to learn the system from the ground up like you did in the Marine Corps.
Oh, and one other thing I will want, I let me just ease longer than just like tip to
onto the soapbox for a second because there are so many companies that offer internships
and they only offer internships for college folks in college. The people who need those
internships in the same sense that you would do internships for plumbing or welding or
mechanical work or age fact are the people who are trying to learn it on the job. So
they should have apprenticeships for this job. And if companies would offer apprenticeships
for this job, they could actually get away with, with treating, you know, the stuff they
say like we're family and they'd like to abuse you. Yeah, they could do that a little bit
easier, but also would be for good. Right. Because they would actually be giving these
folks something like that that they need. So yeah, companies should be doing apprenticeships
and not internships and I will I will beat that drum until the head breaks and then I
will yell through it.
I agree with that. I have brought in multiple people into my business and now I'm not like
a big huge business with lots of revenue, but I've definitely brought a number of developers
in because I'm like, Hey, I'm doing the work anyway, so you should learn it. So come alongside
of me, learn the work. I'll coach you along. You can help me deliver something and then
boom, you've got something that you can take and actually bring that into an interview
or bring that into a conversation. And I think it's so important to give those chances. So
I love love love your soapbox.
So we've got a comment from X about the company's morning college students because of insurance
liability and the fact of the matter is Lee's large companies, they will absolutely because
they will make exceptions for folks in the military all the time. They will do internships
for folks in the military without college degrees. So it is not an insurance liability
thing. That is that is that is that is not that is not sufficient deterrent for the practice.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I we've been having such a good conversation that I didn't see
all these amazing people in the chat. Kevin and Emmett and Rizal and Tages and trust.
I don't know that I've met trust yet. So hello, Roxy. What a great, great group that we have
this morning.
Okay, so
I agree. As someone who has hired people and worked in these different industries, been
a part of the recruiting process, I know for a fact it has nothing to do with insurance.
It has to do with the fact that they think that they need something and the in in their
minds that that's it's what's inside of corporate. It's what's ingrained in their ladder. It's
what's ingrained in their structure and changing that means a whole new HR process, a whole
new whatever it is right within that company. So it's a it's a pain that's really hard
to to definitely solve. I fully agree, James, fully agree that it's getting done the less.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, so we dove into what you're doing. We dove into your education. Love that. What
kind of problems are you facing today? Right? Like you've got your hands in a couple of
different things, but like what what challenges are you saying and things that you're trying
to hurdles you're taking down?
So it's interesting. I've got, you know, two different kind of areas I'm working in and
I'm also by for care responsible, but there is a lot of overlap, right? Yeah. On a lack
of organizational knowledge around how things work. Right. And I say this and this has been
a recurring thing. I have made so much money based on folks really not understanding the
house and the wise of things work. Right. I was a principal cloud economist at the Duck
Bill group. And the, you know, one of the main things that you can do to save money on on
your infrastructure operations is to understand how your infrastructure works. And then you
can start making decisions around how you want it to operate because now you know how
it works versus just putting money in the money hole and getting infrastructure out.
And we still see that now. There's a lot of folks that need, we need expertise in this
and we need expertise in that because we don't have it right now. And it's, and it's once
people have the expertise, we're expensive. We're not cheap. And so there is really the
this vacuum of extra and this started with Kubernetes. A lot of people had to hire Kubernetes
talent and they got paid a lot of money because nobody knew it. And then the stop gap became
the ecosystem, which offered a lot of services and tools and things like that, which let
people run Kubernetes without knowing Kubernetes. Yeah. Right. But then you become dependent
on that. And as either providers raise their, raise their prices or they get bought by Broadcom,
you know, and then all of a sudden people were like, Oh, we actually don't know how
to run this ourselves. And they get, they painted themselves in the corners. And so you're
seeing a lot of folks either who have already painted themselves in the corners are realizing
like, actually, hey, we're going to paint ourselves into a corner here. And, and that's,
that's the main trend I'm seeing is folks who are either have painted themselves in
the corners and need help or folks are like, we actually don't want to paint ourselves
in the corner because we're seeing how that's bad and we need to get our expertise up. This
kind of goes along what I'm saying about internship, but the, but the notion of real professional
development and having your folks learn things, employing people and then letting them learn
is not a thing our industry seems to really be good at anymore. They want you to know
everything already. Right. And, and, and, and I can let me give you this as, as a person
who, you know, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is not something you're going to start at being good.
I don't care how athletic you are. And, and I love, I'm 49 year old. I'm short. I'm built
like a bowling ball with Corgi limbs. Like I am not particularly like people. You don't
look at me and think I'm an athlete. Right. And, and, you know, so we'll get some, you
know, college Jim Bro who can cross fit till the days till the cows come home and has cardio
and, you know, like 2% body fat. And that's all well and good. You get them in there and
they listen to Joe Rogan. They think, all right, I know some jiu-jitsu. We're going to slap
hands and I'm just going to exhaust them in 30 seconds and then have my way with them.
Right. And this is the thing that happens over and over and over again. Right. You have
to, you have to get over the, the idea that you're just going to instantly be good at
something. Right. You have to build fucking up into your budget. Right. Cause you need
to do it if you want to learn and grow. Right. But we swing the opposite way. It's like,
Oh, well, we're just going to, we're just going to fail fast until we learn. I'm like,
no, because that means, that means two white belts are going to become black belts just
by rolling with each other is what you're telling me. And that's not how that works.
That's a great analogy. A gym, a successful jiu-jitsu gym, right? Her dojo or academy
has, you know, a lot of white belts and then fewer blue belts and then fewer purple belts
and then fewer brown belts and just a few black belts. But then sometimes they have a
lot of black belts because people have stayed with them a long time. Right. But the process
of learning is part of the academy. You have to, when you are a white belt, you're going
to lose all the time. Blue belts are going to wipe them out with you. Black belts are
going to be untouchable. Right. But, but that is necessary for everyone to learn. And we
don't do that in our industry anymore. We don't have the notion of an industry where
people learn and grow. They expect you to know everything. They're really probably not
going to promote you. Right. If they do, they're going to give you just a little bit. And so
if you learn a greater to go pop, you know, pop from company to company. There are some
people that say, oh, I've stayed here this long and I've, and I've worked in this thing.
I want my channel up. But you notice they're typically specialists. Right. Yeah. Or exceptionally
great companies that are harder to find. Yeah. Yeah. That is, that is true. And so I really
feel like that notion of losing operational knowledge in the, in the, in the pursuit of
velocity is kind of what we're doing with that. We don't want people to really learn.
We just want people to do. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I've been on
my own little soapbox lately as I've been diving, you know, deeper into different areas,
right? And as my business has evolved and taken me into sort of different areas of like
realizing that a lot of developers today, they have so many tools, so many libraries,
so many frameworks, so many things handed to them that they don't actually fundamentally
understand what is happening behind the scenes in those frameworks of those libraries. And
it's, I joke that I'm like, oh, my dev chops suck today. But at the same time, like my
dev chops kind of don't suck, right? Because like I came from a world where like I understood
the entire system, how is it exactly my infrastructure working alongside of how is exactly my code
working, right? Because I had to understand it. I didn't have all these tools. We didn't
have all these advancements. There wasn't like warp, right? For terminal where like,
you no longer have to actually remember terminal anymore. It's like, I had to know all the
things. And now today I see developers who are more like, Oh, well, I don't actually
know, like react, right? I just know like next yes, or I know tailwind, or I know, you
know, whatever it might be. And I think it's interesting to me with what you're saying
too, is that that's definitely something I think that, you know, these younger developers
are the ones that are early in their career need to start to push on and expand on it's
like understanding the underlying infrastructure of everything that you're building, because
exactly what you're saying, how do you become a specialist? How do you become an expert?
How do you get those big fat paychecks at those great jobs and companies? If you don't
understand and you're not a full expert on everything that you're working on?
So I give a talk at the committee, your code conference about to come about context, right?
And one of the things I talk about when when folks when I mentor folks, and they say, Well,
how can I grow my career? It's like, do you learn more about what you're doing? Yeah,
don't learn the intricacies of the syntax, learn more about what you're doing. How does
it fit into the system as a whole? How does it fit into the business as a whole, be able
to talk about how this function is going to help the company meet their quarterly goal?
Right? Because you should be able to draw a line from one to the other. And if you can't,
right? What are you doing?
Fully agree. It's been so it's been so interesting to hear this sentiment around how important
understanding the business side of technology has been in these conversations. Like, you
are not the only one every time I've gotten someone in here who has been a more experienced
and more senior individual, a leader, someone who is, you know, leading in or specialty in
their craft, right? That's the advice they're like, you have to understand the business.
What would be some of your tips that you could share with folks in terms of how they can
understand the business? And also, I'm going to put the commit your code presentation that
you delivered in the show notes because it was very good. And a lot of what his answer
would be would be in your presentation. And so I'm going to share that with folks too.
Sure. I appreciate that. So I think the number one thing you can do is to ask questions,
right? And it's not just like, Hey, how do I do this thing? How does this fit in? Right?
What is what I'm going to write this function? It's going to be a JavaScript. Where's it
going to go to? What is this going to run on? What is the customer trying to do? Who is
our you know, saying like, and I told a story in the past of really, you know, told stories
in the past of really what it means to have the goal of what the customer is actually trying
to do as your as your North Star? Yeah. Right? Because if you're just trying to do the do
the thing that you want to do, and you're not necessarily doing the thing that they want
to do, there's, you know, you're pleasing yourself, there's a word for that, right,
which not pleasing the person who matters in this one. And that's the customer, right?
And I'll give you a great example. There's a lot of work in the platform engineering
space, right? A lot of work in the platform engineering space was to make it easier for
developers to do stuff because, you know, they just needed the velocity or whatever, right?
In a lot of the platform engineering teams are catering to the developers needs and wants
and desires, as if the developers are only writing things to be to be put on the platform
and then never be used in the public. But if your developers are writing stuff that the
public is going to consume, your customer is not the developer, your customer is the
paying customer who is going to be consuming that, right? You are writing something that
is going to be consumed by your customers, right? So the developers needs and stuff like
that are taken into account. But if you're only meeting developers needs, the developers
don't have the context for what's happening outside. Once it leaves, you do. Operations
does, right? Your TAMs do your developer advocates do your customer success managers do your
support teams do and the customers do, right? So all of those things must be considered
when you are building a platform that has to be job zero. And then you write the things
that the developers can have their little API's to do the stuff. That is the dead last concert.
That's the last thing you do. You know, like, I'm not going to build a house around the
wallpaper. Boom. I love that so much. I think I don't know about you, but like early in
your career, you know, depending on what roles you had, I had a really beautiful opportunity
where I was at an agency. And because of the human that I am, I'm very, I actually don't
want to say that I'm extroverted, but that's a whole conversation we're not going to get
into. But I am I am people friendly, right? And I understand business. I came from business
before I got into technology. And so I was the developer that they put in front of the
clients. And they were like, Hey, let's talk through the project. So if you've ever worked
in a small agency, then you're brought into some of those conversations, you're part of
the work, you're working alongside the project manager, you're working alongside the designer,
you're working alongside the rest of the people on the team, right? And so when I had those
customer conversations, oftentimes I was able to break down really what seemed like complicated
needs from a customer into what actually ended up being very straightforward needs on the
actual technical side. And I am curious how many developers are getting those types of
opportunities, because I think that those opportunities are gold, because you start you
have to sit there face to face with a customer and talk about technology, not only explaining
it in a way that they understand, but also being able to take what they're telling you
and formulate that into what that technology actually like looks like. Have you had any
opportunities, any tips for devs to think about things that way?
I had that opportunity the first time I worked at a startup, right? Same thing, right? We
had we had solutions architects, but they weren't like our solutions architects that
were from the company that acquired us. So as they call this DevOps engineers back then,
but we were SRVs, you know? And we met with customers all the time. As a matter of fact,
the customers met with us and the support people mostly and their salespeople like secondarily,
right? We knew the customer's needs. Some folks have heard me tell a story about like
working with Tinder and how we knew those cats very well, right? And we knew the use case
and we had all because we knew the use case, we were able to build solutions for them exactly
how they need it, right? But if you're not in a company of that size and that agility
where you have to wear a lot of hats, you tend to get pigeonholed, right?
And I do think one of the main things you can do as an engineer at any level and every
level is to sit in on customer calls. Yes. Right? Even if even you're just flying a
wall, right? I want to hear what our customers are actually talking about. I want to hear
what their business needs are because then like, you know, project managers have to,
right? And if they're not, your project and project managers have to, they absolutely
have to. You know, developer advocates, obviously they do a lot as part of their jobs, but product
managers too. But if your engineers, especially senior engineers aren't doing that, then they're
missing out, right? They need to have some things because they're going to have some
context with things that you may not, they're going to have some more insight in the code.
But especially as they're advising the juniors, they're going to now have the context of what
the customer is actually trying to do. So you're going to make fewer mistakes. You're
going to have to iterate less. Like, yes, yes, fail fast is great for learning how to fail,
right? But if you want to be efficient, right? Get more context.
I love that so much. I think it's interesting too because, you know, speaking to these capabilities
at least I can presume that it has happened to you, but in DevRel role specifically,
I've actually been brought into a lot of sales conversations and a lot of sales opportunities
did a lot of field marketing type of stuff, a lot of sales engineering type of stuff because
of the personality and understanding it and being able to take that, I get the context,
right? What you're saying, I understand it. And then being able to go in those sales
conversations. And by the way, I really love doing them because most of the time the sales
people are dudes and I'm a girl, right? And so in those conversations, they'd like look
at the sales person and be like, so can your technology do this? And I'm like, and I love
it because they'd be like, actually, you need to talk to Tessa about that. And I'm just
like, Mike drop because it was just a beautiful thing. But I think that it's interesting in
being able to do those opportunities to understand and to speak to them also in a sales sense,
because then you're understanding the dynamics of the purchaser, right? Why would somebody
buy something? Why do they want something? What's the value that they're getting out
of it? Because oftentimes, and I still do this, even though I know that I should self-reflect
but we forget that the value of a product or the value of what we're building is maybe
different than what our assumptions are, right? Someone might need it for something else.
And I think being exposed to those conversations are really, really valuable as well.
Yeah, Michelle brings up a good point. She says, only thing to get familiar with gong.
Gong is a great tool. Otter AI is another one. Circleback is mine. Yeah, if anything
you see anything that you see that has a note taker, right? There's a note taker in your
call that's being recorded and if your sales org has it, uses it and will give you access
to it, yeah. And you can, you know, that's a great little data project. Find out what
words folks are saying most and what are their technologies and which of your core technologies
that they're concerned about the most. And it really, really helps. That I think is one
of the, one of the uses for AI I think that is actually good is call transcription recording,
especially for accessibility reasons. But yeah, it's a great way to do it to make it
more efficient and you can figure stuff out. And a lot of those folks are, a lot of them
can already summarize those and summarize groups of calls too. So, but yeah, getting
context that way is a fantastic idea.
Yep. I definitely agree with the gong thing. One of my clients over the summer, they had
gong and I was able to just dive in and I could listen to any sales conversation that
I wanted to, which was very, very helpful, right? Because then again, speaking back to
the value, you get to understand what the customer actually wants because like, and
this isn't always the case, right? But even sometimes sales people don't necessarily know
if they're not, you know, super technical or depending on their experience, right? They
might not be able to bring those pieces together. And when we are technical and we can bring
those pieces together, the value that we can bring to that company will far exceed the
developer skills that we have. So yeah, I,
Here's the dirty not so secret about sales calls is sales people nine times a 10 would
absolutely kill to have a technical resource on a lot more calls, right? Especially that
resource is intimately familiar with the products, right? As in I write them or I work on them
all the time or it's like that. Just, just, just to have like, oh yeah, yeah, they can,
so they can ask you questions. If not on the call after the fact, right? Did you hear that?
What do you think about this? Right? Because, because they don't have the context for the
technical side of it, right? It's really going to help them out strategically. So companies
that have solutions or architects, that's what solutions or architects usually do. But
even then sometimes they still, still, still helps out a lot. So helps a lot to be able
to get that insight on both sides. Yep, I agree. And it's, it's really interesting
to and this is like kind of going down a little bit of a rabbit hole too. But I think it's
really interesting on kind of that sales side, right? Depending on the company and the staff
and the, you know, the actual experience that they're bringing in, even partnering with
them outside of calls, right? Like they can go through calls and questions that they've
had and being able to, for the developer, understand what that customer conversation
is. But then for the actual end user for that sales, that salesperson, right, they're
able to get insights. And that's actually what I do with the client is I took a step
back, consumed the gong and I actually created an entire sort of enterprise play motion for
them of like, Hey, this is what these developers are looking for. This is the insights they
need. This is the value that we can provide. And those are all conversations that happened
outside, right? But we, I could absorb the calls and we can still have those conversations
to allude into all of what needs to be, needs to be told essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think in the end, there's, there's a lot more of growing outside your
pot, so to speak, right? Like, you know, when, you know, the more I see outside of my, the
more I see and understand outside of just whatever things I type on the keyboard, the
better I am going to be, right? You know, it's like, it's like, if I'm designing a cog,
right? Right? Is it for a clock? Is it for an engine? Is it for, you know what I'm saying?
Like, it's two different things, right? Yeah. Yeah. And even if you tell me like, Oh, well,
it needs to have this and this and this and this, right? Just to set a requirements on
the sheet doesn't tell me enough, right? If I understand how it's going to be used and
why, maybe I'm going to see something that the requirements didn't capture.
Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Mike, drop on that one. All right. So one of the other questions
I like to ask, and we're kind of nearing the end of our time here, but when you are stuck,
the amazing Tim Banks, when you get stuck, what's your go to?
So as I often tend to do, I'm going to release something to Jiu-Jitsu. Getting stuck is a
thing that happens to you too. Normally stuck inside, controller stuck in mount. Neither
one are great. But when I'm stuck, the first thing I try not to do is panic. Right? Love
that. I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to defend my neck. And then I'm going to see
what do I have and what can I do? Right? Or what can I get to? Right? When someone is
stuck inside controller mount, both of them involve someone being on top of you and kind
of controlling, your legs are not in the game right now. So it's just your body versus their
whole body. And a lot of people try and jump and move around and do everything in one
big explosive move and tie themselves out and then get the life literally crushed out
of them. And I love doing it to people. Don't get me wrong. But the thing that I do is I
take inventory of what I have. And then if I know I need to get an underhook and I don't
have an underhook, my battle is now for the underhook. And it's a bunch of little things.
I'm going to bump this swing and put my arm that way. I'm going to shift you that way
and blah, blah, blah. Okay, great. Now I have my underhook. What can I do with this underhook
now? Well, I can do this. And I'm going to do a bunch of small little battles, small
little moves that don't require a lot of energy until I get all the pieces I need. And then
now I'm going to make the big move. And the only way you can figure that out is to know
what the big move is and then to piece along all the little things you can need to do along
the way based on who you are. So I work backwards from where I want to be and digest everything
down small parts. But the first thing I do is I call them the fuck down and I defend
my eye.
That is a really, really beautiful analogy for it because I think that it all plays into
solving any kind of problem, right? How can you sort of like, what do you need to do immediately
to protect yourself or to protect the situation that you're in or to do any form of, okay,
I have to take some form of action now, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. But working back from, okay, if I'm trying to get to this
end result, how do I get back into that? Okay, on a more actual, direct technical sense,
if you are stuck in code, what is your go to? Do you go to peers? Do you go to forums?
Do you go to what's kind of your, your stack of steps? Do you rubber ducky? That's a very,
obviously, many of us. Sometimes we don't. We forget.
What rubber ducky is?
What? Shut up.
You gotta remember, I'm an infrastructure person. I'm an ops person. So like my coding,
when I get stuck in coding, you know, I'm old school, the first thing I'm gonna go to
is Google Stack Overflow kind of thing like that. To look for something similar, I will
check the docs, right? Because even today, and docs are not the best, right? But even
today, nine times out of 10, my question is answered in the docs.
Yeah, yeah.
I love that.
Because I came from before the internet.
Right, right. Yeah, same, same, same. Well, okay, I'm edging on 40. So,
Oh,
I know, a little bit younger, but still in the same vein of the edge of the internet.
So rubber ducky is just where you explain something to somebody. You're like, okay,
this is the problem I have. I'm dealing with A, B and C, right? And I can't get it to do
D. And as you're explaining it, you're like, I'm an idiot. I forgot to do the step between
A and B because you just explaining it allows you to, but I think it's very similar to your
sort of triage example, right? It's like working through that problem and really thinking about
it. And that's exactly what you do in jiu-jitsu, right? You think about where you need to go
and what steps need to get you.
So the thing that I've done before is I will literally copy and paste the code out of whatever
context it's in. I'll copy and paste the code and I'll put in a brand new thing. And then
I'm like, Oh, that's stupid. Why did I do that? You know, because I'm too busy thinking
about it and, you know, like I'm relating other things and, and which is wild because
I was just talking about context before, but also sometimes the context can lead you to
thinking things that aren't, you're not, you're not looking at the thing you're looking at.
Yep. Right. You're looking at everything else. And I was like, Oh, I was trying to do this
variable there or I was trying to pass this like that. And no wonder it's not working
because I don't, I don't even have it declared properly in here. Right? So it's like, let
me actually take everything out. I'm going to rewrite this piece that I'm doing to make
sure this piece works. Now I'm going to plug it back into there. And then that didn't usually
get to change variable names or whatever. Right? Right. But take that piece out out
of its context, fix the piece and then put it back in. Yep. Yep. I love that advice.
Okay. This has been an absolute lovely conversation. As you know, though, you and I could talk
for hours and hours, which is always so lovely. Where can people find you on the internet?
I'm mostly now on Blue Sky. I'm at lchefe.me on Blue Sky. I'm on LinkedIn. You can probably
search my name. I don't think anyone else out there looks like me. I have an account
on Twitter that's probably going away shortly. It's there mostly is for archival because
I have very quality shitposts on there that I don't necessarily want to lose. I love that.
And I've got a blog, Timdeshbanks.Ghost.io, which like anyone with just incredible amounts
of ADHD, I have a ton of drafts and I've got like four, maybe five published. But that's
just how it is. But yeah, come holler at me any of those. And then I'm always happy to
talk. If you see me at a conference, usually happy to talk. If I'm overwhelmed, you're
going to know I'm going to have on sunglasses and headphones, maybe not then, but any other
time I'm great.
That's a good approach to the sort of like leave me alone face, the sunglasses, because
like I'll do the headphones in the hoodie when I'm on a plane or something. So I'm like,
don't talk to me, which is pretty rare when I don't want to be talked to. But the sunglasses,
that will really seal the deal. No contact.
Let me give you something for all the neuro divergent folks out there. Conferences are
horrendously overstimulating, right? Because of the noise, but also because there's so
much crazy light coming into your face. Please. The thing that I started doing is I start,
I wear yellow lens sunglasses, which cuts off a lot of that. And if it gets really bad,
I will just wear full on sunglasses, right? But it has greatly reduced my tendency to
get overstimulated in those areas. Even with the noise and everything like that, just cutting
out so much light, it is transformative. So if you find yourself getting real tired real
quick, you know, like that, all the symptoms of overstimulation, try wearing some yellow
lens or some outright just regular sunglasses inside. I don't care what people say, you
know, but this is there for me, but it helps a lot.
Yeah.
Oh, and if you got ADHD kids, try that too. Give them some yellow lens and not blue blockers,
actual sunglasses that reduce the amount of light coming in.
Hmm. Interesting. I love that tip. Okay. Before we sign off, any last, any other last famous
words or tips you want to share with anyone listening?
I would just say, I would just say, start learning things outside of your day to day,
right? Ask people jobs, ask people who have different jobs, especially people who have
quote unquote non-technical jobs, right? And you will find out usually the areas that are
concerned are quite, quite vast and the depths of their knowledge are quite vast. And your
knowledge about the situation in the moment is very, very small. Get your eyes open that
way, please. It'll help you out.
Oh, I love that. To layer on top of that, if you're not sure how to do that, pick up Rise
by Patty Azarello. Best book I've ever read about just being more connected, be more communicative,
all the things inside of an organization or inside of a project or group of any kind that
can help you do what Tim just said. I love this. All right. Well, it has been so amazing
having you on the show. It is always fun talking and hanging out with you, Tessa. I agree. I
need to find some local Jiu Jitsu and Waco and then I'll come down to Austin and you
can show me all your tips. If you want recommendations, I could probably
give you some. But I would just need to come down to Austin for the ball, darling.
Yes. Yes. Yes. The ball. I will come for the ball. All right. Well, with that being
said, thank you all for listening. It's been a lovely morning here with Tim and I will
see you all tomorrow.