Hello, hello, everyone on this fine Thursday morning.
I personally have a few sick children in my house and I am inviting my time because I
think it is coming for me.
So we are here with the 99 Dev Problems show.
I am excited to talk with David this morning.
David, I would love if you could introduce yourself.
Absolutely.
My name is David Beal.
I live in Chicago, Illinois.
I'm originally from Virginia.
I did a nice stint in New York City, which is kind of where I kicked off my career.
And yeah, I've been a lot of things.
I've been a software engineer, a DevOps engineer, a sales engineer, and right now I'm a site
reliability engineer at a company called Payne or Me.
Oh, gosh, I have like so many things I want to pry into that.
Like I did some sales engineering for a while.
So let's like come back to that because I want to talk about that role because it's
not a role that gets talked about a lot.
So I think it'd be cool to compare your roles.
As it relates to your developer education, whether that be sort of official or self taught,
can you share with folks how you got into having the technical chops that you have today?
I can.
I am 100% self taught.
I had a pretty rough childhood and things really fell apart.
My senior year of high school, I ended up living in my car, delivering pizzas, just sort
of surviving.
And so I ended up not actually finishing.
I went to college a couple times, community college stints, but usually I just get the
student loan money and buy a van and go on tour with my band.
Go to VE.
Yeah, yeah.
And so that being said, I was a musician.
I still am.
And I toured a lot through my late teens and 20s.
Started out working in restaurants.
And eventually a restaurant that I was working at needed a website.
Like menu, all that sort of stuff.
And so that was one of the first things that I ever did.
I had built skateboarding websites and MySpace themes.
I knew my way around like HTML, CSS.
I had done some PHP.
And then in the late 90s, I was like a MIRC and then got into installing Slackware on
my computer and playing around with Python and stuff like that.
But my home life was so chaotic that I really didn't get to develop that or be like, oh,
I could go to school and learn this and have a job and stuff like that.
It was more just like I have to survive and kind of got caught in a whirlwind.
So I really didn't get my career kicking until 2011, 2012.
I had done some contract work.
I worked in computer stores, did all this stuff.
And then I'd build websites on the side, taught myself Ruby on Rails, just sort of
random stuff like that.
And then I got my first job as a contractor and just doing kind of a data center refurbishment.
Fresh.
And then I worked for another company doing like kind of server patching and automation
and still writing code on the side.
And then in 2014, life just sort of imploded in like a sort of beautiful way.
And I moved to New York and my friend had a studio apartment on 34th and Park.
I slept on his futon for six weeks.
It took me three weeks to get my first job.
And I just started working at New York startups.
I didn't know what a DevOps engineer was.
I didn't know what AWS was.
I mean, kind of.
But I moved there and I just figured it out.
I went to recruiters and looked at job descriptions and learned the tech.
And then I got my first job and I had no idea what I was doing.
And I would just stay up all night and figure it out and post on Stack Overflow and read
it and anywhere else I possibly could and figure out the answers.
The good news is that in the early days of DevOps, no one really knew what they were
doing.
True that.
And yeah, just kind of slowly but surely built up a skill set.
And thankfully it's carrying on and I'm still gainfully employed and supporting my family
and thinking about what's next, where I go from here.
I loved hearing your story.
There is a lot.
And obviously in the pre-show, you and I got to take 15 minutes and really deeply get
to know each other, which is really, really great to even sort of just speak about that.
Very similar childhoods that we talked about, very similar sort of adulthoods and just having
to figure things out.
Yesterday, Aaron Francis mentioned having grit and just go do the thing and really talking
about just it doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing, write about it, go
do it, eventually things will come together.
And it sounds like your story is like very much an exemplary case of that where you had
a lot of stuff going on in life and otherwise and you figured out exactly sort of that niche.
And I think, you know, as it relates on my side, very similar.
I was also in restaurants, did bartending, then instead of going the route of sort of
musician, I wasn't that cool.
I went into restaurant management.
And so I spent a great deal of time over in restaurant management.
So then that slowly eeked into my tech career as well.
So that was very cool to hear about.
So of the different, yeah, sorry, if you have a follow up, go ahead.
I'll go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to ask you of the different opportunities and roles that you had, like
do you have a favorite, even though I think sometimes we get further and we're like, oh,
we're better now, but I don't know, some of my early jobs were really fun and more straightforward
and just there was a lot more learning.
So I'm curious if you had sort of a favorite thing throughout that career.
There's a couple.
So I worked at a company called Red Owl Analytics.
And it was cool because I met the CTO through sort of one of my earliest mentors in tech.
It's got him Greck Cannon, awesome guy, met him on a skateboarding newsnet group.
He was a software engineer, gave me my first like Linux shell account that I could have
to say gen do and like host my website and all that sort of stuff.
And so I met Paul, the CTO through Greck.
And immediately I was just thrown on site at Blackstone, the hedge fund.
And I'm a, I'm about a year into living in the
New York, but I'm from a small town in Virginia.
I'm uneducated.
I'm making it up as that go along.
I'm like, literally like, you know, trying to just like remember how people talked in
like the West Wing and like shows with smart people and be like, I'm going to use those
words.
And man, I, it was, it was not, it was not graceful.
I was uncomfortable, but I was there.
I was on site for three months, like there until three in the morning, just like snowflaking
this, this sort of map reduce data aggregation application that we built.
And you know, really just trial by fire had to learn so much so fast.
And without the sort of humiliation of being like on site surrounded by all these, you
know, incredibly intellectually superior people, I don't think I could have done it.
So that's a favorite one.
It sucked.
Like I was, I was pretty unhappy and, and, and it was tough.
But like looking back, it's like, you know, I'm a, I'm a big fan of David Goggins and
he talks about your hurt locker and like how you got to like wake up every day and like
feel that pain sometimes.
And you know, it probably, it probably didn't suck any more than getting a, a computer science
degree at like a top level university.
You know, I'm sure that, you know, finishing up a masters in computer science at MIT is
probably equally or more so uncomfortable to the experience I had.
So I often think about those early jobs as my education, you know, like I wasn't really
qualified.
They needed bodies.
I was cheap.
And I kind of knew what I was doing.
I knew what I was doing enough to be effective and, and I could fake the rest.
And so that was a big one.
I started getting some better jobs.
You know, I worked at a skincare and makeup company called Glossier that kind of made
a lot of great connections there.
Um, you know, got my current job because of connections from that job.
That's amazing.
Networking is king.
I worked at Etsy, which, you know, they were huge in DevOps and one of the, you know, the
architects of like the original system that kind of became the model for like a successful
DevOps job.
I got there a little after that, you know, I got there in some growing pains, like regime
changes, moving from a commitment to bare metal into Google Cloud.
But I did some good work and I learned a lot and like, you know, so those are huge.
And then the last one I'll mention, and this is certainly back to sales engineering.
Um, I worked at a company called Armory.
So I had a pretty good amount of experience with Sphiniker, which was a continuous delivery
tool first built by Netflix.
And so when I, back in 2022, I was just, I was really burnt out, like working in the
pandemic as a developer, DevOps engineer, especially like fairly extroverted one.
It's pretty isolating.
So I talked to a friend and they was like, you should just try being a sales engineer.
You know, make more money.
It's a more socially stimulating job and you can use your experience to like work for a
DevOps company.
So I worked for Armory and I had a great leader, got him Paul, just a legend in sales engineering
and learned so much.
It was, it was kind of another red out type experience where I was just thrown in.
Um, I was on a, on a plane, uh, demoing in person to, you know, a huge airline within
two, three weeks of starting the job, which, you know, it's pretty crazy.
Um, and so I've kind of just always loved those.
I like those jobs where it's just like, you know, here's a laptop, here's root access
to everything.
Everything's broken.
I wish you the best of luck and I won't notice anything you do.
Oh my gosh.
That's, those are good, very good lessons there.
Very much related.
I mean, you said a lot of really, really interesting things, but relating to the sales engineer
side of things and sort of your experience being thrown into like Blackstone, I can relate
to that very much.
And you probably related to when you were in New York City was like, once you get thrown
into sort of that Silicon Valley or like the in New York city's case, the NYC sort of,
uh, you know, whatever it's called, right?
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Silicon Valley, let's call it that.
Um, things are different.
I remember working at a company that was in open source.
I would have never guessed that I would have had this experience, but we went out for dinner
because we were doing a very like sales engineering slash developer advocate type of a, uh, type
an event, essentially, and that's the role I was playing.
Um, and I ended up like sitting at a dinner where it was like a 500 person dinner and I
was just so uncomfortable.
There was like so many pieces of silverware that I had no idea what they were for and
where they were supposed to go and when I was supposed to use them.
Um, and so I can relate to that also of like, you just, when you're thrown into those scenarios
of like almost chaos, whether it be technically, socially or whatever, um, I feel like those
are the opportunities where you're like, okay, we're faking it till we make it.
And when you do make it or you don't make it, there's a lot that comes out of that that
you learn that you can take into that next experience, which sounds very much like how
your career has been.
Yeah.
And I think that's a, a testament to something that I've been really like coming to terms
with lately.
I'm not an incredibly technical person.
I was never great at math.
I was never great at, uh, you know, but in, I am because I'm an artist and the way that
I express myself as an artist is often very technically when I was a kid, like I would
take things apart not because I cared so much about how they worked.
It's because I was like, this VCR would look way better if the internals were visible.
Like it was a, I mean, really, it was like, uh, and, and I realized that like my greatest
piece of art that I've ever built up to this point is my career.
It's performance art, 100% performance art.
Like I am, I am not, I don't have the, the, the formal background.
I grew up, my father did not grow up with electricity.
He grew up in Mennonite.
Uh, my, uh, yeah.
Very different.
Like I have, I have hopped like a big jump here.
And so the only way that I can do this is truly, and it's not deceptive.
It's just, I am learning how to, I learned how to be an engineer from a, from a performance
standpoint.
Like I learned the words, the, the cadence, the, the tools, part of that is being able
to write code.
But for me, it's like, it's more like a, an expression, you know, like, okay, I can
just do this.
Like, and that's to me, the ultimate freedom of like being a creative person, being an
artist is just like, I can just create this piece of art.
And for me, it's like my career.
So I think of the sales engineering part and, and I'm actually fresh back from that.
So I was a sales engineer for about two years and I'm, I'm almost three months into my
current job.
And yeah, this is my first job back.
I'm a much better engineer.
And I appreciate building more than I ever have because when you're selling, you're not
building.
When you're selling, you can do everything right and still lose because, you know, they
were always just going to buy the other thing, but their boss said, no, you have to do two
POCs or I can't approve the purchase.
And I can't.
I can't, I can't do that.
Like for me, like when, when I'm building, and I think that's where the artist mindset
comes in, you know, if I'm, if I'm putting all this effort into this painting, I want
to be able to stand back and look at it.
And that's, that's the beauty of, you know, building infrastructure, building products,
building code, building anything.
So, you know, I enjoyed it and I'm glad that I did it.
I'm glad that I know that I can do it.
It's made me a better communicator.
Love that.
But it's also, it's also made me really kind of challenged my, or it challenged my values
a lot.
And, and, and yeah, I'm just selling at this point in my life does not align with my values.
Building does.
Yeah.
Yep.
Well, that's really interesting.
So, so accurate on the side of no longer building, you're building demos, you're building
sort of maybe integration pieces.
You're like, you know, trying to present your product in the right way, but it is not the
building that, you know, you and I or any really other sort of true blooded developer
enjoys doing.
Sometimes a good demo would get me excited because I'd build something or do some fun
new use case with it, but it, that didn't last as long as like you said, when you can
take a step back and like look at the full picture of everything that you've built and
how that contributes to everything else.
Yeah.
And it's speculative.
We're building all these things in hopes that it closes the deal instead of we're building
all of these things for this awesome, you know, API or whatever product that, that we're
selling.
And so I just felt really ephemeral and, but, you know, I can't overstate how helpful it
was and like the people that I met and I'll say this to you, the, the only true currency
in your career and I don't care what industry you're in are the people that you meet and
the relationships that you build.
And, and, and I learned that or it was, it was further, you know, affirmed to me in my,
in my time in sales and, and I, and I'm definitely flush with relationships coming out of that.
And so, so, you know, no regrets.
It's great.
Maybe I'll do it again one day.
Who knows?
Probably not.
I think.
I think there's, there's other things that I would like to do if I were going to do something
else in tech.
Yeah.
And, but I'm glad this is a part of the story.
Yeah.
See, I'm, yeah, I relate very much to that.
I think what a good hybrid and this is sort of a good conversation, you know, that to
kind of dive into, but when I was playing that sales engine or engineering role and when
I have, honestly, I played it like my entire career really because I was, I am also extroverted
even though if people are not technical or intelligent, I do get drained.
And so I'm sort of like, is it, I'm an extrovert with smart people, but I'm an introvert with
the rest of the world.
That's what I think.
Um, but I love to talk to people who are technical and I like to get out there.
And so I think that the sales engineering role can very much feel like that grind.
But in my opportunities, I've had a developer advocacy sort of layer over top of them.
So if I built like a sales demo, I was usually presenting a similar type of talk, not about
Hey, look at my product, but like, Oh, Hey, look at a potential solution for a technical
problem that you're, you're spinning your wheels on.
And I feel like that gave me a lot of value from that because then you get the feedback
from developers.
They're like, Oh my gosh, this was so great.
I'm going to go take this code sample or like you really helped me.
And I think that helps sort of supplement maybe what you were missing potentially, um,
in your sales engineering role.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think as a sales engineer, you're often kind of thrown into a lot of
different roles and you're oftentimes like, it will really change how you feel about sales
people, you know, account executives, they can be your best friend and just love you
and think you're the most genius person in the world.
And then, you know, the second that the, uh, their technical or economic buyer rolls
their eyes, you know, your, your damaged goods and, and you're the reason the sale blew
up and, you know, it, it, uh, there's just a lot there.
There's a lot.
It, it, it makes me wonder, like, is it, do people really need to be making like four
or $500,000 a year as a middleman to sell, you know, SaaS applications to developers?
Like, like maybe we could worry a little bit less about AI replacing developer jobs if
we weren't like sending a bunch of A East presidents club every year.
I don't know.
Like maybe we could rebalance the, the economics of tech a little bit and the people who build
the products could make more money than the people who sell them.
And, and, you know, we're getting into a world.
Yeah.
And I mean, we're getting into, you know, a little bit of politics and economics and
all that sort of stuff, but yeah, it's interesting.
You know, it's interesting knowing how the sausage is made and then also knowing how
it's sold.
And, and, and maybe, maybe that's more than people need to know if they want to just have
a job and be happy and, you know, live life.
But for me, uh, I, I feel like as a developer now, I know exactly, and I call myself a developer.
I'm not a reliability engineer or whatever.
I write a lot of YAML, uh, but I, you know, I write Terraform, I write whatever, I write
a lot of Python, like, um, but it's, it's made me understand my value more.
It's made me understand like, like what my impact is.
And, uh, and something that I've been thinking about a lot is how we're not really paid for
our skills.
Like anybody can have skills.
We're paid for our enthusiasm and we're paid for our curiosity and we're paid for our
integrity.
And those are the three things that make up like a good, a good thought worker.
And I use that term a lot lately because I think that we're kind of in the equivalent
of the industrial revolution, but for thought workers right now.
And, and that's why, yeah.
And that's why I'm starting to just think more about like what makes a good thought
worker, you know, if you really boil it down, I can't, I can't get it to any like lower level
than, than those three elements, you know, enthusiasm, curiosity and integrity.
Um, those are the things that AI can't have.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Okay.
Let's, uh, let's shift.
Love the deep note.
And honestly, like I think you and I could have these conversations for hours.
You were on the AI panel.
So for anyone listening, um, there's a panel that we did on December 30th.
It was, it was pretty lightly attended, but it was a really fun panel to just sort of
slip all back and forth what we think, um, how and where we think AI is going and productivity
wise, which is when I got to meet David, thankful for your network who introduced me to you
because I didn't know you before that event.
Um, so it was a really great event.
Um, David shared some very strong opinions that I absolutely loved.
Um, so I would strongly recommend going to hub.builtfor.dev, uh, to find that recording.
Um, but coming back to you, the conversation, what is your, now that you've shifted away
from sales engineering, site, site reliability engineer, um, what does your day to day look
like?
Obviously you're new.
So I realize, you know, what you're doing onboarding probably still, but you know, generally
what is that, that type of a day look like?
Uh, we're startup.
I was, I was committing code the second day I was actually maybe first day.
Um, right now I am, I am fully responsible for delivering a new service into, you know,
our environments.
Uh, and, uh, so I'm working with the development team.
And, uh, QA engineers and, uh, other folks on my team, but I'm kind of, I'm kind of
having to lead the charge.
We, uh, we're like mini shops.
We have a sort of legacy application and then we're building a lot of sort of new greenfield
things around it.
Um, I work more with the greenfield things, but specifically with what I'm working on
now, there's a lot of integration between the two.
So, um, sales engineer jobs are coming in handy because I'm really having to like pull
people together.
Um, and, uh, you know, trying to kind of do a good job.
Good job of that.
Um, but, you know, my day to day, I, I think I use pretty strong developer ergonomics,
you know, for me, my, my life is, you know, writing code, committing it to get, you know,
opening PRs, getting approval.
Um, I do a lot of, uh, uh, architectures, a strong word, but I do a lot of like thinking
about how things could be maybe done a little bit better.
Um, and then, uh, yeah, you know, it's, there's a, there's a reactive element to it.
Um, for sure.
I think, you know, anybody and, and if you're a developer, like in your, you know, a little
board, is it back developer, front end developer?
Like there's always a need for SREs and DevOps people and the, the best or some of the best
DevOps people are developers.
Like if you can, if you can wrap your head around sort of, you know, I, I, I describe
it as like, uh, if you, if the front end developers are like painting your house and
making it beautiful and doing your window trim and all that sort of stuff.
And maybe the back end developers are like laying down the floor and building your cabinets
and putting up drywall.
We're wiring things.
We're putting in the plumbing.
We're, you know, kind of behind the scenes, but still, you know, code and it's, it's,
it's a great job and it's, but you, you have to kind of, you have to think a little bit
differently to, to do the same thing.
And I don't know if that makes sense.
No, it doesn't make sense.
Cause I did some DevOps after being a developer.
So I fully agree.
Yeah.
And, um, but it's, you know, there's a lot of impact.
There's a lot of autonomy.
Um, and I would say that the one blumber is like, I miss the, the succinctness of a feature.
You don't really get that.
We, a lot along with projects, it's hard to work in sprints.
It's hard to like chop things up into smaller tasks.
Um, you do end up with like, uh, a lot of updates that are like still chugging along,
like still working through issues.
Like, you know, something that you might think would take a week, takes a month.
I'm really struggling with that right now.
Estimation and deadlines and things like that.
Like feel like the, the more senior you get, the more you have to take responsibility for
that.
You don't have other people being like, you can definitely get this done in two weeks.
Like you're going to get this done in two weeks.
It's like, you know, I don't have any, I don't have anything, anyone to escalate to if, if
I can't get it done in two weeks.
So it does, there's a lot of moving targets, but, uh, you know, generally day to day, I'm,
I'm, I'm working through what I'm working through.
I'm, I'm interacting with my team, uh, pretty collaborative, love to kind of mob on things,
pair on things.
Um, and then, you know, I'm trying to make some time for, for, uh, career development
right now.
Um, I was going to learn the ZIG programming language this year and I started on it and
then I was like, I want to just get really good at go-ling.
I've been writing go for, you know, seven or eight years, uh, intermittently.
And so kind of made me just want to double down on that.
So, um, yeah, working on that, working on writing more, um, and, and, you know, maybe
figuring out how to share my, my, my story and, uh, you know, maybe help some other people
that, that want to work in tech or struggling with tech and imposter syndrome and all that
sort of stuff.
Cause, uh, I've, I've done it.
Yeah.
I really wish that there was like a support, like a, like an online therapy support, not
actual really therapy, but like just somewhere for developers to just come in.
If they have to be anonymous because that's how they feel comfortable, but just somewhere
to just come in, like sort of dump and engage because it is so frequent that I meet other
developers who are like, Oh, it's so nice to hear your story.
And not because my story is exciting, but because there's some relatability and we
all feel imposter syndrome.
Like when we think about it, doctors have like medical licenses and they have to stay
on top of things and medical boards tell them what to stay on top of things and what they're
supposed to do.
There is nothing for developers.
They're just like, well, we're figuring it out ourselves.
So we are constantly like filled with imposter syndrome because there is no bar at which
that we can compare ourselves against you, except for our neighbors, but we're told not
to compare ourselves to the Joneses, right?
So how can we by extension ever feel satisfied if we don't know where that bar is like many
other professions do.
So that was my soapbox, but yeah.
No, no, I'm, I'm with you.
There is a Slack channel that has been around for over a decade.
That is, it's a little bit like, if you know, you know, but also like, you know, so I wouldn't
broadcast it on here, but if someone's interested and pings me, I would be happy to share.
Please.
And it has a mental health channel or it's a Slack group or a Slack account, but it has
a mental health group that is probably the most active on the server.
Like, I think it's beautiful.
And it's a lot of people being like, I got a weird review.
How do I make my work visible?
How do I like, you know, and it's, it's, you know, directors at fame companies all the
way down to, you know, how do I get my first job out of college?
And you know, a lot of people are struggling with struggling with anxiety and depression.
A lot of people are like, Hey, does anyone ever tried this, you know, mental health
drug or is anyone ever tried like this type of therapy or does anyone have any recommendations
for therapy in this area?
And and it's, so it's, there are things out there.
I think that, um,
Very true.
There are problems.
We talked about empathy for a lot in DevOps.
I feel like DevOps was just all about empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy.
There's a precursor to empathy that is not supported in most industries and that is vulnerability.
You cannot be empathetic to someone if you're not also vulnerable.
And that is the thing that I've really struggled with in my personal life, my, my professional
life, like, and everything in between.
But now that I'm learning to be vulnerable, I'm finding that life's a lot easier and
you can, you know, if you're worried about a bad review or about a passive aggressive
thing that a coworker said to you, it is okay to just ask them what they meant by that.
And it's, it's really great to just hop on a call and do it face to face.
Even if, you know, we lose a lot of that empathy and vulnerability just inherently in our sort
of remote world, which is great.
I don't want to go back to an office.
It's not, it's not worth the trade off for me, but
I will not go back to an office either.
Yeah, and, and I'm, but I'm working on ways to sort of bridge that gap.
And I think that, uh, yeah, vulnerability is everything.
And if you can just get to a place where you can find a supportive company that you can
feel vulnerable in, that you can, you can build empathy for people, you know, like I
talked about before, the, the only actual currency in life is relationships.
And those are the things that will make your job good.
Like I, you know, I don't want to work in a shop deploying C sharp applications to Azure,
but if there was the most awesome people in the world there, I would do it every day with
a smile on my face.
Luckily, I would work at a shop now with awesome people and, and we're deploying tech that
I like and, uh, and that's great.
You can have it all, but the people are more important.
Yes.
Uh, I think back to different teams and different places that I worked.
I was most recently laid off from Snapchat like way, oh my gosh, almost a year ago now
in a couple of weeks, it'll be a year.
Um, and I think the hardest part of that was the people, like whatever it is they're doing
over there, smart, smart, kind of creative is their values and people show up with all
three of those values every day.
And it is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in terms of coworkers.
So sometimes it's like, I'm sad and it's not that I'm sad that I'm, I'm happy I'm doing
my business.
I'm happy I'm doing what I'm doing and getting to drive developer growth for multiple companies.
But gosh, do I like miss the people and I miss, I miss being on a team.
I'm like so lonely.
And so, and it's not, I don't, I have people, right?
I have four kids.
I'm married.
I have people, but it's different when you're in that work setting and you're working with
coworkers and you're hanging out.
And I think of all the things I realized with doing this live stream, which just gives me
more conviction to keep doing it and talk to awesome people like you, um, is that it's
actually like taking away some of that loneliness.
Like I've, I've realized over the last few weeks and I'm like, holy, holy cow, I'm getting
happier.
Like each and every day I'm like happier and I'm like, ah, my people, I need to hang out
with my people, whether it's someone new I've never met, but, but people who are like us,
right?
Who think this way.
And then coming back around, I wanted to speak to what you had said about the mental health
channel.
And I think that, I think that being vulnerable is really hard.
I am vulnerable enough to build strong relationships with people and I know that because I'm very
socially, um, mature in that way.
Right.
I know how to build relationships.
Well, it's one of my superpowers, but I'm not vulnerable about the things that I really
need to be vulnerable about.
And I think when we think about things in like a mental health channel, like, I don't
know that I would dive into that because I'm like, this is just, I just have crap, right?
I just have problems.
Like I'm just a, I just have stuff going on, right?
And I wouldn't necessarily jump to that, but I think it's beautiful that there is a channel
that is sort of normalizing like software engineering is hard.
Tech is hard.
We have no bar at which we are set to, right?
So as far as we're concerned, we don't know when we are good and when we are not good.
And I think that part is the hardest of all.
Yeah.
The stakes are high.
Like it's, you make a lot of money and you build a lifestyle and commitment surround
that money and then you need to keep making that money and then things change and you
need to make more money.
And that's a lot to sit with.
You know, I'm a, I'm a single earner.
My wife is a state of mom and, and it's amazing and beautiful.
And I wish that I could say we were doing it purely out of, out of love, but childcare
is so expensive that it really doesn't make sense for her to work.
You know, so, but that's a lot.
That's a lot on me.
And I used to really let my, my personal life affect my work a lot.
And I used to use it as an excuse, but now I'm like, I'm finding it as a, an awesome
respite, you know, like when, when I'm feeling stressed and anxious about, you know, a weird
fight that I have with my wife or whatever going on in my personal life, work is consistent.
It's there.
You know, these people are, are working with me every day and, and we know we have shared
goals, um, you know, in whatever level of alignment we're in, like we're at least working
towards the same things.
And, uh, and I'm starting to find a lot of comfort from that.
And when that gets ripped away from you, you know, by choice or otherwise, that's trauma.
Like I think our generation, we hop around a lot.
Look at my little tin.
I had, I struggled.
I had struggled to find a home and a lot of that has been, I think that's tech though
to give yourself grace there.
It is tech.
I'm, I, up until the last couple of years have been a pretty difficult personality type,
you know, very high conflict, very like, like when you're insecure and you're struggling
with that imposter syndrome, you get really defensive really quickly.
And you know, people don't want to work with that.
And so slowly things start to degrade and you know, you, you're like, wow, no one likes
me here anymore.
I should find a new job.
And, uh, I don't want to keep, I don't want to keep doing that.
And, uh, so that's why I've really just been trying to be really grateful for, you know,
a lot of gratitude for the people that I work with, you know, whether they are right, wrong
or indifferent about this, that and the other, like at least they're there at least like
you have someone to talk to, to share this goal.
And that's awesome.
I've been freelance before, you know, that sucks when you're just like, here's the thing,
do the thing.
And like, um, so yeah, I'm, I'm very much a, yeah, it's tough.
And, you know, I, I've, you know, there, there could be a future in which I, I build something
on my own or with a small group of people.
And one of the things that's always kept me away from sort of chasing that idea, as fleeting
as it might be, is, uh, can I do this on my own?
Like, do I, do I know what I'm doing enough to just take this on?
And right now in my life, where I'm at, like I'm, I'm loving being an employee.
I've got a lot to learn.
I feel like a lot of my career was running on ego for a long time.
And now that I'm learning to be a little bit more vulnerable and get the ego out of the
way, it's like, oh, wow, I can actually learn something.
I could, I could legitimately be good at this and like, you know, provide value to a company
and not be a liability.
That's a, that's a powerful feeling.
Hmm.
Oh, I love, I love all the vulnerability that you just shared.
Um, completely agree on childcare.
We have four kids, but I have two, three of the four are in school, right?
So we don't have care for them, but my husband's a stay at home dad.
And so I know exactly what that's like.
He's been a stay at home dad for the last nine years and it's, you sort of set your
life up, right?
And even when, and so this will be sort of a, I don't know, a little tip for your wife,
maybe like to keep some form of passion or something that she loves doing because now
our two year old is two, right?
And so he's just a little, he's crazy, crazy, like a toddler and he needs to go to daycare.
Like he needs to get out.
He needs structure.
He needs to just learn that his personality type needs it.
And so my husband's like, okay, what do I go out and do now?
I've been a stay at home dad for like nine years.
He's like everything that I did know, like his technical skills used to do fiber ops
and telecoms has all sort of fleeted, right?
Things are changing, advancing and like he's been out of the workforce.
So I think it's, um, it's an interesting dynamic of, of that stress, right?
Of both being that stay at home parent and provider, because frankly it's not a job I
can do.
Like I cannot be a stay at home parent.
It is not for me.
I don't have the patience.
I don't have that willpower.
There's not a, I'm an achiever mentality or achiever sort of dimension in terms of personality.
And so it's very hard to figure out how you win when you're taking care of children.
So it just, it doesn't work for me.
But on the other side, there's all this stress, right?
Of being the breadwinner and the sole provider.
And if I get hit by a bus, like what the heck happens to my kids, what happens to my family
or even if I just lose my job, right?
Then what happens?
What do you do then?
Um, yeah, there's, there's a lot with, you know, sort of that role generally and of being
that sole provider, but also like doing that in technology, right?
Where again, the ecosystem is just so different than what is out there in the rest of the
world.
Yeah.
No, for sure.
Yeah.
My, my son is, uh, is three and he just started a, we live in the city of Chicago and he started
a preschool here.
Uh, that's thankfully a part of the parks department.
Otherwise like,
Oh, I love that.
I mean, preschools here are really expensive and pretty unattainable, frankly.
Um,
Oh, that's sad.
Well, education should be attainable.
It's so frustrating.
I mean, you know, it, it back when there was a middle class, things like that could happen.
But you know, now it's, it's, like, I, I talk about it a lot, but like six figure poverty,
man.
It's a real thing.
Like it's a real thing.
And making what feels like a lot of money and it's just gone as soon as you get it.
And, uh,
And, but now that he's in a, in a, in a preschool situation, uh, my wife is, is much like me.
She's very autodidactic.
If there's something she wants to do, she'll just do it.
So she wrote a book and taught herself Photoshop and illustrated.
She's an incredible artist and, and drawer and, and you know, visual artists in general,
but she's just like, I'm gonna write a children's book and she just did it.
And it's like almost done.
Yeah.
It's pretty incredible.
Um, so, you know, like,
I know I would, I would love to buy it.
Sorry not to interrupt you, but I would love to buy it.
So I'm gonna get over it.
Yeah, absolutely.
We'll do.
I think you'll, you'll really like it.
Um, and yeah.
So, you know, like the grit that we talked about earlier and then like enthusiasm and
all that sort of stuff.
It's a, it's a family value for me and it's a family value for us.
So like, um, it's, it's awesome having that alignment, but it's a lot of stress.
You know, it's a lot of like, yes, it is.
Like it's just all on me and I don't have any generational wealth.
I don't have, I don't have like, I don't have any.
I don't have anything to fall back on.
You know, this is it.
I, I pretty, I'm a pretty good cook.
I have a couple of nice knives.
So like I could, you know, maybe go get a line cook job and, and, and keep the lights
on if I really had to work my way up to Sue.
Uh, and do that if I really had to, but that's it.
I can, I can write code and I can cook food and that's about it.
I can play drums, but I've, I've lost more money as a musician than I've ever made.
And so unfortunate, but I'm, I'm still doing it.
Um, yeah.
So yeah, it's a lot.
It's a lot.
It's good to, it's good to have other people that are like minded and vulnerable and supportive.
The leader at my job right now is amazing and fantastic and has really, uh, taught me
a lot already and shares a lot of my values.
And I think that, uh, for a long time I got jobs that didn't align with my values because
I was just like, whoever will hire me, that is where I will work.
I'm being a little more selective now.
And I have the luxury of that because I'm, you know, more senior in my career, but, uh,
that is super important.
Don't be unhappy at your job.
I'm done that, done that too much and it's not necessary.
What happens if you're making yourself unhappy?
It's so hard in the business.
It is.
It's so hard.
It's hard.
Cause I, yes, like, yeah, keep on.
There's, you're always, if you're unhappy, you're always making yourself unhappy.
That's something that I've learned.
Like you, you, there's always a different direction that you can walk in and, uh, I've,
I've kind of had to learn to accept that.
You just have to accept responsibility for it.
If you're making yourself unhappy, stop.
True that.
High standards.
It's hard when you own a business and you have high standards, but I think it, it comes
back to sort of everything we've talked about in this conversation, the imposter syndrome,
the childhood, the upbringing, right?
The uneducation.
I constantly feel imposter syndrome because I'm uneducated, but it's like, I still have
these beautiful, amazing skills that people want to pay for.
And so I need to give myself grace is where it all comes down to.
Yeah.
You're not, you're not uneducated.
You're, you're, you just don't have a formal education, but I mean, I've worked with so
many people that have elite degrees from elite schools and they're like, yeah, you know,
I learned a lot about Java garbage collection and like, you know, I wrote, I wrote a C
compiler and a similar, but like, I don't know anything about API gateways and AWS or, you
know, Cloud front, like, and that's the reality of, you know, that's the reality of doing a
lot of work.
I mean, if you're a backend developer, it's like, yeah, they didn't teach me how to configure
my postman to go through an in GROC layer because we, we have to use, you know, like
a cloud front in our local dev environments.
You know, that's the sort of stuff that you learn on the job.
Like, and it's so invaluable.
And I think that like, yeah, there, there needs to be more like, we should all have like,
if once you've been in tech for 10 years, you should just have like a, an honorary master's
degree from the university of your choice.
Boom.
I love that.
I do.
And honestly, there's so much truth to that.
Like, and we could even dive into that in a whole session about how much you learn by just
being like thrown to the wolves, honestly, because that's actually really the best way,
in my opinion, to learn something that's valuable to an employer.
But there's a couple of topics I like to talk about before we jump off and we're nearing
the end of our time together, unfortunately.
I know that you do slightly different things than maybe a traditional developer or software
engineer, but still doing a lot of the same technical overlaps and otherwise.
So what does your like building stack look like?
You talked about, you know, investing in go and how you're, you want to, you know, obviously
become a stronger, uh, goaling, you know, goaling capable, right?
But like what, um, yeah, what else is sort of in that stack of things you like to do?
I'm going to jump in.
Sure.
I mean, I'll, you know, I'll start from my fingers and go to the metal.
Um, here we go.
Yeah.
So, uh, I've been, I've been in a editor purgatory for a little bit.
I was a VIM guy for a long time and then I used a sort of variant of them called space
max that was VIM running on top of E max.
Then I got tired of all that and I used VS code for, I don't know, three, four years.
I've been playing around with Zed, which is a sort of native AI editor, um, but lighter
weight than some of the other ones.
And then recently I've been back in Neo VIM.
So weird full circle, but, um, having a lot of fun in Neo VIM right now, um, playing around,
you know, customizing it with Blua and stuff.
Um, so, you know, use that.
Um, if I were going to write, if I were going to write a, like if someone was like, Hey,
I've got this great idea and you know, $10 million and I want you to architect this from
the ground up.
Um, depending on what it was, but you know, let's just say it's sort of a standard web
application where I'm going to need, you know, a backend databases, cues, whatever, and,
and maybe some sort of front end.
So I would, I would probably lean on go, um, for most of the backend stuff, or maybe just
like TypeScript, Node.js, Express Services or, or whatever, um, for, for just the, the
ease of, uh, finding people to help me, you know, like, I love, I love Elixir, but I'm
not going to write something on, you know, Phoenix with Elixir because it would, you
know, I, there's 12 people that could help me and I know.
Um, but I'm sure.
Yes.
Uh, and then if there's anything sort of data intensive or something that I could use
like a DAG, TensorFlow, something like that, obviously Python, it's hard to build anything
in tech without Python making it some way in one way or another.
Um, for sort of orchestration and, and all that, I do really lean heavily on, uh, Terraform,
Kubernetes.
Um, I like Pulumi and, you know, CDK, I've played around with crossplane.
If it's infrastructure is code, like I typically, you know, I, I'm, I'm down with it.
Um, I would lean towards, uh, open tofu now, probably as opposed to the hash to core Terraform.
Well, I've hashed to court, but you know, times are changing and it just is what it
is.
And then, uh, you know, I don't, it's, it's funny.
I'm actually, I want to take on like a front end freelance gig at some point this year
just to do it.
I, it's been a while, but, uh, for anything sort of website related, I'd probably go for
like Jamstack, you know, Next.js.
Um, as, as sort of static as possible, probably use like a, uh, definitely static file deployments
for all things front end.
I actually have like a little bit of an affinity towards like front end DevOps, which people
don't really think about that much.
But you know, leaning on things like CDNs and static file deployments, building, uh,
managed version artifacts for easy front and rollbacks and stuff like that.
So, um, I get excited about that sort of stuff.
Um, and I think that's a pretty like standard stack.
You know, I, you could really drop anything in and it's, in its place.
Like if I had a good reason to use rust, let's, let's do it in rust.
Uh, I, I just, I wouldn't, I wouldn't really lean for any, any kind of legacy.
Like I, I really wouldn't want to have to deal with an ORM or MVC framework or anything
like that.
I just, and, and then I would try to do everything as cloud native as possible.
You know, like I'm instead of, you know, I feel like AWS is just kind of where we end
up most of the time.
So I'd really leverage things like SQS, SNS, managed Redis, managed databases, all that
sort of stuff.
I had strong opinions on like Postgres versus MySQL or Redis versus whatever faster thing
or Kafka versus this or that or the other, like best tool for the job.
Yep.
But that's sort of my like, like a hundred yard view of, of my tech stack.
Um, I like, uh, Spotify a lot.
That's pretty important.
And my, my developer, gotta have the vibes.
Yeah.
Oh, I love that.
You were very, uh, comprehensive in your response.
And it's usually like, I use this IDE or I use whatever.
And it's pretty, uh, pretty summarized that that was very verbose on the tech stack that
you enjoy, which I love hearing because like for me, you know, coming back to like not
being as technical most recently, that was one of the core reasons of starting the show.
One of them was because I have to market my business and I hate marketing my own stuff.
Love marketing for other developer products, not my own.
Um, but starting the show, I was like, Hey, if I can chat with developers.
Every day, then I can start to learn what are the technologies they care about.
Why do they care about them?
Why are they so opinionated about it?
And then allow that to flow into like my trends and opinions as I'm getting back into, you
know, building things myself.
So yeah.
Totally.
Okay.
Yeah.
Last question.
Um, and then we will wrap up because we are already over as long as that's okay.
Are you okay on time?
I'm good.
Okay.
Cool.
Um, what do you do when you're stuck?
Uh, loaded question.
I know.
I'm not stuck, but yeah.
Uh, you know, a year ago, I'd say I asked chat GPT, but me and chat GPT have probably
been, been going at it quite a bit at this point already.
I can relate to that.
Pretty big part of my workflow and, and you know, that's a whole other episode.
Um, I, I asked for help always.
I tried to help before I'm stuck.
Um, I love that.
Yeah.
And, and, and not that.
Go ahead.
I'm just going to say what are your signals when you think you're going to get stuck?
Cause that is the first time I've heard that answer is that you try to avoid getting stuck
to begin with.
So I'd love for you to double tap into that.
I mean, we all, we all know the feeling of like uncharted waters when you're like in
a place and you're like, yeah, this is, I'm making it up as I go along right now.
And then when you, when you hear, when you feel that friction of like, yeah, I'm not
doing a great job of making it up as I go along right now.
That's when you just bring someone into sanity check.
They might not know either, but they could at least come at it.
You know, with a, a different lived experience.
And I think that, uh, that is where the ego struggles.
That's cause like asking someone for help that doesn't know any better how to do it
than you do is a really difficult thing to do sometimes, but it is so powerful.
The only thing better than one person who doesn't know what they're doing is two people
that don't know what they're doing.
And it's even at a certain, it gets even better.
And eventually the result of three people who don't know what they're doing, trying
to figure it out often results in three people who know what they're doing and just learn
something.
Yes.
I love that.
That was a beautiful answer.
Like best answer yet, I think I've gotten a lot of chat GPT's.
I go to my peers, go to my mentors, stack overflow, GitHub, search the internet, you
know, AI, just sort of all the things.
But like that, I think is something that especially early in your career is incredibly
hard to do to like let that ego go and be like, Hey, can you help me?
But I think like you said, that is the biggest learning opportunity.
I also had some of an ego around that.
I think because I was self taught, it isn't, wasn't natural for me to have an ego generally.
Although I do like to win, but it's usually egoless.
But I think the self taught side of it made me feel constantly an incapable, right?
And so being able to be vulnerable, just like you said, and just be like, Hey, how would
you do this?
Right?
Like it doesn't have to be that you don't know how to do something.
It's more of like, again, we don't have a bar that we are set to.
So it's okay to be like, how would you think about this?
How would you work on this?
Because we're all just learning.
Yeah.
And I think the most important thing is just reminding yourself that you already won.
Like you're here.
You're getting to solve these problems and work with people that you respect and that
you want to learn from.
And it's just so incredible to be here.
And if you can get that in your head, then everything else just feels a little less important.
You know what?
That is so true.
And just for context for you, for you, because I know that oftentimes, especially people
like you and I, we really like to help one another.
That statement actually really helped me because I've been struggling my business because I
feel like there's this bar at which I need to reach, right?
Where I've got this revenue flow and things are reliable.
And honestly, the fact that I'm still getting to run my business almost a year later and
like, yes, things are getting sketchy here, but I think that it's going to be okay.
And that statement really just reminded me like I've always wanted to do what I'm doing
right now.
And so I need to just appreciate that I'm getting to do what I'm doing right now.
Same.
I get to sit in my office with my skateboards on the wall and my music and drink, spend,
drift and play around with code all day.
That's pretty amazing.
We are living the dream, David, living the dream.
Okay.
I so, so, so much have enjoyed talking to you.
We are definitely going to have to chat again.
Where can people find you so that they can get all the amazing David essence for themselves
as well?
Yeah.
I think LinkedIn is a great place to find me and I'm pretty findable.
I think it's just D.Beele Jr.
And then I have a website, which is just B.E.L.D.
.sh and it is not much, but it has links to things like Instagram and LinkedIn and my
email address and things like that.
If anything that I've said resonates and you want to talk, I love talking.
I love connecting with people, whether in person or virtually or however.
So please reach out.
My network is your network.
We're all in this together.
Yes.
Oh, I love that so much.
Okay, well, thank you so much for your time, David.
This has been an amazing session, honestly, and I really, really appreciate you.
Absolutely.
I appreciate you too.
Thank you.
Yeah.
All right, friends.
We'll have a fabulous rest of your Thursday.
I have a girly hair appointment tomorrow, so there will be no 99 Dev problems tomorrow,
but I will see you all on Monday.
Bye, everyone.