What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from AndyHackers.com, and you're listening to
The Andy Hackers Podcast.
On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense
of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they are today? How
did they make decisions both at their companies and in their personal lives? And what makes
their businesses tick?
Today, I'm talking to Saran Yabarik, the creator of CodeNewbie. Saran has had quite the winding
career path. She spent years doing research, working in biochemistry on DNA. She worked
at NPR, helping to write and produce one of the radio shows. She's worked in sales and
marketing and content jobs at several startups. And then she learned how to code and worked
as a developer. And today, she's running CodeNewbie, a supportive international community of people
who are learning to code. Saran, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me. That was a really great intro, by the way. I feel very fulfilled in
my life.
You've done a lot of stuff.
And it's funny because all the things you've done are like the exact startup skills that
you need. You've done a lot of writing, you've done a lot of marketing, done a lot of sales.
It's coming together well.
It really has. So CodeNewbie is a community of people learning how to code. What does
that mean exactly, and how does it work?
Sure. So it all started from my own journey learning to code, I think it was five, five
years ago, four years ago now, where I was learning on my own for a few months, and then
I went into a bootcamp. And when I was doing it by myself, I said, oh my goodness, this
is so, it's so hard and so lonely and so frustrating. And when you're not used to that level of
consistent failure, which is how I describe coding, it's hard not to internalize that
failure, right?
Like you, you keep putting something in the computer, the computer keeps saying, nope,
that's not it. No, that's wrong. Oh, error, error, error. And if you aren't used to that,
if you're not used to that type of feedback, then it's easy to look at that and go, wow,
I must be really stupid. I must not be made for this. I must not be any good at this.
I don't have a future in this. And it wasn't until I did the bootcamp and I found all these
other people, 44 other people who understood that journey, that I said, oh, it's not me.
I am not the problem. The problem is this thing called coding and the fact that it's
just very, very different from anything that I've ever done. And it was really shocking
to me how big of a difference it made to just be surrounded by other people who understood
the ups and understood the downs. And it got me through a lot of really hard times. And
so what I realized during that program is that at that point, anyway, when you decide
to learn to code, unless you were part of a college or campus or a bootcamp like I was,
it's really hard to find that type of community. It's hard to find people who understood that
journey. And if you found one that usually costs several thousand dollars, $11,000 for
me. And I didn't like that. I didn't like the fact that if you wanted to find that type
of community, you had to spend that much money and that much time to get one. And so I wanted
to find a way for people to connect, to support each other, to share resources. And so it
started as a very, very simple Twitter chat that we did every Wednesday for one hour,
6 p.m. Pacific time, 9 p.m. Eastern time. We've been doing that chat for four years
now. And it's all been about listening to the community and figuring out what people
need to help support each other. I'm a big believer in finding strength and finding power
and validation in yourself. And the community is a way of finding that in you by connecting
you to other people, if that makes sense. And so we've done the chat. We now have a
podcast. We have a conference. We have several meetups. So it's just all been about listening
to people and saying, like, what is it that you need? What can I do to help facilitate
these interactions?
Yeah. On your website, you say learning to code is hard, but you don't have to do it
alone. And I think that's very similar. It's very true. It's very similar to how I think
about the problem that ND hackers is solving. It's also a community. We've got people helping
each other on the website, on the forum, and sharing their stories and their strategies.
And the idea is that starting a business is hard, but you don't have to do it alone. What
do you think it is about starting a company or about learning to code that sort of makes
people default to doing it on their own? And why do you think more people aren't doing
it with other people?
Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with how we tell stories of people who've been successful
in that way. We almost always focus on like the hero, right? Like, you know, Jeff Bezos
is like the star of Amazon and did all these things. And I'm sure he had tons of support
and had a whole team and all these other people who helped him out. But that's not really
where the story goes. That's not the completely invisible. Yeah. And so I think that we like
narratives with heroes. I think we like the whole, you know, I'm an underdog and I started
from nothing and I clawed my way up and those stories are easier to digest. They're definitely
more impressive, right? Than saying like 20 people got us all here together. And so because
of that, I think we have been surrounded by these stories of single heroes overcoming
huge challenges. And so we expect that of ourselves and we say, Oh, well, I should be
able to do that too. And the reality is that, you know, you can do it, but it's so much
easier and it's much more realistic to do it with the support of other people. And that
doesn't make you, you know, weaker. It doesn't make it less successful. It doesn't make you,
you know, any less than, but I think we are just surrounded by these stories. And so we
internalize them.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And even running a community where I'm trying to get people
to talk more to each other, I find myself sometimes looking at the things I'm proud
of and most proud of. And I'm like, I did that by myself. And I'll emphasize it to
find myself part. I'm like, no, that's dumb. It's so much better to get help from other
people. Most of the successful founders and programmers that I know are people who have
sort of a vibrant community of mentors and people that they talk to. And so I think you're
dead on. There's just this myth that makes us sort of prioritize and believe that everything
happens alone.
Yep, absolutely.
Let's talk about your journey and getting to the point where you were able to start
something like Code Newbie because you didn't start off as a programmer. How did you make
decisions in life and what was sort of the path that took you to becoming a programmer?
Yeah, oh, so many of them. So I think it started for me when I was working at Discover magazine
as a fact checker. And when I was there, you know, think about being a fact checker in
a magazine that only publishes once every five weeks is you have a lot of time off.
There isn't like that much work to do when the magazine isn't being published. And so
I spent a lot of that time just reading up. I read tons of books, listen to podcasts,
just spend all that time educating myself. And it was during that time that I read the
Steve Jobs book. And this was the first time that I had read about the tech industry in
a way that spoke to me. You know, my husband has been in tech since we've been together
for a very long time. And I was familiar with tech as an industry. I like heard of coding
sort of kind of not really. But this was the first time that I saw a person who was very
emotional and very artistic and loved design and stories and a lot of things that I could
relate to, but was applying that to the tech field. And I saw that and I thought, Oh, this
is interesting. Maybe there's a place for me in tech. And so that was kind of the beginning.
And so from there, I started reading a bunch of books, followed a bunch of people to start
reading blogs, articles, that kind of thing about the specifically the startup industry.
And I said, Oh man, this is really exciting. I need to find a place here. And so I cold
emailed a bunch of startup founders, startup CEOs, and had coffees with a few of them.
And one of those coffees turned into an internship. And then two weeks into the internship, I
turned into a job. And I've been working like in the tech field ever since. And it was at
that first position where I found myself looking over the shoulders of the engineers and their
screens were very confusing. And, you know, there are all kinds of symbols and everything
was like black and, you know, white. And it was, it was a very strange world. And I kept
thinking like, what are they doing? How can they possibly read whatever that thing is
on their screens? And I kept, you know, kind of poking my head and, and asking around.
And they got to a point where I felt like I as a sales type person was very limited
by how much I could contribute to the startup, to the team, because I wasn't technical. I
didn't understand product. I didn't know what product management was. I didn't know what
code was definitely hadn't heard of, you know, Ruby or a web framework, any of those things.
And so I felt like I kept hitting this wall where I wanted to be integral. I want it to
be impactful. I wanted to make my mark and do great things and help everyone succeed.
And because I just didn't understand technology on the technical side of technology anyway,
I just felt like I couldn't contribute the way that I wanted to. And I worked at a few
startups and I kept hitting that same wall where I said, damn it, if only I knew, if
only I knew how to code, like I could do more. And after hitting that wall enough times,
I said, okay, maybe this is a good opportunity for me to just pause, invest in my skills
and see where that takes me. So it was hitting that wall a couple of times that eventually
led me to just quitting my, my startup gig, learning to code for a few months, doing the
bootcamp thing and got me on the technical side of tech.
And what gave you the confidence that you could just learn to code? Because I know a
lot of people who will see programmer screens and think I could never do that. That looks
crazy. You need to be born to do that. You need to start doing that when you're a teenager,
you know, I'm too old to start. Why were you confident that you could, you could just teach
yourself? Oh, I wasn't, I wasn't confident at all. And
even nowadays I've been coding for a few years now. And even now when I hit a hard problem,
I think like, Oh, is this going to be, is this the moment when I realized that I actually
cannot do this, you know? So it's not really about confidence. It's more about fear. It's
the fear of failing, you know, the, the coding journey was less scary than the fear of never
reaching my potential. That's really what it was. It was picking the less scary option.
So the first time I learned to code was actually a year before I quit my job. I took a, um,
an MIT open coursework class. It was like their intro to computer science course. And
it was horrible. I took four lectures. And the problem was that, you know, I was doing
it alone and I didn't know enough about not just code, but how to learn to code. There's
a how component that I think is very different. And I don't really know how much we talk about
the how component where, you know, I, I took all the hard classes in college. I took, you
know, calculus, organic chemistry, biochemistry, research, all those things you talked about.
And my strategy for learning was a lot of highlighters, a lot of flashcards, sticky
notes, uh, you know, writing notes down over and over again until I, you know, that that's
what, that's how you study. Right. And then I do this coding thing and I, I pretty sure
I still have the notebooks where I tried to like memorize the code samples, you know,
like, I, I like wrote down the code samples. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna
do flashcards out of these, you know, because that's, that's like the only tools that I
had. Neil's say that did not work at all. And it was on lecture four. I was like, I
have no idea what's going on. None of this is making any sense. I didn't know that you
were supposed to, you know, open up a text that are actually type in the code and like
run the code like that, that just didn't know that that's the thing that you do. And so
after that, I said, okay, I guess this isn't for me. I guess my brain just isn't wired
this way. You know, I can do all this hard sciencey biology stuff, but when it comes
to, you know, computer science, there's just something about the way my brain works that
this is just not possible. And so I had, you know, no confidence at all. And the thing
that got me, I don't say got me over it, but got me to push through is the fact that I
just kept hitting that same freaking wall over and over again. And it got to a point
where I said, man, I need to pick, am I more afraid of, you know, this weird coding world
that I don't understand, or am I more afraid of not being as successful as I know I can
be. And the fear of falling short of what I could do was much, much more terrifying
than the fear of failing to learn to code. So that's how I, that's how I did it.
What were you considering living up to your potential at that point in time? What kinds
of things did you want to accomplish? And why did you see being a programmer as being
necessary to accomplish those things?
I don't know. And even nowadays, when I think about, you know, what is success, there's
you know, the, the easy to measure stuff, like how much money do you make? And you know,
what's, what's your title at the company? And you know, how many followers do you have?
Like there's, you know, there's metrics that are certain indicators that can make you feel
good. But for me, I think it really boils down to like control and freedom and impact.
And so in the tech industry, especially in the startup world, I felt like without being
technical with the skills that I had at the time, without being technical, I was always
going to not be as impactful to the product, which is a technical product. And so in that
context, whatever success meant, whatever that ended up looking like, I knew it involved
at the very least understanding how to build products and how to solve problems with technical
skills. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's, you know, being a CTO at that
point, anyway, being a CTO, being a CEO, being, you know, lead of a huge corporation, I'm
not sure exactly what the final picture was. But I knew that whatever it was, however,
that defined itself, if I didn't have technical skills, it wasn't even an option for me.
Let's rewind for a second. I want to go back to this point where you were first starting
to get into tech. And you said that you cold emailed a bunch of people, and eventually
got some jobs. I think that's super cool. It's a very proactive way to go about it.
I think it's sort of reflective of the community that you've started, which is that you want
to get help from other people, and then you're not afraid to reach out. How did you get into
tech? How did you cold email people? Did you have a particular strategy? And how can other
people sort of learn from what you did and figure out how to meet the right people to
advance their careers? Sure. So I think there's two parts, right?
There's one is how do you get the confidence to cold email, because that's something that
a lot of people are very, very, very scared of. And then there's once you have that, you
know, that confidence, then actually executing on it, right? So the first part, the confidence
part, I think that anything that looks like confidence is just a practice skill. I really,
really firmly believe that. And so cold emailing for me is what I did in journalism. That's
what I did all day for hours. My whole job was cold emailing people I had no business
talking to who were way more successful than me, who had done more, who were very hard
to reach, who sometimes took six months to even respond a year to book and bother the
crap out of them until I get an answer. And the first oh my goodness, I remember the very,
very first time I had to do that at NPR, we were covering the story on I think it's Sudan
women driving. I hope I said that correctly. It was it was yeah, it was it was women driving
in a country where maybe I don't think it was in Saudi Arabia. I think it was Saudi
Arabia. But anyways, it was women driving in a place where they were like not not allowed
to drive at that time. And it was this big protest this big like fight for it. And I
found this really awesome woman who was like leading the the movement leading the protest.
And I had to like find a way to get her on the show, which you know, at that point, like
there's no Zen caster, there's no you know, it's not it's not a Skype call, it's put her
get get an ISDN line, which is you know, available at like certain studios and such, and have
them connect at a specific time to our DC, you know, studio, and record an interview
that way. So it's like there's a couple steps involved. So having to locate this person,
I had you know, who didn't exactly have like an email address, or like a phone number I
could call and find her and ask her to be on the show and then actually arrange that
booking as my first job, you know, as a professional journalist was the strangest, most intimidating
thing that I think I could have done. But then I did it and I figured out how to do
it and I ended up doing like Facebook and Twitter and like, just went through a whole
bunch of loops to get it done. But like, that was, you know, that was the deep end for me
in terms of, you know, cold emailing and reaching out and finding people and like tracking them
down. And so after, you know, a good amount of time of doing that type of work, cold emailing,
you know, the startup CEO of like, you know, six people, it's pretty easy. It's pretty
straightforward, at least. So, you know, I think that the confidence isn't it's not anything
inherent, it's purely just practice, like once you email people, cold email people enough
times, eventually, it won't feel like anything. And then in terms of the strategy of it, I
followed a bunch of blogs like TechCrunch, Pando Daily, Mashable, you know, like the
typical ones, Recode, those kinds of things. And I just kept track of the ones that I thought
were interesting. Anytime a startup was mentioned, I wrote it down, I think I have like an Evernote
or something. And I tried to find ones where I felt like my background was applicable.
So the first company I worked for, Contently, was a really great fit because their whole
thing was content marketing, and specifically like branded content, but with more of like
a journalistic angle, I don't think they would call what they do journalism, but they leverage
journalists and that type of really high quality writing and researching for their brands.
And so I thought, Oh, this is great. I'm a journalist, I know this world, and I can offer
that as a skill as a strength. So I think if you're thinking about cold emailing, whether
it's to get a job, to get a sponsor, to get a client, whatever that is, figuring out,
you know, is there a commonality? Is there a way that your past is a skill or at least
is interesting to the person that you're reaching out to and using that to help at least get
that first coffee, that first conversation?
I really liked that point that you made a couple times about things that look like confidence,
really just boiling down to practice underneath, but from an outside perspective, they don't
see all that practice. They just see the confidence. They're like, how did, how did she do that?
How did you eventually become more confident in your skills as a programmer? Did you, uh,
you know, eventually reach a point where you had practiced being frustrated with not succeeding
enough to get to the point where you're like, all right, I'm going to push through this
and just keep going anyway.
I think I came to a point where I said, if you don't change your expectations, you're,
you're gonna emotionally burn out. And what I mean by that is, you know, when, so in journalism,
for example, you can't be wrong. Like you were not allowed to be wrong. If you're wrong
in the most minor way, you have to basically publicly apologize for being wrong. I remember
there was one stat I got after all this research, after getting all these things right, there
was one stat that I missed by, I think by like a digit or something. And because of
that we have to publicly, but we did air an apology for getting that stat wrong. So I
came from a world where mistakes are not tolerated. You double check, you triple check, you quadruple
check everything and make sure it's perfect before you put anything out publicly.
And so going from that mentality to, you know, if it's not broken, then you've published
too, you know, too late is like the craziest thing, you know, it's insane. Like this whole,
you know, it needs to be ugly and it's okay if it's broken. And like beta is not supposed
to fully, you know, like the mentality and the acceptance of not even mistakes, but public
mistakes is something that I took me a while to just adjust to and to wrap my mind around.
So for me, it was literally sitting with myself and saying, okay, this is not journalism anymore.
This is this is a new thing. There are different rules here. You can make mistakes, it's expected,
it's okay. And just readjusting what success meant to me, and being more realistic and
mashing it up to just the way tech operates. That was a huge, it was a very iterative process.
It took, you know, it still takes me time. You know, when I when I think I'm done, and
I'm not quite done, I have to remind myself, I'm like, No, that's okay. That's normal.
That's what tech is. You think you're done and you never are. It's just been about like
talking myself through a lot of those moments.
I asked a bunch of people on the indie hackers forum, if they had any questions for you.
And so I'm going to splice in a few of them here and there. Oh, cool. One person named
Alats asks, What pain points do you think new programmers have that the market isn't
addressing?
Sure.
And I assume this person is trying to find some business ideas.
Sounds like a very businessy business idea question. I think the big one is hiring and
what it looks like to get a job. I think that, you know, it's so interesting because there
is also an internal quote unquote internal battle just within the tech community of like,
what should hiring look like? And what should the interview process be like? So no one's
agreed on this. I think it's part of the that's probably the biggest or the source of the
pain point. But for people who are just getting started, a lot of them, you know, some people
do it because they love it. And it's something they're passionate about. And they're excited
about. But a lot of them are doing it for socio economic gains. It's really that simple.
They don't have great jobs or they're not happy with their jobs or they don't have jobs
at all. And they've read about code a bunch of times. They keep hearing about all this
tech and all the opportunities in the tech industry. And they want some of that success.
They want they want some of that money. And it's very simple. It's you know, it's very
straightforward like that. And so yes, they like it. But if the money wasn't there, it
would really wouldn't be an option. And so one of the things that I think is really sucky
about people like that entering is that a lot of the resources don't tailor the education
to. OK, it's like it's like there's two options. It feels like there's either get a job right
now and it may not pay a lot and it may not be something that will teach you enough or
will give you enough depth that you'll do well five years from now. But it'll get you
that really that very, very first job. And then from there you can kind of figure it
out. So it's a little it's a little too shallow is what I found or it's so focused on the
craft and how to make really beautiful code and how to make things really readable and
gorgeous and really nice that it doesn't quite tie back to that. OK, but how do I make money
from this goal? So I feel like a lot of resources fall in one of those categories. It's either
like too shallow and too short term gain focused or it's so long term that I don't even know
when or how I would benefit from what I'm learning. So I think that that's probably
one of the biggest pain points for people. Yeah, that's fascinating. There's no there's
no in between. Not that I've seen and if there are I don't think I know much about them.
I think it generally I think it generally does fall into one of these two categories.
Well if you don't then most people certainly don't. So let's talk about code newbie for
a little bit. And by a little bit I mean the rest of the rest of this episode. How did
you come up with the idea for code newbie? You said that you got a lot of value out of
having a community around people who helped you learn to code. Was it primarily just that
you wanted other people to feel the same way? And were there any other ideas that you're
considering working on besides code newbie? Yeah, great questions. So code newbie was
totally an accident. There there really was no no plan. I don't really think there there's
really a plan until maybe you know like somewhat recently. It was very much about me saying
oh let's do this Twitter chat. It'll be like a fun little thing I do on the side. And at
that point you know everyone was doing a Twitter chat. So I said oh this would be a nice addition
to the Twitter chat family. And then it kept going and people seemed really excited about
it. And it got to a point where I found that the Twitter chat is a great way of having
people talk to each other. But it's not a great way to dig deep into a topic and to
unpack something. What is a Twitter chat exactly? Oh that is a great question. So a Twitter
chat is when you use a hashtag on Twitter you pick a time. So for us it's Wednesday
nights at 9 p.m. Eastern time 6 p.m. Pacific time. And usually there's a moderator. So
in this case I was the moderator. And you the moderator tweets out questions and then
people respond using that same hashtag. So it's using the hashtag to anchor a conversation.
So for example we pick a topic like oh we had one recently on parents who code. I think
parents who code are like absolute heroes. I don't know. I just think about how busy
I am as a as a non-parent person. And I think about like adding children to that. And I
just I have no idea what I would do. So I wanted to give an opportunity for like parents
who code. Give them a shout out and just hear more about their stories. And so that was
a topic that we picked and we had I think it was like four questions. You know what's
the hardest part about being a parent. What's the most rewarding part about coding and being
a parent. Like what are life hacks you use to get it all done. You know that kind of
thing. And we do that for one hour every single week. Cool. So that's a Twitter chat. How
did you get people to agree to do this with you. I mean how do you find like the first
few people to participate in the Twitter chat. I cold DM'd everyone I knew. That's how I
did it for like the first I think it was like four months like every Wednesday. I had you
know a couple friends who were relatively you know big on Twitter who had lots of followers
and I DM'd them and I said hey can you retweet this for me. Can you like get people into
this. And so yeah I just did that every week for like the first few months. And eventually
I think it was around maybe month five or six. It got to a point where I didn't have
to do that anymore. It just kind of got sticky enough that people kept coming back without
me having to do that huge push. But yeah it was just and it's interesting because I think
that that was easy for me to do because it wasn't my job. You know like it wasn't a business.
It was just this fun Twitter chat thing I did on the side. And so if people showed up
it was awesome but if they didn't that's fine too. I'll just talk to myself you know for
the hour. It's not a big deal. I think that if I had started that and said this is going
to be a business and it's going to be the thing that I use to feed myself every this
year and like this is I'm putting all my eggs in this basket. I think I would have quit.
I think I would have quit after the first month or two because it would have just been
too much pressure. And I think at that point anyway my expectations for success were a
little unrealistic. And so if I put those values and those expectations on myself at
that point I think I would have said if I'm in month three and I'm still asking for people
to you know retweet me and that's the only way I'm getting people to join my community
then this is obviously not going to work and I'm not going to do this. Like I think that's
how I would have approached it.
It's so funny that you didn't approach it with a plan in mind because everything that
you're saying is kind of like the textbook right way to start a startup.
Oh cool.
Like for example like you had no idea. I mean you're like it's crazy like you reaching out
to people and sort of manually getting them to come into your Twitter chats is the perfect
application of this principle that's like do things that don't scale. Early on you're
going to have to get your hands there. You have to spend a lot of effort to get the ball
rolling and then eventually it'll get easier but you can't shy away from that work early
on which a lot of people do because they don't see how they could do it forever. But you
don't have to do it forever. You just have to do it for the first few months.
And that's the thing right because I like I'd heard of that right. I read all the startup
books. I knew I do things that don't scale but I would not have guessed that I had to
do that at least in my case for three to four months. Right. Like I would think OK you do
it one time maybe two if you really have to three times but after three times if people
aren't you know clamoring at your Twitter account to join the chat then obviously no
one cares you know. And I think that for me was the big thing that was missing in all
the startup startup literature that I read is it's not the how to do it it's the how
long to do it for. At what point do you realize OK maybe this isn't working. What point do
you realize you know oh it takes you know it takes a hundred tries before you get your
first yes you know what what is persistence and then what is stupidity. You know where
is that line. And you know I'm still figuring it out. You know every time I do a new task
a new tour it's like OK how long does it take for this thing to be you know to quote unquote
work and figuring that out is yeah something that I didn't really come across too much
in the things that I read. And it's cool that you didn't really have to worry about it because
you're kind of just doing it for fun. And so you weren't worried. Oh it's just going
to it's not going to work. I should stop. I should try something else. It's like no
this is fun so I'm going to keep it up. I think the other thing that you've done pretty
consistently and I think this is not written about as much but I've seen it I've talked
to so many founders and I think talented founders it's kind of a constant is you're able to
take advantages that you've had in the past and use those and parlay those into future
situations. So for example you could take your skills at pitching and sending cold emails
and use that to break into tech or you could take the fact that you know these people who
have big Twitter accounts and you can use that sort of amplify the message of your Twitter
chats and get that out there. Whereas a lot of people might not be able to use whatever
advantages they have. It really shows in not just what you've done in these couple of things
but also like the future growth of code newbie because you didn't just stay at Twitter chats
that you then took those and sort of ran with it. So how do you think about using your advantages
to move into new areas with code newbie and where did you go after doing the Twitter chats.
Such good questions. So it's funny I think it was a year ago some time ago that I looked
at all the different things that I was doing for code newbie and I think I tweeted and
I said if I didn't have all of the seemingly random collection of skills that I had running
code newbie would be cost prohibitive because I would have to hire you know an editor I'd
have to hire a podcaster I have to hire a coder or hire design like I would have to
hire for all these you know skills that fortunately I have enough of I can do the job and it would
just be way way too expensive. So I think number one it's it's been really beneficial
it's been really helpful that I have a lot of skills that I think most people in tech
feel are hard. So like I always think it's so funny when I see the tweets that are like
communication skills and people skills are the hardest skills. I'm like really. For me
though that's the easy part like I love talking to people I'm really strong you know with
my communication skills and to me like the tech side is obviously harder the design side
is harder for me and so I feel really lucky that interviewing people public speaking you
know just general community work or things that I've cultivated in other areas of my
life and you know just even you know I'm Ethiopian so even like my culture of my upbringing and
my family it's so much a part of who I am that those have been really easy for me but
because they are considered hard in this industry I've been able to stand out and get opportunities
and connections you know and build up code newbie for that. So I think that has been
really awesome. So that's one thing and I think that on that point a lot of people feel
like they are non-technical skills are a burden like I definitely see this a lot in the code
newbie community where people say I remember it very vividly at one Twitter chat we had
a woman who was a nurse and she wanted to learn to code and she was like how am I ever
going to get a coding job with all this nursing you know nursing experience like what was
that going to do for me and I thought what you know how to deal in emergency situation
like actual emergency situations you know how to you know work with patients and work
with people who are freaking out and have you know life-threatening issues and serious
situations you are very empathetic you have to be a great community there's so many awesome
transferable skills that come with nursing that she just didn't see and so I think step
one is all the the quote-unquote unrelated skills that may feel initially like a weakness
or may feel like a burden flip it around and say what does this look like if it's a strength
that's been absolutely huge for me but the other part of that is that can be a bit of
a trap because if you focus so much on what you already know then you get stuck there
and you never really give yourself a chance to grow and this is directly applicable with
me and CodeNubi because for I think for about a year I had this idea of creating this platform
for CodeNubi where you can find all the technical resources available and sort them by different
filters and I just kept saying to myself I mean yeah you know how to code but you're
not technical enough to build that like you're just you're not you're not quite there yet
just you know like stick to your podcasting stick to your speaking that's where you're
good at that's what you're known for and just you know just do the thing it makes it makes
enough money just like keep doing that and you know how we talked about you know the
fear of failure and you know picking the the less scary of the two fears it just got to
a point where I said to myself okay if you continue down this path of sticking to your
strengths and things that you know you're good at then you'll never grow like you will
be stuck in in this role in doing what you're doing which is fine but you know you can do
more you know you have more to offer you know you can make a bigger impact you can reach
more people but you need to step away from your strengths and dip into the areas that
you don't feel as strong and if you don't you will be stuck here forever and like you
know I think the the theme of my life is a fear of being stuck anywhere forever and so
that was you know after hitting hitting that wall several times it got to a point where
I said okay I need to decide you know am I am I just happy where I am or do I want to
do more and at that point I said okay you need to actually do more coding and you spend
more time building this thing that you've just been sitting on forever and once I started
working on it it was fine like I could do it you know and I had to learn some new things
there's some you know parts that were a little funny but I was able to figure it out and
so I think looking at your weaknesses and deciding that their strengths and using it
is great but also looking at some of those past skills and not letting it define you
and limit you from growing and exploring new skills is something to be aware of it's basically
the Goldilocks principle where you don't want porridge that's too hot you don't want
porridge that's too cold and that's what makes giving advice so difficult because no matter
what you say it's probably the exact opposite of what some people need to hear you mentioned
some public speaking that you're doing your podcast that you're doing code newbies a whole
bunch of stuff you've got multiple podcasts yeah you do a lot of talking and you've got
the blog you've got this website that you've built how did you go from the Twitter chats
into doing all this stuff sure so the podcast just came very directly from I want to explore
a topic a little bit more in depth I want to focus on a person I think individual learn
to code stories are super inspiring and because I worked at NPR and I've done like radio
journalism before I said this is a really good podcasting is a really great tool to
do that so it was the right you know tool for the problem I was trying to solve the
other stuff the speaking specifically started because when I graduated my boot camp I think
it was maybe like a month or two after graduating RailsConf had their CFP out and it was you
know applied it to give a talk and the Dean of so into the flier in school the Dean of
the school Avi he sent an email out to all the alumni and said hey we should all we should
all come together come up with an idea and submit to this conference and I said oh this
that'd be really awesome in RailsConf the hugest you know the biggest conference for
Rails developers I said oh this is awesome and so I went and it was I think maybe like
eight people who went I was the only I was the only non white male person and I sat there
and I was so intimidated and so I wouldn't consider myself like a shy person I was very
shy that day and everyone seemed to have all these ideas and I'm thinking to myself we
were in the same class why do you have all these ideas and I have nothing like it was
so confusing to hear all these you know amazing ideas coming from people I was like sat in
class with and I was so intimidated I was so scared I didn't say anything during that
meeting and Avi at some point pulled me aside and said hey I know you have some ideas speak
up and then the next day a woman Vanessa Hurst who is the one of the co-founders of Girl
Develop It she had this like coffee and CFP meetup thing that she did where she said hey
I come with your CFP ideas let's submit talks together and I went it was me her and one
other person and we sat a coffee and she she's like what ideas do you have and said okay
I have this idea I think it's really stupid but here it is and it was this idea for reading
code and I had a group of friends about five of us who every Sunday for an hour we picked
a code base we read the code together and we discussed it and it was our way of building
up our technical skills through reading instead of just writing code it's so smart yeah yeah
and so I pitched that and I said who wants to hear about a bunch of people like reading
code sounds so stupid and she's like no that's great you should submit it and I said to her
okay fine I'll submit it but like don't you think I should maybe start with a meetup like
do you know a smaller event first and like eventually wake work my way up to submitting
to something like RailsConf and I'll never forget that she looked at me and I don't believe
in stepping stones and I was like oh my god that's the most baddest thing ever and I said
well I also do not believe in stepping stones and so I submitted and when I submitted that
first talk I remember vividly being at my desk and there was just something so intimidating
terrifying so just like wrong about submitting to be a speaker at this huge conference when
I was not two months graduated from a boot camp a month into my first developer job didn't
have a CS degree didn't have a long amazing resume in tech didn't have all this experience
to speak of with this stupid idea that I didn't even think was interesting there was something
so wrong about that and it was incredibly intimidating overwhelming to the point that
I cried while writing the CFP I cried the whole way and I forced myself to type and
I forced myself to keep going and I hit the submit button I'm sitting at my computer just
you know tier streaming going like I don't deserve this keep in mind I have not been
picked to speak okay this is just just submitting this is just applying and my husband's looking
at me from the kitchen like are you okay and I'm like I'm just trying to supply this god
you know it's terrible and I hit submit and I said like the goal is not to be selected
the goal is to submit that's the win the win is the act of submitting this talk and I think
it was about a month later I was sitting on the train on my way home and I saw this email
from Marty hot who's at the time was the chair of that year's conference and it said congratulations
your talk was accepted to RailsConf and I shouted yes and I threw my hands up and then
I cried and then I laughed hysterically and I was sitting across these two old women who
were very very scared and I was just shocked that anyone thought this was interesting and
wanted to hear me give this talk the talk went really really well I've given that talk
about 15 at least 15 times all over the world I've been paid to give that talk and that
was the launch that was the kickoff of my speaking career and I've been speaking now
for I think three three four years it's terrifying every single time every time within your 24
hours before I speak I want to throw up I have I call it nervous pooping there's a lot
of nervous pooping it's I asked myself why do I keep doing this why do I why do I put
myself in this position every single time but then I do it it's awesome I get a lot
of really great feedback and that's my my speaking story I've had the exact same feeling
when why do I keep doing this I last time I told myself I would stop I said it feels
like this why do I keep doing this I keep saying yes I would love to talk about public
speaking forever and I think the trouble with interviewing somebody like you is you do so
many things that just not out of time but let's talk a little bit about some other parts
of Code Newbie as well like you guys have meetups you have study groups on the site
how did you start doing those and what are some ways that you've gotten people to meet
up in real life sure so that part is pretty easy because people really like meeting people
they do that's what I love about yeah that's what I love about this community in particular
because they're very excited very eager to meet people who are like them and I think
there's something unique about learning to code because you can't it's hard to explain
to people in your life what that actually means you know the people still think I just
fix the internet you know for people in my family and you know friend group outside of
tech and so if you're going on this journey learning to code if your family and friends
are not already in tech it's hard to explain what that is and part of the time part of
the time you're trying to figure out what that means you know for yourself like you're
like what what is this code thing so it's really lonely you know you can't really talk
about it my mom when I when I used to talk to her I was in boot camp and I talked to
her about my coding adventures she did an amazing job of pretending to understand what
I was talking about and you know I would I would say like oh like I got this yeah I couldn't
figure out this one bug and it was just so fun I got this error messages and I would
see these all these were she would know she would go oh sorry I'm so sorry she sees the
opening that's where that accent came from but you know she would she has no idea what
I'm saying but she could tell from my inflections you know like what the right response and
then I would go like yeah I finally you know I made that PR and it was great and it's such
great code of yours like oh good job you know it was amazing so if you don't have a really
great actor in the family then it's just hard to have those conversations so the meetups
are a really great way of saying like hey we guarantee people who understand how you
feel and they may not necessarily be working in the same language or framework but they
understand how you feel and they can help you figure it out they can at least help you
feel a little bit less lonely so we played with a bunch of different formats with the
meetups we did we had paid events for a while we had now we have all three events we had
more of a more of like an event event with like a speaker and dinner and that kind of
thing we had more casual coffee and code type things so we played around with a bunch of
different formats we landed on and we're still in the couple but we've landed on one where
we have more of a study group where we have three hours we pick a place that has you know
Wi-Fi coffee outlets chairs tables that kind of thing and we invite people to come bring
their laptop if they don't know what to work on we have like suggested activities if they
want to pair up with someone you know the meetup leader plays that role of you know
matchmaking and then we also do these live Q&A's because the thing that we found that
is kind of missing in the meetup world is there's a lot of tech focused events there's
a lot of you know I want to JavaScript to meet up I want to Ruby meet up and so instead
of and for us since we're language agnostic instead of focusing on a technical topic we
try to find just developers with interesting stories and we focus on the how did you make
decisions how did you get to where you are in your career how did you get this job that
kind of thing that's awesome and that's like it's kind of what you do on your blog as well
and it's what I do on ndhackers.com just find people have them tell their stories everybody's
stories different yeah everyone's got their own specifics but for a lot of people reading
just hearing the stories and knowing that it's possible or seeing what part of it resonates
with you could be so powerful and inspiring so I think that's like a great way to go yeah
and especially for the meetup format because there's a lot of a lot of local information
that is very relevant in a meetup so for example you know if you like it's great to hear the
story of you know a developer who works at the New York Times but if you don't live in
New York and you know you you probably like don't have the same access to the New York
Times as you know as you would if you actually lived in Manhattan it's different right so
talking to a developer in the local market who is working at a local company who can
follow up with you and have coffee afterwards you know who can oh you can ask questions
to that's really really valuable so we're trying to leverage the the format of a meetup
and the fact that it is you know specific to that region and trying to create an event
that takes advantage of that and really gives a lot of value to the attendees so let's talk
about your podcast sure you've got two podcasts on code newbie and I think you do a third
podcast elsewhere is that right yeah in line heroes that's from my red hat that's that's
a lot of podcasts why so many sure so the code newbie pot mean that's you know how it
started it's how it all started and I just I'd love doing that so it's been such a great
opportunity for me personally to meet people to connect with people to hear their stories
and and you know do teaching and inspiration like that's that's the golden combo right
is teach people and inspire them the base CS podcast happened because for maybe a year
or two I've really wanted to do a highly technical podcast I think podcasts are very very powerful
medium for convenient like on the go learning and inspiration like I think you can very
easily make a strong emotional connection with the voices that you hear in a way that
I don't think you can when you're reading a blog or even watching a video I think it's
easier to make that connection through audio and so I wanted to take advantage of that
and provide an entertaining easy to easy to consume podcasts that taught you highly technical
things the problem is that I didn't have like the content to do or to teach and so I was
very comfortable with using podcasting tools and best practices but I didn't have the actual
technical content and so when I saw by the he joshis blog series basis blog series and
I read her post I thought holy crap that's the content you know she has she's done like
the work she's done the work of digesting and unpacking and breaking up the content
I have the podcast skills together we can do that technical podcast that's fun and easy
to consume and entertaining and so that's where that came from is this idea I wanted
to do for a long time and she she's such great chemistry on the show and it's it's so it's
just fun like it's fun every time we finish recording like that did not feel like work
that felt like I was hanging out with one who knows more CS than me and taught me some
things that's where that came from red hat was totally like out of the blue they reached
out to me and said hey we're looking for a host we're doing this new show we think you'd
be really perfect for it you know do you want to do it and I said of course this is an amazing
opportunity and obviously an amazing company to work with so yeah that's how that happened
a lot of people nowadays are considering starting a podcast and they're not sure whether they
should or they shouldn't and they're not sure what pitfalls to avoid what are some of the
things that you've learned by doing your podcast I think you've done something close to 200
episodes if not more what do you know now that you wish you would know an earlier oh
I'm so glad you asked about this we could do like a whole podcast on podcasting really
good yeah we really could so so many feelings so many feelings and things about this so
number one is it saying you want to start a podcast is like saying you're going to make
lunch like you can make a PB&J sandwich you can make like this huge gourmet Thanksgiving
dinner type thing right like the medium doesn't really say much about the quality or the time
that you are willing to invest in it so I think the first question isn't so much like
should I do a podcast or should I not do podcast I think the question is how good of a podcast
do I want it to be do I want you know do I care for it to be and how much time and money
am I willing to invest in it I think those are like the first two questions and so you
know you can have a podcast by you know recording in your kitchen with your you know headphone
that the mic that comes on your headphones literally talking to yourself for an hour
which I know people who do that post it with no editing no cleanup and you have a podcast
and if that's the goal then sure why not if your goal is to do something that is higher
quality that is actually serving an audience that is providing value I think it takes a
lot more work than people on think that it does I think that you know anywhere from researching
the right equipment to figuring out what mics to use to figuring out the editing process
is to booking guests like all that it's significantly more work than writing a blog post for sure
and I think that people don't realize how much work it is until I give them like my
checklist my podcast checklist and they're like oh these are a lot of steps I'm like
yes yes they are I need to get your podcast checklist my checklist yeah no problem I've
significantly improved my process but that's the other thing too right look I care a lot
about audio quality so for example I mail all of my guests a mic like I mailed a recording
kit for every single episode I you know I researched and figured out what's the best
mic in a bunch of different settings I have them create like a little a little makeshift
audio booth with like two pillows that I also figured out you know how to do to reduce the
reverb I bought like a you know over $1,000 piece of software that does really really
good cleanup and audio fixing and so like I care a lot and I put a lot of time and money
into making my show as high quality as I can given the fact that I you know I can't put
everyone in a studio so if you also care a lot it will take time and money if you care
less it'll be easier but I think that if you care about quality at all I think that there's
there's definitely an investment to be made and I think most people don't know that so
you do a ton of stuff obviously you've got your podcast you've got these meetups you've
got the public speaking and your Twitter chats and a whole bunch of stuff on your website
that we haven't even talked about your conference how are you how are you doing all this stuff
who's working with you who's helping you and how are you so incredibly productive yeah
so my team right now is we have an assistant producer named Crystal who's amazing absolutely
amazing I love her to death we start working together six months ago I think and that just
really changed the game it changed the game so much and that's one thing too like I'd
always wanted you know if I could have afford to hire people sooner I definitely would have
and if I got to a point where I said I'm just I'm doing too much I'm spread too thin I don't
feel I'm doing anything well I just really need help and so I decided to make that investment
but there were a lot of really interesting benefits going from like a solo entrepreneur
person to even just having one addition to the team all of a sudden my processes had
to be a lot tighter and I always consider myself to be a pretty like organized person
but oh my god they have to be a different type of organized I can't keep everything
in my head like I used to I have to document a lot more stuff I have to keep track of a
lot more stuff there's something just very powerful about explaining your decisions to
another human being that helps you make better decisions so you know by the process of like
having meetings or emails and saying hey we're gonna do this it forces me to think like should
we really do that thing should we do it this way so there's just been you know it's not
just having more bandwidth the process of having to collaborate has also created a level
of efficiency an increase in our efficiency that I I didn't anticipate so that's been
a huge huge part of it there's also just like other just system things you know I use Trello
I love Airtable to death Trello and Airtable are my two go-tos for sure table is crazy
good oh my god and it's one of those things were useful yes like I know they have I forgot
what it's called like Airtable University or something like you know they're they're
docking their docs on how Airtable works and I feel like if I took the time to do any of
those courses I would get even more value from it but it's awesome it's absolutely amazing
so yeah those are like you know there's like just a tool set in general I also do time
sheets I literally document every hour of my day and I tally it up at the end of each
week and figure out like where my time went and I compare that to where I wanted my time
to go and then I reevaluate and I say okay you spent you know way too much time you know
on emails why is that do you need a better system do are you just you know are you rereading
each email five times which appear in order making a typo that's costing you an hour you
know like what what is happening and how can we improve it and that has been a huge huge
eye-opening activity that I really make sure that I make time for is time sheets tallying
up at the end of it taking an hour each week tallying up where all my hours went categorizing
them saying you know it's simple things like for example with the coding thing right I
made a decision that I wanted to focus on the platform are my hours reflective of that
decision hmm you said you want to code more you only spent five percent of your time this
week actually coding are you actually serious about coding more and saying you know if if
you are serious and you are not making decisions with your time as such then what needs to
happen to change that and that has been a powerful powerful tool in keeping me focused
and highly productive I've done literally the exact same thing I used to toggle tracker
yeah I would categorize all my time into buckets and say okay well what did I want to spend
my time on this week how did it go I would even post them publicly and blog posts in
the beginning of indie hackers and it was I agree it was crazy helpful I had to stop
it was stressing myself out too much but I thought it was awesome because it's so often
that you see like wow I said I was gonna do this thing this week but I spent all of my
time doing this other thing and I never would have thought that was the case yeah I've never
heard anyone every time I tell them that they're like that's very intense so before the show
we talked a little bit about people you have helping you and in addition to the person
who's actually working with you you see a career coach so you talk a little bit about
how you decided that that was something that you wanted and what you get out of having
a career coach yeah so I have a career coach she's amazing I absolutely love her I've only
had a few sessions with her so far but it's already been just such a game changer so the
decision to to get one comes so the first time I ever even heard of a career coach was
through this fellowship called the coaching fellowship which is made for ambitious you
know like high-achieving women who are you know have like big dreams and are trying to
figure out how to do that and you apply and if you get accepted you pay some like really
really you know nominal fee I think it's like 300 bucks or something and then you get a
career coach for like I don't remember how for a certain number of months which is like
a huge discount usually these things are you know a couple hundred per hour per session
and that was the first time I ever heard of it and I remember reading the description
of a career coach and being like what exactly is that because it's not an advisor it's not
someone who'll say you have the wrong you know business model you should switch to this
like that's not the job they're not going to give you specific advice or you know strategy
and so when I read the descriptions of it I just couldn't picture what it was and it
wasn't you know until me like a few years after hearing about that that I kept coming
back to this and it really became apparent once I you know quit my job I used to work
at Microsoft I quit my job to do couldn't be full-time where I realized that the biggest
obstacle in doing Code Newbie was me it wasn't getting sponsors it wasn't the code it wasn't
the podcast it wasn't the conference like it wasn't anything any ideas that I had it
was me getting in my own way and I felt like over and over again I had to deal with just
all these issues I didn't know I had you know all these not even weaknesses just just all
these beliefs I had all of these tendencies all these habits these fears just all this
this crap that I just didn't I wasn't aware of and I kept hitting them and they kept
you know surfacing up and affecting my business in very very real ways and so it got to a
point where I said you know I I kind of need I basically need a therapist but with someone
who who is focusing on me reaching my my career goals my business goals and that's what a
career coach is a career coach is a therapist who helps you work through all the issues
that you probably have and it's okay to have issues we all have issues it's fine but it
helps you work through that with the goal being for you to reach whatever your goals
are for your career so an example of that is I have this breakthrough some few months
it was actually before I had my career coaching what led me to finding a career coach where
I said to myself you know I am I'm spread too thin I feel very unfocused I'm incredibly
overwhelmed with all this stuff that I'm doing for code newbie and this is not a new feeling
I feel like every few months I get to this point where I'm just totally overwhelmed that
I feel very lost and I I know that the answer is to focus I know that the answer is to do
less and you know go all in on one thing or very small collection of things but for some
reason I can't do that like I just I can't get myself to do the thing that I know in
my head I should be doing and I was sitting with my husband he's like my you know my my
therapist in life and all those things and so I said to him I don't I don't know how
to get myself to do the thing that I know I need to do and I feel like there's something
deeper there that I just haven't addressed yet and so we sat and we talked and by we
talked I mean like I talked for a while and it got to a point where I said I think the
reason why I keep coming back to just doing so many things is because when I you know
I'm an immigrant I like my parents both went to college but I was you know the the first
person in our family to go to like high school in the US and then go to college so the college
application process is you know very different here and my parents raised me to focus on
like good grades and you know AC exams like that was that's how you get into college and
I didn't know until it was too late that I also have to do like 20 extracurriculars and
be on the sports team like I didn't know letters recommendation were important like I didn't
know all those other things that you need in the US to get into a good school and so
I found myself senior year after college acceptance letters were all you know sent out looking
at my peers and my classmates and realizing that they got into a bunch of good schools
that I didn't get into and I was like what how how did you do that like we got relatively
the same grades like how did you and it wasn't until it was too late that I found out it's
because they did all these other things and so when I went to college I said I'm gonna
do all those other things and by the time I graduated undergrad in four years I had
enough degree enough credits to get three full degrees I took all summer classes winter
classes I did all the extracurriculars I did the biochemistry research organic chemistry
tutoring everything I could journalism and everything and my goal was to do everything
I could to maximize my chances of success so that if I didn't get the thing that I wanted
to get at that point I wanted to go to med school it's not gonna be because I didn't try
I have on the record that I have tried everything that I could possibly do and I think that
I carried that mentality with me to you know to being an entrepreneur where I said I'm
gonna do everything I'm gonna cover all my bases a podcast conference meet us and check
I'm gonna do all things so that if anything doesn't work it's not gonna be because I didn't
think of it it's not gonna be because I didn't try and that does not work that mentality
does not work in entrepreneurship and it took me a very long time to realize that that does
not work and when I realized that and I literally realized that as I'm talking to my husband
he said to me he said okay so now that you know why you you feel this pull this tendency
to do all the things if you could start over right now start completely fresh start completely
clean you have no obligations no one's gonna be mad at you you know there's no penalty
to starting clean if you could only do one thing just focus on one one of those six projects
you're doing how does that make you feel and it scared the crap out of me I sat there and
I said oh my god that sounds that sounds horrible it sounds horrible and I said to myself why
does that sound so scary and it sounded so scary to me because if I do all the things
and some fails it's not my fault I was busy right like I'm doing I'm doing the best I
can I'm obviously you know in these all these projects if if one thing falls through then
I'm still good I can still say that I tried but if I do one thing and that falls through
that fails I have no excuse and I realized that this whole time I thought that I was
optimizing for the success of the business I was optimizing for you know the community
really I was optimizing for my own ego I was optimizing for the feeling of trying not actually
succeeding and once I had that breakthrough moment it just it put everything else in perspective
everything else fell into place all of a sudden all those ideas that had been nagging at me
it's like oh you should do shit we're so easy to say no I can't because if I pick you I
have decided that I care more about looking like I'm trying than I do actually succeeding
and actually succeeding requires actual failure and once I got to that moment it just oh it
just changed it changed everything and all of a sudden all those decisions that were
so hard were so much easier and that was a really awesome great breakthrough moment for
me to get to but it took me like two years it took me like two years of feeling frustrated
and not knowing why and you know removing the same doing the same terrible decisions
over and over again for me to get to that moment and that's when I said oh if I just
if I had someone to talk to and make you know make this a priority I could have reached
this point sooner and made better decisions earlier and that was the moment where I said
I think this is why you get a career coach so you know obviously that breakthrough I
did on my own took me a while but I did it the career coach for me is a way of expediting
that process it's a way of saying I don't want to wait another year to have you know
to figure out my other deeply rooted issues that stem from things outside of kunubi I
want to get there faster and so I will happily pay you know I pay like two hundred bucks
an hour a session once a month to get those breakthroughs with the idea being that I will
you know make more money and have more success sooner and so like it's already definitely
paid for itself but that's the whole thing with having a career coach it's like a textbook
psychological breakthrough you really understand what your brain is doing oh my god I was so
excited I lived off of like the high of that breakthrough for like the next three weeks
I was oh my god I was thrilled I was like I know what's wrong with me haha it was great
and it's so helpful too because like that change it might seem subtle but it's a huge
difference and it was you're optimizing for a completely different thing oh and I actually
have on my monitor I have a sticky note that says what are you optimizing for and every
time I feel myself being pulled in a direction that and it's so interesting it's like you're
heading your heart are very different like in my head it's like you really shouldn't
do that my heart's like oh it's so fun and so when I when I feel that disconnect I look
at my second and I go okay what is this really about is that your feelings are you you know
are you trying to look like you know what you're doing or are you actually trying to
do something and this is a nice little reminder to to put me in the right direction this whole
story about you having this breakthrough is fascinating I think a lot of people listening
in might also need to have some sort of similar breakthrough yeah what is your advice for
them should they go out and hire a career coach they just do some personal self-reflection
and how can they do either one of those things effectively yeah so number one if you are
a woman if you identify as a woman definitely check out the coaching fellowship because
it's it's very very cheap it's a great program I think they've been around for five or six
years they've helped a ton of people that I personally respect so if money is an issue
definitely check that out I would say you know I think that the career coach for me
worked because I feel like I've done a lot of the groundwork of already being very self-aware
and you know I reflect constantly I reflect I have a schedule time every Sunday Sunday
morning Saturday night where I you know look at what I did and what I want to do better
I do retros you know within my team so like there's I've already done a lot of the the
legwork and so the career coach just gets me to the end you know to the finish line
a little bit faster so that is to say that I think you can do a lot of the work on your
own if getting a career coach is just not financially not an option and so I think that
scheduling time for personal retros writing down like one thing that I'm very bad at is
I'm terrible at acknowledging wins you know as soon as something happens I do a little
dance and I kind of forget about it and so for me one thing I want to work on is acknowledging
the wins figuring out you know are they a wins again for my ego or are they actually
a win for the business two very different things so I think that if you build in time
for reflections for writing debt journaling is a great way to do it for writing down your
goals for figuring out if you're if the goals that you say are your goals do your actions
align with them because that's like you know that that's usually the the place where you
can see it the most if they're not aligned then why are they not aligned I think hypotheticals
are really helpful so my husband saying you know how would it feel if you could do this
other thing and with my career coach she does a lot of that kind of stuff with me too and
that's really helpful so yeah I think there's a lot of just introspection reflection retros
you can do to get a lot of that value all right well thanks so much for the words of
advice hopefully people will take those to heart can you tell us more about where we
could find you online where we can learn more about what you're up to and code newbie yeah
for sure you can follow me on Twitter it's just my first name last name Saran yet bark
S-A-R-O-N-Y-T-B-A-R-E-K you can also follow code newbies it's code newbies with an S on
Twitter cuz going to be mistaken and you can also check out our our conference which is
called code land happening May 4 and 5 in New York City I think we still have a few
tickets available and that's at codeland conf.com it's a two-day conference focusing on newer
developers and exploring the wonderful world of code all right thanks so much for coming
out on the show Saran thank you so much for having me if you enjoyed listening to this
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how they grew their products from nothing as always thanks so much for listening and
I'll see you next time.