CoRecursive: Coding Stories - Behind the Mic: Adam Gordon Bell on Communication with Software Misadventures Podcast

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Today the tables have turned and you're going to hear someone interview me.  Ronak and Guang from the Software Misadventures podcast are going to interview me  about podcasting. My history as a software developer and I guess this big idea. That I don't think I've shared too much about the importance of communication. More details including a video version of the interview here: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/adam-gordon-bell-story-telling

Hello, this is Code Recursive, and I'm Adam Gordon-Bell. Today the tables have turned, and you're going to hear someone interview me. Ronak and Guang from the Software Misadventures podcast are going to interview me about my history as a software developer, and I guess this big idea that I don't think I've shared too much about the importance of communication. I don't know why I shared too much about the importance of communication. I don't know why I wanted to be best engineer, but like there's all these people that I looked up to in that time, like Joel Polsky. Like I want to be that great. But like, if you think about it, the reason we know about them is because actually they're communicators, right? They're explaining

problems to us. Like I thought this guy has a blog because he's the most amazing engineer. But no, he, I know about the things that he's done because he talks about, right? Like all these people I looked up to, what they're actually good at was communicating, right? The person who wrote the book that I wanted to ask questions

about how to do functional programming, like it's not clear they were the best functional programmer in the world. Hopefully they were decent at it. But no, they had written a book, right? They had spent a lot of time communicating. So I think that actually I maybe realized that my goal was misplaced, that there was a larger goal or something. Yeah, I wasn't seeing that all these people who communicate are

the people that I look up to, right? And it can be super impactful if you can take something and explain it in a way that lets it crystallize in people's minds. And I don't know that I'm the best at it, but it feels very valuable and important. So that's going to be this month's episode straight from the feed of the Software Misadventures podcast. I myself have been caught up in job hunting, as I mentioned last time, going through the various interview stages. Take-home assignments have been a lot of fun.

Coding interviews, I used to be good at those, super not good at them right now. So that's an issue. But yeah, I've had a couple job places that I thought were really promising that didn't work out and a couple more, you know, that I'm still working through that I am excited about. So hopefully new developer relations engineer type role coming soon. But until then, right, as I'm busy practicing leet code problems and trying to do well at job interviews and find something that works for me, well, I'm getting that all together. I thought you might all enjoy hearing more about the backstory of me and of the podcast, because I think that Ronak Ngong did a great job of pulling a story out of

me about my journey, right? From being a backend software developer to doing this podcast and then learning really about the power of communication and believing in that so much that I shifted my career to go into developer relations where I kind of do this as a job and it's a weird job but super powerful one and hopefully this interview will help others understand that. Welcome to the Software Misadventures podcast. We are your hosts, Ronak and Gwan. As engineers, we are interested in not just the technologies but the people and the stories behind them. So on this show, we try to scratch our own edge by sitting down with engineers, we are interested in not just the technologies, but the people and the stories behind them. So on this show, we try to scratch our own edge by sitting down with engineers, founders, and investors to chat about their path, lessons they have learned, and of course, the misadventures along the way.

Awesome to have you here, Adam. You're the host of our Co-Recursive podcast. Before our conversation, you were telling us a little bit about your background. I love sort of the arc that you gave, the focus being the value of communication and then how you were able to get there via the different steps in your career. So I thought maybe like interesting place to start is going back to when you were first getting started as an engineer, like was there different points where you specifically recognize it's like, oh, wow, communication is something that's quite powerful, but that's very under leveraged by like your peers. So I used to work at this place

here in Peterborough called Opera Tell, made a lot of friends there. And I think like, I just really wanted to be really good coder, I guess, you know, and they had like a large complicated code base. People were always adding, it was like enterprise software. People are adding features as fast as they could. And like, nobody can keep track of any of it. And like, I just wanted to get really good at that, right? Like, oh, you want to be the guy that they go to when something's on fire because you know all the stuff, right? And there was people who knew all the stuff and I'm like, I want to be one of those people. So that was very important to me. I don't think

I thought communication was important. I just wanted to have this great skill set, right? And develop it. Yeah. And then I ended up transitioning from there to working someplace remote. So it was actually a weird thing where my boss had left and I liked him and he was interviewing for this other role, but it was in another city. And he's like, yeah, you could do it remote, like from home. And I was like less on point with me being remote than he was, but I didn't end up taking it, even though it was like iffy, whether I would have to move Kitchener, uh, for instance, but, um, I liked working from home, but I missed some of the stuff from Opertel, you know? And like, it wasn't, you said communication, that's like a big word. It makes me think of like writing up documentation for something. Right. But like what think of like writing up documentation for something, right? But like what I missed was like being in the cafeteria, like we had this cafeteria and you know, you're like having lunch or waiting for the free microwave or whatever.

And you know, somebody's telling some story about the something server was down last night and like, and I got called in and then somebody's like, oh, did you, did you check? Was it the, you know, was the disc full? And they're like, oh, I thought it was the disc full, but it wasn't the disc full. And they're like, oh, was it the whatever? This was a Windows server. So it was like, was IIS like leaking memory or something? And anyways, people like go back and forth through it and it's like a fun game and you're like trying to figure out. And the guy's like, no, no, it turned out it wasn't it at all. Like somebody had pointed something to the wrong server and blah blah blah there was always these stories probably because people were moving too fast and things were always blowing up but like

a lot of the the knowledge about how to solve problems about how things worked there right it was actually transferred just in people like, you know, like shooting the breeze in this cafeteria setting. And like, I didn't get that right once I started working remote. So that was my first inkling. I think that like, oh, this is something important, right? Nobody says like, oh, you know, we would like to give you a raise because people have learned a lot from those crazy stories you tell at launch. But like, it turns out that that's very important. And it's like a thing where people get a lot, like people talk about mentoring, like a lot of it is right there in these like casual venues. So that was my first inkling that like, this is something

important. Interesting. And fast forward a little bit. So you mentioned that you then got into management and then later on DevRel, like how did that sort of experience like evolve into something where you're like okay there's a strategic point to it rather than just something that's very um makes the job more fulfilling there's like 30 steps but like i guess that's the problem but like yeah so i started working remotely i worked on this team really smart people some of the smartest people I worked with before. And we weren't always actually accomplishing as much as I thought we should. It's like, you know, sometimes you wish you're like, man, wouldn't it be great if the whole team was rock stars? Like you imagine there's these 10X

developers out there and they'd be so amazing. or maybe you just imagine like you didn't have that guy who you keep having to walk him through things that was me that was me that's why i raised that guy sometimes but like the team was very skilled but we weren't getting as much done as i thought through like it just didn't seem to be working and so that was my entry point to becoming an engineering manager because i thought like the problem here isn't technical skills. Like all of the people on this team are super talented. So something else is the problem, right? So that transitioned me to being an engineering manager. And then eight more steps, and then I end up in developer relations. So I wanted to fast forward a little bit and talk a little bit more about podcasting.

So before I think you started Codecursive, you were a podcast host at SE Radio, software engineering radio for folks who might not know. I think IEEE actually managed this podcast. But can you share a little more about how you got into podcasting in the first place? There was this podcast called Software Engineering Daily. And Jeff, who was the host, he made an episode for a long time every weekday. And that was a lot. So anyways, I was listening to one of his episodes and he said, I need some people to

help me do this. Right. So I reached out to him and he he said yeah like just find somebody and interview them and like send me the wave file or whatever like there's very little tutelage involved so no waiting almost so that was my entry point and then like he after a while i think he took on a couple of people like this and he was like this is unwieldy i'm gonna stop doing it but then he recommended me to the software engineering radio and they, yeah, they're based on the IEEE. He had started there. They had more structure

and that's how I got into it. But I mean, the motivation was like, I was still in that world where I was like, I just want to be the best programmer. Like I want to know everything and be able to tackle all these problems. And I was at this point, like I was a Scala developer and I was getting deep into like functional programming and there's like a million things to learn. And it's like, it's just, it seems like vast. Right. And so it was like an opportunity for me to just like talk to these experts and ask them questions. Right. It was like, I have a question about this thing. This guy wrote this book. Like I can just talk to him and ask him questions. Yeah. Nice. So like at some point you decided to start Code Recursive. What made you

make that jump? Because SE Radio was kind of doing a lot of the hard work that goes into podcasting and has a good name behind it. Then why start it? Yeah. So I was doing these episodes for Jeff, so the Software Engineering Daily, and I was reaching out to people to interview them. And I didn't really run it by by him I just started booking more interviews and some of them I booked far out and then one time I sent him a thing like an episode I recorded and he's like okay well we stopped doing that like right and I still had more interviews booked uh it was like I guess I'm starting my own podcast like I already have interviews oh wow and I remember the first interview that I did where I was like, okay, so I said I was interviewing for this podcast. Like actually you're being interviewed for as yet unnamed

podcast that I just made up. Yeah. People didn't seem to care. And I remember talking to Jeff when I told him I was doing this, I was like, okay, well, like I booked these couple of first episodes of my podcast saying it was yours because I mean, accidentally, like how do I book for other people? And he was like, people like to talk about themselves. I wouldn't worry about it. Like, he's just like, just email people. Right.

I'm sure you guys have noticed, like it's actually not that hard. I'd be surprised by just how kind I guess like fancy or like famous people are about their time because I think that's the thing I worry about the most right it's like they have this busy schedule you know all these things talking to some random dudes from the internet seems to be low on the priority list but I think yeah if you're pretty clear about the messaging to show that you've done your homework that That definitely helps. I'm curious, like in those first days, what were, for us, I think it was the writing the emails. I think that was the most painful to actually do.

So it's kind of funny to hear that for you. It's like you already probably have a process at that point, right? If you already booked, you know, quite a few. What was the hardest part about the early days of starting the podcast? That's a good question. Definitely reaching out to people feels fraught, right? Like you feel like you're putting yourself out there. And I was looking at your episodes, like I know that there's people in that list that I have reached out to in the early days who said no, right?

And maybe they would say yes now, but I'm never going to reach back out to them. It's like you feel rejected. Rejection, I'm sensitive to. Probably somebody's just like, no, I'm busy. I can't do this. But my perception is like, oh yeah, they look deep into my soul and said that I'm not worthy. Right. It's like that's so real and it's super funny because uh ronick and i actually we had a instance where is someone that we reached out to like maybe two years ago and then they said

no now it's not the good time but then they actually came on the show because i didn't realize he wrote the email like two years ago. So then I was just like, oh, this person seems pretty cool. Like, let me just write the email. So that was a pretty funny moment. I remember as charity majors, I was trying to figure out reaching out to people. And so I read some articles about it by some marketers or whatever. I don't know.

Like, don't look for advice on like how to cold outreach to people. Like, it's really scary. Yeah yeah. Oh no, it's terrible. Like do almost nothing that people say on the internet. Somebody recommended like, oh, there's these things and they'll like, basically like set up a chain of emails where you reach out to them and then you follow up and then you follow up. Right. And so I found some tool. It's like, so I wrote the email to charity and then like three days later, it would send a follow-up shed and respond. And there's like three of those. And so I emailed her, like I set up the thing and I sent it to her and she emailed me like

back like 60 seconds later. And she's like, yeah, sure. But like, what's going on with all these emails? And they had all sent at once. So I'd sent. I really want you on the podcast. Would you like to be on the podcast? And then like, oh, you haven't come back to me.

No, you still haven't come back to me. Yeah. That's how fast I iterate. On the order of seconds. Within 60 seconds. So maybe that's the method. So one question on the follow-up. This is something that I struggledate. She said yes, within 60 seconds. So maybe that's the method. So one question on the follow-up. This is something that I struggle with a lot

when it comes to writing an email to reach out to a guest. One part is you want to do some research to write a thoughtful email instead of a random cold email, which I think is okay. Like there's a way to do that. But then in the follow-up, at least I feel a lot of friction in doing that follow-up and i have guang here pinging me almost every three days

did you follow up yet and i don't have one of the tools that you mentioned and when i say there is friction for me that friction comes from not knowing exactly the language to use to follow up there are certain templates that i use but then for whatever reason I get bored and I don't like them anymore. And then I'll go to chat GPT and waste 15 minutes just to craft like one line followup. I'm curious, is there a language that you figured out that you used in followup emails that just makes it much easier to do that? No, I guess the answer is no.

Like it's funny cause, cause in Guangyu had to follow up with me for this just because I don't know. There's a lot of emails and I forgot. I was like, I'm going to respond to that and then I didn't. Yeah. I did like a little retrospective on just like the power of following up. I think I really

learned it when I was doing the third Insight Bootcamp to try to do a VC funded company. One of the advisors, so Yuri, who used to work at YC, he was like, yeah, you got to set it up, you know, six follow-ups. I was like, six? Like, are you kidding me? Like, I would like, I would definitely report spam. Like, so then I think we kind of settled, like, like who on earth? Anyways, but then that was also kind of drilled into my head.

But then he was until much later when like i think i saw jake doing this so he's the founder of of insight and then he just wrote like very casually say kind of like hey just quick reaping you know uh in case that email got buried and then he says but if not it's not the best time. Like, no worries. Like that line to me was like magic because he just like absolved me from all the, cause I felt so bad for like, I feel like I'm not begging for like, oh, can you please like, you know, do this thing? Can you please like take a look? And then that really changed the equation to more like, Hey, I'm trying to find like

a match, right. To see if there's like value that we can provide. And if that's something that you're interested. So it's kind of like, okay, it's more like equal instead of like, I'm trying to, you know, get stuff from you. So yeah, it's not, I'm not much less scared about doing. Yeah. I have this thing.

Okay. One second. Follow up then.com. All it is. Yeah. All it is is like a whole bunch of email accounts that you add to your contact list and so when i message somebody i'll just i'll just write them a message and then i'll bcc like two weeks at followupthen.com and it just emails me the email back two weeks later

so it's like that's my system now i don't have any so you don't you keep track of it that way you can do the follow-up or if you can check to see if you still want to follow up. It just puts it back to the top of my email box. And then I'm like, okay. Yeah.

Like, and I agree, like saying like, yeah, no worries if it's not a fit or whatever makes it feel, I don't know, less on the line, I guess. Right. Like, yeah.

Oh, so I was reviewing Corey Kershaw's profile on Apple podcasts. And there are a bunch of good reviews about your storytelling, where people like every story feels very unique. It's very engaging and things like that, which is pretty amazing. So I'm curious, like, how did you figure out what sort of storytelling mechanism you want to use in the podcast? And how do you now go about structuring the episode? This is mostly me trying to learn. So software engineering radio is very technical and like dry, I would say. And they have like a very strong format. It's like, let's interview somebody about the CAP theorem, right? And then it's like, you have to have like an outline prepared and you have to show that this person's an expert. And then you can go through like, Oh, what are the trade-offs of this versus that? And it's very dry. You can learn a lot, I guess. But as I, like, as I was doing it and then kind of repeating it on my own, talking to people for a co-recursive, like I found like the parts that spoke to me were not

that right. Like the parts that stood out to me talking to people was when people shared things, right? We go back to what I was saying at the cafeteria at Obertel and, you know, they're explaining like, oh, the server was down and how do we look into it? And like that stuff was so much more compelling to me.

And I just wanted to do more of that. The last interview I did for Software Engine Radio was Stephen Wolfram. I was talking to him about his, you know, his programming language and all the things he's built. But then I forget what we started talking about. Like if he could estimate, you know, something to do with like how much he weighed based on his calories or something. And he's like, you know, coding and his language and trying to figure out how much he weighs. And it was just like us having fun, like using his Wolfram Mathematica and stuff.

And, and I was like, this is better, right? It's like just an experience rather than him explaining the trade-offs of various things. They, they cut it from the episode.

Like they got rid of it all. Yeah. Oh, wow. And he was, I forget what we were coming up with, but it was like, I was throwing problems at him and he was going forget what we were coming up with but it was like i was throwing problems at him and he was gonna calculate them and i was like oh i'm in peterbro

and he's like peterbro uk i'm like no peterbro canada and he's like mathematica is like his baby and it's like he was like the tom cruise in minority report like he was like pulling the data from various places and i was like this is awesome but yeah they didn't they didn't feel that was like educational but the point is i was like this is the good stuff right just like lean into the actual experiences that people have yeah so that i don't know i don't have a quick answer for like how you do that but like pay attention to what you find interesting right and like double down on that i think is the key that was that must have been super interesting, weird experience, right? Being like, oh, I think I got this really golden nuggets, but having that cut out, like,

did you, how do you work with the editor? Like in that process, like, do they kind of come up with like, Hey, you know, the outline that you mentioned, it's like, we need to hit these things. And then do you get much say in terms of like, so I had the software engineering radio, the Robert who runs it, he has a very in-depth process. It's like the manual that he made for it is online. And actually like,

I don't think he's wrong about, about cutting it because the way that that podcast worked was always like about the technical details, right? It wasn't like, Oh, let's have some fun with Stephen Wolfram, right? It was like, tell me about Mathematica and like, what's the history of it? And what, you know, how would you parse it?

And whatever the details are. But so their process was you'd come up with an outline in a Google Doc. The editors and the other hosts would review it, offer feedback, and then you record the episode. And then you can provide a list of edits if you're like oh you know we need to cut out this one part you would just give like time stamps um and then they kind of took it from there and usually they just went with whatever you had but my interview with steven was long because we were just like messing around and so i guess he wanted to cut some stuff out and he's like yeah let's get's get rid of this. Like playing around. Like what's the fun of that?

A lot of those lines. So Ron, I mentioned this as well. And you know, you, so you started out co-recursive back in 2018, being pretty technical, like you said, coming off like software engineering daily and now it's, you know, it's a very like storytelling driven, right? I think you mentioned that the raw interviews can be like up to two hours versus like the final product, right? Could it's like only maybe like 40, 50 minutes. So there's a ton of like editing, you know, you're thinking about the story.

So it's super different now in that, like, were there any like pivotal moments in that journey in this like evolution of the podcast that you like that comes to mind? So, yes, but many. So the other day I get all these emails from people who like want their CEO of almost always Bitcoin startups. But like varying things to like be a guest on the podcast, right? Somebody reached out, wasn't like a blockchain thing, but they're like, oh, you should talk to this, to our CEO, whatever.

It was like sort of interesting. You know, they're like, oh, Ron can talk about our new release and we have a new feature flag on the settings page. I was trying to explain to them like, no, that's not what I need. Like, does he have an interesting story? And they're like, oh, he's got tons of stories, right? And so we had some back and forths,

but there was like a gem of stuff where I was interested. And so we got on a Zoom call to talk it out, right? And I was telling this person, this is what I learned. And I tried to give it to them, right? So this is a story. I am here in Peterborough. A couple months ago. I'm driving to see my wife at her work and I'm almost at her work and I'm at a stoplight and there's like

several cars in front of me and I have to pick her up. Then, you know, the light turns green, the car in front of me goes, and then like this guy runs out in front of my car and he's on crutches right and he doesn't look well but not in like the injured way but in the like I've been living a rough life type of way and he's like screaming right just like screaming not at me but like off in some other direction and then I see what he's screaming about and there's another guy in a wheelchair that he's screaming at and they're screaming back and forth. And the guy in the wheelchair,

like, first of all, I just want to go, like, I want to drive. I can see my wife's work. Cause it's like on the corner, but like this guy's standing in front of me,

like having the screen match. And in a way I don't want to catch his attention. Right. But like, I also want to get by him. And then the guy in the wheelchair is like wheeling. Right. And he like builds up speed and he actually smashes into the guy on the crutches knocks him down the crutches are on

the ground like i'm still there like i still i'm like i'm gonna be late to pick up courtney my wife i'm probably not that late but like i don't want to anger her like i borrowed her car and blah blah blah and then the the guy with the crutches like gets up and I'm like, oh good. He's going to get out of the way, but he takes his crutch like a baseball bat and he goes to the guy in the wheelchair and like smashes him. And they're just fighting like in the middle of the street. Right. And, um, so I say to this lady, like, that is a story, right? Like I, I'm the protagonist and I'm trying to get to my wife's work. Right. That's my objective.

And then there's obstacles. Like the obstacle, these guys, like a guy in a wheelchair and a guy, they ended up being fine. Like they both, like the, I don't think the wheelchair guy was a paraplegic because he kind of jumped like, and they were wrestling. So like he obviously could use his feet but yeah but i was like the new settings thing on on the feature whatever it's not a story right i need like the what what did ron do like what were the things that happened yeah so this this is what i think about right it's like you need a story and like a story is a very simple thing it's that right you have a story. And like a story is a very simple thing. It's that, right? You have a protagonist, he has an objective, and then there's obstacles. And that's like,

that's like 90% of the thing, right? It's just like, you find somebody who has those ingredients. Sometimes you don't know, right? You just start talking to them. And then they're like, they tell the story. But that's what I focus in on. Halfway through the story, I was like, where is Adam going with this? And then I realized, I realized, oh, this is an analogy that he's trying to draw for the, uh, for the code email and then realize, oh, wow, that's actually very spot on and, uh, well played sir, well played. How do you go about, uh, finding the right guests who have a

good story to tell by the way? Like that's hard because you don't know a lot of people and you don't know their stories. Agreed. Yeah. That's the hardest thing, right? Sometimes I'll see something and I'll be like, okay, I've got to talk to this person. Sometimes I will just talk to somebody and like, basically I'll do a pre-interview. I'll just chat with them and see, you know, what's going on, you know, tell me something

interesting that happened to you, kind of explore it. But yeah, I mean, I think that's difficult. And the story doesn't have to be like, I did this episode with my friend Don and he had worked with me at this, this place, Albertall, I was describing with the cafeteria and the stories and whatever. And like the story was just about how, like he started at this place as soon as he finished university. And, you know, he just felt like they never valued him. Like he stayed there for a long time. Like he never worked anywhere else. He never got the context for like, oh, maybe this isn't a great place to work. And like, I guess his story was like, you should value yourself because I went through this thing. Like I was working so hard for this place. And then I

found out like I wasn't being paid well and there weren't good working conditions and whatever. So, I mean, there doesn't have to be a guy with a wheelchair and a guy with a crutch. It's more like it's through the eyes of the person you're talking to, right? I guess is a way to think about it. You mentioned pre-interviews. Like is this, do you do that commonly? And if so, then what does your pitch look like to the person you're reaching out to? Yeah, I just email them and say, hey, I think you could be an interesting guest for my podcast.

Do you want to have a chat about it? And then I send them like the Calendly link. And I think sometimes that it can be valuable for them too, because they get to ask me questions. I think they just get to meet me, right? So it's not like a blind date. It's like, oh, we've chatted before. Yeah. Yeah. Do many people take you up on that, or is it only a handful?

I always talk to everybody first before I interview them. Yeah. I didn't always, but yeah, it's super helpful. I took some classes from the Independent Association of Radio Journal radio journalists I think it was called anyways NPR type folk and they were super valuable but like one thing that proper journalists do is audition people like they'll audition people all the time and like you know something

happens like okay the uh big um security thing that just happened what was the company again CrowdStrike right so you're you're writing an article about crowd striking like you need a quote from like an expert or whatever right like a lot of times journalists will will talk to like seven experts right like whoever they can get a hold of quickly and they're just looking for whoever's the interesting person and like that will be the quote that they use. Right. So basically they're auditioning people. Yeah. Like who's going to say something that's, you know, poignant and

gets my point across. So yeah, a, it's for radio. They would call that like a pre-interview if it's like a TV show. Right. Like often they have producers who this is all they do is like, try to reach out and find like, okay, we need somebody to fill in this little segment, right? Like, who do we got? And like, are they interesting?

What are some traits you look out for during those interviews to like see if they're, what would you call them? You wouldn't really crazy. You wouldn't believe it story. Yeah. So I think there's just two criteria. One is that they have, yeah, some sort of story where they have, they had an objective and like, they're, they're willing to share that. So that's like,

has a story. And the other one is like, is a talker to, to use just, that's my generic term for somebody who's just like interesting to hear talk. What questions do you ask to get these responses from them? Like, do you have a story? Is that the question? I'm assuming something else. So the talker thing, I think you'll know. Let's look. I have a checklist here.

Please stand by. Thanks. I'm a big fan of checklists. Yes. So when was a time when you thought things were really bad? Usually there's like something else attached to that, right? Like when in your experience at LinkedIn, were you like, oh, we're screwed now, you know?

And we'll say like, oh, you know? Yeah. And like, what was the scariest thing, et cetera, attach that to something, right? So it's like, yeah, tell me about your time about LinkedIn. Like, what was the scariest thing that happened when you were there? You know, what was the time where, you know, you really, those are the only two questions I have in front of me.

But yeah, it's usually like. And how long do you schedule these chats for? Like 20 minutes. And after the chat have you have you said no to any guests yeah i'm not good at saying no though i would imagine that to be a hard part because you're reaching you're inviting someone to say hey you could be a good fit let's chat more but then you may not like the stories or maybe they don't have as many as you might think yeah what have you said if you have said no i would love to know how did you go about it?

Yeah. I think I've just said to people, like, I'm not sure if it's like quite a fit or, but yeah, I don't like to do that. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing that I think the journalists are good at that I'm not, right? It's like, they're like, oh, I'm going to talk to six people and only use one of them where I feel like I'm using people's time. So like there should be some end result.

Yeah. one of them where I feel like I'm using people's time. So like there should be some end result. Yeah. In this case, like when you have this pre-chat with them and you invite them back on the podcast, what does your prep typically look like? And do they know that this is the story that you'll focus on? Yeah. I try to let them know, you know, what's interesting to me. And then sometimes though, during the interview, the directions change just because something more interesting comes up. I interviewed before this guy who he created a Google AdWords, I think, or AdSense. We were going to talk about that. So I did the pre-interview, we chatted, it sounded pretty interesting. He was like a very early Google employee. But then when we were talking, I was like, well, you know, let's go back further. And like he had worked at the JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And he had like been this person who had pushed for them to use Lisp. And I had gotten Lisp like on this spacecraft and then like had a problem with it and got like, had to get a REPL going into this like thing that was like a hundred thousand miles away in space, like through satellites. And he's like, I don't know how Lisp REPL works, but you know, he's printing out, I assume a thousand open braces from space. So I was like, I just changed what we talked about right like we didn't i mean we still talked about the adsense thing but i guess that's the benefit of being able to talk to somebody for two hours and then cut down to an hour right like once i had that i was like okay

maybe this is the story that's really cool so in other words you talk to somebody you look you know what's an interesting experience but But then when they tell, like, then you just pay attention to what's interesting and keep leaning in on it, right? Maybe once you edit it, it changes as well, right? You're like, oh, the focus should really be X. Do you edit the podcast yourself or do you outsource that?

Yeah, I edit it. It's a pain. I think it's super cool that you take so much effort into the editing process. And not because for us, it's more of a chore but for you right it's like a creative process right like that's where you have all the lego pieces and

then you're putting together something you're creating something i'm curious like what's your favorite part of the process of making a podcast episode because for for us i feel like there's less choices versus for you i feel like there's a lot more like you're doing a lot more interesting stuff the problem is like i kept on putting more work into like polishing the episode and so sometimes i feel like it takes me so much time that i'm like oh like what am i doing but yeah like at some point somebody told me like oh you should have music and then so i did put music in like just at the beginning and then at the end like i think this person wanted me to like like score it like Hans Zimmerman or something I was like yeah I don't

even know how that worked but um it turns out like like putting the music in is super fun so that was like just a fun part I enjoy right I once again I took a little class from some sort of like NPR folk and so instead of just having like oh we're gonna play our theme song right they would you know try to have like a song you know like where the kind of like beat drops at the right time to like cut you into the story and that like putting that in it's kind of a pain because I'm like oh I still gotta do that but it's super fun but you mentioned a class before as well. Can you talk more about that class you took?

Yeah, I took this class from Christina Shockley and I took two classes from her. I forget what they were called, but she works for NPR. Does one of their morning programs, I think, but just like the Michiganigan version of it i believe anyway she's super talented took this class it was all like journalists and radio people in it except for me which like totally freaked me out uh like there's a guy from the economist and i was

like what am i doing here like i just interview people about like whatever oh wait how did you how did you get it or like it's uh so there's this thing called air like an association for independent radio journalists so you just you just pay to join like and then they have classes and then i paid for the class one of the things she had us do in the class was every so i think we had a class every sunday for several hours and we did like various things but she also had us make like a there was an assignment every week and it was like making a two to five minute like audio which you know like if you're listening to the radio sometimes they'll like cut into like oh here's a whatever small story about a man in newfoundland who's reunited

with his dog or whatever it It's like a little thing, but she had the, she had us make them like about ourselves and like reflecting on ourselves. Right. So it was like a audio piece, like it's almost like an audio essay, I guess about yourself, but like making it very small and condensed. And then she was giving feedback on it. And yeah, so I don't know know i forget how long the class went but it was like making these every week and it was pretty fun it's like writing like a you know a reflective little essay but instead of for your blog it's like you're you're speaking so i learned a lot from that process that like you can make something interesting

in audio by just like reflecting on something that's going on in your life. I'm very curious about like the conviction aspect of like getting enough like conviction that like, hey, this is something I want to really get good at, right? Like I want to invest in learning all these new skills, right? Skills that are core to like producing like this great piece. But before that, I'm curious about like, were there any engineering practices that you thought that were pretty helpful in kind of systematizing this? Yeah, I have checklists for the process of going through an EPM. So we've kind of built them up over time.

And then I tried to write down things that don't go well. And I keep a list of that. And so it's just like some process was a pain or I forgot to do this thing. And then I try to go back and try to knock some of the, so that's like my, I guess like refinement step, right? And so if I write them down a couple of times on this list, like, oh, this didn't go well, this didn't go well,

then I can go back. Because oftentimes it's like, okay, yeah, it was a pain to do this, but like, I got to get the episode out. Like, I don't care that it's a pain. I need to do it. But then afterwards I'll have it on the list. Like, oh yeah, that's stupid. What's an example of that? I was hoping. What's an example? Let me look. I was hoping there was going to be some mention of Fibonacci numbers and story points. Yeah. So like I was getting transcripts done of the podcast, but then I switched to using, I guess, the OpenAI transcribing thing.

Whisper? Yeah. But it's like, like I ran into all kinds of problems with it. And so I had to feed it a glossary and then had to tweak things on it. So like one time, like I have written down here, I wrote this thing like glossary generator. Right. And so it takes the, the whisper transcription feeds it to like chat GPT-4. And there's probably some mistakes in it. Like, can you make a list of the words that it got wrong? Right.

And then I feed that back again. So that was like just something i added because i was like okay this is wrong and then i'm like okay now i have this list and i'm feeding it back and then it gets it yeah nice oh you mentioned you learned a lot from that class what are some of the pieces you learned that would involve telling a good story the thing i learned from christina there's a lot in your in your voice like a lot of emotion and power and if i am telling a story to my wife or something even just like i was i was reading this book and it had this crazy story in it was like a non-fiction book and i'm like animated and telling her all this right but then i would you know want to introduce the story for my podcast and i would be talking

just into the void i'm like recording the intro and there's nobody there and i just don't sound like a person i just sound so bored right Right. Like, I don't sound excited. Um, and so like, that's hard. Like, I still struggle with that, but like,

that was the thing where she was like, yeah, this isn't good. Like, you know, there's all these radio people in the class. And then I remember because she had me, like, I was in this room and we were all in this big zoom meeting,

uh, whatever. I have to like practice reading so I'm like reading the intro and uh she's like okay try again but she's like leave like get out of the room and then I want you to like run in as fast as you can and then like stop and give your intro right and then I did that and she's like see that's getting better and it was like she was like she made me just like physically move a lot um but the idea was like to try to get some of that humanness of like how I would normally talk. It's like for whatever reason, like a switch would flip in my head and I'd be like, time to read the introduction to my podcast, you know?

Oh, nice. How did you come across this class by the way like i i think i found a link to this uh the it's like association association of independent audio producers yeah yeah um yeah they have class so training yeah yeah so i joined them and then they send out emails and they're like hey here's a class and i was like i should sign up for this and then i was very nervous about it because i don't feel like i should be part of the independent association of audio producers but yeah it was fine oh nice so you mentioned you took another class with npr as well which was more about like where can you add certain sound bites not sound bites soundbites, but rather, what's the right word?

Audio pieces to emphasize what the person is saying. What was that about? It was about that. Like where to add. What did you learn as part of that class? Yeah. Like, so if you were to listen, I guess like Serial was was a really big breakthrough podcast back in the day. And it was scored. It had music.

And the music kind of gave it momentum and kept it moving and made it interesting. And that was created by the people who made This American Life. And if you listen to This American Life, right, it's like a bunch of 15-minute versions of that. And they use music. Sometimes it's too much and I don't like it, but sometimes it really adds a lot to the episode. And so, yeah, I took a class where they talked about how that's done.

You know, there's podcasts that are like full dramas with like people acting out a fiction with sound effects. But I just learned the very basics. And yeah, I found it very powerful. And the thing that I learned was like I, if I took like a, so I paid for a non, like a royalty free music service. And I found like if I found like a rock song and i drop out all the instruments except just the bait um and then i can use kind of like a gritty sound bass uh and then when you you know just like a repetitive bass chord when i'm introducing things and then i drop out like that when you cut the bass and then the story starts and people are like you know it gives them an audio cue that like, oh, something's changed here, right?

That was Adam talking, but now like, boom, now we're in the... Pretty cool, pretty cool. Guang, you gotta add more music. No, I was gonna say, you should be taking notes, not I. How did you get this conviction to, you know, put in all this investment in terms of like

learning new skills? I imagine, yeah, it must have been pretty you know daunting to be in that room with the people from the economy yeah so i read this book called ultra learning and it's by scott young i believe super good book ultra learning master hard skills outsmart the competition accelerate your career career. It's quite a subtitle. So Scott Young was this guy who he finished business school and decided, why didn't I go into computer science? Like I like computers, right? I like programming.

And so he embarked, you know, this was, I don't know, 20 years ago, but it was right when the MIT like open courseware came out. So he embarked on this project like i'm gonna do the whole mit undergrad uh but i'm gonna hit it like full time as a job and i should be able to do the courses um i'd like do a triple course load and pass through all these classes um and he he did do that i, you don't get a degree for just doing all the online MIT things, but he had somebody grade him, like he got tests and whatever. And then he, I don't know, he did this a bunch of times.

Anyways, he wrote a book about this. He called it like ultra learning. And I read it around the time that I transitioned to the storytelling stuff. And, uh, I guess the, the point of the book was like, Hey, if you like really hit something hard, um, in a short period of time, you can make a lot of progress, right? Other examples in the book included like people who, you know, develop a level of language proficiency really quickly. Um, and how they, they just invest a lot of effort and surpass somebody who spends 10 years on Duolingo,

you know, they get there in three months, but just by like hammering it. So I think that that's true, right? So what do you want to throw yourself at, right? So I chose to throw myself with the podcast. There's people now, you know, I mean, you mentioned data science, right? It's like, sometimes if you encounter something new and you're excited about it, you can just really invest a lot of time and and level up pretty quickly nice taking a step back right like you're doing this all like while having a full-time job how did you balance this like did you treat this as just like kind of like a hobby that you like do on the side or yeah i mean so it started off when i wasn't putting much into it then it wasn't too hard. Like before I really started focusing on, oh, let's make the best episode I can, then it wasn't that challenging because it didn't take

up that much time. At some point, I started waking up at five o'clock. And so I would work for two hours, like from 5.15 to like 7.15. Then I would get ready for my day and then I would work. I would just do two hours of podcast work before I worked each day. And like, sometimes I wasn't super, it probably wasn't my best hours for working, but cumulatively, there's actually a lot of hours there. So that worked very well.

So it was just like putting in the time. I stopped, I moved the time from five to six because like eventually I did it. Like, I think after like two years of that, like I was just like, that's like kind of sleep deprived or I don't know. Like it ended up, I ended up switching it. Cause my wife was just like, why are you an asshole all the time? She didn't actually say that, but it was like, I felt like I was wearing a little bit of my social niceties. But yeah, so that was a big way. I just spent two hours on it each morning. That's a big commitment, to be honest. Yeah. I mean, I struggle with this all the time is there um clear i mean you know you've already talked about sort of the goal is to kind of keep on improving it and then produce the best

podcast that you can how do you go about like goal setting i guess i don't know yeah you know i've been thinking about this thing like like goal drift start with a specific goal you know doing the podcast because I want to learn about more technical stuff, or I want to ask person question who I read their book, and then like, you know, get some attention, then you're excited about it. And then it's like, well, maybe I'm going to be Joe Rogan with hair, like, I don't know, like that, maybe that's my next stop, right? And then, you know, then I get into the storytelling thing. Nice, nice. What, I guess, what's your, like, current goal, then I get into the storytelling thing. Nice, nice.

What, I guess, what's your like current goal, if you have one? So my current goal, it kind of relates to something you were asking, which is, yeah, if somebody has this big, crazy story, like that guy who did Lisp in space, like that's amazing, right? But like, what about like people's everyday lives um like how can that be interesting and how can people learn from that because i think like well first of all there's a limit of people deploying lisp into space but like also there's so much to learn from you know just like everyday stuff that happens to people but how do you you, you know, make that entertaining? So I think that's

like a big challenge for me, right? It's like, you can write the science fiction book where like the world is on the line and if you don't save things, the earth is going to explode, right? But like, can you write the story where it's like very compelling, but it's about like something much smaller, right? Like somebody raising their kid or whatever. That's a metaphor. I'm not working on any of those things, but like I was talking to somebody recently about something I was working on at work and how I was given this ticket to work on this area I wasn't familiar with. And like, I thought I knew how to solve it and I was working on solving it. Um, in turn it was wrong. I didn't understand what I was doing, but it was like three days later when I figured out I didn't like, I was doing it wrong. Right. And like,

I was new to this. So there's expectation, like I could get feedback and help, but also it had been three days. And so I was like, it's too late to like reach out and ask for help. Cause they're going to be like, well, what the hell have you been doing? Right. And so I was explaining this to somebody and I thought it was like a very much my weird headspace, right. That I was going over this, my head, like, oh my God, it's too late to ask for help. And this person was like, oh my God, like I think about that all the time. Like it's too late to ask for help. Like I'm stuck by that. And then that made me think like there's all these things, the small things of everyday work world. And like, how do you make those interesting

and compelling stories? So that's something I'm thinking about. I don't know that I have an answer, but yeah. I guess, obviously if it's crazy, it has its own appeal, but then, you know, the further away you get from crazy, like the more normal it is, like more relatable it is, right?

So there's much more of an emphasis on how well the storytelling is versus just like sort of you doubt the facts in terms of phobia so it's outlandish yeah but like how do you make it interesting right because like our days can be boring right but like where's the the pieces where that's not boring right and i think it has a lot to do with vulnerability right like if you're able to share the things that you are struggling with um like internally like that can be a lot uh there can be something interesting there like even though this ticket that that was a problem for me was super minor and boring and if i described it to you like you wouldn't care but the fact that it it like got

me worked up and i was worried you know that they're gonna think i'm dumb and like how did i think that this way would work and like i have to hide it like how am i gonna catch up so they don't know i went down this yeah that's where it gets interesting to me nice nice so speaking of storytelling um so devrel so developers relations, there's also, I imagine, a ton of storytelling there. How did you first get into it? From the management story, now fast forward a little bit. Yeah, I mean, like I had the podcast and so somebody reached out to me about a developer relations role. I was like, yeah, I like, you know, communicating to developers.

Let's give it a try. And yeah yeah i didn't know what i was doing and the person who hired me had never they didn't know what developer relations i mean i guess we all had ideas right but so i started thinking that like i would go give a lot of talks at conferences and then you know we tried to do meetups and i wrote like tutorials talking about our product and we didn't see a lot of success but then we reached out to uh this guy mitch weiner he's one of the founders of digital ocean and uh he said like well you just need to understand the the people who might be the customers of your product, like these developers, like what problems they have. And then like, just solve those problems, like write down the solutions. And we were like, okay, and then what? And he's like,

that's the whole thing. Like that's like, people didn't know how to install MySQL onto a Linux server. We wrote that down. We put it like on the DigitalOcean website. And we didn't say like, check out DigitalOcean. I mean, maybe, but like, we just told them how to solve their problem. And like, that happens to be, obviously those people, you know, might be interested in getting a virtual private server from DigitalOcean, right? So that's how I got my start. And we just tried to help people with their problems, right? One of the big first things I wrote that the people really remember me by was this article about JQ. JQ parses JSON, super idiosyncratic tool, I guess, right? And so I just wrote a

tutorial for how it works. Because if you understood kind of the logic behind it, like it made sense. It's like its own little JQ world. It's actually Turing complete. You could build whatever you want inside of it. I think it was on Hacker News recently. Somebody built JQ inside of JQ, like using the Turing complete. Oh, wow. That's fancy.

I just spent a lot of time writing down, you know, like here's's how you use it, and explaining things to people. And then that did very well. You know, it showed up on AcroNews, people were on our website, they learned about our product. And that was like how I started to, yeah, to learn these skills. So I mean, I guess that's not really storytelling. It's more understanding um developers and what problems they have so one follow-up on that like when it comes to developer relations you see many people in this role from different companies and they all do it very differently kind of going by what you said earlier in many cases you see some people building kind of a tutorial working tutorial of sorts and they would publish it on github like here's how you can use by what you said earlier, in many cases, you see some people building kind of a tutorial,

working tutorial of sorts, and they would publish it on GitHub. It's like, here's how you can use tool X to achieve Y, which is basically a way to show how you can use one of their products to solve your problems. In some cases, it's tutorials like a blog post and other cases, like a conference talk, for example. What are the parts which are not visible outside to people, which is sometimes talking to customers, for example, to understand what their problems are. So if I just look at the words like developer and relationships, what are the aspects here which are not public facing, which happens behind the scenes? Yeah, I mean, that would be one of them for sure, like talking to people using the product, seeing what problems they have, maybe paying

attention to where people are just talking about your products or competitors or whatever, seeing what issues they have. One of the problems is like developer relations is a weird role. It means a lot of different things to different, depending on the organization, right? I mean, I guess that's true of any role, right? But like some people is communicating feedback that, you know, users of the product are getting to the product team, right? So it can look a little bit like a PM role or something, right? Where, you know, developers are using this API, they're having this issue, like, how can we prioritize this? So I worked at Earthly, it was like a seed stage startup. And like our big problem,

you know, was we were competing obscurity, right? Like nobody knew we existed. If you worked in developer relations for Amazon, on AWS Lambda, like everybody knows it exists, right? So then it's a different type of problem, right? You don't need to let people know that Lambda is a thing. Yeah, maybe it's much more relevant to provide tutorials that show how to use the latest feature or yeah, that part where you're feeding feedback back to the product team. So it varies a lot.

But yeah, I guess I did a lot of like awareness stuff. Right. And that's where that digital ocean perspective really made sense. Because if you go like, I went to a meetup to talk about Earthly, it was like an online meetup. And like, there was the guy who hosted it and there was one other person and then i gave some presentation and then at the end i was like any questions and the the one person who wasn't like the host was like so this is a command line tool i was like yeah no it is a command line tool to pay and then but the thing is because who wants a meetup where various dev tool startups come and show what they've built right nobody does right so i think mitch weiner's point was like what problems actually people have and you don't

need to sell them on your product just help them you know solve their problems and often it's tangent tangentially related right like i remember um earthly for example really good at doing builds for mono repos which can be a challenge and so we wrote like lots of stuff about like here's how you can build mono repos right not just here's how you do it with our tool like here's how you structure it here's best practices it's like educating people um those people you know we think they would really benefit from using our product but just putting that out there they're aware of us and they know you know maybe when they're like hey what build tool should i use they might check it out so in a way talking about goal drifting at the beginning

of the podcast like you mentioned your goal was to be this amazing programmer who knows how to solve all these problems in the code. Um, on the developer relationship side, I would say it's slightly different where it's little more breadth than depth. Maybe I'm getting that wrong. But if that's the case, like in a way that goal has drifted, uh, considering that, do you want to stay on the dev rel path or would you consider changing it? Like you think I've drifted from my technical roots, I guess. Yeah.

I'm curious about that as well. Cause like when you said that, right? Like I was like, Ooh, like kind of being like an engineer's engineer, being really like a drill down. Is that still important to you? Like, do you still want to be that? Or after all this experience, you were kind of like, you know what, maybe that was kind of a pseudo goal.

Yeah. Or part of the journey that was kind of a pseudo goal. Yeah. Or part of the journey that got me to where I am. Ooh, that sounded pretty. Yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I don't know why I wanted to be the best engineer. Like, I don't know.

Just I wanted to. But like, there's all these people that I looked up to in that time, right? I'm trying to think of specific people like Joel Polsky. I remember he had this blog talking about engineering, like back in the day, it was the guy from Steve Yagi or whatever. I don't know. There was all these TV. Yeah. There was all these people. And I was like, you know, I want to know all the things that they know. Um, like I want to be that great. But like, if you think about it, the reason we know about them is because actually they're communicators right they're explaining problems to us like i thought this guy has a blog because he's the most amazing engineer um but no he he he's i know about the things that he's done because he talks about them right

like what he's actually good at like all these people I looked up to, what they're actually good at was communicating, right? The person who wrote the book that I wanted to ask questions about how to do, you know, whatever functional programming, like it's not clear they were the best functional programmer in the world. Hopefully they were decent at it. But no, they had written a book, right? They had spent a lot of time communicating.

So I think that actually, like I maybe realized that my goal, you know, was misplaced, that there was a larger goal or something that, yeah, I wasn't seeing that all these people who communicate are the people that I look up to, right? And it can be super impactful if you can take something and explain it in a way that lets it crystallize in people's minds. And I don't know that I'm the best at it, but like it feels very valuable and important. Yeah, and so that's what I'm going for, right?

And like, it's weird because developer relations, it feels like it's a good racket because I like communicating to developers. Right. And if I can find a place where they value those skills and it can help impactfully, you know, grow their business or whatever. And also I get to like write about why we should stop using YAML like for everything or whatever my perspective is. Like it feels like a super good, it feels like it shouldn't be something that I'm paid for, but, but it seems like people are willing to pay.

Oh, why we shouldn't use YAML for everything. Well, there's the number, uh, hacker news number one post. Yeah. why we shouldn't use the animals for everything well there's the number uh hacker news number one post yeah that was like a really nice uh full circle in some ways um that yeah and that's actually quite profound that i need to think more yeah if you if you think of all the people you look up to right um like i was looking up to them because i thought they were the best but but like i would never have known about them if they didn't invest time into, into communicating. Right. Like I remember reading all these Carl Sagan books when I was a kid, I loved them. Um, you know, like, Oh, Carl Sagan is the most amazing scientist in the world. Well, no, he was amazing science writer, right? Like, I think he was a good scientist, but that's not why I know not why i love him i know of him because he's a science

writer uh communication is everything right the people telling stories about the builds breaking at opera tell the person i learned the most from i think he was just really good at telling these stories right you know like somebody would be like oh yeah i got called in on the weekend like turned out the disc was full but richard that's not how he would tell the story. Right. Like he would give you breadcrumbs. This is like, so I get this call laying on my couch and watching lost and like, I need to drive in. And, you know, and he would like, and they're like, Oh, Richard's got another good one. Oh, was it this? Was it that? Was it the router power out again? And yeah. And it's like, I learned a lot from Richard, but only because he let you kind of live that debugging experience, right?

Like you got the vicarious learning of that battle. That's just because he was a good storyteller. All right. That was the show. You can go to softwaremisadventures.com to find a video version of this. There will be a link in the show notes to that page. And they have many other great interviews with people, you know, far more accomplished than myself. So you should check them out. And thank you for letting me share this interview on my feed. Yeah. And until next

time, thank you so much for listening.