Tech Over Tea - #32 IT Career Development - feat The Digital Life

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

This might be one of the most informative episodes of Tech Over Tea so far, with today's guest The Digital Life we discussed many things from getting started in the IT industry to running a YouTube channel and even a bit of general life advice, I learnt a lot from the recording of this and I hope you do too. ==========Guest Links========== YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZNhwA1B5YqiY1nLzmM0ZRg  LBRY: https://lbry.tv/@the-digital-life  Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/thedigital_life  Blog: https://www.the-digital-life.com/en/ ==========Support The Channel========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson ==========Video Release========== 📚 LBRY: https://open.lbry.com/@TechOverTea:3 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and related sites. 🎵 Intro Music Aces High by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3337-aces-high License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Okay, great. I didn't get my intro ready. Whatever. We're not doing the intro today. Anyway, welcome to episode 32 of Tech of a T. I'm, as always, your host, Brodie Robertson. And today's guest is the digital life, otherwise known as Christian. Welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you, man. Wow, the lag is actually really bad. And hi, everybody. That's okay. Yeah, there's not much we can really do about that, so hopefully I don't step over what he's trying to say too much, but there's about 300 milliseconds of lag, so... Yeah, that's okay. You can just interrupt me when I'm talking random bullshit. That's okay. I'll try not to. That's what I'll say. I'll try not to, but I can't make any promises.

That's okay. I'm fine with that. So how about you tell people who you actually are? I've got your about section on your website open right now. So give people a rundown of who you are for the audio listeners. Yeah, okay. So I'm Christian and I'm running the YouTube and library channel, The Digital Life. The main goal of this channel is to teach people how to become IT professionals. So I mainly cover everything that helped me to get into IT, tech topics i also do some tutorials live streaming on youtube and twitch and i also try to give some it career tips so how i got started into it um how i develop my it career and so on so this is mainly yeah things that i want to cover on my channel so I do a lot of Linux stuff but also other

technologies like networking web stuff I also want to do some Python stuff so that is also something that I do and on live streaming I do mainly stuff that I'm usually doing not not just in my day-to-day job but when I I do some research, just do some Python coding. I have one project to develop my own Discord bot in Python. So that is something I do beside everything else. But yeah, when I have time to work on this project, I also do this sometimes on live streaming. And yeah, you can just come around, ask me any questions. And yeah, so that's enough for

an introduction i hope i think yeah that'll definitely work oh that i tried to mess around with your audio on my side but it got weird okay this audio is just gonna be weird this episode because it seems fine most of the time and then you'll make some noise and it's just like oh shoot right up okay yeah i know that problem i'll try to make sure it doesn't clip and then i can just i guess boost your volume level or something that'll work um yeah i've noticed that in a lot of your recent live streams you've been doing q and a streams uh yeah i try to do it's mainly i'm experimenting with uh youtube i'm i'm still a beginner yeah i i started um in april this year and wow okay that's that's kind of it it definitely grow um faster than i expected and um I tried to find my way as a content creator

and try to improve and learn also from other content creators I watch on YouTube and, yeah, sometimes library. But mainly I'm watching YouTube. And I started to watch other content creators, what they do, and try to find some interesting stuff i could i could also cover on my channel and yeah that's those q a live streams yeah if you're just a small content creator that's that's probably not so easy because actually nobody is watching you and then nobody comes to ask any questions i know that i could probably do a q a stream stream, but even at my size, I'm like,

am I even going to get enough questions to really fill out a stream like that? But somehow you've managed to do it. So maybe, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you just try to do it. And if nobody comes and nobody asks any questions, I try to just talk about some stuff that somebody comments on my videos or I see interesting topics.

People watch a lot of videos about this and that. And I try to cover that on these live streams. So it's, yeah, I try to make it a Q&A session, but you cannot predict what happens. For sure, yeah. Some live streams, one or two guys show up and they don't ask any questions sometimes even 10 or 11 people come and they regularly ask questions and you can talk about some stuff so that's you cannot predict it as a small youtuber that's yeah kind of weird because you're all you always watch those big youtubers and you see oh they got a question every every few seconds somebody asked a question to

make a donation or super chat and yeah that's that's not what it what it is like life is so small i haven't actually even experimented with live streaming yet i've just have i should do it i it's not um it's not like it's going to take up that much time i just haven't really gotten around to coming up with a format for what i want to do because i don't just want to turn the the live stream on and just live stream nothing really i want to have like a you know a show that i'm trying to do yeah i i know that that's exactly what i tried to figure out but i i the main reason why i started live streaming is I wanted to improve my English and I wanted to practice to speak English more fluent and I thought well let's

let's just do a live stream it's a big challenge but it's the main reason why why I do live streaming to be honest well it's certainly one way to go about it, I guess. Yeah, I mean, at least it helps me to improve my English. So even if nobody comes and asks any questions, I don't care because it's helping me anyway. So that's why I started this. But I really enjoy live streaming. I think it makes a lot of fun because you can interact more with the audience. Sometimes somebody comes and you can interact more with the audience. Sometimes somebody comes and you can really

have a discussion and that helps a lot, especially when you're a small creator. You can take your time and talk to one or two guys and that's interesting. That makes a lot of fun. So I actually enjoy that.

So I will continue live streaming on YouTube and Twitch, definitely. I didn't know you were streaming on Twitch as well. Are you doing just the same thing that you do on your YouTube channel? Are you just restreaming it or something? I tried that once, but then I thought about this, if this is a good idea to stream this. i thought about this if this is a good idea to um stream this first problem is i need to pay for a streamlabs obs license to do that i i know there are some other possibilities but i really i want an easy solution so i would just pay for this license but then i thought about well it's not a

good idea for small content creator to stream to two platforms because you're splitting your audience, which is already pretty low. So I only have a small audience. And if I split that again, that would make it even smaller. So that is probably not a good idea. So that is probably not a good idea. So you also need to mess around with some problems. Like people are on your YouTube stream. Some other people are on your Twitch stream.

And they don't really see the other chat. So when you are reacting to something, some people actually don't know what you're talking about. So this is also, I think, a problem. So I came up with splitting that. And I thought, well, on YouTube, I try to make those Q&A live streams like one stream per month or so, where I can collect some topics about comments or some interesting videos and so on, and can prepare a session where I can talk about some topics. And the Twitch streaming is a bit more less organized, I would say, where I just do some random stuff

on my computer. And if somebody wants to watch, OK, then just come. But it's like I'm there still experimenting, trying to understand how Twitch works, because it is also a completely different platform. and the audience on all these platforms is different, and you need to understand how things are working on this and the other platform. I think the biggest issue with trying to restream is the difference in the audience. You actually can, through a service called restream.io, it gives you, like, a bot where it will automatically post the comments

that were posted over on Twitch on the YouTube stream so people can see what comments are being said. But you have a very different audience that exists on both those platforms. I don't understand what goes on in a Twitch chat half of the time. It seems completely alien to me. I'm not someone who's used twitch that often really so it seems weird every time i look at it i understand there's something going on there they have some sort of some sort of shared language but i don't i don't understand it myself yeah exactly i i get that because i feel the same most of the time when I stream on Twitch.

And I even, well, the first time I installed Twitch was when I played World of Warcraft a few months. I think it's even a year ago where I played this actively. And then I needed to install Twitch because you can easily install those modifications and ui overlays and you need twitch for that for some reason yeah so it's sure it's a stupid idea even if you don't watch it yeah and i first installed it and i i think twitch is pretty annoying when you open it it automatically starts something you don't want to watch so this was pretty distracting so i hated twitch for that it's i always muted this stupid application i really didn't understand what was going on i even couldn't understand why anybody should watch something like this yeah so i i even don't

understand it now but the more i use it and the more I get used to it the more I like it somehow but I cannot really tell you why it's somehow weird mm-hmm but it's yeah I think it's it's just interesting it's it's an interesting way to get in touch with people especially in those times where everybody is in home office and you don't have so much social contacts you need something to get in touch with people there. Yeah I have a day job where I work in a supermarket and people are always like why are you so happy to be here it's like I'm always at home if I'm not here. This is the only time I actually speak to people in person. Yeah that's interesting. So I started a

new role in my main job as a technical account manager in an IT security company. And there offering to work from home with an official home office contract. So I'm working 100% from home office. And that's since, I think, one and a half years or so. I even can't remember because it's so usual to me. And, well, this is a huge change. And it's a big challenge because somehow you're losing your social contact somehow. I mean, of course, you have friends and family, but I mean, you're working eight hours a day at least. So that's a lot of time.

You're actually spending more time at work than with your family and friends usually. So that is a huge impact in in life and i struggled a lot to find a way how i could handle this but um and i i think content creation or youtubing and live streaming really helped me to get in touch with people to keep that um social interacting and this is really good for me yeah so the one of the big problems i see with um at least in university right now at least a couple months ago when everyone sort of had to suddenly out of nowhere start working from home a lot of people weren't really sure how to actually i guess split off the work they're doing and also then the like things they just do in their free time so because they're usually working from the same computer it's very easy to let yourself get

distracted while you're actually working and I know I've sort of dealt with that problem a lot especially while making content um I will occasionally have discord open and then 20 or 30 minutes later has gone by and I realize I haven't actually been working on the video I was supposed to work on. Or the same happens when I'm doing like university stuff as well. How have you actually managed to deal with working an eight hour job at home? Like that seems like a as much or a bigger commitment than just doing a maybe full-time university? Yeah that's a big challenge and I struggled a lot the first few months to be honest. And first a thing that I think is really important when you work from home office is you need to have a separate room where you do work um i also i have a family and a two years old son and a wife so um that is if if you're working in

the same um room or nearby that's that's really distracting and you need to have a separate room where you go and this is your workplace. So where you do work. This is like, yeah, that's why it's called home office. This is a place in your house or in your room where you do stuff. And where you don't do anything else. So that's the first thing. And then you need to come up with a good schedule.

You need to somehow up with a good schedule you need to somehow manage your time and i think there's no concept that applies to everybody because i've i've tried a lot to manage myself to manage time and i've i read so many articles and tutorials there are so many resources about managing time and stuff and nothing really worked for me because I'm a very lazy guy I easily get distracted I know the feeling yeah and that's that's a huge challenge and and people are different yeah you need to find a way that's right for you that fits for huge challenge and and people are different yeah you need to find a way that's right for you that fits for you personally and um it's it's a it's a challenge yeah from time

to time i find myself doing some other stuff or distracting me from work and um one thing that helped me is to to keep track of of the time I spent on specific tasks. So I don't have a strict schedule where I say from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. I do this and that. So that doesn't really work for me because I think, okay, maybe I can just do some other stuff. I still have 30 minutes, so I keep going this and that that doesn't work for me i'm um but i i try to um start a timer whenever i do something so when i work on a youtube video i start a timer and when i do work i start a timer and then i see at the end of the day, I see the volume or the next day I see, oh, wow, the last day I spent only five hours working and three hours playing computer games. And then I recap that and say, OK, probably I need to change something the next day or this day.

And that's how I manage this this because i cannot stick to those strict schedules i but i think the most important thing is to just recap what you're doing and i think that's that that you need you need to do that uh in your life anyway yeah you need to recap what you're doing and try to understand where your problems weaknesses are and then try to improve that and you need to come up with a tool or a plan how you can keep track of this stuff so this is how i should do this and yeah this works for me yeah when it comes to look like looking at other people's methods of um keeping track of time and actually i guess keeping yourself on track. I think that a lot of people get too stuck in looking at what other people are doing and just

not actually trying to apply it and see if it actually works for them. Because it's all well and good to say, okay, here's this method that some really successful person uses. But if you can't actually apply yourself to that method and actually make that method fit to you it doesn't really matter how successful the person was with it if you can't use it yourself then it doesn't really matter yeah exactly and we all are different we all have different weaknesses and strengths and you need to come up with something that just works for you that is what i always tell people not just in in managing time or stuff also in in technical stuff yeah um that's that's also something that i think is really important in terms of um working in it because um yeah if if somebody says, okay, well, I want to get promoted because I want to earn more money in this job, I can earn more money. Well, yeah, then that's good for you. But probably money is not

your first priority. Maybe it is time or flexibility so that you can spend more time with your family, something that is really important to me and um that is something a lot i think you need to have some experience in life to to realize that because a lot of people make this mistake they try uh or they they see something on social media or anywhere else and think okay this is how I should do this. This person is successful with this and this method. He earns this so much money, so I want to do this. And yeah, after some years struggling, you probably find out, well, that's something I don't want. I need other things.

I need more stability in life or I need more flexibility in a a job and money is not the first priority that's and therefore i always say you need to find out what are your personal priorities and you need to find a good fit for that that's right for you then you become happier yeah that's that's the experience um i've made in life general. And I try to apply that to whatever makes sense. I know that you didn't go the university route to get into tech, but what I've been seeing with a lot of people is these people who've just come straight out of high school and then straight away going to university

without really finding what they actually care for in the world, what they actually think is important they just go if they finish school go back into more school then by the time they're 21 22 they are suddenly jumping into a job and don't really know what they actually want from the job all they know is i'm finally i'm working now but i i don't know what i'm what i'm doing here where like where am from here? It's, it's sort of like, I think that I guess taking some time to actually understand what you want to do is probably a really good thing. Like for me, I, I took a gap year before I went to university, which I felt like was a, a very good idea because it actually made me understand whether that was actually the path that I wanted to go down rather than just being like,

okay, this is sort of like an idea of what I want to do, but I don't actually know if this is really where I want to spend my time, especially because of how much of a time commitment going into university actually is. Yeah, that's right. I think that's also, yeah to you need to take your time to find this out and i think that's even changing in life so when i um try to remember what was important

to me five or ten years ago that was something completely different and when you when you come from school i i i didn't went to university so so when i i left school, I didn't go to university. So when I left school, I was very bad at school. So I didn't have any kind of idea what I should do, what job I should make. I had no idea. Yeah, I was completely lost. And I somehow stumbled upon this IT thing. So that's pretty Yeah Well, I maybe I can tell you a bit about this if

Yeah, this is interesting. How long have you actually been in IT for at this point? So I would say like well 10 years or so where I seriously started to work in IT so well, 10 years or so where I seriously started to work in IT. So when I left school and I really, I didn't have any idea what I should become. And I just ended up working in a call center. And that was really a terrible job. So this is something I... I haven't done call center work before,

but I have worked in fast food and I can tell you that's definitely terrible as well so uh we've both had terrible jobs okay then then you know what I'm talking about yeah and I somehow stumbled upon this IT thing it was um when one day at the call center I'm working something, the network went down at some day. And everybody was trying to find out what's happening. The IT guy was on holiday. Of course, such things always happen when you're on holiday. So I know that in IT as well.

And yeah, so nobody could continue working. And I just went to my boss and said, hey, okay, so I knew something about computers because I was playing computer games with my friends at LAN parties. And I somehow knew that you need to connect a cable to a switch in order to play with people together. So I said, okay, so let me just check the network so maybe i can find out something yeah and i went to this room where all cables are going to and saw this switch and the lamps were not blinking and i said okay yeah maybe i just unplug it and

plug it in again and it worked so i went to my boss and said okay i fixed it and he was completely impressed okay yeah we can now continue to work so that's great and maybe i should sit next to this it guy maybe i can do some stuff in it so that's actually when this was the first time when i um started um some kind of an IT job. But this was not really a serious IT job, I would say. It was the beginning. And then the IT guy left this company and I was the only guy who knew how this stuff was working. And this was, well, it was somehow an interesting time.

And this was where I first started to play around with Linux and networking and programming because this call center was dialing those numbers manually so they had phones they have Excel lists and they dialed this all manually and when they made a contract they wrote this down with pen and paper and then some somebody reads that and type that into a system so i i thought well this is such a waste of time why shouldn't we optimize this and this is when i started to self-teach my php and my sql and builded a web interface where those phone numbers were displayed and somebody could click on a link. And this was then connected to a phone system.

I built that with Asterisk and Linux. So this is an open source PBX connected to a SIP trunk where those phone calls were made. And I tried to improve that. I programmed some interface and some automatic dialer for that. Well, I spent some, I think, two years on that or so. And I also wanted to sell this software to other call centers because I thought, well, this might be a good idea, yeah,

so I could make some money out of it. But then I got ill, so that was pretty i had something like a burnout i would say or something like this so i surprisingly started to get panic attacks and so that was pretty bad and this was it took me one or two years to recover from that and after that i had nothing because i really this this was not a thing i didn't didn't want to work in a call center anymore um and i really i was again at the beginning yeah i i tried to think what i should do and then i tried to apply for an entry-level IT job so this was like I would say an entry-level IT job in Germany you have those three years education you can take so this was the opportunity

this three years education in IT you get some some kind of a certificate so that you have learned something about systems and infrastructure and so on. And this is pretty recognized in Germany. I don't think the US also has something similar but that's pretty interesting. I think this is a German thing, this three years education. But you also earn a little money, so that is nothing really. I still needed to live with my parents. But you are half in school and half at work, and you also learn something. So sort of like an apprenticeship you would take if you're trying to be an electrician or something like that yeah exactly

this is something like this and um yeah that is where i started this and um this was the first time where i really seriously got into it so then i worked for small and medium companies. So setting up networks, doing something with Windows servers, with firewalls, but also virtualization, but mainly everything. So you also need to set up a computer, install Office and connect this to Exchange servers. It's very interesting because you learn a lot um and you cannot really predict what happens at one day you you go to one person um who's having problem with his outlook or something like this and you need to restore some backups or something like this or set up a printer yeah somebody buys a new printer you go to the customer set up the printer connect it. On the other day you have a big migration,

you need to sell a new server, you need to do an active directory migration and migrate the Exchange server and do a virtualization and backup stuff. So that can, yeah, it is completely different. Yeah. And it's also challenging, but I learned so much because I've seen so many different systems. I started to work with networking, with firewalls. And I worked for this company four years or so. And then I decided that I need to move on because there were not many opportunities in this company. There were just 10 people or so. And you really couldn't get any valid certificates in IT and that's pretty much the end of the road so it can be a systems engineer and do the stuff for this company

for your lifetime or you can move on to another company and do something different and try to do something more advanced and then I applied at an IT security company because I knew the firewall systems. We have sold that to the customer and I knew something about these systems. So I tried to apply it at this vendor for these firewalls and that was successful. Yeah, so I knew a lot about troubleshooting in this and then I started in network security support. And then I started in network security support. And yeah, for this company, I'm now working, I think, five years or so. And I started in level one support. And then I achieved my first IT certifications in those vendor products, network security products, and

then I moved on to another role as a technical account manager in this company. So now I'm managing bigger OEM customers, so that's mainly for the OEM division where other customers integrate those products into their own stuff. So that's how I walked my way up and um that's yeah I think that's pretty interesting how that all that worked out and yeah I'm pretty happy with where I am now so your start your start was sort of even further to the bottom than a lot of people were like a lot of people will be leaving like they'll like leave university or something like here's here's like a university degree that's not really worth much but they at least have that you sort of just started from absolute nothing you

just happen to like yeah come across oh here's a company that has their their tech on holiday right now and the uh you just turn the other switch on and off again, it works. Yeah. So that's crazy if you look at this, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. You've got to take advantage of any opportunity that comes your way, especially if you're a dead-end job like a call center. You're not really going to get anywhere doing that. Maybe one day you'll manage the call center,

but that's about as far as you get doing a job like that. That's absolutely right. And I think IT, that was a big opportunity. And I think that's also a very interesting job opportunity to work into IT. So if you want to make this a profession, I can definitely recommend it because there are so many different career paths you can choose. There are so many

different job roles that are very interesting. So when you start at an entry or with an entry level IT job, you can move on to a more advanced role. But you can also not just become a developer or a network engineer or something like this. You can also be a more sales or consultant role. So if you like to speak to customers, if you like to work for customers, take responsibility, you can also be a more sales or consultant role so if you like um to speak to customers if you like to work for customers take responsibility you can become a manager or sales engineer or whatever so i took the chance um to become a technical account manager because this is an interesting position where you can combine deep technical knowledge with a lot of responsibility for customers so i so that's very interesting because you also need to have a good technical understanding,

but you're not actually troubleshooting anymore most of these issues. So this is what the support division is doing. And you're mainly just managing that everything goes right. And if something goes wrong, you need to step in and help the customer. So you still need to have... Oh, sorry. So you still need to be at least somewhat up to date on what's going on in the technical field. You can't just let yourself completely slip away from that.

Like if you were to go into a pure sales position where you can you can kind of start losing some of that technical stuff as long as you can understand it enough to sell it to people but in a position like you're in you still need to have some of that knowledge there yeah that's absolutely right so if you want to uh become a sales uh person you don't want to mess around with tech stuff you don you want to become a sales person, you don't want to mess around with tech stuff. You don't want to troubleshoot anything. You still need to have a good understanding of products and services.

You still need to have a good technical knowledge, but you don't really need that deep knowledge. You don't need the implementation knowledge. Yeah. Then you can be a salesperson, a engineer or an account manager but if you want to become a technical account manager this is very similar to a solution architect role so where you need to have a good overview over the products that you can offer but also need to have the good technical understanding how to integrate those products into other systems and how to

troubleshoot issues and there can combine those different worlds together. And this is why I absolutely love this position and why this is helpful because I didn't want to lose that technical stuff at my job. So I still want to dive deep into tech stuff. I want to understand how systems are really working. So for example if we implement a new network protocol or we have something currently what's going on is HTTP free or something like this. So I still want to understand what are the differences but also how the protocol looks like. So how the network packets look on a network layer. What are the differences, but also how the protocol looks like. So how the network packets look on a network layer. What are the different layers, how the protocol is communicating,

how is encryption and authentication negotiation working and this stuff. So I really want to do that research in order to understand how I could troubleshoot issues. Because when something don't work, that's the first thing that you should do. You first need to understand from the very beginning so how does that work this is also something that is very important in it in general that's something you probably cannot learn through a certificate or through a theory you need to have the experience so when there is a problem you need to understand and try to recap that from the beginning so just let's say well

computer a is not able to connect to computer b so first you need to understand what is the protocol and how the packets are going so you need to understand the basic fundamentals about networking and then you try to recap and follow the path so do a tcp dump on computer a and see where the packets are going okay tcp dump on computer B doesn't show the packets. You probably need to find the point in between where those packets are lost. So you need to troubleshoot this. And this is something the experience you get. And also you somehow lose this a bit if you don't stay up to date.

And this is why I want to still do this and this is also helping my channel and YouTube is also helping me in my main job because I want to cover those technologies on my channel to help people but also for myself to really understand how this is working and to stay up to date so when I hear something about HTTP free, something like this, probably this is nothing I need to do right now for my main job, but investing a bit of time into researching that will help me later when

somebody has a problem. So I always try to do that and always try to understand technologies that I see becoming important in the IT industry. And that is something I want to cover on my channel as well, because I think it doesn't help anybody to deal with stuff that is not used by companies. Oh, that is more... Okay, I can't get rid of that. used by companies oh that is that is mine now okay i can't get rid of that that that is mainly i i mean i can understand um why people or why people are also covering other interesting tech topics but it's mainly the goal for my channel and this is probably what my channel is or why my channel is different or a bit unique is because i only want to focus on this stuff that is important which

Helps people to get into IT That is thing. Yeah, I Had a question I was gonna say and then I forgot it but we can go a different direction I actually don't know I remember so from my position where I'm I'm still sort of outside of that That IT industry from where I'm standing sort of outside of that IT industry, from where I'm standing, it kind of looks like there's not really... It doesn't look like there's as much diversity in the sort of jobs as there really is.

So I know most of the people who graduated the year before me, they've gone into basic developer roles and things of that nature. But there is, as you were saying, there's a lot more diversity than some people seem to think in this in this sort of speed you don't just have to be a network engineer you don't just have to be a developer there's all these sort of all of these sort of different fields that you can actually approach the ic industry from so if you are the sort of person who cares more about customer-facing interaction, then

there's always those jobs for you. But if you might prefer being on the developer side and maybe moving up the developer chain, but still keeping yourself in a position where you're always doing the development work, you could then move up to, say, like a senior dev position.

Or, I don't know about networking stuff. I'm happy to let those people make more money than me, I don't understand networking, but... There's all these different fields that are actually in this industry, that, even if you don't want to be a tech, like, just a dev or something like that, there still might actually be something in this industry for you to actually put your mind to. Yeah, of course.

Especially in development, there are a lot of interesting roles. And I also, I work sometimes with developers in my role because I need to, when there's a problem in the product that is reported from a customer, I need to find out why this is not working, reporting bugs or having meetings with product managers and so on.

So there are a lot of interesting roles in development also, I think. And one thing that is also very interesting is if you want to take responsibility for other people. So if you want to become a team lead or something like this, you can be that in any kind of position. So also in development, if you want to lead a development team. But yeah, that's probably not the right fit for everybody. So for me personally, for example,

I don't want to take responsibility for other people because I have a hard time to take responsibility for myself. So I don't want to do that for other people because i have a hard time to take responsibility for myself so i don't want to do that for other people as well so that's fair yeah i can accept that and that is uh well at some day yeah you get you get those um offerings from recruiters they say oh yeah you can be a tech lead in this team and so you're earning like sometimes even double the money I'm currently earning or something like this. But I always say, no, I don't want to be a team lead

or something like this. That's not what I want to do. Like you make double the money, but is it worth all the extra stress you might have? Exactly. And then I know when I'm stressed, I get ill again. So that's really bad for me. So I need to take care of that. I need to find this balance between challenge, but yeah, not too stressful job, I think there are a lot of interesting roles in development as well. It's also very different what kind of projects

you're going to work on. So if you are a front end or web developer, or you mainly develop back end systems, so that's also very different. And mainly I work with developers that integrate products or sometimes DevOps engineers, which is also a very interesting role because you can combine this development stuff with operations. And that's mainly some kind of, I would say, a hybrid role between a developer. So you still need to write scripts, programs to integrate specific systems,

but you also need to manage this operation. So you also need to come up with a good plan or a good architecture, how a workflow should work. So how to integrate those specific systems into the company's workflows. So this is also very interesting and it's an interesting job role that came up a few years ago. So DevOps engineers is also

pretty interesting. And then you can choose, yeah, if you go down the developer road, if you want to take responsibility or want to become a team lead, or you want to become a DevOps engineer and work more with systems as integrations. Yeah, so there are a lot of opportunities. And I think the most important thing for people is just to take action. And yeah, just yeah, yeah, just just do something. Don't just be reactive. Just take action and try to find your way try to find out what you want to become and then just do it. Once you do find something you want to become and then just do it once you do find something you want to do then actually chase after that don't just wait for it to come to you because if you do that then someone else will take that position before you get there exactly yeah

so if we go over to your channel for just a bit i've noticed that i scrolled back through your channel history i've noticed you've experimented with a lot of different thumbnail styles. Oh yeah. So if we go all the way back to the start, you were using this blue background with some big text on it, and you had this, where did you even get that picture from, the picture yourself? That's something you made yourself? I made this myself, yeah. Okay, yep. even get that picture from the picture yourself that's something you made yourself i made i made

this myself yeah okay yeah yeah i i do i try to do um as much as i can myself because i don't have i don't want to afford the money to hire somebody or just buy some artworks somewhere. They are pretty expensive. Yeah, for sure. So I try to play around with Affinity Designer. So that's the software I mainly use because it's pretty cheap but has everything that I need. And yeah, the thumbnails are really interesting. And I've not come to a consistent design where I'm pretty happy. I'm happy with the last ones I did. I first experimented with this blue background and this big text.

And then I thought, well, this blue, I don't like this blue anymore. And I think that it should look a bit more professional then I changed it and I put my face on those thumbnails but that was pretty annoying after some times because you always need to you always need to make

a picture of yourself I've been experimenting with them myself and you try to get a face that looks right. Like there's some people like, have you seen the Linux game before? No. Okay. He uses basically the same face on every single thumbnail.

So if you're going to do that, it's easy. But if you want to have a custom face for every single one, yeah, it gets annoying, especially when you can't get the picture looking the way you want it to look yeah exactly i struggled a lot with this so i've seen so many successful youtubers i i i actually watched a lot of successful youtubers i i um i think i um again desubscribe most of them at the beginning i try to watch those big big Linux YouTubers and see what they are doing. And I've seen so many thumbnails with faces and I thought, well this should be a good idea, so I probably should do this. But you always need to come up with a new face, because if you only

shoot the same face, I also did that quite sometimes, it gets annoying and boring. Oh yeah, I didn't even notice that, yeah. For some of your live streams you shoot the same face, I also did that quite sometimes, it gets annoying and boring. Oh yeah, I didn't even notice that, yeah. For some of your live streams, you used the same face, didn't you? Yeah, and then you want to do something special, you want to make something different and you make some crazy memes or something. memes or something oh yeah yeah that feels so stupid i i just yeah i can't do it i'm just like it yeah so i i stopped it and um i i really but i struggled because i thought well this is probably this isn't all my consistent style and i i moved on with this and then one day my wife came and said why why are you putting your face on that that looks stupid I said okay yeah maybe and I thought okay yeah I also thought about this so maybe I should stop it and let's try to do something different and then I came

um well this is also I've I've I stole this also by another YouTuber, but this idea is pretty interesting, and I absolutely love this, to have this square around the thumbnail. to um for the next video i want to make i um do a search request on youtube and took a screenshot of all the different thumbnails that are presenting and i thought okay i need to make a thumbnail that is better than everything i see on this page i i need to make a thumbnail that the person because um if if somebody or if you want to get views on YouTube, you need to understand that most of the people watching your stuff are not your subscribers. So they don't actually know who you are. They don't know what you're doing.

They just click on a thumbnail and on a title that's interesting. And that's like, you can see it in the YouTube statistics. So I have like 90% views coming from people that don't subscribe to me. Wow. Okay. Mine's nowhere near that high. Mine's at like 67% or so.

Really? Okay. That's pretty interesting because I've also watched a lot of how to grow on YouTube channels and so on. So I've tried to learn from these free resources. And most people actually say the most views are coming from people who don't subscribe you.

So the 90% is actually not a bad number or something. It's somewhat... I wouldn't say it's the default because I'm still a beginner. I don't know how this stuff is working but that's how I think about it. So most of the people are just seeing the title and the thumbnail so i thought well i need to make a

thumbnail that is better than everything else on this page so i need to make people click on this and i try to experiment with different things with different text styles and so on and one thing i realized is the text needs to be really big because a lot of people are actually watching this stuff for mobile phones and if you pick um if you pick up your mobile phone and do a search request you cannot read some of the text on my older thumbnails they are too small then i thought okay this is pretty bad so i need to make this text bigger. And that's the first thing I did. And then I thought, okay, maybe there's not enough space for my face. Maybe I should get rid of it and take a catchy logo or something like that is somehow related to the topic. Yeah. And this square, I put around my

thumbnails. That's pretty interesting because this somehow makes the people want to click it because it stands out. And this has such a high impact. And that's pretty interesting. So that's also something I do. I don't think I've seen anyone else actually do that before.

That's a... I think, obviously, you said you found it from someone else, but I've never seen it myself, and I watch a lot of YouTube content, so that says something there. I scroll through these pages of all these thumbnails and there is one with this square around this thumbnail. I want to click on this because this looks like a button. Yeah. So this is somehow manipulating your brain that you want to click on this. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. If everybody's doing that, then it probably gets useless. But yeah, maybe you're starting a new trend on YouTube. Yeah, probably. After this comes out, the entire, everything that comes trend on YouTube. Yeah, probably. After this comes out, everything that comes out on YouTube is just going to be this button,

and everyone's going to have to go back to the old style because the old style will now stand out. I would be surprised by that, yeah. That's how it works, yeah. Also with fashion, yeah. People are wearing fashion that was popular in the 80s or 90s these days they want to stand out you also got these um you've got a really nice color scheme going with

your thumbnails as well like you have the um obviously the border but then you also have uh i guess drop shadows for some of the things actually in the thumbnail as well. So all of that sort of binds together as a really nice looking thumbnail. Like every, everyone else seems to have way better thumbnails than I have. Like I, I've been experimenting with them, but I don't know. Everyone seems to somehow manage to get something that actually looks really

good. Well, I think your thumbnails are actually good. I don't think they are bad because I think your thumbnails also actually good. I don't think they're bad. Because I think your thumbnails also stand out. Because I like the text, the different colorings, but it has a consistent look. And that is also pretty important, because every time I go through my videos and subscription list, I always see, when I see your thumbnail, okay, this is this guy. That's also pretty good. But it's also stands out from other thumbnails. So I think it's not it's not bad. Yeah. And just, yeah, but just keep experimenting. That's something that really helped me to just not get lazy and try to recap what you do and try to experiment a lot.

And I've seen also you started to put your face on some of these thumbnails. A couple of them, yeah, because some of them seem like they were a little bit empty. Like when I look at a piece of software and it doesn't have a logo, I'm not really sure what to put in that space because I'll have the text and this big empty spot. And some people managed to make those work like if you go look at some of the gaming channels they have some i don't know how their thumbnails work but

you'll see like here's a picture of a game with one like one word on it and it's a million views and i don't understand yeah i i don't understand yeah there's something about the audience of that stuff that I'm sure it works for them. Yeah, definitely. That's also something I try to put into these thumbnails because I try to experiment with different fonts. And I came up with some more handwriting stuff. But then I thought about this. Well, it doesn't look professional.

And my channel is how to become an IT professional. So this well it doesn't look professional and my channel is how to become an it professional so probably that should somehow also look professional yeah so i came up with a more cleaner font so it definitely needs to fit for your audience because if somebody is trying or searching for a video about http protocols or something like this he doesn't want to have a fancy thumbnail with somebody showing a crazy face and some bling bling colors. So he wants to actually see, okay, maybe a screenshot

of the software in the background or a logo or something like this, somehow related and to have a clear font with a good title. So it definitely needs to fit to the audience but i think you can put your face on some other thumbnails but not on all so yeah i think i think that's the best way to go

about doing it that i think when the what i said in a community post the other day was if the topic of the video is about a piece of software i will will put like the logo of the software in there. But if it's about say, here's my opinion on something, here's just something where it's more a focus on what I'm saying rather than here's the thing I'm demonstrating to you. In those cases, I think I'm a bit more of the focus of the video in that case. So it makes sense in those cases to actually include my face in it. Yeah, absolutely.

I agree with that. That seems the right way. And I also, I try to do this this way. So I also, I have one thumbnail with a new style that shows my face because it's the channel trailer and then it's about me. So I put my face on it. That's logical, I would say.

I haven't even done a channel trailer yet yeah you should do i think that's a good way uh because uh people they want to have like a channel trailer i think that should be just uh one up to two minutes or so just um really try to to show the uh outline of the channel the the main key points you cover on this channel of who you are what you're doing where you come from So that really helps people to understand what the channel is about. I think I'm not looking to doing it But for now I've just been switching in random videos to my channel trails Like here's this video that people seem to be liking i think right now it's my video on the

actually what is what is it right now that's a good question i'm gonna find out um yeah you're making so many videos that's a problem yeah yeah that's another reason why face thumbnails are a pain uh seven videos a week is yeah that's crazy i don't understand how you're doing this how you're managing this uh okay so i'm seven videos a week also the podcast also full-time ud working 10 15 hours a week and yeah um i don't know don't ask me i enjoy what I'm doing. That's how. Okay, that's most important. Because if you enjoy that, that's good.

How do I look at it as a... Customized channel, is that how it works? They've been moving stuff around on YouTube. Right. Yeah, it's Unix Philosophy is more than just a simple slogan, and the thumbnail for that I actually really like. It's Unix Philosophy for Dummies. Oh yeah.

I've watched this video out. A lot of people were saying like this is the best video I've done in a long time which honestly I feel like is probably true. I really enjoyed making that. I really enjoyed researching it. I'm probably going to start

doing some more unix history videos just because it's a lot of the stuff hasn't actually been touched on youtube before and a lot of it is actually really really interesting especially when you start looking like how do how do we actually get to linux like what like what is the forking process that actually we went through to get here because prior to to Linux, there was like Minix, but no one really talks about what Minix was or why that even came into existence. And then if you go look in like the BSD side,

it gets even more confusing over there. And like, how did MacOS fork off of BSD and things like that? So there's definitely a lot of interesting things that can be looked at in there. And as I said, a lot of it hasn't been approached a lot of the popular things have like what is like when did eudix come into existence things like that like things you'd see and if you went to like a lecture but digging deep into some of those random things that no one really is going to go out of their way to do the research on. I think there's something interesting to bring out there.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And that's something I really love about your channel because that's something unique and something that you can stand out with. And that's also something that is similar to the approach I try to do with my channel because I want to also not just scratch the surface because that's what everybody's doing I also watched so many big youtubers Linux especially Linux

youtubers I all do subscribe them because I get bored of that content yeah I don't want to see distro XYZ review 100 blah, blah, blah. Do you know how many comments I've got from people saying, hey, can you review this distro? No. I don't understand why people want to watch this. I really cannot understand. It even doesn't help anybody.

Well, yeah, it's usually like Ubuntu 20.04 versus this other thing. Like, if you're going to actually use it on a day-to-day basis, you're going to customize it so much that it doesn't matter what it looks like out of the box. I think that is at least something that I can understand why people are watching this. Because if there is a new version to Ubuntu, like Ubuntu 20.04 lts comes out

people want to know what's different in this version of okay they can go to the um homepage or read the technical white paper or the release notes and you got in five minutes understand what's new that's not very difficult but people are lazy versus video that's when it's sort of weird when it's like it i guess it weird. When it's like... Yeah, exactly. Here's all the... Like, there was a video I watched recently about Gnome Orbis, where it's like, here are all the cool new features

that are in Gnome Orbis. Like, that's nice. Even though, yeah, you could obviously go read the white paper or go read the changelog. That's boring. And most people aren't going to do that. They want it in a more, I guess, digestible format. Yeah, exactly.

But as you said, those comparison videos or this distro review XYZ, that's just boring stuff. And also a lot of content is like, yeah, why switch to Linux? Oh, yeah, I've seen so many of those i i i am so bored of that and i even cannot i even don't like this opinion yeah to to force anybody to use a specific thing i really hate this and this is also why i made the video a contra or against video about this. I don't know if you have seen that. I've watched three parts of it. Yeah. That is that was pretty controversial.

This was a very interesting video that teach me a lot about YouTube and how this stuff works. So this video was like why why I switched from Linux to Windows. And I also added yes, from Linux to Windows, not the other way around. Okay, that's something that was pretty new. And why I came up with the idea is I wrote a Reddit post. And why I explained, okay, why is everybody talking about how to switch to Linux? Because I somehow get this. Yeah, that's pretty common. Everybody is doing those videos and saying, okay, Windows is bad.

Why? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I get this. Yeah. But why nobody actually talks about people who switched from Linux to Windows? Because that is also the case. Some people just do that. Yeah, for some reason.

And why is nobody talking about this? Why is everybody just trying to force people to use this and that? And why nobody says, okay, just use what you like. Just use what works for you personally. Okay? So, and this is why I made this video, but I got so many dislikes on this. Yeah, that was... It's like all my other videos are like 95 or 99 percent likes dislike ratio and this was like 60 percent likes isn't this also your most viewed video no it's not my most viewed video but it's one video that boosted up the views at one day extremely so I think because of the dislikes it didn't went viral but it could I think it had the potential but I but probably this video was not good enough I don't understand but I've seen

if I look at my statistics I see like a consistent growth and at the day when I release this video it's like a big spike in this. So this is the views from this video exactly. And then it flattens down, but also has a consistent growth. So like all the other videos, or most of the other videos, but yeah, this was a very controversial and I got so many funny comments on this video. That was also very interesting yeah that's like something that's gonna happen every time you do that even some people uh commented on the library version of of of this video but usually nobody does because you need to spend an lbc or so to write a comment i know actually on the android

version you need to spend lbc but not on the website ah okay Ah, okay. All right. Because I mainly use the Android version. Yes. Yeah. And okay. So yeah, that was very funny. But actually, that is just my honest opinion in this video. If somebody doesn't like this, I'm okay with that. Yeah.

Even said that in this video. Well, I don't want to tell anybody that you should do this or that. It's your opinion, but I just want to share my opinion on this, why I made this choice. And if you don't like this, it's okay. But maybe somebody else gets the idea of, yeah, probably this is a good idea. Because I wanted, with this video, I wanted to tell people. Make your own opinion or have your own opinion, do your own research, try to understand what fits for you. And yeah, I think this is, it's just my opinion. Yeah.

That's that's okay. Yeah. That's, that's what I try to do in my sort of videos as well. Um, like I did a video on system D, which is very controversial in Linux right now, or I did a video on systemd which is very controversial in linux right now or i did a video on snap packages and i specifically say in the video i don't care what you run like if you want to run every single systemd program be my guest if you want to use snap packages for every single application be my guest and obviously you're still going to get the people in the comments saying this is here's my big essay about why this is terrible but i do like to preface yeah i do like to preface that um i'm not trying to like add fuel to the

flame like when i do those videos on a controversial linux topic it's to make it so people who like most people don't care. They're just like, why are these people fighting? I'm trying to like give some content to those people. Cause most people who look at the system D argument, like they don't really know why anyone doesn't like it. Like they use system D,

it works well enough. What's the problem with it? Why did it, but anyone who doesn't hate, Oh, anyone who hates it doesn't really give a proper explanation of what's actually wrong with it. Yeah, that's absolutely true. I think you also cannot add any value in terms of either defending this or that position.

You can only add value to educate people and trying to explain the technical stuff behind this so that people can make their own opinion and this is where real value is added absolutely that's probably not not where what most people want to hear they just want to hear oh i'm right i hate system d and i'm right with this opinion and they just want to you're not going to get a video sorry no worries you're not going to get a viral video by being a centrist you have to take like one of the extreme positions otherwise yeah yeah yeah that's right that's that's absolutely right it's that is also what i try to experiment with this special video to see if that works out. But I found out, well, it does, but just for one or two days.

And I think that is in social media, that's very common. If you create such a controversial video or something like this you're gonna see an extreme growth at one or two days and then it flattens down so if you go down this road you always need to come up with new controversial topics and i don't want to be that person unless you end up killing your channel with controversial topics um i've seen some people do that like for example um you're saying how you basically unsubscribe from all popular linux youtubers um right now i get more views than brian lunduk he has uh 69 000 subscribers but um yeah he's been making some videos recently that people didn't like and and then his views just basically tanked.

Yeah. You see that a lot. I also try to see that. I use that TubeBuddy extension, and then you can actually see pretty quickly what their views are and subscriber growth. pretty quickly what their views are and subscriber growth. And I've seen so many channels which have more, far more subscribers than my channel, but like the same growth or even less. And I think that's, yeah, just because you have a big channel, you cannot do what you want. That's just, you need to, you need to have, or you need to take care of your audience and you need to make content for um your audience and this is also the reason why i don't want to go down this road and don't

don't want to talk about windows linux and systemd and snaps i could talk about this i have an opinion on all of these topics um i probably i don't have the deep technical knowledge because i just don't care. And because my channel is, that's not what my channel should be about. Because my channel is about becoming IT professionals. I want to focus on industry standards. And if we talk about system D, for example, well, then you know my opinion. Whatever is an industry standard, knowing about this will help you to understand your job to to manage systems and yeah guess what most linux distros are using yeah there's a video that will get you a lot of hate

if you do a video on systemd from an it professional perspective even though you do that tons of comments telling you why you shouldn't be using systemd yeah that's. But that's why I don't want to go down this road. It doesn't make any sense. And this is also not the audience I want to make content for. So I definitely get this. There are channels out there that can talk about this or can say, okay, systemd is bad. Why? Blah, blah, blah.

Probably there is an audience for that. And it's okay to make content for this. But yeah, I don't want to do this and this is not my audience this is also what i found out with the video um why i switched from linux to windows all the dislikes that are from people that are not my audience so i don't i don't say these people are wrong yeah they have valid concerns with Windows. I understand this. I get it. But that's not what the audience

I make content for, and that's okay. So, yeah. You just need to make, I think you need to be consistent with the content or with the audience. That's the most important thing. I think, yeah, if I can say this, because I don't have so much experience

on youtube but that is probably the thing that helped me growing to have a clear vision of what content i should cover and consistently um yeah try to do that i've only been doing this for a year and a half myself but i'm definitely in the same boat we're having that clear vision of what you want to do is very important. Obviously, when you have no viewers whatsoever, you can do whatever you want. But if you want to actually build up a channel and you actually want to have people learning something from that channel, you have to have, okay, this is what my channel is going to be about.

Even if you're going to be like a Reddit commentary channel, if that's what you're going to do, that's what you're going to do. But once you've actually got some sort of view base there, I think it becomes very difficult to actually shift your view base, especially if you're trying to shift, like going from IT professional into the sort of reactionary Linux stuff isn't a super big shift. You could probably do that, but a lot of channels end up basically killing themselves by trying to completely shift their content. So I think it's, especially if you want to take this seriously,

it's a very important idea to actually have a direction that you are actually interested in and you want to put the effort into growing rather than trying to get to, like, become a bit of a bigger channel and then realize like oh i don't actually care about what i'm talking about yeah absolutely that's i i absolutely agree with this this is also why i want to make this content well i probably could become a linux youtuber if i would want to do that yeah so I can just install my computer with Linux and make everything about Linux.

But I don't want to do that. I'm not so... That's not what I spend my time on, personally. I don't want to spend hours and hours to configure Vim or so. I mean, I want to learn something about it.

I want to improve in that that's okay i feel like that was a personal attack no don't worry it's it's i just want to i just want to tell people it's it's okay and we can even we come on a channel we can have a discussion if even if we have different opinions on certain topics that's absolutely fine and we can talk about this yeah because we respect each other and try to tell people well you need to find your way you need to really understand what is your personal opinion and that's okay so and yeah i well as i said could do this probably, but I don't want to do this. And I want to make content I spend my time on and I really enjoy making content off. And that's just the case.

By the way, I also use Vim, so then. Well, the problem with you just becoming a Linux YouTuber is the fact that there's all of these other Linux YouTubers that already exist. You have this niche where you kind of carved out, this is sort of like what I want to do. And you're sort of doing it your own sort of way. If you're just like, I'm just going to become a Linux YouTuber and I'm just going to, I don't know, do it like whatever popular Linux YouTubers actually do. I don't actually care. I don't actually, this isn't a secret or anything.

I just don't watch Linux content anymore. It's actually a good thing. I recommend not watching a lot of content in your own niche because what's going to happen is you're going to start emulating other people's styles rather than trying to obviously make your own sort of style. It's all well and good to see what other people are doing, but I'm subscribed to a lot of big Linux YouTubers, but I don't tend to watch their videos. Just so I can see, this is sort of like the general mindset of what people are doing. Like, here's this... maybe there's some popular news topic that I missed or something and I

want to do a video on that. But I'm not gonna go watch their take on it, for example, because I feel like that would really influence the take that I was going to make on it. So the point I was getting at there was, there are all of these Linux YouTube channels that already exist. Just going into it and doing anything that anyone else is doing won't make you stand out whatsoever. And I feel like that's something that a lot of people tend to completely

ignore when they start up a channel like if you start up say another programming tutorial channel like oh there's there's thousands of these that exist for every single language out there what are you doing that's making you stand out yeah exactly you need to find something that is unique about your channel and you're absolutely right If you watch too much stuff in your niche, it will definitely have an impact on your content because, and, and that is the reason why I also don't watch all of my, of the,

I wouldn't say competitors, but it is like people who are in the same niche or make the same content. And I, I, I never would compare myself to Linux YouTubers because that's completely different. But I compare myself to other people who make videos for IT professionals. So there are big channels that also inspire me sometimes. But I try to find the way I can add value on this. So I watch the content and I try to understand what they

are doing. But I see there is a difference in presentation style, for example, because some of the most big YouTubers I have seen so far, they try or yeah, many of them try to be more entertaining than just educational. So they just want to entertain people and do some funny things in their videos and so on. Yeah, I totally get that. It's fun watching them.

But it's something I can't. That's not me. So I try to stick to what? Try to stick to my personality, I would say so. And I try to find ways how I can add value to those topics that are already covered, because it's really hard to find topics that are not covered. That's interesting. You came up with this idea about Linux history. That's probably a topic that is not covered. So that's interesting. But most of this stuff is already covered by people, but in a different way. Yeah. So that's I always try to think about what I can or how I can add value to this. So the last video I did about Ansible, for example, was something like this.

Because I wanted to do something about Ansible, because I've seen so many companies are using that. It's an important technology in the industry. So that's also very trending stuff. So I thought I should do some research about this and get up to speed and get started with Ansible. That's how i did this so i watched some youtube videos but i i got bored of the way how they presented it it's like okay i

close that down uh go to the technical white paper and try to figure out it myself so this is how i do those the research then i watch these videos again and try to find out okay is that somehow similar to what i have um seen in white papers, how they are presenting it? And I've seen so many videos scratching the surface or like saying, okay, this is how you can use Ansible. Okay, Ansible can be used to provision your Linux machines. This is how you authenticate to a Linux machine. It's using SSH. So you can authenticate

via username and password. But I don't use this in production because this is probably not secure. But I'm going to show this in this tutorial because it's an easy way for me to cover that. Okay. But I thought, okay, yeah, well, while this is a good way to get started, I could maybe add some value and try to teach people how to properly authenticate to these servers because that's what people are gonna do in the real world. They don't want to see test labs and they also want to see how they can use that in a production environment. So I need to come up with a proper authentication via private and public keys. So I need to teach people about private and public keys, how this is working, how the authentication is working,

how they can probably store credentials and so on. So that is where I tried to go one step further this stuff and I think that is interesting for some people if they already watched the other videos and want to see a video that adds some value on top of this. So that is how you could approach those topics that are already covered. Yeah, this is the reason why I don't cover things like Ansible because I would be doing a very surface-level look at it because this isn't something that I've ever really worked with. So obviously I could go and put in all that effort to actually you know get that knowledge there and actually give up produce a proper tutorial on it but I feel like someone like you

who's actually used it in a production system before and has actually got more experience with it because I would just basically be regurgitating what I've read online, which isn't really a good way to actually do a video like this. Whereas if you, say, happen to make a mistake while you're going through the video, you can be like, okay, well, here's how I can actually correct that mistake. Whereas if I did that, I would kind of be stuck and have no idea what I'm actually doing. that I would kind of be stuck and have no idea what I'm actually doing. And also with your sort of niche,

I've noticed that a lot of the videos on these technologies are very, very dry. They're about as dry as just reading the white paper. Whereas from what I've, the brief stuff I've seen from you, it seems like you add a bit more entertainment on top of that. I know that's not the intention you're going for, but having someone actually presenting that information in a I guess, succinct way actually does make it easier

to actually follow along with what or with how to actually use this technology. Yeah, that's absolutely the thing I want to do because I've also seen some other videos about, for example, there's one video about what was that DOH and DOT. So DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS. And all the videos you see is dry presentation style. So Outlook, I mean, a PowerPoint presentation where somebody talks about this and that. And yeah, there are even one hour videos about this. I have watched some of them because it's an interesting technology.

But I think that's not really showing how this technology works. And what I always try to do is when I read about something like this that interests me, it's an interesting technology but i think that's not really showing how this technology works and what i always try to do is when i read about something like this that interests me like dns over https and i try to recap that in my own test lab because it's it's good to understand but um at some points i have some questions yeah so how does a packet really look on a network layer? How does it really look like? I want to test this. I set up a virtual machine. I configure a DNS over HTTPS daemon and let it do a DNS request. Open up Wireshark and let's have a look at the packets, how they look like and see, okay, there you can see the port number, there's the encryption, the negotiation and stuff.

And then you can really understand because you're seeing something, you see how the packets are flowing or you can install that in your own test lab and recap that. So that is what I always do, because it really, it also helps me to understand stuff stuff and i think that's a good way to present it to other people because then they can easily recap and follow this along so yeah that is what i try to do yeah that makes sense um that's i haven't watched a ton of this sort of content just because it's not really the sort of thing that I'm particularly interested in myself. Like, if I want to go and watch, you know, this sort of, I guess, IT, just general IT content,

I'm usually going to go do some, like, programming stuff because that's sort of where I'm, like, where my interests lie. But I can see that you're definitely approaching this in an interesting way for sure. Yeah, thanks. The next thing what I try to do is, but I try to prepare that, is do something about Python. So doing a bit programming, but not in terms of how a developer should use it, but how a network engineer or a security researcher or some kind of that person should use it. So do some scripting.

I feel like that's a fairly unfed section because, or unfed niche, I guess, because if you try to look at like Python tutorials, you're just going to get like the developer style of Python tutorial. Like here is, here's an if statement, here's a class, here's other things that Python has. Here's a dictionary or whatever, but it's not really like, okay, here's how you would actually use it in a networking context,

for example, or here's how you'd use it in this context. Yeah. That's something that, that I'm interested in. Also to write scripts that will help me to do some research. So maybe in networking

style, that could be a script that creates a specific packet or something like this. I mean, there are tools that can do this already, but why not create something like this on your own? Because you're learning so much from doing those things, from starting this from scratch.

And the other thing I also want to do is creating a home lab. That's something different, but a home lab. And I've seen so many videos about creating a home lab with virtualization technology like Proxmox or VMware ESXi or something like this. I know that stuff. Yeah. So that's pretty nice. But well, I want to do it on my own.

I want to install Ubuntu Linux on it and configure everything on my own. So I want to create ZFS storage pools on the terminal because then I can really understand how this stuff is working because everyone can click on a graphical user interface That's okay, but you're learning so much more when you get your hands on and really Do those stuff on the terminal because because then you need to understand what you're doing and this is something I want to do that is some content I want to present on my channel and what I'm personally interested in. And I think that's something that probably is not covered already. And that's something I think that could also be interesting for Linux YouTubers, for people who get to get started with Linux.

Yeah, for sure. Because then they have a real use case how to use that in specific areas so I don't tend to see it on my channel just because a lot of the content I make is more I try to make it accessible to everyone else but just because of the nature of the sort of content I do a lot of it does end up being more focused towards the advanced users so I don't tend to see a lot of those people in my comment section who are like first starting out with Linux, unless they're like me diving headfirst into Arch Linux because they're crazy people. But if I go over to Reddit or something like that I will still see people saying like, how do I actually get started with Linux? How do I get better

at using the terminal? Because they don't really have a, something that they can actually work towards as like a way to keep using it. I had the excuse where I just threw myself at Arch Linux and sort of had to learn it. But if you're not going to do that and you're going to be sticking with like Windows or maybe you're going to run a VM for Ubuntu

or something like that, people aren't really sure how to actually get started using the terminal. But I think, as you said, having a use case there could actually give something someone can actually work towards getting better at. Because trying to just stumble through it, you can do it, but you might get bored fairly quickly. Yeah, that's absolutely true and i i always have made this experience if i don't have a use case for that i'm i'm i'm lazy i don't

i don't learn this this is also um that's that's something i probably need to focus more on my on my channel that's's just one example. When I try to learn Python, because as I said in the past, I was working with PHP and MySQL stuff, and I really enjoy learning Python because it's easy, but also extremely powerful. But when I want to learn Python,

I need to have a use case. Because as you said, nobody wants to go and read through that if, if statements, what is a class, blah, blah, blah. I always learn in the style. So I pick a project I want to create. And this even can be a complete overkill probably. I want to create a web application.

Okay, if I don't know anything about Python, this is probably pretty hard for a beginner to start with. But I think if you have that goal, you need to learn or teach yourself ways how to solve those problems. And my Discord bot is my project or teach yourself ways how to solve those problems. And my Discord bot is my project where I start to learn Python. The first thing I learned is how to connect to the Discord API.

So I needed to research that. I needed to find, okay, there's a module that you can import. These are the comments. There's the API documentation. Okay, so I want to implement a new feature. I want to implement a welcome message, okay? And then you have your first problem you need to solve and you need to think about, okay, so how do I do this? Okay, so I get the event.

I send a message. Okay, but probably my bot wants to have a dynamic message that you can configure somewhere. Then you need to come up with a solution for storage in those messages, probably in a SQL database or something like this. How should I do this? How can I connect a Python application to a SQL database? And so on. Yeah. So you go down that road and you learn so much along this way. And of course you rewrite your code a lot because you get more experience. If you don't, you're going to realize your project is an absolute mess.

I did that. The first Discord bot I've written, I completely thrown all the code away. Because at some point I understood, okay, maybe I should come up with a different approach because this is maybe I should come up with a proper solution for module integration because I was writing everything in one or two files.

And once you add more features to it, it gets too confusing. Yeah, you even cannot remember what you have written a few weeks ago. Okay, throw it away and start a new project with a different approach. gets too confusing yeah you even cannot remember what you have written a few weeks ago okay throw it away and start a new project with a different approach so i started to deploy the python application in a docker container that's managed via docker compose and this docker compose manages also my sql database and i implemented sql alchemy to manage those stuff. And I needed to come up with a lambic because I need to do those SQL migrations in newer versions and so on. So I really tried to extend this.

And you need to find ways to overcome a problem every time and you learning along this way. So if I would compare this to, okay, I want to learn Python. I read the technical tutorial or something like this. I would never been so far and so experienced in Python when I just went through that tutorial and just tried to produce Hello World messages on the terminal. Yeah, that's the mistake that a lot of people tend to make when they're first learning a, whether that be a new language

or whether they're learning Docker or whatever it is they're trying to learn. They'll go through the tutorial, but not actually expand upon that and try to build up a project. A common example that people do when they're doing programming is, I'm going to build a calculator in whatever language i want to write and even that's very a simple project it's still going to get you much more than you would if it was just like okay here's if else and we have print statements in either of them like that'll obviously they're both teaching you the same sort of concepts but

one of them because you have to actually think about what you're trying to do it's going to be a much more ingrained in your knowledge and you're also going to be able to actually use that knowledge that you've built there to build upon other things you might know like maybe maybe learning this thing in c++ actually helps you with something you're trying to do in go or in rust or something like that because you didn't really know how to approach it before but now you've given yourself a problem where you have to deal with that issue now it actually expands upon something you weren't sure about somewhere else yeah exactly that's absolutely right it's it's I think even programming is all about problem solving so you need to find ways to solve a complex problem and break this into

smaller pieces. So this is, I think you can define programming with that. And in general, yeah. If we go back to, sorry, I was gonna, before we go off on a different topic, I was gonna say, you were saying about rewriting code before. I did a a six month react job and i didn't know react before i started the job and that was a um that was an experience for sure because i i went into it with literally zero react experience maybe like a month of javascript experience and it was like okay build this entire front end yourself like okay um where do i start oh yeah that's crazy yeah and then you start somewhere and you think okay this was stupid i need to rewrite this i know that feeling a lot and as soon like every time i learned some new cool thing in react all of my code from that point on would

have that cool thing in if it didn't make sense it So like, as you learn it, you're like, oh, I can do this. It's not the best way to do it, but and then you get back to the end of it like six months later, like, oh my god, what did I write? What is this mess? Why did any of this happen? Yeah, that's absolutely true. That happened to me when I learned about decorators

in Python. So that's some of these features when you learn about this. Okay, this is so useful, I could use this there and there and then you rewrite your code and implement this. When I first learned about lambdas, my code was unreadable. Oh man, that's something I haven't stepped into. But yeah, that's something I probably need to need to have a look at so what were you saying before

I cut you off before what sorry before I cut you off before what were you saying or did you forget lambdas yeah I read like a few minutes about this and I didn't understand and just okay go on to another topic

before I cut you off before to talk about the react job there's something you were saying I didn't understand. And just, okay, go on to another topic. Before I cut you off before to talk about the React job, there's something you were saying, if you remember what that was. I cannot remember. No, okay. Just go on. Let's see. What do you have on your list?

I actually haven't even touched on most of the things on here. So we don't have a ton of time left anyway, but there is one thing I do want to talk about. So, um, before, when we were trying to plan this, um, I was trying to like find out when I was working.

Um, but my work, they decided to upgrade their employee portal on the day that rosters come out because they're real smart like that And it's still isn't online. It's uh wednesday right now. So no one actually knows when they're working uh, but apparently the store like The stores themselves they can work out when people are working. It's just the individuals can't get their own roster now If you were migrating an employee portal

Would you? Shutrating an employee portal would you shut down the old portal start up the new one with no qa testing and just watch what happens is that something you would do ah no not really that sounds well, there are some maniacs in that company, yeah. I sometimes do stuff like this, but yeah, just when I'm working on my own environment. So when I have my own servers and I have a new version, I sometimes do stuff like this. But when I'm working for customers, usually you need to come up with a proper maintenance window and the migration plan and so on. Because here's the thing they took it offline for two days and it seems like all they did was switch out some HTML but somehow everything is broken. I don't know how they achieved this.

Well they didn't run both systems at the same time or anything like that they just shut one off started the next one, and just thought that was going to be perfectly fine to do. Well, that's... I mean, switching things is always a complicated process. I remember when the company I am working for switched their ticket system. So this is a pretty huge process and they told us like two years ago oh we're gonna switch the ticket system in the next six months okay after six months nothing

happened and nobody talked about this anymore and then one year later oh oh, we're going to switch the new ticket system in six months. And guess what happened? Yeah. Okay. So they extended the timeline even further a few months, but it finally happened. Okay. So it's most of the things work, of course course different with a lot of limitations so these people usually uh try to improve something and come up with a new system but they actually then then they find

out okay this is not working in the new system so how should we do that yes and come up with some workarounds and solutions okay so new system is there with some limitations. Okay, we will give that one or two years, even sometimes three years. Then it is finished probably. So usually those things take a long time. And even if you have those processes, like you usually prepare this in a development environment or even in a development and a staging environment

where you migrate certain aspects or some some yeah some test cases up to the new system do some tests do a staging release and then you do the final migration and that should be seamless yeah without any downtime so this is how it should work but in the world, it always is a problem. That's normal. I mean, I remember that every time. So when I was working in this role as an IT service guy, even before working in the IT security company,

I did a lot of those migrations of Active Directory and Exchange. If everything goes right, it's okay, it's pretty easy. But if something goes wrong, then you have a big problem. Hopefully it doesn't go too wrong. There was a story that one of my lecturers

told me about where he wrote a SQL query that he didn't properly test and he accidentally nuked the database when he was trying to clone it. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Just hope that doesn't happen. Well, such things can happen. Usually you should have a backup for this and that you can restore. That's what his job was to make the backup. Oh yeah. Okay.

That's well, okay. That's, that's a bad thing. Yeah. Well, I, I somehow in the job, even when I was working in the call center before my IT career, I was programming that system with PHP and MySQL. And I this is where I started to work on this on this contract workflow. So there was a system where those contracts go in. And this was something I coded at night, at 1 o'clock or so.

I finished that. And I thought, OK, yeah, maybe I upload the new code. And I somehow messed that because I created an infinite loop. This is a pretty stupid but common thing, yeah? So it fired up thousands of new contracts to the partner where those contracts go

and messed up their database. Oh no. Yeah, that was pretty bad. But I thought, well, why don't you have any validation on this system? Why can't I just execute thousands of SQL queries or API calls? That was not a direct SQL, but it was an API call. So why don't you have thresholds and a proper validation

of those fields? You can always point the finger on somebody else. But no, that was my bad. I know that. But those things happened happened i've learned so much from that experience because now i test everything yes that's very i upload it yeah sometimes you need to go through this sometimes you need to do things wrong uh to learn something that's in it that's just normal so i reckon it's probably a good time to close off the episode because we're getting it's getting close to 5 30 here and i have to go get ready for work in a bit um oh yeah and wasn't your window from like 8 to 10 or something something like this yeah yeah it should be getting close to 10 for you anyway yeah we have 10 minutes left so that's absolutely fine

for me that's good okay we have a good so what i usually do at the end of these episodes is give a i guess a shout out to a creator that you think deserves a bit more attention they can be on on library they can be on youtube really wherever wherever it is that you've been enjoying someone's content they can be a big creator, small one. It doesn't really matter. Oh, yeah. There's one special guy I want to shout out that's a real geek. So he has the channel on YouTube and also on library. So I probably need to find out his tag.

I think it's at... Let me just search for that because I cannot remember this tag. Following. So it's at TRG. So he does a lot of Linux stuff. Yeah, but ring your bell. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, I've heard of this channel. Yeah, oh really?

That's interesting. It's, I would say, also small YouTube and small library channel. I know everyone on library. If you have more than 100 subs, I probably know who you are, especially if you're in the Linux sphere. Yeah, so this guy is doing a lot of interesting Linux stuff. And always, he's not taking himself too seriously and doing some entertaining stuff. So I really enjoy this.

So I'm going to check out this channel. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I haven't gotten around to watching any of his content yet, but it does seem like an interesting channel for sure. Yeah. So this is a guy who is less experienced. Yeah. As,

as less experienced like me on YouTube and libraries, or he's just doing some random stuff that he's interested in. And I just like this. I just like people who just do something and don't take themselves too seriously and just do some interesting content. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool. Let's see, who do I want to mention?

Let's see if we can find someone who are watching on library right now. Who have I not given a shout out to, yeah, we'll do this one, so, apparently, I didn't, I didn't realize this until, like, very recently, uh, Lewis Rossman is on library, uh, and I cannot get his... that's not enough N's in his name. There we go. So Lewis Rossman has a very very big channel on YouTube I think close to a million or over a million but apparently he's on Library now. You can find him at Rossman Group with two N's in the name and he runs a uh a apple repair shop and recently he's been doing a lot of videos where he's been talking about how absolutely terrible the uh real the retail property prices are in

new york city and how just he doesn't want to pay 300 a square foot which is insane um but when he's not doing that he's usually doing videos where he's talking about things that Apple is doing or going like through the through the repair process on someone's device and things like that so if that sounds interesting to anyone then yeah go check out Rossmann group on library or on YouTube as well. Okay, before we sign out, where can people find you? Yeah, on YouTube and Library.

So on YouTube, you just search for The Digital Life. And on Library, it's at The Digital Life. Cool. I think it's probably... Yeah. I think it's with dash also on Twitch yeah there are some dashes and on Twitch it's also the digital life with some underscores

very consistent yeah of course cool so that's everything you want to you want to mention yeah okay well we'll sign out there then but before Cool, so that's everything you want to mention? Yeah. That's it. Well, we'll sign out there then. But before we go, I would like to thank my supporters.

So a special thank you to I think I got everyone. No, I forgot Nate Dogg. Yeah. Can't forget Nate Dogg. That's a very cool name. Anyway. Yeah, I need a better way to handle that list. Anyway,

I still don't have the outro ready, so we're just not going to have the music playing at all this episode. But how do you want to sign off the episode? I'll let you do it okay so it was very it it was very fun a lot of fun to be here so thanks for inviting me and i really appreciated this and yeah i think we can do this uh more often in the future if you want so that was pretty interesting yeah i didn't even hit on most of the topics we just talked about you being in it really like i want to talk some stuff about library as well but it didn't happen but i think it was a good episode i had a lot of fun talking as well and i would love to do this again that's cool yeah we can have another episode of library

if you want so that's sometimes down Sometimes play down the line, yeah. Okay, cool. So yeah. Yeah, cool. Um, thank you guys for watching. Uh, yeah, I'll give you the last words. Okay. Thanks everybody for watching.

Enjoy the rest of your day. Take care of yourself and I'll see you soon. That's the outro of my channel. I usually do.