In this episode, we talk with SWYX, author, speaker, podcaster, and learning in public evangelist. We dive into his career history in finance and how he transitioned into development. We also discuss the challenges of Developer Experience, the advantages of learning in public, and lessons learned from podcasting. Additionally, we get a musical performance from SWYX himself.
Bonus: We have Software Engineer, Arit Amana as a guest co-host.
✨ Episode Sponsor
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🔗 Episode Links
Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyxAuthor: Coding Career Handbook: https://www.learninpublic.org/Website: https://www.swyx.io/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/swyxTVThe Swyx Mixtape: https://swyx.transistor.fm/Swyx on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/swyxBuild Invincible Apps: https://temporal.io/Guest co-host: Arit AmanaTwitter: https://twitter.com/aritdeveloperWebsite: https://arit.dev/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aritamana/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/AritDeveloperGithub: https://github.com/msaritArit Amana on Thunder Nerds: https://youtu.be/i74Swu8Us-AHosts: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
📜 Transcript
[00:00:00] Frederick Weiss: Welcome, I’m Frederick
Weiss. And, thank you for consuming the Thunder Nerds. A conversation with the people behind the technology
that love what they do, and do tech good. And our sponsor Auth0 is helping us do that all year long. Auth0 makes it easy for developers to build a custom secure and standard-based unified log-in by
providing authentication and authorization as a service.
[00:01:08] Frederick
Weiss: Try them out now by going to Auth0.com. Also, check them out at youtube.com/Auth0, Twitch.tv/Auth0, and Avocadolabs.dev for their online meetup events. Thanks again,
Auth0. And let's go ahead and welcome our guests, you know, speaking of the guests, we actually
have a co-host on the show today, which I'm so grateful to have.
[00:01:44] Frederick
Weiss: We have Arit Amana.
Thank you so much for a guest hosting!
[00:01:48] Arit
Amana: Thanks for having me. It's great to be back.
[00:01:52] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. And with that being said, and no
ados being
further, let's get to our guests for today. Learning in public evangelist, speaker, author, teacher
writer, programmer podcaster.
[00:02:08] Frederick
Weiss: SWYX himself.
Welcome to the show.
[00:02:13] SWYX: Thanks. Yeah.
[00:02:16] Frederick
Weiss: Thanks. I feel really lucky to have both of you on the show today. So
thanks both of you, I guess, at the start for, for sharing your time. I know it's always, um, a little
challenging on a Saturday, so, you know, thanks again. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, um, you know, I know you were having
some issues SWYX with, uh, with traveling.
[00:02:39] Frederick
Weiss: Uh, do you mind talking a little bit about that? I think, uh, you got
caught up. Uh, Trump travel ban. And now you're back in Washington.
[00:02:47] SWYX: Yes, sir. Seattle. Um, yeah, I went to Croatia for a conference. They shift conferences as
amazing as my first in-person conference in a long, long time. Uh, and it's always amazing to have like
an all-expenses paid, uh, conference travel
trip.
[00:03:05] SWYX: And so I, I went with it with all my friends who were also speakers and had a really good
time there and give a, give a talk and met a lot of interesting people, came back to the immigration gates
and got turned around by the customs and border patrol because they said that I came from a restricted
country.
[00:03:25] SWYX: So, uh, it turns out that, uh, I mean, I knew in concept about the chunk travel ban, but
like that was imposed. Early in the pandemic. And I had the vaccine and I had a negative COVID test. I just
assumed that I'd be fine. Uh, cause like it's like I have American vaccine in me. Uh, but no, it
just as a, as a, as a rule of law by executive proclamation, uh, I am a higher COVID risk because I have the
wrong piece of paper.
[00:03:53] SWYX: Uh, so I had to go quarantine in Mexico for, for 14 days. Uh, don't really speak the
language. Didn't have a place to stay. Didn't have any cash on me, uh, and just had to figure it
out. Wow.
[00:04:05] Frederick
Weiss: So what did, did you, did you not have a, like your COVID registration
card or did that just
[00:04:11] SWYX: not count the matter? Yeah.
[00:04:13] SWYX: It didn't
[00:04:13] Frederick
Weiss: matter. It didn't matter. That is so crazy. Well, you know, speaking
of your travels then I, I know you said you had got caught up in Mexico. Um, you know, w within these
travels, how, how was everything did you feel safe with, with the, uh, with the vid going around? Like, was
everybody mask app is a little bit better than, than here?
[00:04:34] SWYX: Um, everyone's, everyone's fairly actually, I think, yeah. I would say, I'll
say that Europe is actually more uptight or strict about having a mask on properly and at all times. So, uh,
yeah, that's, that's even the ironically surprising bit that the US is enforcing Europe travel ban when, uh, okay. Quite honestly,
Europe is doing a better job of keeping them.
[00:04:56] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's, it's
interesting how that, that all works and hopefully within, um, I don't know, maybe I'm being
optimistic in six months. We'll get to a place that's a little bit better. It seems that
those Delta variances are kind of slowing down in certain
locations in the United States and the same thing with, what is it?
[00:05:15] Frederick
Weiss: I don't know how you pronounce it.
[00:05:19] SWYX: Lambda.
[00:05:20] Arit
Amana: There's a new one. Yeah. Lambdas picking up.
[00:05:26] SWYX: Oh, is
[00:05:26] Frederick
Weiss: that the one that's supposed to be like resistant to the vaccine or
something such as that, um, maybe we'll get back to, uh, feeling safe again, you know, going to
conferences and seeing people and all that, but, uh, yeah.
[00:05:41] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I, think we have to, uh, it's, there
are too many smart people out there to not get us through, uh, the
situation.
[00:05:55] Frederick
Weiss: So switch, tell me a little bit about yourself and your own words. I
know X is from your, your name, Sean, and it's the initials within Chinese of your English and American
name. Um, would you mind just giving our audience a brief, uh, context about
[00:06:12] SWYX: yourself? Yeah, I'm born and raised in Singapore and came to the states for
college.
[00:06:16] SWYX: Uh, and I spent my first career in finance where I did, uh, investment banking and hedge
funds mostly learn to code on the job, but I never had the title of a software engineer. So I made my own
tools, but I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't do any software engineering best practices, no testing.
Haha no version control.
[00:06:36] SWYX: Ha. It was fantastic. Uh, I had, I came out of investment banking with a 4,000 line, uh,
uh, VBA script that I copied and emailed to myself every single time. Chemo with a new version. So that was
my version control.
[00:06:55] SWYX: Uh, yeah. It's, it's on, it's on, they get up just actually, cause I, I lost it
for a while and then I was like, wait, hang on. Like, that was the most significant program I ever made
America years. I better figure it out. So if you search my Twitter and look for VBA, you'll see it. Um,
and yeah, eventually I burned out at the finance bit.
[00:07:13] SWYX: Uh, it was very stressful, and uh, I think it's not very good for, um, just like
fundamentally it's very closed. Uh, ecosystem very zero-sum like, I win you lose. And I realized that,
uh, it wasn't actually compounding. That was the main thing I was okay with. Zero-sum actually because
like somethings have to be, but, uh, it wasn't compounding.
[00:07:34] SWYX: So whatever trade I made, whether or not it made money, the next trade, uh, would have to
top it. And if I lost money, I would have to make up what I lost. Um, and it was just like a black hole of,
of ideas and, and energy. And after two years of day-to-day stress, you know, some days, uh, just sleeping
under the table, cause I was just too tired to go home.
[00:07:55] SWYX: Um, I just, I had enough, I just burned out. Um, and it wasn't, it wasn't like, I
think it was like a 50 50, like me and them thing. Like, uh, I think that, uh, you know, there are some
people who are just really insanely talented at it. Uh, but I put in my all for two years and I there's
a, there's like a company wide ranking of like analysts and I came in in the middle, um, and I looked at
the people who are at the top and I was like, I'm not.
[00:08:19] SWYX: You know, so, uh, but there was one thing I was good at, which is coding, uh, which was
like making my own tools. And I realized that, um, I was doing a lot of number crunching. So I did, uh,
Python and Haskell uh number-crunching for my derivatives trades and for my portfolio risk management. Um,
and I was often the script monkey whenever people wanted to make any changes to calculations or like, Hey,
like, can you rerun the analysis?
[00:08:42] SWYX: Like in this different way, I would have to go back and punch those numbers in and get the
numbers out and then like send it back to them. Um, if I could remove myself from that equation, then, uh,
people would get. Use out of my, my work without me there. Uh, and that's what led me to front end
development and JavaScript.
[00:08:59] SWYX: Um, I think actually front end developers, don't under, don't appreciate sometimes
the power that they have in creating applications that standalone without them. And they can scale basically
infinitely without any resources whatsoever, apart from the browser. That's just an amazing tool. So,
uh, yeah, I, I, and, you know, even despite all the language that I learned Java was the hardest.
[00:09:23] SWYX: So I tried six months of self-learning with free code camp and I didn't feel it was enough. So I enrolled in a bootcamp and
that got me my first job. Uh, so I did, uh, so just to wrap up, I did, uh, I did a year and two Sigma and
then joined Netlify, that's kind of my claim to fame where I, I joined fairly, fairly early on and then,
uh, grew with them and, uh, and then joined AWS, uh, to do.
[00:09:46] SWYX: More like basically five-plus plus,
because like, it was a Netlify competitor to plus storage plus, you know, uh, AWS often stuff like that. Um,
and then year early this year I joined Tim portal as had a developer experience. Yeah, that's it. Well,
[00:10:02] Frederick
Weiss: let me ask you this question. I want to jump back to what you're
doing now, but there's a lot of us that we, we, we start off in these careers that we believe are, um,
you know, the best path for us or, you know, I went to school for this, or my family told me to do this, or
I, I feel like I'll be able to make the most money in this.
[00:10:21] Frederick
Weiss: What, what exactly got you into finance? And, um, what, what, yeah, I
mean, you, you went into the turning point, but w was there an actual love or a passion for finance, and
then you kind of discovered your actual
[00:10:36] SWYX: passion. I think there was a, there was passion, otherwise, I wouldn't have stuck with
it for so long.
[00:10:42] SWYX: Um, I w what got me into it was honestly the 1997 and 2001 financial crisis. So 1997 is not
such a big deal for Americans, but, uh, in Asia it was a big deal. Uh, there was an Asian financial crisis currency crisis, uh, entire governments collapse because of mismanagement of
their, uh, economy. So, um, and also hedge funds.
[00:11:07] SWYX: But, but, uh, I realized that basically every other job, every other industry is inherently
tied to the economy, except if you deal in finance, and if you can short the market when everything is going
to hell, and I kind of saw that again, during college. Because I already decided on Korean finance, but
during college, uh, I went through the great financial crisis of 2007, 2008.
[00:11:35] SWYX: And again like everyone, you know, out of a job or like overextended in your loans or
whatever, but if you're a hedge fund, you were managed, you managed to be able to short the market. So
it seemed like the only career where, uh, if you could call bullshit on those. I'm sorry. I don't
know if I can swear. I think I'll be S on, on, on, uh, sometimes central bankers who are quite frankly,
you know, they, they view their confidence, men, confidence, women.
[00:12:02] SWYX: Like they, the, they say things that are, may not actually be true. And if, if you, if you
cash them out doing it, you can actually make a lot of money. But at the bare minimum, you can at least look
after yourself. If everything is going to, you know, too, to
hell in a handbasket, as you can actually, you know, move yourself to cash or like you are.
[00:12:21] SWYX: In the center of the financial transformation of assets. And I think that's a very
powerful position to be in. And I thought if I could understand that and get good at it, then, um, it would
be, it would be a really great position to be in. Um, I think I, I got there in understanding, but I
wasn't good at it.
[00:12:42] SWYX: That's kind of the summary of it. Um, I also didn't like the people I would say
like, yeah, there were a lot of, um, um, I think money, money is money is an interesting thing. And when you
deal with other people's money and you deal in very large sums of it, like we were three, we're a
three person team running a billion dollars in, uh, gross notional value.
[00:13:05] SWYX: Why say was a notional. Uh, it's not actually, we didn't have a billion dollars
sitting around, uh, that was including the shorts that we had. So we were a market-neutral, long, short funds. So we had to buy $500 million worth of
shares, but then also shorts, uh, 500 million of other shares that which will hopefully go down and make
profit on a difference.
[00:13:26] SWYX: And yeah. I mean, I thought that that was my deal position. I spent 10 years getting there
and I got there and I realized I didn't like it. Um, so, uh, was, that was the second part of the
question
[00:13:39] Arit
Amana: I'll go ahead. No, no, no, please. No, I had, that's an,
that's an incredible story suite I have to say. And
I guess a follow-up question.
[00:13:47] Arit
Amana: I know we need to get to the rest of our talking points, but I'm
curious to hear you speak about how you, cause it takes a lot of courage. I feel like you can know that
something isn't working for you and you can know that I'm not happy here and I'm not as
fulfilled as I thought that I was going to be, but I still think it takes a certain level of courage to walk
away from the familiar.
[00:14:08] Arit
Amana: So can you talk about like how, how you. More. So the, the mental and
the emotional side, I mean, we know you transitioned out of that job, but if you could speak to maybe any
challenges you faced either mentally or emotionally, or in terms of, yeah. Right.
[00:14:25] SWYX: I speak to a lot of, uh, finance refugees who are like me, they heard my story and then,
and then they want to do it, but then they're kind of like, but I have a really comfortable life, you
know, I get paid well in finance.
[00:14:36] SWYX: Like, do you want me to walk away from this? Uh, and yeah. You know, and changing careers,
like, you know, I, unfortunately, I don't have like a kids or anything, so it was a little bit
easier for me, but changing careers, uh, at the, you know, at the age of 30. Is still something that's
intimidating. I think it's like, you feel like you should have, you should be hitting your
stride.
[00:14:56] SWYX: You should be, uh, it should be well-known in your industry by now. And to say like, ah,
screw it. I'm going to start over is you have to be in certain point of like, uh, understanding that
there's a lot of life left and it's life is too short to, um, to spend doing something that you
don't enjoy or are not good at.
[00:15:15] SWYX: Um,
[00:15:15] Frederick
Weiss: it reminds me of a tweet. You just put out the other day where, and
I'm going to read this verbatim, so I get it right. There's a lot of quick quote, unquote, quit your
job, indie hack your way to freedom on social media. I want to articulate a middle path, a work at a company
on interesting problems, but also maintain side projects, reputation as backup and longterm game.
[00:15:40] Frederick
Weiss: AKA have a job while not being your job. That kind of.
[00:15:47] SWYX: Is that fair? Um, that was that's a slightly tangential thing. Uh, but I was definitely
my job, uh, went during finance. Like there was nothing else about me apart from my job. Um, and I think,
but it also applies to a lot of devs who are their job and that's their whole identity and they're
kind of banking on their job, treating them well to take care of them.
[00:16:07] SWYX: Long-term, uh, I don't think it serves them very well sometimes because I find that
basically, you know, jobs don't have your long-term best interest at heart. They, they wants to slot you
in to, um, somewhere within the hierarchy, uh, to, for you to perform according to the letters and career
metrics that they've defined.
[00:16:25] SWYX: Um, but sometimes they don't know what your interests are and if your interest diverged
at all from the company, then you're kind of screwed. If you don't have a network outside of your
job, um, and to build a network, you probably should do something interesting to others that are interesting
to them beyond the company that you work at.
[00:16:42] SWYX: So. Yeah. Th this tweet is a more recent realization, nothing to do with the finance bit.
Um, but it, I guess it's related.
[00:16:52] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I was just thinking it, thinking as a way of a, more of like
advice for people that, you know, you, you don't, don't, don't, you know, if you're looking
to do something, you don't have to jump off a bridge to get to a shift.
[00:17:03] Frederick
Weiss: You know, you, you know, you, you can work at where you're at and
kind of build up and then find that. Or, you know, some, sometimes it makes sense to just drop what
you're doing and go,
[00:17:14] SWYX: go, go forward for anyone who's considering a career change or anyone who knows a
friend who's considering a career change.
[00:17:20] SWYX: This is exactly what I did. I took a year to do it. Um, I left my hedge fund. I joined a
startup that was serving my hedge funds. Um, so I went from customer to employee. Uh, and so I was tech
adjacent, right? I was tech and Jason and still using my finance knowledge, but, uh, trying out a, uh, a
startup role, I was a non-technical product manage.
[00:17:43] SWYX: And, uh, while I was there, I learned to code on decide, uh, F using free code camp.
I'm a massive supporter of them. I've donated to them every year since I graduated. Um, and, uh,
they really, they're really helpful in trying this
on and seeing if you can hack it as a, as a developer.
[00:18:02] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Sorry.
[00:18:02] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah,
[00:18:04] Arit
Amana: I do. Yes. Yes, I do. I love free code camp as well. You're so
right. This is just a really robust platform. And I feel anyone, anyone who's heard my story and reaches
out to me asking that they want to do the same thing. I always point them to free code camp. I'm like,
if you can gain all those certificates and have fun doing free code camp, then you, you could probably, you
know, um, make it as a Dell, as a developer and enjoy it, which is also important.
[00:18:32] SWYX: Yeah. Yeah. How long did you take to go through this whole thing?
[00:18:36] Arit
Amana: Uh, my journey was 11 months, 11 months from. My first line of code to
my first job was 11 months. Yeah.
[00:18:46] SWYX: That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah.
[00:18:48] Arit
Amana: Yeah. But I had a lot of privilege working for me, so I don't want
to make it sound like it was, you know, yeah.
[00:18:55] Arit
Amana: I had, I had a lot of perks like I didn't have to work. And so that
was a huge, you know, like burden not to have is, you know, not worry about bringing a paycheck. Yeah. I
would say that was the biggest part of my privilege was not having to work, but it wasn't easy. I had,
an infant daughter and a son, so it wasn't easy by, by any means.
[00:19:16] Arit
Amana: Um, I would like to segue if it's okay with you switch into your
current work as a developer experience, I feel like there should be a third word. I should be singing.
Right.
[00:19:29] SWYX: The title is head of developer experience. It's kind of
[00:19:31] Arit
Amana: head of developer experience. Thank you. At temporal.io. Uh, talk to us
about what developer experience is, um, and what your day-to-day is like in that.
[00:19:42] SWYX: Sure. I, I, I've been asked to, uh, various versions of this car for quite recently,
and there's a lot of interest around this. I
don't really know why. Um, so I segment developer expert into a kind of two, two large segment sections,
and then I'll focus on the section that I part I focus on. Uh, so internal developer experience, uh, is
often formed by companies and teams that have a lot of developers internally and they want to improve their
productivity.
[00:20:11] SWYX: So you see developer experience teams that like Spotify or slack or, um, Netflix, uh, their
customers are not developers, but internally they have a lot of developers. And, uh, if you can improve the
productivity of 1% of them, then you just gained the equivalent of like a hundred developers for free.
Right?
[00:20:30] SWYX: So, uh, for those people, the way that I split it up is kind of. You there the three main
buckets. And I think the Netflix model was really interesting. If you listen to their podcast, they talk a
little bit about it. Uh, it was just essentially, uh, getting people started really quickly. So boots, the
bootstrap phase.
[00:20:48] SWYX: That's the first bit, the second bit is, uh, getting from code to deploy really, really
quickly. So that's kind of deployment, I guess, or CIC D and then the last bit is getting from
production back to deployment. So getting data logs, errors, all that, uh, feeding that into the dev
environment so that they can respond to incidents or outages or errors very quickly.
[00:21:11] SWYX: So, uh, that's kind of like the full software development life cycle that I really like
in internal developer experience. And I think when development and developer tools companies like the one I
work at or Netlify, or AWS, we try to market to developers, then that becomes external developer
experience.
[00:21:28] SWYX: So, um, what we are trying to do is we're trying to serve these internal developer
experience teams or the VP of edge or. Whoever, uh, is trying to make their own life more productive because
obviously suffered development is as cool as it is. It's still very unproductive in some elements and we
could do better with better tooling.
[00:21:47] SWYX: So external developer experience, uh, Kind of mostly right now developer relations, which
is, Hey, we have an awesome, we have an awesome product. Uh, let me tell you about it. Right. Um, but, but
that's a lot of content marketing. So, you know, you see people writing blog posts, giving talks and
doing workshops and stuff like that.
[00:22:05] SWYX: Um, but also I think it's starting to evolve a little bit more into community
management. So instead of me telling you what to do, or, uh, uh, me traveling out to, uh, you know, travel
the world and do conference talks, um, let's actually have a community where people talk to each other,
people hire each other people, uh, build libraries that help, uh, an open source for each other.
[00:22:27] SWYX: And they realized that a more vibrant community actually is, uh, is a more sustainable moat
than turning out content day after day after. Right. So, uh, there's the concept piece, there's the
community piece. And then the last piece, which in my mind is that forms of external facing developer
experience is the product piece.
[00:22:46] SWYX: Uh, what I mean by products is that, um, that no amount of advocacy you can do in the
content, no amount of community, user generated content or a forum support or. Uh, or conferences or what
have you no mana that can fix a broken product. And if you could just give really good feedback to your
engineers and PMs about, Hey, I talked to a lot of users as part of my job.
[00:23:10] SWYX: Uh, here's all, here's what, here's the pain points and here's how, what
they struggle with when they go through our product right now. And if you build that into the product that
people don't have to docs, they don't have to read blog posts. They don't have to read, they
don't have to talk to any other humans.
[00:23:22] SWYX: It just use your thing. And it just.
[00:23:26] Arit
Amana: Awesome. You know, I hear you speak about, um, just with the
descriptions that you gave and thank you so much for that was very helpful for me. What's the
delineation between developer experience and developer relations, which is another term that I'm hearing
more and more.
[00:23:40] Arit
Amana: Um, could you speak, uh, can you speak to how you manage the flow of
information as head of developer experience? Because from what I hear you describe, there's like a lot
of feedback, feedback loops happening either between the DX people and the developers, whether internal,
external, how do you, um, handle all that flow of information and even from the applications and the
technology itself, and how do you handle that and almost, um, um, like manage that information in a way that
it, it becomes usable and actionable for the, for, for other.
[00:24:20] SWYX: We don't handle it very well.
[00:24:25] SWYX: Let's just be honest, right? Like we're still figuring this out. Like, um, I, I
don't want to say, you know, I want to sit here in front of you and say like, I have this all on. I
figure it out. Um, what we do is we hire really capable people. And then we talk a lot and we talk about the
things that we've come across and we have a, what we call a CRM, a customer relationship management
tool.
[00:24:47] SWYX: That's the notion essentially like we take notes, uh, when we interact with customers
and potential customers. But also we, when you run an open-source tool, custom portal.io is open source. Um, there's just sometimes too many anonymous
customers who, who you never really talked to again. So, uh, it's hard to take notes on everyone and
it's unrealistic.
[00:25:07] SWYX: So we don't do that. Uh, we do that for, you know, large names and prospective
customers that we expect to have along dealing with. Um, and then. Surfacing issues in a holistic manner. So
we love the word holistic internally within temporal. To me, what that means is like, okay, where does this
slot within a developer's journey through temporal, right?
[00:25:31] SWYX: Like, uh, from the landing page to onto the first page of the docs to the hello world. Um,
do we throw the book at them or do we, uh, I realized though the book is an idiom. So a book at them, like,
do we, like how much information do we overload you with and how much is above the fold? Cause that's
quite realistically all you're going to read on your first encounter.
[00:25:53] SWYX: Um, and so what can we squeeze in there that will get you interested in and get you to come
back? And then maybe the next level is after your interest, like, how do you get you to a hello world that
is not only productive but also like it's insincerely is something that you cannot. Uh, on your own or
something that you would take a lot longer to do with other tools.
[00:26:16] SWYX: Um, and then once you've decided to use the tool, how do we get you to production with
all the best practices that we found so far, uh, deploying on your own cloud or on ours and, and then once
you've deployed it, like, what are the practices for optimization and scaling? No. So, so there's a
whole journey that we've been mapping out and I'm using that essentially to coordinate, um, how we
structured the docs, how we do developer relations, like, uh, workshops and our content and all that.
[00:26:44] SWYX: Uh, and then community-wise, I think
it's really helpful when people give you feedback, where does it slot in that, in, in that journey. So,
um, and then hopefully you've you build it out, but, um, I don't mean to say it's a, any, by any
means scientific, um, you know, we're a small team, um, that is serving a fairly large user base, uh,
and it's a very complex product.
[00:27:07] SWYX: So a lot of things get dropped. Maybe we could do a better job of it, but also I would just
need someone full-time taking notes.
[00:27:17] Arit
Amana: Thank you so much. Um, and, uh, just rounding up, I guess, this section,
um, it sounds like interesting work, um, very involved work, but as a developer, it doesn't sound like
there's a lot of coding involved in developer experience work. And so how do you handle that as a
developer individually? And how do you keep your coding skills sharp?
[00:27:38] Arit
Amana: If your day job is wrapped up in that kind of.
[00:27:43] SWYX: Yeah. Um, to some extent I've already given up and being like a full-time developer. So
you just have to make a piece with that. Um, and, but, uh, you know, we do we do code, uh, so I'll give
you examples. Um, and Netlify where I used to work. Uh, our developer relations program formerly had a
rotation onto an edge team for one quarter of the year.
[00:28:05] SWYX: So three months out of the 12 months of a year, you are on the edge team. You do not have
any different responsibilities and you take tickets, you execute on them, you understand architecture,
your document, you write tests, uh, all the other
engineering stuff. So you keep sharp, you work on the products and then you go evangelize the
product.
[00:28:20] SWYX: I think that's a really nice thing to do. Unfortunately, three months is actually quite
a short time. So onboard and offboard. So people can give you long-running tasks and stuff like that. So, uh, I, on some level
you're still not a real engineer, right? You're not maintaining something day in and day out.
[00:28:37] SWYX: You're not on call for the thing that you wrote nine months ago. Like, uh, there are a
lot of nuances that, uh, you just don't get if you're a tourist, uh, and in that space. Whereas, um,
we do write a lot of, uh, example code, so demos workshops, stuff like that. And for me, so for example,
we're building out a TypeScript SDK, um, I'm engaged in API design and that's some of the
heaviest technical challenges I've ever faced.
[00:29:02] SWYX: Uh, even though I'm not writing. Production code. I am determining the design of
production code for years to come, which is a fairly high-stress job. Um, so I mean, it's not high stress. I mean, I'm, uh, I'm enjoying it.
I'm just saying like, uh, to say that that is not technical as a joke like we're discussing,
we're discussing, uh, API design and like implementation details and stuff like that.
[00:29:27] SWYX: Um, there's, there are a thousand
more ways to be technical than like hands-on keyboard
committing code. So, uh, I don't know. I think that's, I'm enjoying it and it's, I'm not
scared if I ever have to go full-time coding again.
[00:29:47] Frederick
Weiss: Well, speaking of coding, I'd love to talk about our next subject,
which is the, uh, coding, a coding career handbook.
[00:29:56] Frederick
Weiss: Um, so first off, when did you write this?
[00:30:01] SWYX: a few years ago. No, this is April to May,
uh, April to June 2020. There was last year. Yeah.
[00:30:07] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Sorry. That's what I meant by if your time is going by
quickly. Uh, so what was the, what was the catalyst? What, what
made you write this book?
[00:30:16] SWYX: I had two months off between uh Netlify and, and, uh, Amazon. So I, uh, I decided that I
wanted to do it in India. Everyone was like launching their own books and like running your own courses. I
was like, okay, okay, I'll get into this. And, you know, uh, I looked around for what's, which of my
blog posts have had the most readers.
[00:30:35] SWYX: And my blog was on learning and public has had over a million. And constantly get
shoutouts there, bots that like are written because of it
there are translations. I think there are like 10 different translations now of, of that essay. And
so it really resonated. And I was, and I was like, okay, probably people want this as a book.
[00:30:54] SWYX: So I expanded upon it. I was like, okay, I'll, I'll try to make this like a
two-week project because Daniel Vassallo and Twitter-like encouraged me, like, you know, just to get started to
get it out there. I ended up planning on 50 chapters, uh, and having to cut it down because I, I,
there's no way I was gonna ship 50 chapters and, and then just wrote and wrote and wrote for two months
and, uh, wrote everything that I thought was true.
[00:31:21] SWYX: What's what, there's a little bit of imposter syndrome giving out career advice
because everyone's journey is different. Everyone starts from a different place, you know, depending on
your privilege and, uh, your, you know, just your circumstances. Right? So, um, how do you get around that
is you collect advice from other people?
[00:31:37] SWYX: So, um, it's, this is not advice, not just advice from me, this advice from 1400 other
resources that I collected and put in the bibliography of the book. So it's very much a starting point
for like, okay, you just graduated from your Bootcamp or your free code camp. Um, here's every, let's say you just got your first job as
a.
[00:31:55] SWYX: Um, I, I try not to address the like first job hunts thing because a lot of other resources
do that. So I think that's overcrowded, but, um, it's very important by the way, you don't have
a job. You don't, you're not starting on the rest of the journey, but once you get in the job, um,
the people stop learning and they're not reading.
[00:32:12] SWYX: They're not resources to get you from junior to senior. And guess what? Like, most
people want to hire senior engineers, not juniors. Uh, so my focus was to level you up from junior to
senior. And that was the entire messaging entire focus of like, okay, here's everything that they
don't tell you when you start the job.
[00:32:27] SWYX: Uh, I think it's the equivalent of having a good mentor, um, at work. And sometimes you
don't get to choose your mentor, you just show up and they assign you someone and they may or may not be
that great. And I'm finding that so many people are mistreated by the employee or just like
under-resourced by their employer.
[00:32:44] SWYX: So they come to me and, uh, I try to help them as best as I can.
[00:32:48] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I love too that you have like a full-on, like, it's very interactive too. Like you can obviously buy
the book, but you also have all this other material. Do you mind kind of touching on like the, uh, the
advanced options of, of the purchase?
[00:33:02] SWYX: Yeah, I've actually simplified. I used to have three tiers and that was just like,
okay. Let's like trying to make the most money out
of this thing. And I realized like, I, you know, I have a, I have a good job. Uh, I don't need, I
don't need to maximize the money. I just need to charge for my time. And also, I don't want to like
add on another monthly charge to people's bills and stuff like that.
[00:33:21] SWYX: It's just super stressful. I'm, I'm sick of all the subscriptions I'm
paying. So I made it a one-time fee if you want the book, get the book, but it's already like, you know,
pirated too, to oblivion. Um, what, what really, what really
matters is the community, like read the book together with other people, reading the book and me and ask me
questions as you go along.
[00:33:42] SWYX: It's a one-time fee of like, I don't know, like 40, 50. Uh, 40 bucks and, and yeah,
and I have a discord and I have a circled forum and we
chat about the book we meet up. Uh, I show you how I wrote the book cause I have, um, you know, recorded
lectures and stuff like that. Um, and I give you extra commentary. So, um, it's everything I think, uh,
I think it's, I think it's just, uh, uh, steel of my time, but, uh, I love, I love running the
community and like, I love the the chats that we have.
[00:34:10] SWYX: I have people showing up and saying, they asked me questions, and then you go away and come back seven months later and they go like, Hey,
by the way, you know, uh, I, uh, I haven't, I've been pretty quiet, but like, this is what I've
done in my, in my job. And, um, I had, I had a couple of people. Go from actually go from junior to
senior.
[00:34:25] SWYX: And one of them doubled their pay, um, going from junior to senior. And, uh, I was just,
you know, I mean, I can't take credit for all of it, but I can, I can at least say I helped them, uh,
with allowed their questions and their interviewing and stuff like that. And it's just really cool to
run a community on the side where people have a trusted place.
[00:34:42] SWYX: They can talk about career stuff apart from their friend network who may not be developers
apart from the people at work who may, you know, you can't be 100% honest with them. Uh, but here you
can, because we're all, we're all interested in growing ourselves and in our careers,
[00:34:59] Frederick
Weiss: speaking of, uh, trusting people, uh, I wanted to talk a little bit
about the whole learn in public thing.
[00:35:05] Frederick
Weiss: If you don't mind, like, uh, I, I'm going to read a little bit
from one of the PDFs that you had for free on here. Uh, one of the chapters, which you communicate that, you
know, uh, you've been trained your entire life to learn and practice. And keep what you learned to
yourself. Success is doing things better than everyone else around you.
[00:35:25] Frederick
Weiss: And of course, I'm going to just, just with brevity to just kind of,
I'm just reading some things here, but, and of course you don't share your secrets with competitors,
uh, which I found super interesting. And then you have here a point about Eagle, this programming, where,
uh, you could learn so much on the internet for the low, low price of your ego.
[00:35:46] Frederick
Weiss: Do you mind just kind of speaking about this whole, um, learn in public.
Y, uh, it's, it's important to let go of that feeling of, oh, you know, I don't want to put my
ideas out there because, you know, I might get, um, you know, shamed for it or something such as this. And
you know, one of the things that I did see, um, you talked a little bit about, you know, you don't want
to build a brand of, you know, somebody not knowing things, but it's also really.
[00:36:13] Frederick
Weiss: Put yourself out there and get some eyeballs and, and kind of share your
learning experience with everybody, right?
[00:36:20] SWYX: Yeah, that's true. Um, I think it basically takes advantage of the fact that tech is a
fundamentally open and positive industry. Uh, we are encouraged to go on stage and share our lessons and our
failures and that's, what gets voted on hacker
news.
[00:36:37] SWYX: You know, we open-source our code that
we, we wrote, uh, in a, in an attempt mostly to hire more engineers, but also to spread good ideas. And, you
know, partially the company I work at is, is a benefactor of that. Uh, you know, temper, uh, Uber had no
reason to allow open-sourcing temporal, but like, uh, it got a lot of traction and externally you got a lot
of contributions and then eventually the whole
community benefited as a, as a result of that.
[00:37:03] SWYX: Um, and so I think if, I think if you do that for your own learning, you actually learn
much faster than you. Um, by yourself. And there's a, there's a few reasons why, so the first reason
that I, I, I think I list like nine reasons. So I'm not going to go through all of them. This is way too
long. But, um, the, the most important reason to me is the feedback loop.
[00:37:22] SWYX: Um, because when you start off learning, it's a, it's always a burst of inspiration
and motivation, like, okay, today's going to be the day I change my life. I will get good at whatever it
is I'm trying to get good at. Uh, and then you get into it, and then you're like, oh, okay, this is
actually hard. And then you give up, um, so what the learning public does is actually it gives you a
feedback loop of like, okay, when you share what you learned and people respond to you, you have some
impetus and external expectations to go.
[00:37:47] SWYX: Like actually, you know, other people are in the same boat with me or they're mentoring
me, or they're looking up to me. I gotta keep. Um, and, and that feedback loop actually turns, it turns
it into a positive cycle of like, okay, I'll, I'll share what I learn, get feedback on what I
learned and then go fill in the gaps on what, I didn't know that I thought I, that I thought I
knew.
[00:38:09] SWYX: Um, and that's just a fundamental thing. Like I've done it for maybe four to five
years now. Um, and I've already had amazing success. And I just can't imagine that. What if, what
happens when I do it for 40 years or 50 years? And I think a life of life lives where you learn together
with others, uh, that you learned in public.
[00:38:29] SWYX: Uh, such a more fulfilling one than something where you keep everything to yourself. Um,
and people have no, uh, it's just, it's just like, it's, it's just inherently better. Uh, I
even have the math to prove it. So I call this a big L notation. So it's comparable to the big O
notation. The algorithm for big L notation is a log of N which N be the number of years.
[00:38:51] SWYX: And it's always the question of like, how do you grow better than the average by a
number of years, we all know that years of experience is not a very good metric. Um, but we still do it
right. I, I, my company does it and we don't have any other better objective number to gauge the amount
of experience or knowledge or skills that a person has just off of a one-line judgment.
[00:39:13] SWYX: Um, but as an, as an engineer or as a. With the, with the knowledge was it was a knowledge
worker. How do you grow your skills disproportionately to your career? Um, to your years of experience? Like
you need a different algorithm. Is this the same as big
O right? Like if you're on the algorithm, no matter how hard you try it, you're, you're just
going to grow by the big O of your algorithm that you picked.
[00:39:34] SWYX: So if the different algorithm is instead of learning private learning public, and we learn
in public, you. Uh, another factor, which is P so, uh, the number of people that you learn with. Um, and so,
uh, L L N times P uh, that's, that's kind of like the the mathematical improvement on that, uh,
because, um, you grow by essentially the number of important questions that you are the answer.
[00:39:57] SWYX: And sometimes you answer when people ask questions of you, um, they ask they're asking
something that you never know. That you didn't know. And so you, you, you should try it. You tend to
uncover things a lot faster. Um, and also when, whenever you get anything wrong, um, you will just remember
a lot faster. So, and people, people will crawl over broken glass to remind you of something that you got
wrong.
[00:40:18] SWYX: So, uh, it's just a funny way that the internet works, but I just really like it
because, um, you know, the only thing that you lose is some sense of ego that you got everything right on
the first try. And if you can let go of that, you can learn so much.
[00:40:33] Arit
Amana: Do you feel like, uh, what would you say to someone who may be saying, what if I put, you know, I'm learning in public and I put
my mistakes, quote, unquote, out on the internet.
[00:40:45] Arit
Amana: Um, what if they come back to bite me or what if they come back to, you
know, like how, if I put my mistakes out, how do I then convince people that these mistakes that I made, or
it may not even be a mistake? It might just be like substandard code, for example, or substandard. Um, Um,
convention, you know, it could be, it doesn't have to be like a wrong thing, but it might just be maybe
not as optimized, for example, how do I then convince people that I've grown past that level?
[00:41:16] SWYX: Ooh. Um, sometimes yeah, just a track record of putting up increasingly better stuff. Um, I
don't think there's any shortcut to it. Uh, so by the way, uh, there are definitely repercussions
for this and you do have to be careful. Um, I have lost friends over it. I have, I have, uh, put out some
stuff I should not have put out because it was in private conversation or a not public yet or something like
some stuff like that.
[00:41:41] SWYX: Um, and you have to recognize that there's a certain journalistic responsibility that
you have when it comes to affecting other people. Like if it's yourself, you can be as public as you
want. And nobody cares. But if, if it involves other people, other people may have a different preference
level. Uh, sharing that they do online and you need to need to take care of not to hurt them.
[00:42:00] SWYX: Right. Um, and that's on, that's on you, that's on me. Um, and all that. Um,
but uh, specifically people judging you because of bad stuff that you put out. Uh, I don't mind, I
don't mind, again, that's part of the ego, right? Like, uh, it's part of the journey of like,
you had to put out the bad thing in order to get good.
[00:42:18] SWYX: Um, and guess what, like a year from now, two years from now, you should look back on what
you put out and you should, you should think of that. It's terrible because that's that, that way,
you know, that you've grown. So, um, if you try to only put out, you know, the best perfect quality
every time you might find yourself less productive than you would if you just put out the incremental steps
along the way.
[00:42:38] SWYX: And I think people, um, there's a certain amount of like you can't please
everybody. Um, and so the people who get it, get it, and we'll support you along the way. And the people
who judge you based on your first impression of you, you don't need them in your life.
[00:42:55] Frederick
Weiss: And it's also, you're going to be, uh, people are going to more
appreciate that kind of level of granularity. If you're if you're putting out those details, right.
It, it, it provides an opportunity for others to learn. Like if you're, I dunno if you're a designer
and you go to dribble and you see all these, like, you know, beautiful designs, but you don't
seem like the actual, like pen and paper sketches of how
somebody got to that idea.
[00:43:17] Frederick
Weiss: Like, that's, that's the good meaty stuff that really helps
people learn. Right. Wouldn't you agree?
[00:43:23] SWYX: Yeah. Oh, okay. I'll say, I'll say this. Some people want, uh, different levels of
signals versus noise, right? Like some people, they have more time to follow your journey. So they don't
mind putting up with more noise, more work in progress, more drafts.
[00:43:37] SWYX: Uh, but some people just want the quick hits of like, give me your top three
accomplishments, you know, and just give me the, uh, the best image of you then. That's quite honestly
all you're evaluated on. When people look at your resume or look at your portfolio or your site to see
if they want work. Um, so I do think that different mediums should have different levels of effort.
[00:43:57] SWYX: Um, and, and so if you set the expectations clearly, like this is my work in progress, uh,
the channel where I share everything I go in progress and here's my finished product channel, where if
you only want my finished product, um, go here, right. And have a very clear channel. Uh, and that's
consistent communication across all your, all your social media and your, your personal channels.
[00:44:19] SWYX: Um, I think that that works really well. So, um, I do like having a space to experiment and
to fail and to, uh, just complain and that's essentially Twitter. Uh, but then I do have more sort of
professional channels, which is my blog, uh, where we're putting a lot more hours. Its kind of like the hours is the ratio of hours.
[00:44:40] SWYX: Spent in creation to the hours spent consuming. So you want higher ratios on the media that
you own versus a lower ratio in a borrowed media
borrowed platforms and borrow platforms are literally
like YouTube. Like anything that can be taken away from you eventually like Twitter or YouTube or
whatever.
[00:45:00] SWYX: Um, yeah, so, so that's kind of how I think about it. Like, um, there's,
there's a, uh, I spent 600 hours writing my book. Um, you probably will not get better writing that out
of me than in that book, because that's the one I, I wrote for under my own name for, for money. Um, so,
uh, but everything else, like my, my tweets, like you get it for free.
[00:45:20] SWYX: Uh, I don't put a lot of thought into them. Uh, it's fine. But also, uh, you know,
it's, it's, it's weird cause like it's also a semi-professional channel, but, um, I do think
that people sign up for the work in progress on, on Twitter in, in, in a way that's kind of different
on, then on YouTube or on a blog post.
[00:45:36] SWYX: So I like that.
[00:45:39] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, we're getting short on
time and I do want to just quickly touch a little bit on your podcast, which I find just super fascinating.
I am I'm hooked now, which is the six myths mixtape and it really is a mixed tape. I mean, you talk
about things like from the six principles of influence to Pokemon jazz, like it's, it's anything and
everything and you, and the mixtape part is you, you
know, you bring in a lot of these pieces of media into the podcast.
[00:46:11] Frederick
Weiss: And I, at first, I just want to ask you, how did you come up with the
idea and, uh, what, what are people's responses to the show?
[00:46:20] SWYX: Um, how did I come up with the ideas I wanted? So I had a dabble in. Professionally or more
highly produced podcasts. I love podcasts. I listened to, I subscribed to over 250 podcasts and I listened
to podcasts maybe like three to four hours a day, thunder nurses on there, by the way, uh, love the
show.
[00:46:40] SWYX: Uh, so, so it's an honor to be on. Um, but also I think that podcast is a very lonely
experience and, um, I'm doing all this listening and I wish I had a way to take notes on the stuff that
I listened to. And also, I wish I had a way to share it, share the joy and, uh, with others. So, uh, when I
decided to start my own podcast, I thought that something that was that wasn't, that was kind of missing
in the world was, uh, audio notes just to friends of like, Hey, um, there's nothing in common with all
these topics, except that I'm interested in.
[00:47:16] SWYX: And if you're, if you're along for the ride, if you like, what I like, uh,
here's a way to subscribe to it. Um, I will never make any money on this. It's actually mostly for
me. Um, but if you, but you know, I'm kind of working with the garage door open is, is the ND two shock
phase phrase of, of, of this. Um, but like, if you like this stuff, I like, and if you like my
recommendations, then here's a daily feed of them.
[00:47:39] SWYX: I love them that people, people, people really, I mean, the audience is pretty small,
it's in the hundreds. Um, but uh, people still give me good shoutouts, um, every week or so I'd say, um, and I don't really
know how to grow a podcast. I, I don't think it's like the most productive hour of my day, but also,
um, it makes me, I think get much more out of my own listening and honestly like that's a win in
itself.
[00:48:04] SWYX: Like, um, and I love these, uh, basically what I call single-player games, uh, where that can they have the option to turn
multiplayer, right? Like, um, As much as you learn in public, like you might get discouraged if you never
get feedback. Right. Like if you're like, okay, I worked so hard on his blog post and I put it out there
and I get one, like, which, uh, is very demoralizing.
[00:48:26] SWYX: Um, if your entire goal was to get likes and views. So if you try not to measure yourself
on those things and you, you just, you, all, you say you flip the switch and you're going, okay, I'm
doing this for. But I'm even open to the opportunity for others to get through, join along. That's
much more authentic because you're not performing anymore.
[00:48:43] SWYX: You're literally fulfilling your own needs. Um, and you win no matter how much people
respond, whether or not it's a hit. I still, I get hits and I get misses. Even today. I have over a
million visitors a year to my blog. Um, I get hits, I get misses. And, uh, it doesn't matter. I still
win because I wrote. And it expresses something or in notes down something that I've been researching
and studying for a while.
[00:49:05] SWYX: Uh, so that's kind of how I approach my, my mixtape as well. Like I still win because I w had the chance to go over a passage within a podcast
that I really liked. Um, and so, yeah, and then the eclectic mix is it's inspired by a few things. Um, I think, uh, the technique right home is
like a very short daily news podcast.
[00:49:24] SWYX: Uh, the, the breakdown is, is a crypto podcast. There's also daily it with, uh, with extended pieces on the weekends. And then, uh, so what
I do is, uh, on Monday Mondays, Thursdays, I do clips of other podcasts on Fridays. I do music because music
is another interest of mine, and I like to share my musical pixel.
[00:49:42] SWYX: And then on weekends, I'll do long-form audio sometimes of others, but most of
me, so my appearances on other podcasts or resyndicate it onto my own feed. So if people like what I do,
they'll find it on my feed eventually. So, uh, I like, I like that. All those, all those things, just,
just so that. It makes it easier for people to find me.
[00:50:02] SWYX: And also it makes it, uh, it preserves it in case the other podcast goes away.
[00:50:10] Frederick
Weiss: Well, I'm looking forward to us being on a, on the mixed tape. No, I
know what you're what you mean because I have the same thing, at least for me is where I'm like,
like, I, I take a lot of notes. Like are well contested, this use all, like, I take a lot of notes.
[00:50:26] Frederick
Weiss: I do a lot of research on every guest. And for me, like I, if even if we
don't like ask like 10% of the questions, I still feel justified because I got to internally learn from
all these things and I got to learn from you. Uh, and it's, it's very fulfilling for me. So, uh,
everybody else getting a little bit of the podcast out there, like that's just a bonus, you know, for
me, I do it for me.
[00:50:52] SWYX: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think people also like a commentary on podcasts, like meta-commen
