00:00:00.320
so welcome welcome um so let me tell you why I picked this
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topic um so the thing is since November last
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year till the beginning of May um I had the debatable you can say it's
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unfortunate I said it's fortunate um experience of being unemployed uh or how
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a friend of mine calls it funemployed um because I knew that at some point I will
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find another job but what I found interesting in my research was in my
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search for a new job was that the market I was used to wasn't there
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anymore there were so many changes happening uh in terms of
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Technology speaking of whatever framework or language is hip uh at the
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minute um new technology trends like large language models uh machine
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learning um and uh also the kind of uh I was speaking with Julia today the kind
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of um Vibes that companies have now and
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I've been an engineering manager for the past 5 years what is expected from an engineering
00:01:32.720
manager what is expecting from a manager in a technology company it's like what I was used to is like everybody tells you
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it's like stay away from the code it's not your job anymore J and um boss is going and um
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and now IM me I was having very mixed signals from the market again it's like
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there were people that were like oh no you have to code at least 70% of the time and uh I was like who's going to do
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the managing then H and others that still stuck to the concept of you're a
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manager that's not your main job you can do it in your free time but it's your free time if you have any uh that
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usually doesn't happen so I thought that could be an interesting uh conversation
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to have with these very nice people here because we have a very different background we have people that have been
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in uh engineering for 20 years uh and that have been leading organizations
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that actually help Engineers finding jobs um as Freelancers uh we have someone that had
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experience in very different fields within our industry and we have someone
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that is uh more new to the to the market but also has some of the coolest
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knowledge around lately um so it's not going to be an interview um but I'm
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going to start the conversation please join if you are curious and if you want I'll run around with my microphone no
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problem um but so folks on the stage how has your feeling of the market
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changed uh in this past let's say postco should I start okay well uh uh
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there is no denying that the market um experienced first dramatic growth after
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covid uh as um as Monica mentioned uh I
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uh I happen to work in one of the biggest um um freelance marketplaces in the world toptw and I happen to have a
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very unique perspective at the company because I have served as the VP of engineering and then as the VP of
00:03:45.959
research and development so I am very familiar with uh the global Trends
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basically when the economy is hot our profits Skyrocket where the economy is
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not hot we are the first one who are going to tell you this because companies don't hire as many Freelancers
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as they would normally do so um for 2020 there was um a short disruption of the
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market while people were wondering if the world was coming to an end around the end of the summer they saw that um
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the world wasn't coming to an end but there was a lot of um uh free money on
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the table uh Christian mentioned the zero interest rates and if you remember all the governments were pumping money
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in the economy to because they were very afraid of uh an economic crash people couldn't travel couldn't go to
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restaurants they had a lot of money to spend uh online shopping uh uh using all
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sorts of services so we saw a demand like nothing in the entire history of
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the company and then all of this uh came to an end uh exactly 2 years later
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around uh the end of uh 2020 and uh you probably saw with in the
00:05:00.160
public news massive layoffs in every famous company layoffs that are continuing uh to this day um so
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clearly the job market right now is not uh not in a good shape uh Monica
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mentioned this as well from what we are seeing things haven't started to recover
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yet and uh I'm not psychic I'm not sure when this is going to happen but other
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than the economy obviously we have to uh worry about uh the impact of uh gen
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because I know that a lot of companies are interested uh in J jna for one
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reason and one reason alone can they replace humans with
00:05:45.960
Gen thank you how was it to start your
00:05:51.000
job search in that time I think when I started during the job search um before
00:05:57.960
uh before Co it was very much easier to get the jobs because I was getting a lot of interview rounds and calls from the
00:06:04.080
recruiters but as soon as the co hit and there are a new job opportunities which
00:06:09.160
came in like the prompt engineer which was a new field alog together because of this gen Ai and the new technologies
00:06:14.280
which are coming up there was no such prompt engineer back in the 2018 or you know like back in the 2010 days now it's
00:06:21.000
like very much prevalent in the prompt Engineers or ethical uh Engineers or you just name it sustainability Engineers
00:06:28.000
there are so many rules and opportunities which are coming up but of course there is the dirth of the opportunities in terms of what exactly
00:06:35.039
is required so job search hunting was difficult because no one was ready to take up the chance when the economy is
00:06:41.120
going to get good but uh there were like other brooming uh opportunities which were also equally coming up so it was
00:06:47.800
just all the persistence hard work you know and just grooming your cover letter SL your resume on the basis of the New
00:06:53.680
Gen AI technologies that really helped in getting and Landing this job that I'm presenting working in so you are more
00:07:01.120
thinking that the the role of an engineer is going to
00:07:07.000
change more than being replaced by gen I 100% agree that the jobs which were like
00:07:13.599
monotonous or which were more involved like Teddy's jobs they are definitely going to get replaced but as we can say
00:07:22.080
you know like when the calculator was being invented then people were also afraid that we don't need that right so
00:07:28.720
new opportunity ities will definitely groom up like The Prompt inures as I mentioned before and everyone needs to
00:07:35.440
get upskilled because there is a broom of again uh this gen Technologies so people or the engineers they need to
00:07:42.319
know for the prompt engineering itself also you need to have the exact promps you need to understand why the chat jpt
00:07:48.240
or any other large language model needs to give you a certain response so you need to have the background and the
00:07:53.720
knowledge behind it and therefore uh you know the these kind of opportunities will groom up thanks Lucian what's your
00:08:00.960
take what's your experience yeah I I don't have the Deep knowledge so I I will say a couple of points starting
00:08:07.080
with the last one it's it's it's interesting that uh in a funny but also
00:08:12.520
maybe concernful way that yeah I think for a company that is either a tech
00:08:18.240
company or a company that is using technology a lot right um paying uh developers it's a huge sum and it's like
00:08:25.440
the dream that is not only in this years but a dream back many years that we should automate the developer
00:08:32.599
because it costs a lot of money um so maybe we will do it ourselves like we are trying to automate ourselves out but
00:08:39.320
I think also the same that probably this will if this works uh not only for fun
00:08:45.560
things but for more um how to say reliable and
00:08:50.760
more important in our daily lives part uh maybe this will create some some kind
00:08:56.680
of uh demand for us to shift into some some other stuff that's that's one observation another one is and we have
00:09:03.600
like just talking about the Ruby Community right we we kind of had multiple conversation or in my
00:09:08.800
newsletter I noticed a lot of conversation about this thing that if you look at the Ruby jobs most of them
00:09:14.640
are for middle and seniors and there are very little for juniors and I think the current pressure makes this probably a
00:09:22.079
bit worse right because the companies not having enough money about talking about zero interest rate they're they
00:09:28.519
don't have money to spend on a junior so if they if they need to if they need to hire they'll probably try to hire a
00:09:36.200
senior and if the market is down a senior cheaper is the Unicorn right it's a it's a for for for a company so so it
00:09:44.040
it might be a tough market for a junior in one way and I I what I can say but this is just my um my background what
00:09:51.320
worked for me when I was Junior uh and I still keep this mindset but it might be
00:09:56.399
just one person example is I'm I'm a more of a generalist in some way I did various things what was needed and yeah
00:10:03.720
when the market it's up the and the companies have a lot of money you have deep specialization right I have a
00:10:09.600
person that needs to do this job very very tiny slice of the job requirement
00:10:14.880
but very well right but when the market is it doesn't have that much money let's
00:10:19.959
say you want to hire someone that can be flexible in various shapes so or at
00:10:26.200
least this is a this is a conclusion a logical conclusion that I will I will extract so one possible direction for a
00:10:32.279
junior will be to be a bit attentive also in some other parts like listen a bit to the product and what does it mean
00:10:39.079
to have a good product and what does it mean to talk to end users or or a bit of a higher level what does it mean to be
00:10:45.560
in an organization or what is the role of a manager but also in the stack a bit right like what is more than just coding
00:10:52.839
back end or front end or or these kind of things and yeah it it might be also
00:10:58.360
just pitching here out allow a good a good opportunity to pick rails because it's one person framework right it's a
00:11:04.560
it could be a like it it it is fitting very well uh a market like this right
00:11:09.880
that you can build a product very easy so in a way even even not not having big
00:11:16.639
success in applying I I have two encouragements that I'm pitching uh sometimes is one write write a blog
00:11:23.639
about your learning experience this is what I will do if I will be junior I'm trying to do it also as a senior but I don't have much time but I'm trying it
00:11:30.880
right um and and maybe start start a kind of project can be an open source
00:11:36.160
can be something that you think will give you money but that will give you an opportunity to understand a bit more
00:11:42.680
what does it mean to build a product so then you're not only on the technical side but you are more aware of what's
00:11:49.440
there I don't want to use the term t-shape because it's very natur term but
00:11:55.320
I'm just saying look left and right yeah thank you and um ah you wanted to say
00:12:03.040
something sorry yeah I wanted to say something on the topic of uh being less
00:12:08.399
experienced person in the current job market I I really hate the terms Junior seniors whatever because uh it's so
00:12:15.680
overloaded and it means uh different things for different people but I can tell you that even when we scaled back
00:12:23.440
hiring significant uh significantly in the wake of the recession we continued
00:12:28.800
to invest in our um Academy for um um Ruby developers because it was very hard
00:12:35.600
for us to hire uh Ruby developers uh when the market uh was very hot very
00:12:41.120
saturated so we had to train them um uh inhouse and uh even though now it is uh
00:12:48.639
super easy uh there are plenty of available U Engineers on the market we kept working on our Academy because we
00:12:56.399
also believe it is important that in every organization there is something resembling the normal
00:13:02.199
distribution of experience you cannot have just super experienced people or super inexperienced if you have super
00:13:09.720
experienced uh half of the time your team is uh demotivated because they they
00:13:15.160
feel that the tasks that they're working on U uh do not reflect their skills
00:13:21.240
their knowledge and if everybody's inexperienced then you don't know what you're doing uh and you might be rowing
00:13:28.399
the boat in a in a circle so this is something that we have been very careful to
00:13:34.519
maintain to inject fresh blood into the organization to develop uh to develop
00:13:40.920
new people and this might be subjective but it has always been my uh observation
00:13:47.320
that um the less experienced people are usually more energetic and might become
00:13:54.360
the Catalyst for a change that uh organization that an organization needs because you know the more you've been in
00:14:00.839
the business the more you get used to certain problems and you don't want to
00:14:05.880
challenge the status quo which is dangerous uh uh for everybody so I think that regardless of the market every
00:14:13.040
smart organization should be in investing in young in experienced people absolutely it goes back to that uh
00:14:20.320
Frozen caveman problem that uh you guys were talking about uh but I personally
00:14:26.759
found very tough to sell this idea even in times when it was
00:14:33.079
clear that there aren't enough senior Engineers out there for you to hire even if you have all that
00:14:39.079
money it's a bit of a tougher sale sometimes um but I totally agree with
00:14:44.800
you like my personal experience when it wasn't me launching that program but we had a uh uh actually someone that
00:14:53.320
started as a working student at my company that uh pushed for having more working students uh joining and both of
00:15:01.519
the people that we got actually brought new ideas they I still remember to this
00:15:07.519
day there was this one guy that it's like one of our senior Engineers she was she is super smart um and um she spent a
00:15:16.959
few days thinking about this huge problems like oh how can I solve it and then he came back to usually working
00:15:23.639
students in Germany work only 20 hours per week so he came back from uh uh from
00:15:29.120
lessons I was like why don't we use the database for that like we can query the database instead of writing the code and
00:15:34.880
she was like oh yeah you're right so he basically saved us another week of development just by looking at the
00:15:41.920
problem from a different angle that she was too much of a ruby and rails engineer to think from uh to think of um
00:15:49.839
and there was a joke U this is a slightly different topic there was a joke that was a running joke between me
00:15:55.600
and me and a friend of mine and were like either we stick with be long enough for us to become like the engineer that
00:16:04.000
wrote the code for the Voyager probe or we going into management because guess
00:16:09.680
what we're going to become the blue collar workers of the of the tech industry as
00:16:16.160
programmers um any advice on how to potentially decide to
00:16:22.120
go to the management path okay
00:16:30.279
uh uh well uh if uh you potentially want to do
00:16:35.600
something you should do it that's that's the advice um I I have told this story
00:16:41.800
many times at a different type of conference because unfortunately as a manager I cannot speak only about weird
00:16:48.319
features in programming languages but um I became a manager by an accident uh I
00:16:54.399
was hired um to be one of the first engineers in a startup and uh the manager the the person who
00:17:01.839
was supposed to be my manager uh never showed up for work uh so uh they told me
00:17:08.319
okay now you are the manager uh go hire the rest of the people prepare uh the
00:17:15.360
the project plans etc etc and I was like okay let's see how this is going to go
00:17:20.400
and uh um at the beginning I was extremely socially awkward um when if
00:17:26.799
you have met me as a real developer I was like every stereotype in the books I go to an interview with a person and I I
00:17:34.919
literally don't know what uh what I can say I am just thinking oh please let
00:17:40.799
them say something stupid so I can say this interview is over and be done with this um so it you know I didn't know I
00:17:49.400
wanted to do it but I had to do it I did for a while seemed it wasn't horrible
00:17:55.960
for me and I wasn't horrible and you got to do more and more and more and you suddenly become the manager of 200
00:18:03.000
people and uh H okay it's doable um so
00:18:08.600
yeah just go for it uh like Nik said yeah um somehow a similar story
00:18:17.200
like my when I I got into being a manager um my manager left the company
00:18:24.320
level up let's say and she said yeah you should be and I I was in between being a
00:18:29.760
developer or some kind of team lead or something like this and I got into that position because I talk a lot and I ask
00:18:36.159
a lot of questions so I was a developer but uh I was asking product managers and other people questions about what we
00:18:43.159
should do and they they started to address questions to me because I was responding to the questions so they
00:18:48.440
started to ask me what's the status and how we are going to do this and this kind of things or invite luchan to tell
00:18:54.720
us a bit about how to implement this or to get a high level rough estimation and so on and I was answering everything um
00:19:01.559
about that I I did not have the plan to be like this and when the man my manager left he said yeah you should be it um it
00:19:09.520
was not that easy I was I was taking the keyboards of my colleagues and
00:19:15.919
implementing features and so my manager before leaving was putting stickers on
00:19:21.480
my keyboard you should not do that you if you want to be a manager so it's it's I think it's
00:19:27.280
a it's not a white and black or how to say like it's an axis that you you can be more we're discussing this right you
00:19:34.520
can be more Technical and people or only doing people manager and so on and depends on the company where where you
00:19:40.600
want to be um but but about this I think it's also for me I did I did this and
00:19:46.080
then I was I was doing freelancing and then I got into a I pitched to a company
00:19:51.240
that wanted to innovate their internal culture to be more Innovative and more
00:19:56.960
entrepreneurial and they were looking for a role that was named Innovation Master because they were thinking scrum
00:20:02.480
Master sounds well so we can put the name that and I pitched how to transform a company based on some ideas that I had
00:20:10.039
about what programmers should do because it was a developers company and then from there I arrived to the role that
00:20:16.559
was called Product Innovation product owner which was something like I was taking ownership of a team in the role
00:20:23.240
of a product owner and then doing some kind of processes that you can find them
00:20:28.720
nicely named as design thinking or these kind of things but basically taking developers to talk with end users and
00:20:35.159
then generating ideas about what we can do right so this is how I got into that product ownership U part um but I think
00:20:43.400
what what for me what is the distinction between those two and what I invite anyone that is let's say a developer or
00:20:50.520
on the technical side and wants to be more on the people management I don't
00:20:55.640
know if management is leadership side I don't know what's a good name for that it's just try just try to the idea is
00:21:03.280
that you can do it technically probably well but the idea is can you R up or how
00:21:08.360
to say get a part of your colleagues to have an initiative together and you have to do that without doing it yourself
00:21:15.520
right so that that's for me it's a good test that I should have done to to try to do something it does not have to be
00:21:21.840
technical it can be let's organize going out and I have some ideas but let's take some people and try to organize that or
00:21:28.919
something like this and and try it out to see how do you like to be in that situation where you should delegate the
00:21:35.360
actual action to someone else right and it's it there are a lot of learnings if
00:21:40.400
you are a bit more perfectionist you you'll have a lot of learnings out of this situation how other people are
00:21:46.720
doing an action and it might not be the same as you see it done and you have to
00:21:52.720
correct some things but also accept that there is another person that has some other opinions right and that that kind
00:21:59.000
of things yes so I don't know I think that's the answer that and if they don't
00:22:04.600
fail they're not going to learn so you also have to figure out when it's a good time for let someone trip and it's like
00:22:13.360
okay that's fine they're not going to do it again and instead when it's important to manage more than lead and uh and
00:22:22.400
interject um that's interesting because I also ended up becoming a manager by happen stance uh well not really by
00:22:29.480
happen sense but my manager noticed that I was doing some of the things you just mentioned I was like are you interested
00:22:35.760
in this and I'm like let's try and see what happens like people don't hate me yet
00:22:41.480
so anything different maybe in Academia uh if you want to move make the move
00:22:47.880
from Academia to um to the industry vice versa what's your experience okay so in
00:22:54.640
Academia we don't have the managers kind of a thing we do have like the pis which are principal investigators for a
00:23:01.360
specific Labs which is again not a manageable role that you don't have the J and all these things but it's more
00:23:08.559
about a sounding board brainstorming your ideas with your researcher like the supervisor kind of a think and uh you
00:23:16.440
know it's more or less because research and Industry they are very very different in Industry we definitely need
00:23:22.159
some end goals the ROI we need the product to be released there is another
00:23:27.279
cycle around you know the Sprint and whatnot stuff in Academia there is nothing like that for example if you're
00:23:33.279
targeting any research paper then the timeline for the research paper is very
00:23:38.679
flexible so we don't have uh you know the similar pillars like the way that it
00:23:43.760
happens in industry but in Academia it's more about the hidden trials you are doing a lot of experiments and the
00:23:50.520
experiments are not necessarily going to give the best results but in Industry you definitely are aiming to get you
00:23:56.400
know the ROI around the experiments that you're running around so that's what my take
00:24:02.120
is um is there something you prefer between the two I think um I'm I said
00:24:09.279
during my introduction is I'm a machine learning engineer by profession but a researcher by Passion so I definitely
00:24:15.799
enjoy doing a lot of research because that gives a lot of flexibility to brainstorm on the ideas try out new
00:24:22.240
ideas using the MIT supercomputers which I don't generally get in the industry for that matter um
00:24:29.000
so I think um having a researcher mindset so complimenting of both the
00:24:34.480
skills really helps in thinking through the perspective for example in a researcher you are putting a lot of
00:24:40.000
thought process you are experimenting a lot a lot of hidden trials are happening so that similar concept or the thought
00:24:46.840
process you can replicate in the industry in order to build a product around or building something from the
00:24:52.039
very scratch so having the complimentary skills really help thank you um
00:24:59.000
I see one question over there um let me run you go
00:25:04.200
thanks it's for the recording unfortunately it doesn't work works for me but okay so um I see that we are
00:25:11.559
talking a lot about people the people path and people who want to move from
00:25:16.919
being Engineers to EMS but we also have Engineers who love being engineers and
00:25:23.840
they want to grow as Engineers not as EMS so how can someone who is a senior
00:25:30.039
um de move from being a senior Dev to a staff Dev from a staff Dev to a senior
00:25:35.240
staff Dev because I think there's also a bit of leadership there and as much as
00:25:41.399
we love to code as you begin to get into staff Senor staff you are still expected to code less and then achieve through
00:25:49.320
people so what's your advice how would you what are the steps you think that
00:25:54.520
people who want to go from senior Dev to staff Dev to senior staff what are the things what's the kind of mindset that
00:26:01.240
they should invive thanks uh thank you because this
00:26:06.960
would have been part for potential of further question also because we had somewhat similar conversation
00:26:14.120
yesterday uh my take on this and then I'll give the microphone to someone else
00:26:19.320
is that um you mentioned that there's a lot of leadership there and I think even
00:26:27.640
before becoming a staff engineer that's what you need to develop already at the
00:26:32.760
senior level your first steps in a senior position would in my opinion need
00:26:38.520
to be how do I influence others without being their boss and going back to what
00:26:45.080
we were saying at the very beginning about the culture that companies have
00:26:50.159
developed in recent years even as a manager like a people manager in theory
00:26:57.279
you have the power of Hing someone so it's kind of like a strong
00:27:02.799
incentive for people to listen to what you say but what you want to have in my
00:27:08.399
opinion and it works much better is to have people that follow your lead and
00:27:13.440
take their own decisions and for that again it's very similar in that regard
00:27:19.120
but definitely then the technical part becomes less because you don't have that in the same space to develop that part
00:27:27.440
and that's where I think it becomes really really interesting then and I'll let the others speak
00:27:34.159
now well uh that's uh that's a great question Abby and uh something that is
00:27:39.679
uh very close to my heart because uh we we were in an interesting situation in Toto in the past U uh we had just two
00:27:47.640
roles in the engineering team if you're not in the senior leadership you're either an engineer or an engineering
00:27:54.080
manager there were no other roles um in the earlier days of the company and we noticed that this forced um a lot
00:28:01.440
of people who wanted to grow professionally to go for the managerial path just because they didn't want to be
00:28:08.399
stuck professionally and you know there was just uh uh this one uh one part so
00:28:15.480
you know one thing that has to happen is to be in an environment where uh this
00:28:20.640
second option even exists I I think you have to get to a certain size of a
00:28:26.039
company like in a small company it's rare that such rols even exist because
00:28:31.360
there usually everybody is doing a lot of different rols maybe informally so uh
00:28:36.960
it doesn't make so much sense but in in a bigger healthy organization you definitely have to have uh more than one
00:28:43.080
option you cannot force people uh to be doing things that are going to make them uh uh miserable so that's one thing and
00:28:51.159
now that this is there uh it becomes really interesting what uh what is the
00:28:57.360
role of the principal or staff engineer or the architect for that matter because for me
00:29:04.200
uh the role of an architect is often discussed as uh something independent
00:29:09.600
like this uh person like gandal who lives somewhere in an ivory Tower uh
00:29:16.600
constantly thinks about uh magical solutions to all the problems but in
00:29:21.679
reality The Architects are constantly negotiating uh with uh with various
00:29:27.519
people and they U um just as uh limited by the infamous triangle uh of uh
00:29:36.240
constraints as anybody else like you might have a brilliant solution that is going to be super expensive to implement
00:29:42.679
so go get bind for this or something is going to be very disruptive uh or people
00:29:48.519
just hate it so um um we've observed that several people in our architectural
00:29:56.000
uh team became AR arits with the idea that they're going to be like gandal and
00:30:01.640
self demoted themselves after a while because they figured out they won't be just doing engineering work but they
00:30:09.080
have to be constantly on those heart negotiations they have to influence people without Authority which is very
00:30:15.679
hard like uh if I'm a director or a VP I point my finger get this done magic
00:30:22.640
happens oh I solve problems but I don't really solve problems because I'm smart
00:30:29.559
or influential it's just because the chain of command Works in my favor and
00:30:35.080
to be a principal and an architect is so much more challenging because somebody
00:30:40.480
has to come up with compelling arguments to convince the management their peers
00:30:46.559
uh etc etc and this is very very hard especially in a bigger organization you
00:30:52.039
notice that many of the principle and Architects cannot convince each other that uh uh something is a good idea so I
00:31:00.000
think that this work requires an amazing combination of communication presentation and technical skills which
00:31:08.279
are less rare than more rare than unicorns not easy uh but uh those parts
00:31:16.080
are very very important and there is a reason why in many uh many famous
00:31:21.399
engineering organizations a principal and staff engineers make more than some directors of engineering because if
00:31:28.080
you're good at this job you can probably have more impact for the organization than almost anybody else there so very
00:31:35.240
valuable career path and something that everybody who is passionate about technology should
00:31:43.519
consider um I think he said a lot better A lot of things that I agree so I will
00:31:49.880
try to say some practical stuff but uh to tell you the truth I never had a role
00:31:54.919
that was called staff or principal but I also did a lot of financing and basically fulfill basically I behave
00:32:02.080
like if you want if you have a problem you tell it to me and I go to support or whatever to find out more and design it
00:32:09.720
and build it but I was not uh chasing a label but still the role I think it's
00:32:15.080
important like like he said in a bigger or smaller but what I would say concrete about this is it's something like this I
00:32:22.080
think um what what I would do if I would like to grow into that role one I will
00:32:29.159
focus on writing good you have a good arguments in written form right because
00:32:35.399
we are debating I'm not sure how are you but mostly we are debating in PRS in
00:32:40.519
emails in stuff and face to face of course but let's say face to face I think it's easy to have it in a way but
00:32:47.880
having a good debate to convince someone to change something or to adopt
00:32:53.440
something it's a skill that can be trained by writing technical stuff debates so this is what I will do one
00:33:00.919
the second one of course you I think you you have to be good technical or at
00:33:06.000
least to see to be able to go into a kind of technical leadership role right informal a bit so when someone is
00:33:12.960
thinking in your team about we want to adopt something or not or I don't to grow something you should be the person
00:33:19.320
that they think about to ask in a way right um and and about this I think what's important to do this and also
00:33:25.960
hard to actually have it I think it's a mix of having strong opinions that they
00:33:31.080
are right right you you have to be opinionated or or else nobody will talk
00:33:36.320
with someone that will say I think it's good like this but also like this and also like that and like okay and we need
00:33:41.720
a decision right so you have to have an opinion and you also have to be right
00:33:47.000
technical because or else like you will say something and your opinion is not
00:33:52.120
good and I think that comes with practice you you need to practice that and see what fails and to grow your
00:33:59.360
strong technical background but for sure having a good opinion is a part of this
00:34:05.559
roles however you name them possibly I I say possibly right yeah anything you
00:34:12.879
want to add if you want to I think for this one I will just pass on okay no problem Does
00:34:19.639
this answer your question ABI yes fantastic so we have five more minutes one last
00:34:27.280
question um we were speaking about Freelancers right so some of us work for companies
00:34:33.359
some of us don't and uh recently I'm I'm subscribed to this newsletter Cod folio
00:34:40.359
uh some of you might know also someone that has been working with rubyan rails
00:34:45.399
for quite some time um great resources there and uh his latest newsletter was
00:34:52.200
about how we as Engineers should also have a portfolio and how to
00:34:58.240
that and I remember you and I luchan speaking about um how to uh basically
00:35:05.960
advertise yourself through your projects and you started short Ruby um so what
00:35:11.800
would be uh your advice in that yeah I I propos a couple of talks about how to
00:35:17.599
show your work from last year so that's that's it's basically I don't think I'm
00:35:23.440
saying something that is uh extraordinary and I don't have an advice like this is how to do it um but but but
00:35:30.280
I think being more present online in some parts talking about technical stuff
00:35:36.960
right like or or sharing when you have something it's a part of that right um
00:35:42.040
it's a part of coming back to growing right if you start a kind of side project if it's Technical and you start
00:35:49.160
it this year and you keep putting at it even if it has users or not right but you keep that two years now you have two
00:35:55.160
years experience with Ruby on Rails right it's like that's that's a nice
00:36:00.359
portolio right there right even if maybe people are using it or not but you you keep improving it right that that could
00:36:06.640
be can be open source can be close Source I'm I'm not going there but but I think what I'm trying to do with SH Ruby
00:36:12.640
for example it's I'm trying to I know it's hard also for me to try to pitch my
00:36:17.920
newsletter I I wear this t-shirt but not from the beginning um to to try to promote it so promoting yourself it's I
00:36:24.920
I see it hard to to promote yourself right so with new with the newsletter I'm trying to uh make the creator of
00:36:31.599
something uh as Central as possible but what what I recommend is that there are
00:36:37.160
things that that people are doing and that is talking about yourself and you can talk about yourself by sharing what
00:36:42.440
you know and I assure you no matter where you are with your learning you have something to say that
00:36:49.319
someone will find it useful writing technical even if you say this is the first day that I wrote the first line of
00:36:55.520
Ruby and this is what what I think about it and this is this was my experience right and because people are learning in
00:37:02.200
different ways about that and someone might match with your experience but but
00:37:08.119
I think it's important to exercise that presentation skill right and then if you write or or maybe video it's a format
00:37:15.440
I'm when I say writing it's a one part but writing is important I will not dismiss it but maybe you can create a video I don't a Tik Tok or real or
00:37:23.720
whatever forms are there um creating that that forces you to have a train of
00:37:30.560
thoughts right and puts you in front and it's a bit it's a bit uncomfortable uncomfortable to be to be to show
00:37:38.800
yourself right and people might criticize you and might say ah on that line of code that you put there
00:37:44.359
something is wrong I will do it totally different in some ways right right but that's feedback from someone unknown on
00:37:50.240
the internet so you can not read it if you don't want to but the idea the idea is to I don't know why the the idea is
00:37:57.599
sorry close closer okay but I'm okay the the idea is to practice this and as
00:38:03.400
you're doing this more and more you learn how to present yourself through
00:38:08.839
the work that you're showing but also this style you can say ah I wrote that article about that so this is this is
00:38:15.400
something right and of course the basic will be just to keep a portfolio of nice things you can now go into practical
00:38:21.480
stuff right what I saw being very nice presentation let's say I'm not sure about the hiring part
00:38:27.720
cuz I'm not doing the hiring so you can ask him but for example you can have a profile on GitHub right it's like you
00:38:33.640
create a a username you you can create a read me there and show something right
00:38:39.079
so people are clicking on your name and going there that is something you can have and you should have your own
00:38:45.160
website with your own name you can be a very simple one page where you say hey this is me this is what I know this is
00:38:51.960
what I'm looking for that's that's Basics right and and and then if you try to promote what you want to share in the
00:38:58.599
world there will be people who are listening come on I mean online people are listening to a lot of things that
00:39:03.680
are very weird and not true I I tell you share something about ruby and there
00:39:09.400
will be people who find that useful right yeah thanks anything you want to add on
00:39:15.800
the hiring part there you go of course so uh I can uh so luchin is completely
00:39:23.319
right you have to promote yourself because nobody is more interested than you and as a hiring manager I can give
00:39:29.359
you some concrete advice for the things that I'm looking for like for instance it's very hard to evaluate what somebody
00:39:35.760
has done in their previous job people claim to have done all sorts of things
00:39:41.119
but uh because I wasn't there and this is not public um it's very hard to prove so what I like to see is uh some work in
00:39:48.520
the public space if they have open source projects or contributions this is something that I can actually verify if
00:39:55.079
they have a Blog I can read a few articles uh uh if they participated in
00:40:00.839
some community events um in general for me always some Community involvement
00:40:06.079
speaks um to a person that is probably above average because I don't
00:40:13.720
expect that the majority of people are doing something in the community so if you're out there uh that this is
00:40:20.720
something that is going to catch my uh attention and uh that there are some
00:40:25.760
Basics that uh so many many people are overlooking like a well organized resume
00:40:31.240
when you're applying for a job or some presentable LinkedIn profile because uh you'd be really shocked uh at uh the
00:40:40.079
materials that some people are using when they apply for jobs and you know the the reason why um you have a resum
00:40:47.560
is to get somebody's attention so if you don't put the effort there like you
00:40:54.040
don't need to uh uh be some Community Guru with 100 talks 20 open source
00:41:01.480
projects or whatever but you know at least you should project some level of uh professionalism passion uh uh I like
00:41:10.520
to be able to understand why somebody is doing the things that they're doing uh and I I've had so many funny interviews
00:41:17.440
like um why are you inter interested in this job like U you know what I like
00:41:23.319
about it is that uh typically they have ping pong tables and free massages and
00:41:29.079
uh and maybe something about technology the business domain of the company so
00:41:34.839
it's uh it's weird um and um you know you have to invest a little bit to get a
00:41:42.680
lot like uh this is where the returns of uh investment of uh are the biggest for
00:41:48.760
you it's always important to stay up toate with current trends because we
00:41:54.560
live uh in such Dynamic uh times I can tell you that right now the only people
00:42:00.400
who are uh having an easy time finding jobs are people who are experts in
00:42:05.920
machine learning because they call it AI today but uh as I think Ricardo told us
00:42:13.000
earlier it's just a fancy name uh for uh for ML and that there is a massive
00:42:18.880
demand so uh before this uh when react suddenly spiked in popularity you know
00:42:24.720
if you were a front end engineer who was Forward Thinking and quickly oriented
00:42:30.040
yourself uh in this environment you would have um no problems finding a job
00:42:35.240
before this there was the boom of uh Native mobile applications before this uh blockchains but at any point in time
00:42:43.839
in our industry something is always booming and there is some
00:42:49.160
specialty uh that uh you know you can focus on that is going to secure you a
00:42:55.359
good uh good many good job opportunities in the industry Rail and trby used to be
00:43:02.240
this in 2006 to 2010 the peak of U the
00:43:07.640
rails Mania um and it's good that it was so big that we still have the community
00:43:13.000
today but there are always going to be Trends and uh from time to time you have to be a little bit flexible and uh maybe
00:43:20.839
move on from the things that you felt um were your passion because there are
00:43:26.359
always some other patience uh when I was very young I thought that uh C was the
00:43:31.680
greatest programming language in the world and um I have a feeling I might
00:43:37.240
have been wrong no I totally agree that was that's
00:43:42.440
one of my biggest regret I mean as much as I love Ruby but I should have taken up the offer of learning Swift or cotlin
00:43:51.680
uh back uh back in the days can I add something yes just because I'm doing the
00:43:56.839
new letter so so we we we I think this is this is an
00:44:02.119
assertion that I'm doing but uh okay uh rails and rubby was big in when all these big companies were founded like
00:44:08.920
GitHub Shopify and gitlab and and so on right um and it it has it has a plateau
00:44:15.680
and then the industry grew and then it it maybe got a bit down and and so on
00:44:21.160
but what I'm seeing it's a it's growing again now maybe this does not reflect
00:44:27.640
now in more jobs and because why because Shopify is hiring that many developers
00:44:34.160
10 years after it was founded right so the first year maybe there were three or two or only Toby or something like this
00:44:41.599
right so if if people are picking now Ruby to create startups they will not suddenly hire 100 people right um
00:44:48.920
something like this but so but but I at least from my perspective I I feel to to say that right I I think our community
00:44:56.760
is growing you can see it in some things more conferences are happening some of
00:45:02.119
them new some of them are reopened right there are more books new books written
00:45:07.920
right there are people which we saw today that are trying to bring the IML and so on into into Ruby right and that
00:45:15.040
reflects that people are still trying to use it to solve to to find new problems to solve with with Ruby right um there
00:45:23.040
is there is in the front end something that we did not have this hot water that I think you will see if if if I see
00:45:30.079
this successful you will see some real until hot wire basically the setup was
00:45:36.160
uh rails API with react front end some of them right and you see it even now we're having a senior that knows rails
00:45:43.200
and react right senior in both of them let's say but you will see some rewriting so these are just some um how
00:45:49.480
do you call this uh future projections but if you have the time and money or I
00:45:55.599
don't know the position that you invest now in Ruby and this is true you might start today with hot wire and rails and
00:46:02.960
Ruby and this is growing in two or three years you are the senior that this new things will try to hire or if you are
00:46:10.119
senior now but did not dig into these ones I will dig into it so you can also make the BET to say Okay I I can the
00:46:17.599
community can offer an alternative right if you can afford to stay if you don't
00:46:24.200
find a job now let's say if you can afford to stay believing that it will grow and at least from inside the
00:46:29.960
community looking at at new things happening at least we inside believe in ourselves right this is why people are
00:46:36.040
creating new products and books and so on at least we believe in more in ourselves and this will show I'm not
00:46:41.720
sure if this will pick more than JavaScript and so on because that's another type of competition right but
00:46:47.520
also if you go into just saying into JavaScript then you suddenly have a lot of competition on on the jobs right so
00:46:54.359
it's a smaller Community but also then smaller people applying right more companies are interested in inviting you
00:47:01.880
to events and pitching you to apply there so there are pro and cons of course but maybe maybe a hard a longer
00:47:08.400
time to find a job I'm just sharing a perspective here and it's mostly also what I believe I'm not basing this on on
00:47:15.240
some big numbers or something like a trend or something but it's just something that I wanted to share Voyager
00:47:22.200
probe thank you very much I hope you had fun now you can clap
