recruiter turned developer w/adam brown

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at t s and t d e s s e y n. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? Who do you work for? I think I have kind of an inclination of who you work for, but just give us a rundown about who you are right now.

Hey, good to meet everyone. I'm Adam Brown. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, born and raised. I lived a couple of other places. I always came back here. I went to school at University of Georgia, also studied at Georgia Tech. I studied math and computer science. and I currently worked for Twitch as a software engineer. I work specifically on the Amazon IBS team, which is kind of like a bridge between Twitch and Amazon, where Amazon has essentially taken a lot of Twitch technology, changed it, rebuilt it, repurposed it for Amazon AWS, and now uses it and some products on there for companies to use within their enterprises.

That's pretty cool, that's pretty cool. So Adam, let's get to the first thing and let's talk about your journey getting into tech. And I'm really excited about like I said, because you were a recruiter. So talk about, so Adam and I were catching up before we went live and he said the same thing I did about coming out of college. So Adam, what was that? And talk to just talk about your journey from college to software. Yeah, so when I finished college, was around 2011. I had worked for what I thought was a valuable degree. Not because I wanted to become a math teacher or anything, but I thought mathematics was essentially universal to everything that I'm passionate about, whether it's software engineering or some other form of engineering.

I'm definitely an engineer at heart. And so I finished school, started applying around, I knew I wanted to get into IT and or specifically development. I didn't know how to make that happen other than applying to jobs. And I didn't understand what a recruiter was, what their purpose was, how they could help me, things like that. So I just kind of walked into it blind and honestly I just took any phone call that came in and I just kept applying to jobs. The unfortunate reality that I went through was that getting a job even after achieving success in college with a degree in a field that I'm trying to get into is not easy, not straightforward, a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

There's a lot more unnecessary roadblocks by all types of different companies, people, processes, things like that. And I wanted When I got into recruiting, I wanted to help people get over that hump. I specifically loved working with people that were fresh out of school or had just transitioned into the industry. And I think the thing that I saw on the recruiting side of things is that there was a couple different... I could categorize the jobs that would come into my agency. And you're either looking for someone that's zero to two years of experience, i.e. junior. in here. You're either looking for someone that's mid-level, meaning they worked somewhere for like two to three years and are ready to finally switch jobs.

Right. Not hopped around for two to three years, but like stable employment. Yeah. Enrated get that big bump into like the middle range. Or your five or more years, you know your stuff, your like turnkey hire. And the problem is is when I was a recruiter, I started seeing that candidates didn't necessarily fall into those buckets easily. And there's a lot more involved in in terms of gauging someone's fit for any given role, then most might think. And I started recruiting, that's an interesting story, how I got into recruiting. But I approached it very differently than my peers. Like my peers taught me how to do all the fundamentals.

Like what's the point of recruiting? How do we talk to candidates? How do we engage them and get them submitted to a client? And how do we take the proper care of them throughout that process and best represent them. Like I learned all that, but then I started like figuring out how I could tweak each part to conform towards what my master plan was, which of course I wanted to be successful in recruiting and I wanted kids to be well taken care of. And I wanted our clients to be happy, but I wanted people to level up. And I wanted people to get to that next level that they're really trying to get and not have to settle for something in between or a step backwards just to do so.

If you've already put in the time, There's a job out there for you. It sometimes comes down to all the other aspects of job seeking, those things that confused me back when I graduated. So I think I understand how to go get a job a lot better for myself, just me speaking for myself. I go out there, and this is before I work at Twitch, it's a lot easier to get people calling you back, I'm sure, if you have Twitch on your resume. But even before I had these big names on my resume, I was still seeing incredible success. And it was from what I've learned as a recruiter.

So there is some education there for candidates. I wish I had enough time to talk to everyone. I'm glad there's people like you that exist around here to help cover that. And we just need more people that are like life coaches or career advocates for people in engineering. Because it's hard to get this information. You have to meet people on LinkedIn or run into someone at a meetup or something. It's almost mysterious. Yeah, so let's dive into some of those nuggets, right? I mean, what are some things that you would impart on the individuals watching right now, just some things to help level up, especially kind of the ones that are more junior in their career?

Oh, yeah, okay. So I mean, you can get really detailed with this like per programming language basis, but in general, I think focusing on one technology One technology as you get into this is critical. Because I meet a lot of people that are like, hey, I went through this bootcamp and learned JavaScript. And then I found the real cool course online. And now I'm learning Python. And I'm just going to keep learning everything that's like, ooh, shiny and programming. And don't get me wrong. I am just as excited to want to learn Python and all this other stuff that's out there. The reality is, is there's too much stuff.

And if I'm a master of everything, I'm a master of nothing. And so I found that encouraging people to focus in the beginning on one technology, really getting the fundamentals down there and then venturing out into extensions of that technology or things that couple very closely with that. Quick example, the majority of the code camper that I meet, they get into JavaScript in their code cam. That's pretty straightforward. It's like the most popular code camp language. JavaScript, I knew going into my code camp that JavaScript was a platform to jump off wherever I wanted to. And if I could get JavaScript down, I knew I wanted to get into React.

And the reason I knew I wanted to get in React is because the market is so demanding for it. So knowing those little pockets of market demand is incredibly useful, because you know what you're working towards in that case. And that's just not average person. That's not just information, the average person. Well, and let me ask you this. I mean, I can, like, you know, they're like, okay, how do you find that information? I think you asked recruiters. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We know when you recruited, you knew where the hot skills. I mean, heck, dude, like, I've been in it for 10 years now. And I started recruiting, like, I mean, I was going around asking for like, dot, do you have dot net web forms?

Yeah. Right? Like that was a thing. That was hot. And then we're not even talking about that anymore. And so it's one of these things where that's where I really preach all the time that recruiters, I think you don't even have to use us. Just ask, like let the recruiters be like, ask Jeeves, right? I like ask Jeeves. So just ask the recruiter stuff. Just like, hey, listen, like, I'm looking to get into this. What do you think? I don't think that's a good idea. Okay, great. And then just go ask another recruiter. and just really lean on recruiters for advice. So I was wondering if you kind of think the same way or not, which is fine.

I totally agree. It's so funny because when I was a recruiter, only a small handful of people that I would talk to on the phone were in the place, right place at the right time in their day and in their life where they feel comfortable to just chat me up. And the amount of information I had, because I talked to all the candidates, I talked to all the hiring managers, and I talked to all the other recruiters in my office. So like, I know the lay of the land as a recruiter. And the amount of information I had that would benefit the people I'm talking to is massive.

So yes, engage your recruiters, just shoot the ish with them. Just ask them any question about jobs, career, progression, things like that. And do that with a couple of different recruiters, put it all together, see what comes out of it. Correct. It's important for a couple of different ones. Like use a couple of different ones. 100%. Never, as much as I love Taylor, I don't put all of my eggs in Taylor's basket. I usually do not. Because they keep you not. It's not Taylor's fault. It's not Taylor's fault. Taylor recruits out of the southeast. And you know what? The west coast, the northwest might have different opinions.

And region matters. So there's a lot of differences. And it's not just about the person knowing or not knowing their stuff. Recruiters are people too. Yeah. So the one thing we talked about, Off-Air that I want to get to, and this is something that we hear constantly, and I think you said it really, really well, about soft skills. So talk to me about, so recruiter, turn software developer, you've seen kind of the boot camps, and you've seen the individuals come out of boot camps. Like, talk, let's talk about soft skills. I know people are so tired of it. They're like, oh my gosh, people keep saying soft skills are huge.

Like say why in your mind they're so big. And then what can people do that maybe a bootcamp doesn't teach? Man, we could have a whole podcast on just this. I know. I try to keep these things for 30 minutes because people's attention spans are terrible. But I really would like to like actually talk for nine hours to everybody, so much to cover. Yeah. Okay. So if I'm gonna talk about some of the more important things your soft skills are definitely a part that coding bootcamps don't prepare you at all four. And you're not paying to go to a coding bootcamp to have therapy and to figure out like other things that you could be doing more efficiently about like communication and like body language and attentiveness and being what people deem as responsible and in terms of like following up and sending thank you letters and like doing the right thing there, not only doing the right thing there, but like framing it all correctly.

Because what people find that they do is they're doing their best. They say everything that's on their mind. They leave the call feeling like that way, great. Like, you know, I told them everything about me. And but the other person on the other side of the phone maybe got off the phone feeling a bit confused. Maybe there's something you didn't clarify and it might open up the door for them reading it as a red flag. That's really what I try to focus on minimizing myself when I'm interviewing. And it goes a really long way. Here's a simple example. Software engineers get into the technologies and they fall in love with stuff naturally.

It's the coolest feeling ever. But let's say they finally get into React by the end of their coding boot camp And it's just like unlocked everything they've been learning for the past three or four months. And it just, it's a pretty small full circle. It's a really cool feeling. And they start going on interviews and they're like, yeah, reacts the best, reacts the best, reacts the best. And three of the ideas is, yes, I'm biased as hell. I love React. But it is not the best. And I probably couldn't say that any one JavaScript framework library, however you want to dub these toolboxes, like Angular view React, not one of them is the best.

They're all just different. They all do the same stuff. They just do it in a different, you just type different characters on the keyboard to accomplish the same thing. And everyone has their own naming style and blah, blah, blah. Google wants to be different than Facebook, doing a React, and then wants to be different than Vue. So yeah, there's no one best. And I think when candidates come in hot, declaring something to be some way, and at a time where maybe they're still learning, I don't feel, I don't feel a rub the wrong way by that. Cause I understand what that is, like, cause I went through it, but like some people just don't know and don't have that perspective.

So you can, you can come off not as you intend sometimes. So, so just being, so getting into interviews and not just being so dead on for necessarily things you want to do, but being more open minded, but also having more of a holistic conversation instead of being so like hard-nosed on any sort of tech or whatnot. Right. Yeah. I tried to, when I'm interviewing, I try to be approachable and I try to be flexible. I would like to have time to think about what they describe the job to be like before eliciting like a hard response to it. And sometimes that takes like thinking about it overnight after the interview.

So I'm going to go into interviews as like a learning and investigative approach rather than like trying to find a reason to shut it down or funny. Well, and that goes into the whole side of interviewing and what and we can talk about we can go into that now. But I do want to give some shout outs real quick before we dive into kind of the interview inside of things. But Yolanda, it's good to see you girl, Brian, Riley, it's good to see you man. Chris, a lot of people saying JavaScript is the gateway to react or hey goes if you can get a good handle on JavaScript will definitely help with react.

I love it. Riley comes in and goes also just look at job listings in your area and you'll see the languages they want also you also DMing local software engineers to find what languages they use at work. I think that's great as well. I'm just kind of again regional get in the lay of the land. John goes we need a soft skills bootcamp and I do have to say NSS they do a hell of a job. National Software School shout out to them they do a a fantastic job and I will tell you this, almost every single individual I meet at an NSS is very kind and their soft skills are off the chart.

So whatever y'all are doing an NSS from a curriculum perspective, I think I think y'all doing a fantastic job. So I do want to get into the hiring part and kind of what you just said, right? I think hiring needs to be more of how can we want you, but Let's figure out how to work you into our organization set up, prove to us that you should work here. Right? And I love what you just said. So talk about what you would like to tell. So this is your platform. What would you tell hiring managers right now to consider when it comes to junior devs coming into the workforce?

I know we talked a little bit about it, off air, but especially from a matchmaking perspective. But any other, so let's dive into the matchmaking inside of things, any other things that you would want to say to a hiring manager. Now that you're on the other side of it and advancing your career. I personally think it's worth conceiving a little bit on the skills. If you feel good about the soft skills and the candidate, even if they are below what you normally hire for and you're not sure that they can hit the ground running. It's important to have the right kind of leadership-minded engineers. I'm not saying lead developers and upper level leadership, but just the right type of personalities around that are interested in helping the next person that comes on.

Because there's a lot of value in pairing a code camp graduate up with someone that's already in the role, maybe for a year. And when you pair someone up that's junior with someone that's more junior and just joining the company, magical things happen. So you actually say to pair a juke, like a new, I'll just say noob for this conversation first, a noob with a junior? I think so in the beginning it's worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying like paired programming eight hours a day. I'm not saying that, but dive into that a little bit more on why. Yeah, so I've experienced this in my current job.

I'm mentoring someone that we knew hired. I experienced this in previous jobs and the amount of value that comes out of Someone that is new to the environment but has ramped up for a better for some period of time Like I'll just say a year sure and knows the label and as far as like getting going so they can get to work But like obviously there's a lot of room for growth for that person still I think the level of perspective that that person has giving back to someone that's fresh have a code camp and just join the team it's it's I say magical because I love the person that's joining is gonna like Level up so fast their skills and then the person that's giving back and doing the mentor is only going to reinforce those fundamentals even more so and All I know is my mentoring, the reason I mentor is so selfish.

It's totally for me because it levels me up and helps keep me humble and helps me keep perspective of what's going on in the world. It's totally a selfish move, but it's also not at the same time. It gives me a lot of other joy and stuff. I think engaging junior developers to be in that position earlier than people might think is vastly beneficial. And one thing you talked about too, and I want to highlight this because you made a really good point, you told me that you feel like junior Dez are actually more fit within an organization than most managers think. Can you impact it?

Yeah, yeah, I think where that where we find a good way to explain this. I think companies, I think people can join companies and be more effective quicker if people can feel comfortable working with them. There's a base level set of skills out there. Sure, there's going to be gaps here and there, and any code camp graduates background, as far as JavaScript and all the technologies go. But having the right people to work with and communicate with, you really want someone new joint of the company to be comfortable asking questions. That's like number one. We don't want them to fail. We don't know what they don't know.

They have to ask questions. So if you have a culture that promotes friendliness and communication and things like that, that part will start happening. Okay, cool. So now they're at least going to speak up with what they don't know. So a lot of companies will complain, well, I don't have the resources. I don't have the time to dedicate towards helping this person ramp up. And David, they work it up to be this like huge insurmountable amount of work. At the end of the day, it's a lot more manageable I found than people think. It's just a matter of how flexible I am to switch context to help that person.

I think it's a mind shift from a hiring perspective because the company's so go-go-go usually. It's one of those things, you kind of have to go through it to really see it. But I'm sure there's companies out there where like this is just like a hard stop and like they just don't have the time and things like that. I've seen that before. That was actually us before the holidays, we wanted a hair book, and we couldn't because we had to deliver three features. So sure. But those times come and pass. That shouldn't be a permanent state of the land, right? So that's the thing. If you're feeling like that as a hiring manager and you just don't have the time to hire someone up, it's not the right time to hire.

You either need to buy more time from the company and like carve that out specifically or maybe wait until some of your responsibilities evolve and then you have more time. So it's a tough problem now. So you, and I want to give a shout out to Adam. Adam just got promoted. So Adam, congratulations. Oh, thanks. I really want to try to get your brain for a second, right? So I'm looking at your LinkedIn right now. And it's like you were literally a recruiter up until 2018. And then now, December 2021, your front end engineer to at Twitch. Yeah, have you dealt with imposter syndrome? Oh shit, I still do.

Yeah. Everyone on my team is way smarter than I am. I still don't know why they hired me. I kind of ignore those thoughts and just keep chucking on. And it's so funny because I am the least scared person about asking a stupid question. So that also pushes my imposter syndrome because I'll ask a question that I might think, OK, this is potentially dumb. I don't care. I wanna know how to do it right. I want the right answer. So I have to ask this again, right? That's pretty straightforward. And so I'll do it. And then, you know, crickets afterwards. And I'm just like, oh God.

And like everyone's judging me right now. But at the end of the day, no one's judging me. Like, and those that are who cares, it doesn't matter. This is my career. But I work with some great people that are way smarter than me. Then so it's always there for me. So yeah. And so, I mean, I love something. I want to dig into that a little bit more. It's just like, it's my career. I want to go ask questions. And I feel like a lot of people are held back because they don't want to come across as potentially not knowing something. And it's like, listen, like the only person that's going to be the advocate for your career is you.

And if you're not going to ask the questions and wanting to learn things, like, who else is going to be asking questions for you? Yep. And you know, the biggest secret of it all is, is the most talented people I've worked with, really respected, appreciate that I ask those questions. And they've told me on the side afterwards. So it must be doing something, right? You know? But the catch is, I don't just, I frame it in a certain way to protect myself. And this is actually something I encourage people to do on interviews, is like, if you need to ask something that you think, ooh, like, I think I should know this, but I want to ask it, I'm not sure, frame it correctly.

Be like, hey, I'm going to ask you a question. I think I should know this, like kind of have fun with yourself while you're doing it. I should know this. I don't know why I can't think about it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It comes across way differently. So there's a little trick you can do. That goes back to the soft skills thing that people don't really know about, right? I mean, literally framing of questions is incredibly important, right? Like I'm married. Anybody who's married understands that the framing of questions is incredibly important. And I feel that way during the interview. So let me ask you this, because I want to talk about, as we wrap up here, and again, of course, this like flu by news can happen.

If you all are watching right now, have questions for Adam. If you're at a place in your career, if your junior kind of making kind of that jump, listen, Adam's gone through it. Now is your chance to ask somebody who's gone through it. But yeah, I love what Darryl said. Be curious, not judgmental. I think if an organization can adopt that mindset, I think they're gonna grow like crazy. John's over here going, I'm fixing my PR after a code review this morning and feel the imposter syndrome hard right now. Listen, everybody does. So true. And here's the deal. Like, and so, and I listen, while we're being transparent, I'll be transparent.

I have dealt with, in terms of content creation and other people wanting to use me within VACO for content creation, I have had the first, I've never dealt with imposter syndrome in my entire career. until this year. And literally like, I was like, man, now, cause like, cause I would go to these conferences and I'd hear these developers talk about imposter syndrome. I was like, well, I've never dealt with that. I can't resonate. Now I can resonate. That resonates with me. And I will tell you this, everybody deals with it. Like the senior engineers that Adam deals with, I'm sure they would say they feel imposter syndrome to their other higher ups.

Like we as human beings naturally feel insecure. That is that that is a natural feeling in many different areas of your life, right? And so for me, like if you can if you can go into an interview, if you can go into a code review and understand that the other person across the table is insecure as well, in some part of their life, I don't know, I feel like that breaks down a little bit of barrier. I'm interested in your thoughts on them. 100%. Yeah, everyone goes through this. And it's just it manifests itself in a variety of different ways. I also didn't go through imposter syndrome until I got into engineering.

So, yeah, it's a new thing for me too. The key is to not buy into those thoughts from a mental perspective. I just kind of acknowledge them, let them pass, and just kind of continue the day and see how it all plays out. But it makes it less powerful and less paralyzing for me. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it's a sense of I think it's a normal thing and it's a good sign that you Understand that you're going through a growth phase love that so love that yeah, so good Elliot comes in here says do career switches bring more soft skills in your opinion you answer first and then I'll answer But I think we have the same answer I would say Yes, typically because engineers, there's a certain type of person that grows up being in love with computers and programming from a young age.

And that was me. I was not very sociable growing up. I always label myself as an introvert and I still am socializing where's me out, but it doesn't mean I can't do it. Same, believe it or not. Yeah, no, I believe it. being said, it's always, it's a lot harder for someone that's always hold up in their room to really build those social skills, especially before the internet and voice comms were a thing on the internet live streaming and all that. Yeah. Audio streaming. It was a lot harder than I think there's better tools to get the, you know, self-proclaimed introverts out of the shell a little bit more and get them more socializing.

Get them a little bit more more sociable. But at the end of the day, yeah, other careers that emphasize talking and communicating, switching over into engineering 100%. I think recruiting is really what gave me the soft skill reinforcement in my life. I think, listen, I'm going to tell you all this. This may be a little extreme. This may be clickbait later. Sorry, no, sorry. I think every individual graduating some sort of college boot camp, whatever, I think should be a recruiter for a year. And here is why, and here is why. First off, you really figure out how to work with people. Second off, you actually figure out what areas of the job market you could potentially get into, right?

Like when I went to college, I didn't know what a recruiter was. I didn't know what a data analyst was. Listen, I, that's why I want to do this live. So that's why I'm so loud about this stuff. I had no idea about the job market. None. None. None. All I knew is there was accounting people and I failed accounting and I knew there were salespeople. That was it. And so recruiting has really opened that up. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. Oh, 100%. I like so happy you said that because not only is there like a million different facets of IT.

Titles don't even give you enough information about what the person does anymore. Correct. Yes. And a lot of titles also intertwine. There's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of mislabeling going on, things like that. So, oh yeah, that's actually a really cool idea. I learned everything I would ever want to learn about business and communication slash socializing from recruiting and paired with my tech knowledge. That's exactly why I was a deadly recruiter. I was I was the number one recruiter every year and it wasn't because of my experience in the industry it was only because I already had the tech beast down. Like I knew everything about the tech from a high-level perspective.

I couldn't get in their code nearly as I can't as good as I can now but that was deadly enough to Once I learned the business side of things, the two came together and I was just making stuff happen, helping people change their lives. It was the coolest feeling. That would be a good strategy. The number of people that we realistically do that, you know, you can go to a code camp. You want to go code? Yeah, no, no, no, I know for sure. We're going to wrap up here. Adam, as we wrap up here, tell me about barbecue real fast. How do you do it?

What's your method? Give me kind of, and for the people, like a tip on barbers would go. Yeah, low and slow. I use a ceramic cooker in the form of a big green egg. Depending on what kind of meat you like. I'm doing a brisket this weekend. I did one last week for the family for Thanksgiving. It'll be about a 15 hour smoke. I started at like nine at night. Let it run overnight. Do you really got that complex anymore? They got a lot of really cool tools to help you keep it at the right temperature and do all that. So it comes down to how you want to trim the meat, how you want to rub it, and that's where you can get fun with it to really get a good outcome.

I love it. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. I appreciate it. Adam appreciates it. A lot of good conversations taking place in the comments, and I appreciate it a ton. Hey, just for the record, Go Connect with Adam on LinkedIn. He is a fantastic individual. Again, he's very passionate about giving back. So go connect with him. Also, to tomorrow morning, I have Cassandra Ferris on. She is heavily involved in the tech community. I've admired her from afar. She's at Rocket Homes. It's gonna be fantastic. We're gonna talk about vulnerability in the workplace. So that's gonna be a great conversation.

So we get Adam, thanks for coming on me. Thanks for hanging out with a complete stranger on the internet live. I appreciate it a ton. I'm staying on for a quick second, but y'all have a great Thursday and I'll see y'all tomorrow in one piece. Thanks everyone. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others.

And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Dastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.