guidance counselor 2.0 w/milecia mcgregor - career paths outside of software

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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, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at tdesntdesen 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. I want to give the mic over to our guest and our speaker for render 2023. Alicia, if you want to go ahead and kick it off and ensure yourself, that would be wonderful. Yeah, thanks Taylor. So it's up everybody. My name is Alicia and I do all of the tech things.

So front end, back end, dev advocacy, tech writing, devops, AI, whatever. If it's on the computer, I probably do it. I love it. love it. So I, so I, you know, I don't like personally, um, as, as a host and a fellow podcaster, I don't like to have super structured interviews. Um, I, I think, um, I like to off the cuff. And so, uh, some Alicia and I, when we logged on, we, I, I've known her now for like 17 minutes. Um, and so I was like, Hey, what are you passionate about? And she goes, I have a topic. I said, great. She goes, when you hit kind of that mid-level range in software development, where do you go?

And I think that's wonderful. And so I want to hand it back over to you and kind of your initial thoughts and maybe promote something that you recently done or are doing rather. Yeah, so I've noticed a lot of people in tech have this problem when they hit, you know, that three to five years of experience and then they're like, okay, I want to do the next thing. I want to be a senior dev and it's like, oh, that's cool. That's great. Go be a senior dev. But do you know about all of the other things you can do? Like, you can go into product management.

You can become a technical writer, a developer advocate, or you can just completely abandon all of your programming skills and go to DevOps or to something else. You don't just have to follow this super rigid, like technical track. You can literally do anything. Literally anything. Literally anything. And I think that's so big because I think right now, because of the market, and Ben, it's great to see you, man. Thanks for tuning in. Because of the way the market is, I think everybody is just software, right? Everything's like, you know, how to make six figures in 90 days with software. I feel like that's where all the books are.

So I feel like software development is on a pedestal, but talk maybe through some personality, Profiles or traits that if you have this, maybe consider X. Do you think you can whip that up off your head when you're on the spot there? Actually, yeah. It's something I've been thinking about a lot because yeah, surprise. I've been working on a book with O'Reilly on just the different paths that you can take as a web developer from that mid-level to whatever else. else. So if you're somebody that actually likes talking to people, you might think about going into, I don't know, the management track, but come with tech lead.

Business analyst. Business analyst, that's a good one. Or recruiter. You really, really like people. But yeah, if you like to talk to people, yeah, do a people focus job and just kind of tuck the code in the side. It's like, Like, you can pull it out when you need it so that everybody knows you know what you're talking about. But that's not your day to day anymore. You just talk to people. 100%. Do you think, this may be a dumb question. Do you think people are hard-headed and only wanna do software development when actuality, they shouldn't be doing it to begin with? I don't know if I would say hard-headed Or if they just don't know the other tech careers.

Like you said, everybody's software, this software that, but nobody talks about the product team. Who's actually? It's about product. What is product, right? Cause like, I mean, that's kind of, it's not a new, worth thing, but it's a more new thing that I feel like you're seeing a lot more product owners and managers than project managers now. So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so the product managers, they're the ones who are talking to like different stakeholders. Maybe it's support. Maybe there's a subset of customers that they talk to. And they kind of figure out how people are using the app or the service that they have.

And they go through and find like those pain points. And they talk about it with those stakeholders, then they bring it to the engineers and start to translate it into user stories. And that's how we get the stuff for the sprints. And then we try to make sure that they don't promise a deadline that the engineers can't meet. So that's like product management in a very, very quick nutshell. You know, I don't know if you're seeing on your end at all with any of your network, but I'm starting to see a lot of developers get out of development and go to the product space. I'm starting to see it a little bit more.

I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you have any reason for it, but I think what I've seen is there's a passion from engineers who want to actually better the product they're on and they feel like they can have more of a say and a product role than just a senior engineer role. Yeah, I've seen some of that happening. Kind of for the reason you said it's like, as a developer, yeah, you have some input. You can kind of push back on things or suggest stuff, but coming up with those new features is pretty much what the product managers are supposed to do.

So if you find yourself at a company where you really, really like the product, that's how you end up making that jump from developer to product manager. Cause you already know the weeds of it. You know the baby is actually ugly. So now you can pick out the clothes that you put on the ugly baby. We can go ahead and end the pod right there. That was fantastic. And I want to, but so I want to go back to the middle. So just popped into my head and I want to drive this home real fast. Why? Because it's so interesting what you say, right? Because my thing is, is like I'm really passionate on kind of telling people from the early stage, right, before they get into it.

Or maybe they maybe they just got a bootcamp. You're actually saying more mid level, let me educate you. Why mid and not junior or entry? There's a lot of just content and resources out there for junior devs. There's a bunch of mentoring programs out there. But once you actually like have that solid programming background, you've maybe worked at a couple of different jobs and you really have that strong technical core. You're kind of out there on your own. It's like, well, I guess I'll just be a senior dev because that's the only thing that I know about. Even though I don't really like coding anymore, but it's fine.

Yeah, it's so interesting. Have you talked to people who have said like, I just don't like coding that much anymore? I mean, have you had the conversations? Yeah, especially the past couple years, people just burnt out. They're like, well, I don't want to write code. So I don't want to leave tech. What else is there? So true. I want to talk about another skill set, because I know I've talked about this a lot with junior devs, is the QA route. So can you break down what QA is and maybe why a developer who may be a little burnout now may be interested in the QA path?

Yeah, so instead of being the one that gets told that your code is broken, you get to tell them that code is broken. That's it. That's the same reason why you do it. And then the fun part is like, if you switch to QA from development, there are SDET roles or software developer, engineer and testing. think that's what it stands for? Yeah, yeah, but you still write some code. It's just not going to production. Like nobody technically cares if your code works, but you're writing some tests that will really help out the developers when it's crunch time. Like nobody has time to manually do regression tests for a whole app.

Right. But if you're an estet, you can automate all of that. Yeah. Would you say also, Estet, is there a different mindset? I know you said about breaking the developers code per se, right? Is there more of an investigator type mindset with QA? Is there more of helping people break fix? What type of personality do you think would go well within the QA space, based off your experience. I would say somebody that's like super detail oriented. Like you don't mind getting into the weeds and trying to break stuff in the most ridiculous way as possible because that's what users do. Yeah, I love that. I love that.

So I wanna move on to kind of your consulting background. I definitely want to hit that and then we're also gonna hit obviously what we talked about with the hobbies But before we move on is there any more words of encouragement For mid-level devs right now That maybe we haven't touched yet One thing I would say is like if you're hitting that three to five year range And you kind of like the place that you're at even if you don't think you'll be there a long term Just see if you can shadow some of the other people like oh See what a DevOps engineer does every day shadow your manager Just get a feel for what that role actually does Yeah, and I would imagine correct me if I'm wrong I would imagine that's gonna make you a develop better developer in general because you're gonna know how everything works together Exactly.

It's like I love it. You win either way Is that something you've done? Like, is that something that in your career that you've either asked to shadow or help with or research? I mean, is that something that you've taken upon yourself to do as well? For sure. Like some of the roles that I've had started because I shadowed somebody at my company. It's like, oh, like with DevOps, it's like, what do y'all do in AWS all day? Yeah. And then I saw it. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, I kind of want to do that for a while. That's cool. That's cool. What would you tell people?

Because I feel like the people's career path is definitely mental. Like the mental toll, right? Like I got into this conversation when I was down speaking at Connect Tech in Atlanta this year. And we were talking about how we know developers that have taken the engineering manager route but then has stepped away from it and just gone back to IC. And I think a lot of people normally would say, oh, that's a step back, but it really isn't. And so what would your words of encouragement be if you're like, well, I'm a senior software developer now. And if I wanna move to DevOps, but they won't give me a senior DevOps title.

Like what can you tell people to be like, hey, it's not about that. So I actually did the exact thing you just said. I did. I was an engineering manager for almost a year. And now I'm not, but it's not really a step back. It's just trying something else. Like, you can't think of it as failure because you didn't fail. You're already doing something technical. You beat the game. Now you just get to play as different characters. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's so true. Yeah. And then my words of encouragement for those folks as well. and you and I kind of talked about it off air, that there's a lot of y'all out there, and I can say this kind of seen it a lot, that y'all really, really want that senior title, right?

And that's okay, there's nothing wrong with it, right? I always tell people, if you wanna go chase the bread, go get the bread, you wanna chase the title, go get the title. But I would encourage you this, is that you only can have so many titles and you can only have so much money, right? It's eventually gonna wear out. You're eventually gonna plateau eventually, right? And so my words of encouragement for anybody who watches this now in the future from my end is listen, the enjoyment process should be going from junior to mid, right? Stay in the mid range, right? Three to five you're staying in the middle.

I want senior tailored that, you know what? That's fine, go get senior. But here's the deal. I know some developers who consider themselves mid who can out code senior developers on paper, right? I mean, really at the end of the day, titles are important. Don't get me wrong, but it's really what you are doing. That matters the most. I agree. So I didn't know if you had any more thoughts on my rant just now. Yes. I mean, that does come a point where it's not really about the money anymore. It's what's going to keep you sane in real life. Like, don't don't burn out over a job.

Seriously. Just don't do it. I've done it and it sucks and it's not worth it ever. Yep. Yep. 100%. All right. Moving on to the next part. You know, one of the things if I ever talked to more of a career consultant, I want to talk to them about how they're doing it. Tips for people who maybe want to do the freelance consulting route. So let's go ahead and dive in. So how long have you been kind of consulting on your own? Um, probably about four or five years now. Wow. Okay. Awesome. Any, any major tips? We'll, we'll just start there. Any major tips with people who want to go out on their own.

One thing I will say that really helped me in the beginning because I was like, as no way I'm about to quit my job and just step out and do this. Right. Yeah. So what I did, I just started super small. Like I found a client that just wanted somebody of write articles. That's it. They just wanted new content. So I just started writing like three or four articles a month form is something you can do outside of work pretty easy. And it kind of helps you figure out how to find clients and balance your time in those relationships. And then you can just slowly ramp up.

Like, I don't think I really went full time on consulting until maybe a year and a half ago. Wow. So you kind of, you did the moonlighting part timing, typing for a while then. Yeah. And, and, and, and it you, so I'm interested because I, I talk about this all time. I'm wondering if you did it. Did you try to work up your bandwidth load to at least like 20 hours a week before you left 30? Like, like did you, that's it. Yeah. Like that's it. I don't have time to be out here trying to figure out how to make money next month. So I wasn't one of those that's like, yeah, I'm just all in.

I'm going to jump in. Yeah, like, yeah. I was like, well, I can spare five hours a week. It's fine. And then just slowly working up to building my clients and getting referrals and stuff like that. And then it just turned into a point where it's like, oh, oh crap. I can make my own schedule and I have enough to replace my full time. I love that. And how many hours did you get to part time before you made the decision to leave the full time? Was it like 20, 30? Was it, did you try to take on a full 40 outside of your 40?

Okay. I think I'd start it with like, I started with five and then I ramped up to about 15 ish. Okay, the 15 is when you kind of made that jump. Okay. That's so smart. That's so smart. Yeah. That's exactly what I preach. So glad I'm glad I'm not crazy. Thank you for that. Well, how did you deal with pricing? Right. I think pricing is something that all freelance. Individual struggle with me. My wife's a freelance photographer. I mean, she and I joke all the time that they didn't teach her how to price things in college. So I mean, what resources have you done? I mean, is it as easy as phoning a friend?

He'd be like, hey, what are you charging? I mean, how did you do it? Really? What I did was just take the salary I wanted to make and divide it by 2080. And that's my hourly rate. I love it. That's simple, folks. That was it. For those of you who do not know, a typical individual works 2,080 hours in a year. It's 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. If you wanted to build in a two week PTO per se, you could basically divide your salary by 2000 hours, which will be a little bit higher of an hourly rate, but that's super smart. Is there something that you've fallen in love with recently outside of software development that is new for you in the tech space?

Because I know you've mentioned a few other areas too. Um, actually, yeah, there's this air guitar project I've been working off like two years now, really on and off. But yeah, basically have like this EEG sensor and some EMG sensors and I'm trying to read brainwaves and muscle signals to make a literal air guitar. Whoa. Is that per client? No, that's just, that's just me. awesome. That's cool. That's really, really cool. I love that. All right. So, so let's, so let's round or any, any more tips and tricks for the consulting side of things. Obviously, it's super high level. But is there any other words of encouragement or just tips and tricks on, on, on your end?

Don't be afraid to ask. Like, if there's a company that you really like or some product you really like, just reach out to them even if it's straight up through the contact form like, Hey, I like y'all. I wrote some stuff about you. Can we work together? It's really not that deep. So let me ask you this. I wanted to dive into what you just said. I'm glad I gave you that open form because I like taking snippets of what people say. So you say I wrote something, what you just said is I wrote something similar to like what your company uses or what you're using or something like that.

I love that. I think one of the figures on Twitter, his name is I think Corey Quinn, I think. I think he works for AWS Duckbill or something like that. But the Duckbill Group, I think, is his consulting company. But basically, he talked about how it was a long Twitter thread about how if you're looking for a job and you want to work at Stripe, proof of concept, a Stripe feature, send it to one of the engineering managers and be like, Hey, I built this. Is this correct? Am I using this correctly? Because what that shows is that you're interested in the company because you're using the product, but then also you're trying to get feedback on the product you built.

Is that is that something kind of what you've done in the past to kind of get in the door? Or is there a variation of that? That sounds pretty similar. Usually what I'll do is build some kind of project or something with the tool that I like. I don't know, maybe build a couple of projects, write a few posts, make a video or something about it, and then just reach out to them like, hey, hey. It's, it's, it's. Look at this. Yeah. I love it. I love it. The biggest piece of advice I'd give is, you're probably going to do some upfront work for free.

Like, that took me a while to get over. It's like, what do you mean I have to do stuff before I get paid for it? But you kind of do. There's really no shortcut around it. Listen, listen. I've tweeted this before and people got mad at me. Right. Well, it happens. It happens. Listen, if you tweet, people get mad. It's just, it is what it is. But basically, I said, if you are, if you are, if you are at a point in your career where you can afford to do free work to get into a company, I would do it. Now, the big kickback is, well, I'm not in a position, listen, I understand that's why I said if you can't afford it.

Right. Because I, because in my experience, the people have interned for me for free, have always found a job. And what I've noticed is that that people who are willing to do the work for free on the front end are usually more eager and get the job on the back end. Now, again, I understand. Let me refil, again, preface. Not everybody can do it, I get it, but I do agree with you. I think that really, really helps you stand out for sure. Cool, last part that you brought up and you giggled off air because I think it's so true. What do you mean by you need hobbies?

I really haven't written down. I said hobbies please. Two exclamation mark on my pad right here. So break that down for the people who are listening. So basically something I see and take all the time is that people just become tech people. It's like that's their personality, it's their life, it's all they think about, it's all they do. And if it's really what you like that much. Cool. Do you think? But there's there's life outside of the computer. Like there's just other stuff to do that's not related to tech. And I think we kind of lose sight of that because it's always this push to keep up with the newest technology or stay up to date with the trends or just always be on and doing something and learning stuff.

That's true. But get a hobby to take a break. Like, have fun, not take fun, but real fun. Tech fun. I would also, also, to piggyback, I'm really big on building community and relationships and networking. One of the best ways to build community and network is to have a hobby and invite other people to do your hobby with you. It's true. It is amazing. I don't know if you have any hobbies where you've met tech people. I play ice hockey here in Nashville and I've met so many most of my hockey team is either is in tech so again typically, you know people If you like hiking start inviting people in your to end the community to go hike with you right y'all are weird Who like hiking but that's fine?

But do it right because like if you can get five to ten people in your community community who are, happen to be in tech that you're seeing once a month, then it becomes a way to network with others and to do what you're passionate about. So I didn't know if you had any thoughts about that. Yeah, like I practice Carl McGaugh and I found out a lot of the people in my class. But a lot of them, they do something tech related, whether it's software or actual engineering. I say that with the little salt, my backgrounds in mechanical and aerospace. Oh my God. It's like the other engineers there as well.

So you learn about other careers and just you get more, more perspective, I would say. Yeah, I love that. I love that. All right. So any last words of wisdom before we end it here this morning? Go try stuff. Just do it. Just do it. it. Yeah, we're gonna take 90 today. Just do it. I love it. I love it. That's awesome. Well, thank you again for hanging out with me this morning. Michael, it was great to see you as well, brother. But y'all have a great rest of your week. We will be back not next week. So this will be an every other week type thing.

So we'll be back in two weeks with another render 2023 guest. Again, really hope to see you at render 2023. Go check it out. It's going to be an absolute blast. I think I think I have their website up here. I do. I actually have my code. If you want to use my code for a few bucks off, GC2.0, that's my podcast. Guys, it's got through 2.0, go check it out. But yes, it's going to be a blast. I'm going to see that. Thank you so much for hanging out. Stay on real quick so I can say bye to you. But you all have a great one.

And we'll see you all in two weeks. Have a good one. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished 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 Tdaston on all social media handles. and I hope you have a fantastic day.