what is out there for free w/ julian dasilva, software mgr, stem advocate

full transcript

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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 for 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, social media at tdesntes 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. All right, all right, what's going on everybody? Good morning. Happy Monday. You made it through the week. And again, not the week, just Monday. Excited to kick it off again this morning. My new friend, Julian, Julian and I just met 15 minutes ago, but we're friends now, how it works on the show. But the power of networking, right?

So I got connected with Julian from our mutual friend Dom Dominic. And so thank you for that. This is going to be a good episode today. I'm excited. We caught it backstage, talked about, Julian and I share very similar passions, I would say, about giving back, getting people in the tech, and just educating people what's out there. So this is going to be a great episode. If you are tuning in, welcome, say hey, I know it takes a few minutes to hit the inner webs would love to hear from you where you're tuning in from again the reason why I tell people to say hey where you're tuning in from is because this is a this is a networking platform.

I'm I'm extremely passionate about the fact that you can if you networked off the back of me and when I say that I mean hopping on all my lives DMing the people who comment DMing the speakers and you've done that with me through this journey over the last few years you'll be pretty doubted from a networking perspective and Julian and I are going to talk about that, networking, the importance of it getting plugged into the community. So say, hey, we're not in the metaverse yet. We don't have our, you know, Apple Pro visions on yet. But I do have to say guidance counselor 2.0 and the metaverse is going to be sick.

But we're not there. So if you don't comment, no one knows you're watching. And so that's why I tell people to comment. Let us know we tune in from two because I always love knowing where people tune in from. I mean, this This shows international. We've had Nigeria, we've had Poland, we've had Africa. I mean, we've had, I do, I understand that Nigeria is in Africa, but we've been all over the world, right? So say hey, second off, ask questions, right? Julian is a very experienced individual in tech, and this is a time for you to ask him questions and he not bill you for it.

So ask questions. And then finally, wanna give a shout out to the official coffee sponsor of the show, that conference. So that conference, go check them out. My friend Clark Sell, he's been on the show a few times. They are announcing their Texas speakers I believe today, but they're keynote speakers for Austin in January or Kelly Vaughan, Shonday Pearson and Danny Thompson. You're probably Taylor, there's names sound familiar. I know they've all been on the show. Incredible speakers, you need to go to the Austin one. Tacos and tech, it's brilliant. So go check that out. And finally, shout out Gun.io, place I work for. Listen, if you are hiring and you need developers quickly, as in like you don't have time to interview, hit us up, all of our 3000 engineers on our platform are ticked out and ready to rock and roll.

So that's enough there. I wanna give people a shout out to tune in. RJ, it's good to see you Bobby Ricardo, Rashab, Cory, my guy, Cory. If you didn't check out Cory and I's episode, last this past Friday, it was fantastic. Go check that out, especially if you're in DevRel, wanna get in DevRel. Chris, it's good to see you Dominic. My man, thank you again, thank you for introducing us brother. I appreciate it. Ritu, it's good to see you Scott. As always good to see you too. Jordan, RJ from Atlanta, Phoenix, Mitchell. It's good to see your buddy. Lambers, good to see you Beth, what's going on.

And then Ryan, that's good to see you. Cool, awesome. We got the crew out today. Join enough of me running my mouth, ma'am. Let's give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Well, good morning. First of all, everybody. Good morning, Taylor, again. Obviously, my name is Julian De Silva. I am currently a senior software engineering manager for an AgTech former startup acquired by a Fortune 500 company called Zwettis. We actually build platforms to help cattle farmers save money, increase their margins, and just stay healthy, keep be farming in the kind of family farm space as much, as much and as long as we can.

So that's kind of the mission. I think we've been successfully executing on that mission. I've been doing software engineering for 12 years. I've been a manager for about five years now. So I've kind of seen a lot, done a lot, worked on a lot of different stuff I've bounced around. So I think that's me in a nutshell. I love it. Quick buy it. You know, it's interesting. So I recruited back when I was at my last company on some AgTech stuff. I feel like Ag-Griculture tech is fascinating. And I feel like from a problem solving perspective, it's, it's, it's a industry mired and I mean, credit me over for like access and like VBA and Excel docs.

And, and, and, and I feel like modernizing the Ag industry can be pretty cool. I'm interested to just hear your thoughts about working just with AgTech. Yeah, my boss, when I first came onto the company a little over four years ago, he said our biggest competitor is Penn and Paper and Grandpappy's formulas. And what he really meant by that was it's true, right? In farming in general or in agriculture in general, it really is a field that people believe don't fix it if it's not broken. And some of these families have been farming for 200 years or they even come from other are plasma and farming for longer than that.

And it's like you're fighting with hundreds of years sometimes centuries of tradition to kind of let go of some of that tradition and embrace new software. And then obviously the biggest challenge is yeah, internet connectivity out on the farm, not great. There's a lot of literal poop flying around everywhere. So you got to keep things easy to press, easy to see, a lot of challenges with it. There's definitely a lot of interesting challenges in the space. I actually jumped into it from a DOD contracting job and all using the same tech, kind of similar problems but the different source of the problem I'd say for sure.

What's the coolest thing that you've been able to push a production or be able to develop that you can share because I'm kind of curious. I think the biggest one for me was we launched, when I first joined, they're trying to build out their animal health platform, which is individual animal tracking. So when we released that, it was a big deal, it was a big win for the customers, but also just seeing it, you know, seeing what people could do with it, seeing what kind of programs people can now qualify with that data. You know, data is power, it's money in today's society and giving that to these farmers that have always been able to say that, but not have necessarily a paper trail to prove it.

I think that was probably the most fulfilling release we had. And you could literally track each animal with an ear tag and every single piece of food you gave them, treatment you gave them, anytime you saw them at their shoot, all that data was being tracked. And we've expanded upon that, we're going to continue to expand upon that and continue to bring more data gathering at the individual animal level. That's cool. That's cool, man. That's cool. All right. So y'all didn't come here to talk Agtech. I understand that. So let's go ahead and dive into the topic of the show. And, Joanne, if you just want to give a background about yourself and just kind of getting a tech and why you're so passionate about giving back and then we can kind of go down that rabbit hole.

Yeah, growing up, you know, my parents are both immigrants to this country from Brazil. You know, they worked, my dad worked construction. My mom was a, worked in the bakery, just making bread and stuff. So I didn't have a ton of resources, at least through my parents, my parents didn't know what was really out there to help get me into college, get me into tech, you know. They thought everything was really expensive. And so breaking into tech was really difficult because I was interested in it from such a young age. Nowadays, you know, there's a lot more available than then but there was a lot available that we just didn't know about it, right?

So my mission, you know, after getting into tech and being in it for as long as I have, I really wanna give back to people, you know. I started this journey back in Miami when I was still in college, I started off as a teacher for a program called Codeia, which was for, you know, typically Hispanic slash Latino girls from 10 to 15 and just teaching them how to program, you know, helping them, helping them with their college applications, helping them get SAT prep help, you know, teaching them how to program. You know, just helping also connect with their parents and show their parents what's out there and available to help their kids get to college, get, you know, some kind of funding or, you know, free funding even from the government in some cases and just connecting them with those resources.

So. So, and I love that a lot because, you know, again, I think I love hearing people's stories of getting into tech and their backgrounds. What, let me ask you this, what would be your framework, right? And again, I know there's a lot of tools and stuff and maybe I can get, you can email me this week and I can upload them to the show notes or something like that to get people involved. But if I were to come to you out of, you know, and I would just be like, Julian, like, I want to get involved. How do I get involved? Like, where would you point me to start?

Yeah, and it depends on the person. Obviously there's a lot of different circumstances, but if somebody came to me that didn't know any tech already wasn't, you know, had never written a program or really looked at anything technical, I'll tell them to find something that they enjoy and try to look to apply something technical to it. It could be small. You know, if they're old enough to or they have their own place, you know, Learn how to install a smart light or something. Something small. Start small, kind of get in a little bit of a taste. If they're really interested in becoming a software engineer or programmer, just jump in.

Find a course on YouTube for now. And just follow along. Pick a language. Go to a few job postings that may be seem interesting to you. Look at the languages that they're looking for. Look at the frameworks they're looking for. Start there. And I always tell people, whatever you do, always apply it to something that matters to you because the lesson will stick in a lot better. A lot of times people go out and they're like, okay, I'm gonna build a Reddit clone because that's what this course does. And that's a great starting point for getting a base. So once you have a base, a foundation built up, go into projects that matter to you.

Like I love tennis, love watching it, love collecting all the stats. So a lot of times when I was first starting out, I used little programs to help me watch more tennis, keep track of more matches without having to spend as much time. A lot of people are into sports. Use it to track your sports. Make a little web scraper app or something that just scrapes your favorite news websites or anything that's relevant to you. Maybe it's gardening. It doesn't really matter what it is. Always look for a practical application that matters to you. And I think the lessons will stick a lot more. Yeah, I get a lot of individuals coming out of bootcamp and junior devs just in general asking me like, Hey, how do I get started or I don't have an experience in tech?

And I'm like, you got a pull from your current situation in your industry and tie that into tech, right? Like, so for me, I grew up in the restaurant industry, right? You and I kind of shared our notes about our different industries we grew up in. For me, I would have probably developed an application where I kept track. This is just off top of my head. probably kept track of my tips on what nights of the week yielded the best tips and used that model to optimize my schedule to make the most money. Right? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, my dad was a construction guy, and I know that a lot of the work I did, as a kid kind of interested in it, was definitely helping my dad make his invoices faster, I'm a little his biggest problem that he had was time tracking, you know Because the guys have to write on a piece of paper then the people would get damaged loss whatever You know just making a little web app for that and hosting it for a few dollars and just giving that to him was like a game changer And it took me a couple weeks or something to stumble through and and you get to see all the happiness from it, too So I don't know I think it it just It leaves such a mark and it could be a such a small thing But then you learn so much from just kind of stumbling through a realistic project and I think you're more willing to stumble through it when it when it matters to you.

Absolutely. So Marie's coming in kind of giving some some information. I love this stuff. Marie keep keep dropping Um keep dropping the that information Brett. Good morning from the train to machu pichu. All right. That's a first Brett Have fun, man. That's awesome. Um, so julian, and we kind of taught we you alluded to this backstage There's a lot of bad advice out there How do does Grammar's not my strong suit? How does, how do people stay away from the bad advice? Like how do you know who to listen to? It's tough, right? I think, you know, looking for people that give off, you know, this kind of genuineness is really big, you know, people that are really in it with their heart, that doesn't necessarily mean their advice is always not, You know, the best or not bad advice per se, but then it's a good place to start.

Word of mouth is really popular, you know, really powerful. I think word of mouth is a big thing. You know, maybe not clicking the first link you see advertised as a Facebook ad about some great, you know, interview prep website or something. It's probably not going to be the best advice. It's probably going to cost you a lot of money. You know, ask around. I always tell people the best advice you can get to is just, you know, just kind of cold calling people on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the few platforms where you can still kind of just connect with someone and shoot them a message and it's kind of considered normal.

Like if you just randomly drop a friend request on Facebook or Instagram, it's a little creepy sometimes. But on LinkedIn, it's not. Yes. Yes. No, I love this. I mean, I think I just think people are still sleeping on LinkedIn and I'm not talking about the LinkedIn from a content creation. That's a whole other conversation in and of itself. But like I'm saying LinkedIn from a networking side. And I think you make a great point. I think, you know, you drop a DM on Instagram. So it's a little weird, right? You know, if you connect with me on Facebook, and I don't really know you, also a little weird, but I think you can, again, the power of LinkedIn is you can send a bunch of DM, so a bunch of people you don't know, and it's like wildly accepted.

Like it's like normal, and so take advantage of that. I love that advice. Got some comments coming in here. Let's see here, I'll always listen to anyone named Richie. Well, and I will tell you this, the people who are on this show and commenting Richie is a great resource, honestly. Marie's a great resource. RJ knows his stuff. So I mean, really like the people who are commenting on this, I've watched them, Corey Weathers is another great one from last week, like really, really lean into the people. And that's why I think community is so important, right? Can you talk about like community, especially as you growing up, immigrant son, and maybe a community you got involved with or how you got involved?

Yeah, actually, so funny enough, gaming helps connect me to a lot of other nerds. I love it. I've heard that multiple times. My first mentor in life, I met at a line in Best Buy, waiting for World of Warcraft, the Burning Crusade expansion, at midnight to launch and I saw this guy, he had a shirt, you know, like tech shirt. I don't remember the company now. It was like a local tech company though and I just, you know, I was like, oh man, that's so cool. Like that's what I want to do when I graduate from high school. We started talking about the game, talking about that and he ended up being an invaluable resource for me.

He got me connected with other tech people in the area and you know, that's what kind of launched me into finding a group of people and you know that is the simplest networking right at play. You know just right place, right time, definitely a lot of luck there but you know you can recreate that kind of moment you know there's so many tech meetups out there that I definitely think people should go to. Finding people in a field you're interested in on LinkedIn reaching out to them. Hey like yeah I'm super interested give them the starry-eyed kid message Now people love that. People love to feel looked up to.

And so it's, it's, I think you'd be making somebody's day by asking them some questions and they'd probably love to help you. And I think a vast majority of people will. Yeah, and you made a great point. I always say people in tech love to give their opinions. And if you come at them at a sense of like, Hey, I want to learn from you, like most people are going to be pretty down for that. I do want to give again, Jordan right here wouldn't have gotten my current job if I hadn't hit up a total stranger on LinkedIn. Again, I love it. Gaming brings us together.

So, Julian, we talked a little bit about backstage about how, especially you as an engineering manager has seen this a lot, just because you know all the things doesn't always get you to where you need to be. So, can you talk about what else you would need to bring to the table than just technical skills? Yeah, I think the intangibles that you can't necessarily list on a resume, in some case you can, volunteer work, getting out there, getting involved. Obviously, you've already mentioned networking, being associated with these communities that can get your referrals. Actually, speaking to a friend of mine who's a career coach at Higher Right, and she told me that nowadays she's noticing that 70% of jobs are being filled by referrals.

So you could know all the stuff you want and you send a cold application into somebody who has no idea who you are, you're not playing for the 100% of the jobs. You're playing 30% of the jobs and even then there's 800 applicants, right? And how do you stand out? Because there's a thousand people that know all the technology, all the frameworks, right? And I think you do that by creating relationships with people, you know, being a pleasant person to talk to, a pleasant person to work with, you know, engaging with people, having people that are in your corner. Maybe even people you don't know, but meeting somebody at a tech meetup and then maybe you notice their shy and you kind of approach them and give them an end into some conversations, get them engaged.

That person's going to be in your corner for the rest of their life. And that goes along way of differentiating you who knows the 10,000 frameworks and languages from the other 9,000 people that know the frameworks and languages, right? So that's really the only way you can do it. I mean, you got to get out there, you got to put yourself out there and build relationships, I think. Well, and then for those of you who remember my episode with Angie Jones a week or two ago, she's the global VP of developer relationships at Block. She was saying how she got a thousand applicants for her staff engineer role.

So first off, staff engineers are hard to come by. And there was a thousand applicants now granted block and working with Angie. I'm sure that drummed up a lot of interest. However, there's a lot, a lot of applicants. I know the girl she hired for that role and they know each other through the conference circuit and they know each other from going to meetups. It's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. Joanne, Joanne, do you have any more thoughts on that? It is, yeah, I was just gonna, you know, I, anytime we've opened up a job, we get flooded. You know, it doesn't matter what level it is, anything from junior to, you know, even principal level engineering.

On average, how many resumes are you shifting through? On average. Depends on the position. When we're in like active hiring, we're doubling our team last year. I must have gone through 400 personally, and that's the ones that got filtered out by the HR staff that's going through them. They must have looked at thousands. I mean, each of those job postings had literal thousands of them. Let me ask you this real quick. Do you, now listen, don't come at me, the comment section, because I understand, because there's people that always like, well, I found a job through cold applying, props to you, doesn't happen that often.

Would you even recommend cold applying right now? You know, it's weird. Right, because, you know, it's tough, right? Because, you know, it's not the best way to get out there, but yes, I would still tell you to do it. Right, I've got, you know, friends that are looking for jobs and people that have reached out to him like, listen, at the end of the day, sit down for an hour or two every day and still hit some cold applies, you know, tailor your resume to write that cover letter. I know it's brutal to send out 100 applications and maybe not even hear from two of them.

And both of them are rejections. But now you gotta put yourself out there, take advantage of as many routes as you can, but maybe you don't spend, if you're spending four or five hours a day, don't spend the majority of your day doing cold applications, spend a majority of your day networking, reaching out to people. You've been bettering yourself, learning more about the field that you want to get into, learning more about the technologies you want to get into, and trying to find that little tidbit that's going to set you apart that's going to slingshot you into a potential position. Yeah, 100%. Dominic comes in here.

It's amazing how much of a human being a human being in a public space. Yeah, I mean, listen, again, just getting out there, right? I mean, I'm going to do a little plug here. Gun.io, we're doing our first Nashville meetup this Wednesday for Nashville Techies. Great opportunity for you to come out, hang out with me a little bit. I'll introduce you to the team, get to know people. You got to take advantage of these opportunities, right? And also I'm in charge of the meetup so you can be in bed by 9pm. The event ends at 8, right? Which is incredibly important to me. Daniel comes in here and I want to highlight on this.

Daniel, first off, great headshot, man. You look happy as I'll get out. I want to be your friend. That's also the importance of headshots. Relationships are the greatest wealth. I don't think I could have said any better. I think that's the way that that's the name of the game. It is. It is 100%. And it takes time, y'all, right? because I know, I know like you're gonna watch this and you're like, that sounds great. Taylor, you do this for a living, you know, Julian, you're a hiring manager, so you're forced to meet people. I can't do this. No, you can. It's just gonna, you just gotta show up.

You gotta be intentional. Show up, show up to these lives every day. I'm telling you, show up to this live every day and make a comment and engage with people every day for 90 days, you're gonna be shocked the amount of people you're gonna meet. Show up at your local meetup. Show up at a conference. Be engaged, be kind, say hey, right? Connect with people, it's huge. Yeah, it's easy to definitely sit on the podcast and talk about these things and say, here's what I would do if I were in your shoes. And maybe I'm not in those shoes now, but I've looked for countless jobs over the last 12, 13 years.

And it's tough, right? Like it is hard. It's hard to put yourself out there. It's rejection, really stinks, but that's all you can do, right? You gotta get yourself out there. You gotta put yourself out there. You gotta try to, you know, hopefully meet the right people. And, you know, sometimes you'll get a little lucky and it'll be done in days or weeks, but the reality is it's a process, right? It takes, you know, 90 days is a very good, a very good metric of seeing some change. I mean, it's like with anything, you know, if you start working out, you're not going to get a six pack in a week, right?

It takes years of discipline and, you know, die the next size to do it. So looking for a job, breaking into tech, it's really no different from anything else that you've probably done in your life. Absolutely. Um, so as we wrap up here, Julian lasts like eight minutes or so, um, again, Tom flies when you're having fun with friends. Um, I want to kind of just go and kind of just, As a hiring manager, I think your insight can be incredibly valuable. So I'm going to kind of fire off some quick questions for you. You know, kind of speaking to job seekers. Right now, what can job seekers really do to stand out during an interview?

During an interview, I think the biggest thing, especially if you're in that junior to mid-level, set aside your ego as much as you can. I have had lots of people come in and, you know, flex about all the things that they've done. And it's good to put out the things that you've done that you're passionate about. But understanding your tone, understanding how to really, your body language in an interview is important. If you come off as- I'll say talk about that. Talk about that. Yeah, if you come off as too cocky to me, I'm not hiring you. I've had exceptional applicants with great resumes working at great companies that I have not moved forward in interviews because I just thought that they would not be pleasant to work with.

I thought they just, their ego seemed too big even in the interview to want to deal with. If you're a coachable person, that goes a long way. It's like I said, if you've checked half the boxes on that job posting, your resume is probably going to come through and I'm going to review it. the reality is all the resumes I get maybe one or two have every box checked. Right, so the only way then to differentiate yourself is in that interview. You got to make me want to work with you. And I think the most important interview too is actually the peer interview that we do.

Their opinion is extremely important to me because they're going to be working with you every day. They're going to be really close to you. I might have a one-on-one with you once a week, right but these are the people you're going to be in meetings with every single day and so you know you have to make an impression on them and so researching the panel of people that are interviewing you, understanding what it is that they're passionate about, talking to them about it, you know connecting with them on an interpersonal level goes way further than answering their you know hey can you reverse this link list for me question because we can teach you how to or a versatile linked list.

I can't teach you how to be a good person though. And that goes a lot further than anything else. Well, I'm joying just dropping some words this morning. No, and I think, so let me ask you this. The question I get a lot, Julian, I'm interested in how you answer this question. How do I come across as I know my stuff without being cocky? I get that question a lot, and I think it's a fine line, and I think it's how you phrase things. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. It is. It's definitely mostly tone. I'm currently, I'm shoulders and a head right now. So you can't see a ton of body language.

So how can I give off that I'm, and I talk in my hands a lot, I think that makes me a little bit more approachable. But, you know, tone is everything. And it's hard to control your tone when you're nervous in an interview. But practice makes perfect. Sitting in front of the mirror, talking to yourself, if you've got friends or a neighbor or somebody that you can just go and like, if they gave you some sample questions or if you found some sample questions online, it doesn't matter if they're the questions they're gonna ask, just trying to keep your answers concise. You know, oftentimes you get lost in the ramble, right?

You know, I do it a lot. I love to talk, I love to say ramble, I love to segue. If I wanna have an effective meeting or an effective interview, I keep notes so I can keep myself on track and stay as concise as I can be while delivering my message. That makes you sound extremely knowledgeable when you can answer the question in as few words as possible. And it also prevents you from accidentally, you know, stumbling on your own words or messing up somehow. So for the record, Julian did not look at any of my notes and we just met. So there's no way that he knows everything he just said is what I talk about, everything.

Talk about real quick, Joanna, and we're gonna wrap up here and of course we're getting into the good shit. the notes, talk about the notes, because I'm big on like having like a pen and paper in front of you, especially with these remote interviews. If you're typing and like you're kind of looking off, I feel like that's like very bad for the, like the high range, like are you googling stuff? Are you like chatting with somebody else? But like having a pen and paper, and be like, hey, and like tell me, like if I interview with you about, hey, Julian, I got a pen and paper down here.

So I'm gonna be just kind of writing things down just to let you know. I'm sure that comes across better to you. But can you talk about the notes part because coming into an interview with like some stuff written down is incredibly important. Yeah, three tips I always give people is definitely bring notes. I'm so glad we're here. Tip number one, be prepared, have some notes and definitely let them know ahead of time. Hey, I've got some notes here. I'm going to be taking some notes during our interview. I hope that's okay. One thing to make it less distracting is actually to put your, you know, if you have a camera and you've got two monitors, most people have at least two monitors, put your camera on the monitor you're taking notes on and focus on that one.

One, it's going to make you less nervous because you're not staring the interviewer in the face. And two, if you're taking notes, it doesn't look like you're doing this. I'm looking at my other monitor. It doesn't look like you're doing that. I don't want to be like this. They think you're looking dead at them and you're actually focusing on your notes and doing that and focusing on your notes on that monitor will keep you on track. I think it'll cut down a little bit on the nervousness too if that's something you struggle with. I love it. I think Julian, we need a part two. Those are the people want a part two.

That's great. All right. So we're going to wrap up here. Julian, I got three questions for you. But again, first off, everybody who showed up today, thank you. Please go connect with Julian. Obviously you can tell he's a wealth of knowledge. But again, when you connect with my guests, please in the notes, when you connect with them, tell them where you saw them. There's a lot of my guests DM me after the show and they're like, I get all these invites, but I don't know if they, I mean, they go, I'm assuming it came from your show, but they're like, no one sends me a note.

So please use the note to, hey, Julian, it was great to see you. Thanks for the information today. Because Julian needs to know where you're coming from. So please do that. Julian, three questions for you as we wrap up here. First thing, what brings you joy outside of work right now? So I actually have a great example of this. So back in May, one of the girls that I tutored, she was 12 at the time. Her father actually reached out and I got a text message from a number I didn't recognize saying, hello, is this still Julian's number but in Portuguese? Okay. And I said, yep, this is him.

Who's this? And it's like, hey, it's Priscilla's father. She just graduated from FAU in computer science. She's already got a job lined up. And it was all thanks to the help you gave us and all the connections you brought us. And man, I'm telling you, I cried. I got like a little baby. Yeah. So such a, it was like, I'm getting emotional. It was such a full circle moment. I was like, man, like, that's why I do this. Like I was just so happy. That's awesome. Did, did a, did you work with her on anything specific? Or is it just general stuff? She was just in one of our, uh, code, you know, after school program.

So she learned scratch like everybody else. Um, you know, being that her parents were Brazilian immigrants to, I gave her father my number. I was like, hey, if you need anything, reach out. Like, I can help her out to get SAT prep and some other things that aren't a part of that after school thing, but just on my own volition to help them out. So I love that. I think we did a lot of stuff together. I think I even helped them fill out the FAFSA application for the government aid. So that's awesome. That's awesome. Second question. Any tools, technologies, frameworks, trends that you're looking into right now or tinkering with on the side?

I've been a big rabbit and cue guy. Okay. And so Kafka's kind of taking over a lot. I'm sure a lot of people noticed that. I have not personally had the opportunity to work with Kafka. So I definitely am jumping into that. I've been working on some stuff on the side there, exploring some Python as well, because I have not done a ton of Python, exploring Python specifically with the Django framework for web applications. So those are probably the two big ones that I've been digging into a little bit lately. I know they're on the rise, so. That's awesome. Last question. So the show is called guidance counselor 2.0 for a reason.

We had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now as adults, we don't really have anybody. So just bounce off general career stuff too. I don't know if that may make sense. But all that being said, what would be your biggest piece of career advice to younger Julian? Stay humble and take care of the people you work with. I love that. I love that. When I was younger, I didn't ask enough questions about people's personal lives thinking it was rude or you know, I don't know, I had this like bad advice, maybe that I was given a not pride too too much, but you don't want to pride too much, but asking somebody how their weekend was, you know, seeing how people's kids are doing.

It goes a long way for building your interpersonal relationships for sure. I love that. I love that. Awesome. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. Julian, thank you. Stay on real quick. So I can say bye to you off air. But for those of you tomorrow, I have Mark Thompson on the show. Mark Thompson is a senior developer relations at Google on the Angular team, I believe. He actually made a video the other day about not being alone, which is what my keynote was at that conference. So I wanted to get him on the show. So tomorrow's gonna be a great one.

Not 30 am central with Mark Thompson. Julian, thank you so much, ma'am. I appreciate you. I appreciate the information that you gave us today. Again, for those of you who are still watching, go connect with Julian and we'll see y'all tomorrow. Y'all have a good one. Peace. 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 at Tdastin on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.