engineering leader on the job search w/ dan digangi, engineering manager

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Dan, let's get to people what they want, man. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Well, right now I technically don't do anything. OK, not anything. Yeah, my name is Dan DeGangi. Senior Engineering Manager. I did like a 20 year tour of duty and a lot of front end full stack development. Like I have a JavaScript tattoo in my leg. I'm a crazy person. But yeah, my last few years I've been on the leadership side of things, tons of hire and building teams, delivering cool off. We're solving stuff that I may not actually be starting to solve, but somehow my team helps me do.

But yeah, I was laid off recently, first time in my career, but I was like, I can ask Taylor to help me with everything and put it out there. And I know I'm not the only person going through it. So I was like, I think I got to be on the show. We got to talk about this. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Dan, Dan, Dan, he filled out his name for the form. It says Dan got laid off. The Ganges. There you go. So Dan, let's go and dive in, man. We have a lot to cover today. You, we talk in corn or flour tortillas. Oh, oh, tacos.

Listen, here's the deal. I'm a flour tortilla guy, but I will tell you this. A good listen, hold on, hold on. A good corn tortilla though is better than flour tortillas. Stephen asking the good questions, the hard stuff. Stephen and I are really just bringing the heat Tuesday morning. Steve, I appreciate this. And then Chris is good to see you buddy. So Dan, I mean, yeah, so you've kind of gone through some layoffs. I want to talk about the head game a little bit, right? I mean, it can definitely mess you up Definitely doubt yourself a lot. I mean I was talking to Mark At he's a developer Advocate at Google with the angler team.

He was talking about how he's taking L's in his career Feel like social media is all about the highs Talk about really over the last year and kind of some stuff that that you've gone through Yeah, I mean, so I actually brought a special guest that I think it personifies how we all feel right now, which is that this is fine dog. He's just, he needed to stop by because I feel like this is how we all feel right now. But I feel it myself, to be honest. So I worked at, I'll go really quick kind of back. I worked in two jobs ago. Got brought in, got chased down for a job.

It was really cool. I ended up going down a very bad path and it was beating me up mentally and tons of different things that I want to get into, but I ended up going to active campaign when I decided I was going to leave there. And it was, I didn't enjoy going through the interview process. Again, not because of active, what I mean is just, it was so soon. I'm like, I got to get back into dating. It's swipe right, swipe left type of stuff. Seriously. But I got in there and I actually love the place. It was all the special operations type work I want to do.

I got to support teams, build cool stuff, and then they had a round of layoffs. And I won't lie, I kind of freaked out that I got, it was like a 10 minute before nine o'clock, CTO's like, Dan, you got time to talk. I'm like, oh no, what did I do? But the reason I say it is like, I got back into it and I kind of been going slow and I feel kind of beat up and I'm even questioning myself. Like, tons of network connections. I've got great experience. I've done a lot of cool stuff. do side stuff, you know, and like, it's just it's like a posture syndrome.

It's like, it feels like it's not true if I look at the facts, but my brain is being a jerk and it's like, no, man, maybe you're not as good or maybe you can't do that or they don't really want you. And it's just, it's hard to get through. And I also, it's funny. Um, I'm going to forget the name because we just connected on Twitter, but I don't know if I've ever said on the show, but I'm also bipolar as well as ADHD and anxiety and stuff. And if you take all that and you put those things together, it becomes a roller coaster of ups and downs and stuff.

And so I guess it was just last thing we can keep going is, if anyone is going through those, I feel for you, it's not easy. And it's trying to keep yourself above water, go into support networks, you know, talking to your friends, your family and stuff. So and that's not even just job stuff. So I just want to get that out there. I really am big on the mental health space. So I'll pause there and we can keep going. Okay, no, I love that. I love that. Yeah, I mean, again, I mean, that was kind of my thesis for like, for my keynote, you're not alone, right?

I feel like the job search can be incredibly isolating, especially if you do have a background with ADHD or anxiety or bipolar. It can absolutely wear on you. I want to ask you this, Dan. I mean, how are you doing right now with everything? Where's your head out with the job search right now? Then maybe some things you've learned and maybe some things that you've not repeated that you've learned in the past. And as soon as you said that, I was like preemptively thinking exactly about that because you and I talk about it all the time. So I got to throw out there the biggest thing first and I don't know the solution yet, but I really want to figure it out.

It is still heinous to apply on sites, the disparate piece, go to workday, go to greenhouse, go to leather, but then they have separate workday logins. It has been so frustrating to me. I really, if anyone wants to work on that problem, Taylor, I feel like you might be interested, but I really want to see if that problem is solvable. And I could say you're for sure don't hate any dyson indeed. You're not solving it. I'm just gonna be honest with you The process is rough and I find it really frustrating because like I put hours in my website I got my resume done digitally that I've done a print blah blah blah blah and then I can want to act fast and move fast Because there's you know especially if you're you're not you literally you're not you're not you're not good financially Or you have to support your family and I'm losing hours and hours and it's worth the investment of time But it becomes frustrating and it makes you want to slow down because it's just like it's just a hurdle a hurdle a hurdle and it's not the same thing.

So I find that really frustrating to say the least. What I'm running into is, I don't know why this is the case and it's funny because I talk about this on every episode we've done together. I have a stellar network, a lot of connections, and they have not had as much fruit this time for me to pull onto. And it's probably reminiscent of the job market. It's still not back, it's still weird, but it also might be a sign maybe my network needs to expand or I need to look at it differently. I don't know the exact problem there but I've been a little, not just putting myself for my network but just that it wasn't helping me like it had in the past.

You know and so now I'm like you said not doing the same thing so you know what I'm going to say is I'm not just blasting my resume out 5,000 times and like cool I got two hits and being sad about it. It's talking to people getting going to a connection, a connection of a connection. I started doing some content stuff which you've seen although I'm very a baby footsteps into it right now. But that's really the biggest kind of things I've been doing, to get myself going in and out there. And then last, it's just trying to repeat to myself, just like, you know, impostor syndrome situation.

And you've done some good stuff, you've got good experience. You know, you can do this, you know, how are you, you know, one thing again, and I am believe are not grateful in a way that I was laid off at Bay Co. Because I was out here talking about the job search, never having been on the job search, right? And so like, you know, I've I've gone through it now. How are you dealing? Cause like I was out here saying, the job search needs to be nine to five. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. It wears you out. How are you structuring your days, weeks?

Do you have a cadence, aside from being on guidance counselor 2.0? Do you have a schedule that you try to stick to that you think could help others? Okay. So I hope I don't butcher this. So you had a new most one. I think it was the most recent episode. It was a product designer. I'm following to remember his name. Is that right? Frank. Frank. Frank. Yeah. So I watched that episode. And I remember I think he had a similar approach that I think it was actually not around like jobs. I can't remember. I think it was really skill development maybe. But it was I'm a little.

This is funny. I'm a very like I don't know if you know what the migrants breaks and there's a lot of BS in it. I'm more of a gram guy myself. But yeah. Well, so they've like it's like I see Jay and like the one I was called out is like the J on the end, which is like the very anti wing in it guys like structure organized like that really is who I am because I'm an engineer. But for some reason with this, I'm a very mixed bag. Like I'm just like, I'm going to get a bunch of applications out today. I'm going to go look on my website.

I'm going to do some writing. But that wing in style with my whole ADHD thing is also hamper me a bit. So it's I've tried to do I forgot who I said this here. Oh, it was Tracy from Oh man, I met her at JavaScript camp. She's a pretty big name. I was asking for like Pomodoro technique. Say it again? Tracy Lee. Yeah, Tracy Lee, yeah. And ironically, I was giving her productivity tips with like Pomodoro and stuff while I was being very unproductive myself. But what I brought up was that, you know, there's a mix of the freestyle folks who are the mix of the structured folks, but then there's also like a mix of them, right?

And I guess what I was gonna put out there, I think is important is if I go to structured like day to day, hour to hour, it feels constrictive. And if I go to freestyle, I feel like I'm really just jumping all over the place. So that's kind of how I'm constructing it right now. So I don't burn myself out just on the idea of organizing it, let alone doing the work. Yeah. Do you set? So I'm getting a little granular here. Like some people do, they just do interviews for clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then Monday, Wednesday and Friday and stuff. Or I mean, like what I found myself doing is like in the mornings, I would like be hitting up people on my network and then calls would be in the afternoon.

Do you have any sort of structure around that? Honestly. No. Okay. So if you look at my calendar right now, it's going to look sporadic. I do try to split up the time so that I can breathe in between, you know, get my kind of game face on in the sense of not like put the mask on, but just kind of clear myself out. But I think if you're in the spot where you don't have a job, whether you got laid out, I'll fire it or you're looking for, you know, it's your first time. One thing you have that's a benefit, although I can give you a tip after this or people a tip after this.

have flexibility I will assume unless you have maybe another job because you got to support yourself. But let's just say if you have a pretty open day because you don't have a job, I try to flex my schedule as much as possible to support the people that I'm going to be talking to. It is a two-way street. But I'm like, hey, I've got flexibility. Like if I talk to a VP, I got to figure out how to get into their schedule, not them into me, right? They got hundreds of meetings a day, I would say. But I will say maybe one tip too is that I say to me, you write the emails to schedule, you do want to be very concrete about providing availability.

So I say like give them two to three days with like a couple hours or a single hour block to make it easy for them to pick and pull and figure out where it works. And if it doesn't, they'll be like, you know, I can't, can you do that? You know what I mean? So it's like, it makes it easier, easier chance to get, you know, like you don't calendarly. Great example of this place that solves the problem of the back and forth coordination. So this is more of a doing the communications down, working with someone to get the scheduling down, keep yourself good, and also working with them for their schedule.

100%. Yeah, I got a few more. So Alice comes in and goes, I found that, they get a daily routine going for the job search is mind only helpful. A few things you can either chip away at each day with the timing a little looser. I can't stick to a rigid schedule either. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I found myself too kind of bouncing, but I have interviewed some folks on the show that have been like, I only do interviews on like, you know what I'm saying, like they try try to keep that. Talk about, Jared comes in here, I feel like the job search is nine to six for me, which leaves a little time for coding.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think my biggest thing for folks when I see this, Jared, and I'm not picking on you, I'm just saying in general, make sure you give yourself breaks. Like that's something I'm becoming really passionate about right now, even with my work day. Like I basically take up two hours in the afternoon, an hour to lunch, an hour to work out, just to give myself, because I've started to find myself identity that hit a wall at three, and then I'm unproductive for the last two hours, So I'm interested to how do you stay fresh? You know, I actually have a thought around that.

So I do lately, the last few days has been more like flipping around. Like I was working my website or working on a side project and then I go do job stuff. And that has been effective and you get the little progress each day thing. But I was thinking about, so when I do like my one-on-one session, so by the way, I've also been doing a ton of mentoring on the side, which like getting to keep that when I don't have a job, like helping people, getting that job in the career development, like super fulfilling. feeling. I really enjoy it. I've had so many interesting ones lately.

But I was thinking back to a situation where unfortunately someone had like a loss in their family and another person was just getting burned out. And we went out of the one on ones. We didn't talk it all about anything work related, any of that stuff. We just bullshoot, sorry, BS'd for the 30 minutes. So like the reason I say that is it's well, you may have these days where you're stewing piece by piece, you know, website, you know, job applications. The break to me sometimes is, hey, you know what, I'm going to take the next day and just go code stuff. And I've done that.

I learned next JS. I've been doing some more TypeScript stuff. I love writing Go and Kotlin and stuff. And I did the whole day on that. And I really enjoyed it because I don't get to code much anymore. So it doesn't have to be binary or always this structured piece. Like you can be loose with it and wiggling, flex it around and stuff. And don't beat yourself up if you're not doing it, feeling exactly perfect in whichever way you go. I love that. We had a lot of people kind of just kind of being open and I appreciate y'all being so open in the chat.

So Stephen Campbell comes in and I also struggle with feeling that I should be coding when I'm doing other things. I finally realized that to have just to give myself a little grace and other things help mentally as well. Yeah, 100%. Like you just kind of you got to give yourself a break mentally, especially when it comes to the job search. Alice comes in and goes, I also have ADHD. So I find it costly to direct my attention too strictly, either trying to focus. Yeah, yeah. One tactic that helps me in line, I've learned a few tasks I found valuable that I can switch between.

I love that. Debugging up on one screen, developer docs on another. That way when I get the impulse to task switch, I'm still like that. I like that a lot. Jared, go ahead. I'm sorry, buddy. I was just going to say if you do have ADHD, if you're multi-monitor, especially when you're developer or just that's how you work. When you're feeling like you're getting away from it, I highly advise limiting visual distractions. It could mean unplugging your monitor, getting rid of tabs. I hate a lot of tabs, but that does help significantly. And it's the same thing with audio. It really depends how your brain acts and interprets, but reducing distractions definitely will pretty consistently help at some level.

I will say that. Yeah, absolutely. Let's see here, code is the best escape for life job job. Yeah, 100%. So I want to get into, let's talk about work life balance versus money, right? And I've had this conversation with myself. I've had this conversation with others about being content, right? Like, what's important to you, right? If you want to go chase the bag right now, go get the bag. But that's fine. If you want to chase the title, that's fine. But at the end of the day, you know the two things that essentially kind of run out, the bag and the title. So, anyway, I could debate on this one.

You and I have a lot of overlap on that. I think I commented on Twitter that this one of the reasons I wanted to bring it up is, and I think this might have been the first episode you and I did, which is, I'm pretty sure I spoke to that. I actually do think it's okay to go for the money, whereas a lot of people are like, no, if it's not your passion or you don't enjoy it or you know whatever it is, it's bad. But it really is about what you want. And that's why when I say like establishing values and things is like I said, when I was in my 20s, it was very different lists and now that I'm in my 30s and even as I'm going mid 30s, it's starting to change.

So I'd say it's what do you want plus what do you need and don't let other people tell you that you're doing it the wrong way. You know what I mean? And specific to the bag and money though, but actually let me clarify. What do you mean when you say just to clarify, when you say limits or that kind of stops, what do you mean when you say that? Like you can't get more money or more titles. Yeah, I mean, a title like you eventually cap out, right? I mean, you can call your like, it eventually you can only get so high. You can get the principal fellow staff, whatever, I get that.

At the most part, I think a lot of people may not work in an organization even gets that level, right? We're talking probably just like senior at this point and principal and that's it. The other side is with the bag is that aside from big tech and fang and stocks, salaries for the most part are capped to a certain extent. Yeah, if you think that you're going to make, even just to say make better or a lot of money and I should say you like call it get rich, you won't be making it from your 3% annual raises. I'm just going to be honest, like inflation alone, we all know it's not bad.

It's going to be moving jobs, getting promotions, getting big bonuses, getting stocks. So if you are someone going after big money or you just are, you need to support your your family so you need to make more money. And then maybe I'll throw in there too, and you know when I've been talking about this, it could also be a side hustle, a side business. But that's you trying to pull back in what you do in your day to day, or your nine to five, and you're happy and you're getting what you need. But then you have these other things that you wanna do. But maybe that's it.

Your content with where you're at. I'll be honest, I am a bad with being content person. I'm very grateful for everything I have, but I wanna keep shooting for the next thing, because I wanna see where I finally get the line where I'm truly stuck and then how I'm gonna get past that. It's just like solving another problem and I think it's fun. Absolutely. Thomas comes in here and made my last contraption, paid a lot of money and I lost all confidence in my coding skills for a short time there because of how bad this CTO treated me. That's the thing that's, you know what?

I actually had that come up in a random Reddit chat as a mentoring problem, which was someone was dealing with a very toxic boss. They took credit for their jobs. They would lie to the stakeholders about project delivery estimates. They ran no form of agile and stuff. And that's the thing that's the same thing as like the given yourself a break earlier. You have to remember that there is the outside influence and the things you hear. And there could be validity to that. But then on the other side is like, you got to be like, is that really a true thing? Like I like feedback, but I got to really think objectively about this.

Is it just that's a person that trees them poorly? And I'm feeling bad because of it, even if it's not, you know, you not be true what they're saying or making you feel, you know what I mean? So let's talk again. I mean, there's so much to talk about, but I do want to kind of go into probably my favorite topic and obviously something that you're getting better at is written content, right? Building your brand. You know, I do want to give you props. I see you more right now on the internet than I have in the past. And so I can tell you're trying.

Talk about what you've learned. I know people are so tired of me talking about content and networking at this point, but I truly think it's the unlock. So please, please say some words where you can encourage others that's not me, because I know people are tired of hearing it from me. You know, I'll be honest, I think this might be the first time I've ever actually been going to speak to it as a thing, not that I've not thought it was a thing you should do, but I just noticed what it, with what my goals are and where I want to be. And even with the minimal I've done so far, so I've done is I wrote a few blogs and I'm sure you've caught this on Twitter.

I'm an engineer, but I will fly back and forth every day to UX. I love complaining about UX and figuring out ways it could be better. So I'm actually launching a site around that. I'm really excited. It's literally just, here's the UX and the products we like. You know what I mean? Here's what he's going to be better. You need a screenshot of the things and you need to do the green screen feature on TikTok. So there's a designer I follow. I'll send them to you. There's a designer I follow that literally screenshots bad brands and talks about why they're bad Here's actually I'm curious what you think so one you have a much prettier face somebody let's start with that I've always found that so for sure outside of what we do like my career in engineering I really like I don't like the idea of being an influencer or putting my face up there But what I'm doing in my career I do but I don't I don't like that idea being an influencer I don't really want to go and tick-tock so that's where I started a weird spot I'm gonna squash this now You're not I hate to say it.

You're not an influencer. I'm not an influencer in my mind true influencers are like The ones on TikTok with a good gazillion million. You're never gonna get there I'm never gonna get there so go ahead and get that out of your brain like as your friends like that That's an excuse for you not to do it That's fair. Okay, that is yourself telling yourself a lie to not you do it. You're very intelligent You have a lot of great thoughts. I love seeing your tweets about UX stuff And I think you doing like even a video to just talk about it I'd watch it because I love UX too I always say if there's one thing that I do if I was a techie true techie I would probably want to be a designer like I think designers have like the coolest jobs They make things look pretty which I think it's cool.

So I think you should do it stop telling those lies to yourself I'm calling out. That's fair. All right. I'll say I was fair But it's the thing too is like what I like to think of as my influencer state is all the mentoring stuff I've been doing that that I have some ideas like I've actually been trying around with an idea of like a book and stuff I've been doing the written content But that to me is the influence I do like which is helping people move faster problems be more successful than I ever Possibly could have been in my career and that to me is super fulfilling and if it gets out there in the world That's cool, but if it doesn't I'm still helping someone which makes me feel really good.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that What have you seen though? Can you talk about like some of the effects you've seen with you posting as of late or has there really been any, to be honest? I don't know. So I was looking, okay, so here's a couple of things that got me thinking about it. So if you go to the top of my Twitter, once upon a time, you get a gem on here, gem retweeted just a meme that I posted and it got like a stupid amount of impressions and I was like two, three years ago now and I was always, but it's funny. So that's why I leave it up there.

But I was looking at LinkedIn and actually you Twitter, Kreme, which by the way, they took my blue check mark away. So, Elon, we're not friends right now, because I'm paying you money. And you edit your name by chance, because that's what happens. I changed my photo. And shit, ever. That's the fact that you know, they won't give it back. We verify you every time. Yeah, so anyways, but I was looking at the impressions and like the engagement, now my engagement's not high, but I was looking at impressions and impressions that don't lead anywhere doesn't mean they're useful or important necessarily, but the numbers were there, especially in LinkedIn.

I came back to my profile one day from, I think I posted my layoff and I forgot two others. And it said, your overall analytics went up by 83,000%. And I'm like, that's wild. There was no repost, no reshars, just people engaging and interacting. And it wasn't even necessarily too much content. So I was like, there has to be something here. As I'm doing the mentoring thing too, I'm like, I could produce and write about this. I could put books out. I could put videos. I really don't like the idea of being a coach, if you know what I mean for the, what that part of the industry looks like.

But there's things that are starting to spin, but I know if I stop, it's not gonna be as fire staying a lit. Yeah. Well, and so what are your thoughts about, I mean, have you made new connections from your content? Have you been like, been able to start conversations maybe that you weren't able to beforehand? Has any of that happened yet? And if not, don't worry. I'm not 100% sure. I would honestly have to look back a little bit. I know one thing that I have pounced on though is there's people that I've interacted, they follow me, I follow them on Twitter, and I realize that that's the only place that I've connected with them.

And so I just did a few like new LinkedIn connections. You know, they have either really just smart people and talented or they do work at like big companies or companies I might wanna work at. And it's not my goal is to be like, oh, get that out of somebody. But I can't say at least, I think I've talked to new people that I hadn't before. like earlier, Sock, and there's someone that's gonna be launching spaces for dads on mental health, or trying to, and I feel so bad, I'm forgetting names right now, because I can't see it. But those things I do feel like they've, they could have come up from those things.

It's hard to attribute sometimes. You know, that's right. Absolutely. So as we kind of wrap up here, the next like 10 minutes or so, any other thoughts, because I know you have thoughts. Any other thoughts that maybe we haven't covered? Anything around the job search? Anything else that you've maybe learned or again, stayed away from? Yeah, just really quick. On Twitter, it's Sarah Schook. I don't know if that's her actualizing, but she's the one that I was talking about with the house stuff and was really open about hers. It's like, I am and I really, she's really cool. I'm really interested to talk with her more.

As far as other learnings go, let's see. I definitely can say, yeah, I mean, I would double down in one of the things we talked about, which is getting messages out there to people that aren't like the robotic, a page-long type of thing, just to ask about, you know, like the job and if they like it, not even necessarily ask for an intro or anything. Because I don't like to just ask people for stuff. It's ridiculous to ask before you, you know, take before you give kind of thing, you know. So that still has got some conversation. So I guess to your point, maybe I have gotten some stuff, and like some of them might be driven from content.

The thing that I always talk about, 500 applications of your resume, you're not going to yield too much success. You should do it, but it's really not the main way to get a job in my opinion. And I'll die on that bill all day. What else? The content thing, and we talked about that. What other else are you making? Well, real quick, I'm going to go back real quick on that comment. Yeah. Die on that hill with not doing 500 applicants. How are you? Let's get tactical for a second. How are you like in the inbox? Like what are your, like how do you DM people?

Cause I think that's what people have problems with. They're like, I don't know. I mean, I have my format with like admiration, flattery, a specific question, a specific amount of time to hang out with that person. But like, you know, I was talking to Kelly Vaughn on the show and Kelly was like, I don't have time to talk to everybody. So she said she prefers as a director of engineering to just be messaged kind of the messages every now and then to get on a radar and then pounce when something is a fit. So what do your DMs look like? I really do. I even did this actually at my startup when we did emails, which is they weren't like this automated robotic looking thing, especially right, people are very on edge right now towards AI and like knowing when things are robotic, especially with the automation when it multiplies there.

But myself is really simple. I'm just like, hey, I saw you were doing this. And I was trying to get to talk to someone at Adobe. And I literally just said like, hey, I see you work in engineering leadership recruiting. I'm interested in Adobe. I've been doing some stuff in the area that's rural, and I'll let it go. And I'll be honest, they left me on red, which hurts. But it's okay. I've had another one that I reached out to, and I just sent a very similar message. And some of the ones I was doing, and I don't go in with this move set, to try and manipulate or get out of people what I want.

I go in trying to just learn how to text, essentially. Exactly. I just want to talk. And if you don't want to, that's totally cool. No harm, no foul. So I think for one of the other ones, just like not even looking to ask someone for a referral. It was just, hey, just really quick, is this place remote friendly? It's like, do you think the culture, and sometimes they'll be like, hey, you want to hop on a call or just be like, hey, here's a writer. Or I went to someone, I went to high school with about a job. I asked for them to tell me about it.

And now I maybe have a referral there. And I wasn't going for that. But it was a conversation, it was enjoyable. And I got to talk to someone I talked to in like 15 years. Isn't that crazy? I mean, it's nuts. And that's why I encourage people, open up your phone book too on your phone and just see who you have in your contacts as well. I always talk about making new connections, but I mean, the reason why I got to Gun I.O. is because one of my biggest competitors introduced me to them, right? Like as a recruiter, so you just never know. Jared comes in here, what are your thoughts on the open a work pair?

I think you should have it up. I think, like, why are people here? There's one problem, one problem with it. So, you know, when you go to upload on LinkedIn, and you can have the scale and the skew and all that stuff? So it's hard to, you want to get your face like pretty large, probably didn't cut off somewhat. But when you put that open to work thing, I had to shrink it down so you can't see me as well because otherwise I have a big green mouth and mustache, which I really do not like. I wish you could customize that better or they pull it out of the profile container.

Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, make sure I can see your face for sure. It's hard to do in the morning. Let's see here. Oh, as again, three, five minutes here, What would be your biggest interviewing tip to folks who are the job search something that you feel like maybe you do really well That others may not You know Because I could explain I could say a lot with a lot of depth I know one for sure and this is not any guy if you've seen me before you know Taylor You know this I'm not reinvent the wheel try and you know Maybe things like some secret or whatever So I was actually debating with somebody on LinkedIn as a director at Pluralsight which was it was where like, stake the problem and then, you know, give the proposal, then give the reasoning.

So the same thing as the star method, like, what was the situation? Oh man, I can't remember the letters right now, but what your action was in the results, you know, like that is the best way. And it also helps you kind of like make answers more succinct. And then the other one we talked about is I circle back on points I made later in the conversation, whether I'm getting questioned or I'm asking questions. And then also, if you're in like a an attack interview, especially, or an interview where you don't get to talk much, get really good at your 30, your elevator pitch. But then you, and I said this one a bunch of times, when you get to the questions, use it as an opportunity to get something else about their out-you.

Like, hey, I've been really good at building these sales pipelines. Blah, blah, blah, blah. How does that look for us? What's our landscape? How to drive to build pipe, like that kind of thing? And that is really strong and opportunities to get more out about you to prove out, hey, I could be a really great person here for you. One thing, I'm interested in your thoughts. One thing that I try to do, especially on my last job search, is kind of zero in on like, hey, what, why are you interested in me? And what is the problem you're trying to solve with hiring me? And then I built my, kind of all my answers around that, right?

So like, GONAIO, not a huge content presence. They're looking to kind of get into more growth marketing instead of traditional like paid ad marketing. They needed a sales guy, right? and they needed somebody with deep staffing, talent marketplace experience. So what do you think I told them? I mean, all of that, right? And so again, I think digging into the core of what the company needs and why they're interviewing you and tailoring your answers is huge. I actually saw someone post them, I know we're at time, but I saw a post on Twitter on product managers and it was like running agile and project management is not really the thing.

It's around actually like strategy. So they're basically like if you interview where you're at work is like, what's products role and strategy? How are they driving a strategy and executing this vision for the company and stuff? Like you got to dig into that stuff to really figure out what's going on. And then also one nice quick, I was another mentee from the last like month. They went and they're in sales actually, not engineering. And I gave them a bunch of my pro-home run questions to ask and one in one particular was, what is like 30, 60, 90 days look like for me in success? This director of sales like lost it at how impressed he was with that question.

I was like, yeah, home run, I love it. All right, so as we wrap up here, last three questions. One, what do you do outside of the job search and work that brings you joy? I really, I know it's not detaching myself from work, but I really do enjoy the mentoring thing. Like, I don't want to stop doing it, but outside of it, I'm really hoping, minus I kind of broke my foot. I want to get back to snowboarding this winter. I'm really hoping that I can, but I can't really, technically afford it so I get a job. Right. Right. I love it. I love it.

Are there are you're you're in Chicago, right? Yeah. Yeah, well, the birds nowadays, but Chicago. I'm happy to lie about where you from like downtown Chicago. What'd you say? So I'm if you're like literally the middle of the loop, I'm 45 miles west. I'll be honest, I'm a city guy. It's my energy, but my parents are getting older. So I moved near them to health care. I've been full transparency. That's awesome. That's awesome. Let me ask you this, what's the best, I always love restaurants and coffee and stuff. Any good coffee places or restaurants you've eaten lately in Chicago that you want to give a shout out to?

I can't remember the name of the Japanese sushi place we went, which was ridiculous. I was like, I was try octopus when I go to a new sushi place and they didn't have that. Yeah, like the Yuri Shoshimi, they didn't have it. So they made me a special role and they made me in the gerry because they have brother The other role says like that's super cool. I'll see if I can find the name. And then the other one, the problem maybe for this before, if you're coming for the Chicago Deepness, which I don't like to be frank, go to KeyQuads. KeyQuads is the place to go.

Okay. Not Luminatis, not Connie's. Go to KeyQuads. We use the Luminatis. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next time I'm up in Chicago. All right. Next question. What tools technologies may outside the job search and your mentor, like any tools, technologies frameworks I know you mentioned next JS. Is there anything else you're kind of learning right now or read about. Let's see, I've been going deep in a next JS, but not in the sense of the framework, but learning their architecture, because they do a lot of really good things that I really like. I've attempted to write some poorly written Rust, but I'm not gonna keep doing that because that's not my area, but I have been doing Go and Kotlin, just as they do so right now.

Go school, like I like DevOps, that's how I got into it and writing some of it, so Kubernetes is built on, so those are probably a couple. And then I've got, oh, last thing, I've been running a lot of red jacks. I published something about it. Redjacks has helped me as a manager and a developer, so I've just been doing a lot with that to make my life easier, is tearing through text and changing it and stuff. So nothing super unique, but stuff I've been working with. I love it, that's awesome. All right, man, last question. You probably know it's coming. We have guidance counselors in middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to and ask questions.

What would be your biggest piece of career advice to younger Dan? I really wish that I could tell myself in the past that for the insane amount of hours and time that I put in as much as I enjoyed it, I went so far and so hard that the amount of result doesn't equate out to the lack of life balance that I had as much as I did enjoy the time. I wish I could tell myself that also would be better with your money. You know, it's so, you know, it's so funny. said that as out so my brain works a thousand miles a minute and and as you were talking earlier I was like you know what I need to bring somebody on to literally just talk about personal finances and just saving because I feel like that's something that I don't talk about and I feel like we need to talk about on this show and I'm glad you brought that up.

Huge gap in the education system. Yeah. Good thing I know about the circumference of a parallelogram during tech season. Don't even have this part of education. 20 of my wife and I've had this conversation so many times. Cool, I love that. Alex, thank you for the comment, man. Needed to hear about this today. So many things Dan brought up, good. I love it. Yeah, hit up Dan. Dan's a good dude and great resources plus one. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's, you know, listen, I'm gonna be honest. I'm good at spending money. I'm good. I'm bougie. I'm bougie. We should put our link in to be honest.

The bougie AF is what I am. And so is my wife. And so usually the joke is you get the lessons on vacation. It's like that skit. I saw on TikTok where it's like, Bill, like your money doesn't exist until you get back from vacation. But I will tell you this, we've had more intentional conversations as a household over the last six to nine months because of this market. So it's been good for me. It's been growing pains for me, but I agree. Save your money. Save your money. Cool. All right, man. Dan, anything else big dog? Um, any way I'm gonna plug it? Well, I hope I got a good amount of it in.

I'm just gonna throw this out there. I'm trying to bring Greg Reakloop, which is the Chicago React JS conference 2024. So I'm just gonna throw that out there. If there's people interested potentially I'm trying to explore. If that could be a thing. So I'll throw that plug out there really want to see if we can do it. React's been a while. Check it out. Yeah, we got Kayla. What up girl? She runs a Magnolia JS. I'll be there next week. It's true. Vacation money is basically, dude. that the girl messed up, it just gets me on time right now. I love it. Oh, Taylor. Yes.

If you're good, anything to one in the management space or leadership or engineering, Lead Dev Conference in West Coast, San Fran, Oakland. That was amazing. So really, really, it looks incredible. So if anyone's going, please let me know. I would love to meet next there. We'll be next there. One more time. What is it? It's Lead Dev. And it's the West Coast one in San Fran, Oakland. Man, San Francisco people are going to like us at San Fran. Lead Dev Conference. It looks good. Dan's gonna tune me. And yeah, check that out for sure. Cool. All right, y'all, Dan, stand real quick, second body off air.

But y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. Tomorrow, I have Bria Sullivan on the show. Bria is a founder, CTO of a mobile app that now has 6 million users. So, we're gonna talk about that. So that's tomorrow, Thursday, unicorn finers have a pretty cool startup coming on basically. They are the plaid. So you know, plads to service that links your bank accounts for all these apps like mint. They're basically trying to do that within the HR payroll system. So, um, so more to come there as well. And then Friday, I actually have two episodes, chut, chutting with a VP in India at eight at eight AM, eight AM central.

So early guidance counts are two point on Friday. And then me and Alicia Novan are going to be doing our resume critique unghosted series at noon central on Friday. So Dan, thank you my friend. I appreciate you. I appreciate everybody tuning in. There's a lot of y'all today. It means a lot. We'll see you all tomorrow. Cruz. 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 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 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 T. Dastin on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.