it's not 2019 anymore....w/ anthony mays, founder of morgan latimer

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

Let's give the people what they want. Anthony, who are you? What do you do, and we'll go from there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So I'm Anthony, a software engineer for like 22 years now. Spent eight years of Google left back in 2022 in order to I thought you left longer ago than that. That's crazy. It's only it feels like forever, but it's only been a couple of years. Only been a couple of years though, but wanted to get out in help folks nail the type of interviews. I wanted to help technical people navigate their career. And so I've been doing that. Working with Brian Blackmines from Carrot, which is an amazing program.

And then just recently became a bootcamp instructor, which I really, really love. So I'm now teaching a bunch of young hopefuls how to be software engineers. I love it. I love it. You're way. I love it. want to get a few comments here. RJ is going to see you. Hey, Anthony, may have said there you go. That is right here. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I see he's going hard on that whole. I love that. That's a remarkable thing. Beth, it's so wonderful to see you. RJ, you scared the heck out of me. We said wrap up. Yeah, yeah, I did not mean we wrap up my mind.

You got our day. You made it just in time. Exactly. And Lawrence, my guy, it's so good to see your brother. Hope you're doing well. Miss you. Can't wait to give you a hug at render. All right. So Anthony let's dive in lots of coverage today. The title of this talk is it's not 2019 anymore. Again, for those who watch and I don't have any questions, I don't have any preset questions. I literally get on with guests, some of them who I don't even know. And I say, what are you passionate about? And I like, because I want them to talk about what they're passionate about right now.

So Anthony, let's break it down. It's not 2019 anymore. What do you mean by that? Yeah, you know, it's funny. A lot of tech folks, I think still pretend like it's 2019. pre-pandemic, pre-great recession, you know, the money is flowing, VC Capital is just coming out of thin air. These were the good days and we didn't appreciate them enough, right? Google still had all of their perks and benefits around and all that. And then we got into the pandemic and work from home and all these other kinds of things. And then the great recession, we start coming back into the office, but then big layoffs hit because companies overhired during that 2020, 2021 year period.

And so all of a sudden, you know, whereas folks who used to just smell like Python, smell like Java, smell like dot net, you smell like Python, you got to take it back. I'm just gonna say that right. Like you in the floor and everybody's right. I mean, you You know, you used to just smell like code and you have five people in your inbox immediately. I miss those days. Yeah, man. I'm telling you, but now it's you got folks who've been in for a decade who are spending six months to a year finding their next gig following the layoff. And it's crazy. It's just we haven't really seen this before.

At least this generation hasn't seen this before. I'm old enough now that I can recall living through the dot-com bust, the Great Recession of 2008. So I keep mixing up the Great Recession and the Great resignation. We had the Great resignation in 2021, not the Great Recession. That was the first time. I was following you, but yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I mean, hey, but some folks did go poor, for sure, just like them. But yeah, Yeah, yeah. So there's all that. And so the long story short, those of us who are in tech have had to grow up in ways that we didn't have to grow up before.

He and me, a resume back in 2019, you just need to throw some words on paper to put them up buzz words and then somebody to guarantee, give you a call and you'll get in for the interview. But now you actually have to write a good one. Now you actually have to have a good social media presence profile. Now you have to actually build a robust network so that you are not relying on applying to the front door. So all these skills that I think professionals have had to know and depend upon other industries, say like the financial industry, we've now I had the dot in tech.

And the longer that this industry goes on, the more traditional it will look. I have no doubt in my mind that one day the tech sector will look a lot like the financial sector or like some of these other kinds of sectors of the economy that have been around for longer than tech has. It's not that companies like Google are becoming conventional companies. All tech companies are becoming more and more like conventional companies. And that's not to say the innovation is dead. It's just that, especially for the bigger players, the bigger this thing grows, the more you need, I think the rigor or robustness in even minutia this sometimes comes with operating at that scale.

100%. 100%. So I want to talk about and kind of go back to the basics to Lawrence comes to you as a new universe and navigate and follow up old maps as a kin to navigate. It's more or if I see 100% tough years in tech. Got a lot more tools now than we did. Yeah. 100% 100% totally agree with that. But you got to use the tools. And I think this is what you're passionate about with getting into fang and kind of your talk about knowledge and being prepared, right? And so again, I mean, again, follow Anthony and from an education perspective, he's great.

I do wanna talk about this bootcamp and never you're doing, can you talk about that? And then talk about what you're seeing, right? I think whether you're junior or your senior staff, architect, manager level, really just talk about what you're seeing with kind of these bootcamp grads and really where they're missing the mark because I think it's probably applicable to everybody on this live right now. Yeah, 100%. So the first thing is that the past couple of years of really leaning into coaching as an entrepreneur running my business, a couple of observations. Number one, I've run into a lot of boot camp grads who are looking to augment their boot camp education with the things that they needed in order to pass interviews or at least the things that they thought they needed.

And so I really did a big push in that area. And I'm the kind of person that if I'm doing this work, I want to see the results. when I see the success, I want to be able to say that I'm helping folks land where they want to go. And I've been able to do that over the years, for sure. But I think with the changing economy, one of the things that I realized is that the things that, again, used to be effective aren't effective anymore. And that now the problems have only deepened for folks who have, I think, non-traditional backgrounds coming in the tech.

It has not been a junior-friendly environment at all. Ever, whatever, ever, but even more so now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I started to realize that I'm getting these folks, I'm trying to prepare them and coach them and inhale them out, but they're missing so many of the fundamentals that you might get coming from the traditional. And even the folks with the traditional educational background of a four-year degree, they're missing out a lot of stuff. And I think this has just been baffling to me to ponder like how slow traditional education has been to transition the new workforce to, I think these new conditions. And so I started to get into my mind like, okay, I gotta change the strategy here.

I've gotta do something different because something is not working with the boot camps. It's something is not working with the way that we're teaching people in today's educational system. And so I just happened that I had a boot camp out in Delaware, co-founder Stephanie Eldridge, who's an amazing woman, reached out to me and said, hey, Anthony, we need your help for some interview prep stuff. Can you come and talk to our students? I was like, sure, fine. Signed a contract the very next day, which never happens. Like the next day after talking with her for the first time, we signed and I go in and I'm just like, no offense, but- It wasn't good.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't good. So she was like, okay, well. Okay, real quick, real quick. What, I mean, we don't have to go super high level, or super deep, high level, what wasn't good? So I think there were a couple of things where it's just like, all right, you just need more time. So, you know, a lot of students hadn't really been like, working with their tools and languages for long enough. And so, you know, I'm asking them to do a task and they're still figuring out where the curly braces go. So I was like, okay, that happens. but even more importantly, just around how you problem solve and how you're thinking the questions that you should ask, that was another part that was a struggle.

And so I always tell people that when it comes to like technical interviewing, there's two parts. One of the tools, but the other is the process and how you're thinking about how you problem solve. And you're big on that. You're big on that. I'm huge on that, right? Because if I ask you like, how do you solve problems, generally speaking, describe that to me in 60 seconds. If you can't give me an answer to that, you're not gonna have this coding interviews. Ask my wife. And most people are just doing the leeko grind, right? And so I think until the day, my tombstone would probably read, don't grind lee code.

Right? But that's the thing is I saw this and I was like, it wasn't anything atypical of what I would normally see. Sure. To be honest with you, so it wasn't strange, it was just, and so Stephanie says, well, you wanna come and teach? How about you develop a curriculum? And I was just like me and sure enough, I got the opportunity, put together curriculum and realized like, yes, I'm gonna give these kids, you know, four years of CS education and practical training in 10 weeks with three hour lectures, three times a week, no slides. These four kids, I keep saying kids, these four young people, they really exercise a lot of patience with me through this process.

It was pretty bananas because I was trying to dump basically 22 years of knowledge on them. And I was just, oh, wait, wait, I forgot to tell you this. And we just wrapped up the formal 10-week sweet training part. They were able to build some things. So I'm proud of them for what they survived. But on the other hand, I realized that this is not an easy thing. And I think it's real easy to beat up on boot camps and folks who are stepping in the trial to train the next generation, but not realizing that It's a really, really tough job to do it well and to do it in a way that really sets up the next generation for success.

So, you know, I've taken a lot of learnings from what I did and I would love to, I'm planning on actually writing an article about the things that I learned from teaching a boot camp. I'd love to promote it, get on my newsletter. Yeah, yeah, I would, I'd be grateful because I think a lot of software engineers now who have been wisened over the years maybe just don't appreciate how hard it was to be a junior and to survive through all of that. You know what I mean? It's a lot. I hope that in gender is more grace amongst less technical professionals when it comes to dealing with the new folks who are coming in.

100%. I want to give you a shout out to Jerome. Again, Jerome and I've had many conversations. When he's doing it, that's your code is phenomenal. And again, we've talked about how slow things move. And one guy I admire about Jerome is how fast he pivots is with his true so drum shouts you man. So I mean, you know, I think Anthony, I want to get tactical here for a second. I had to call the June developer the other day. And he was like, he was stressed, he was frustrated. Yeah. In in in a let these numbers aren't quite correct. But let's just say in a six week time, let's say in a four week time, it was a little bit longer than for you.

So say four week time, he said he only had talked to 19 people and submitted 40 applications. That's it. Yeah. You say over a two week, over four weeks, over four weeks. It's not bad. That's pretty good. Yeah. But I told him, I told me to do more, right? And like, I think there needs to be some more activity on his part. Yeah. And I, and, and you know, he was wondering how to send the DMS and how to network. Do you have it? What do you tell your bootcamp grads? because they're coming from a place of no experience and they feel weird messaging somebody who has experience.

How do you network as a bootcamp grad? Yeah, so I've been telling my students, don't tell me, show me, right? I don't care what you say you can do because everybody will say whatever they need to say in order to get the opportunity, right? It's in what you show me. And so I've told them the importance of, and I tell everybody this, it is so vitally important for you to to be able to show what you can do in a very tangible way. And I realized that that means, yeah, you have less time to leak COVID-19, but what did I say a moment ago, right?

You shouldn't be doing that anyway. If I had to do it over again, right, in my career, I would lean heavily into like, let me go find one or two people that I can go build with put together basically anything, focus on writing really good, commit messages, good for requests, good documentation, doing all the things that, you know, I say that I should be able to do on the job and then put it behind a bit. And now every time I'm talking to a hiring manager recruiter, hey, I think I'm perfect for the job. You're looking for these particular things. Go check out this link where I did exactly all those things with a team of people, like go read my pull request, this and any other and see that I'm for real.

You know, I got to do it. You got to do it that way. You really do. there's so much skepticism and doubt anyway, right? You just gotta understand where companies are right now, right? The market is now flooded with senior mid-level talent, right? And there's this great transition, if you will, from companies who have been hoarding this great talent at the Tokyo-Glythe Fang level, right? And now that talent is being reshuffled to other places. And so, that's what you're up against. And so you need to be able to show that you can do it and that you at least have the potential to be that strong mid-level in shorter time.

And so I think being able to bring the tangible assets in the numbers matters a lot. But then also, I think the second thing is that you gotta be able to Empower yourself using the tools of the future. And so I know that for a time, a lot of folks are kind of running scared around AI. I've been trying to encourage my students to pick that stuff up. Use it, learn how to master it instead of letting it master you. And show that you're ready and eager to learn new things. Writing, whether it's writing a small LinkedIn post, or whether it's writing a full article, You got to know how to do this stuff.

It is so invitingly important for you to be able to communicate well. You know, all that stuff matters. And yeah, I think that those are the things that you got to do in this market because obviously going through the front door is not working for anybody much less for the juniors. No, and I've talked about this with Kelly Vaughn, you know, like pre this year, and it's interesting and kind of going through my old content, what I was saying based off where we were at. You know, originally I was like, message hiring managers, ask for six minute conversation. Listen, hiring managers, they got out of the top of time anymore, right?

They're overrun with resumes and they're probably overworked right now. So Kelly has said it best. She was like, ask me direct questions in the DMs. She goes, if you messaged me two or three times with really good questions about the role, then when you submit your information and say, Hey Kelly, I actually submitted my information. That's gonna make her remember you, right? It's just kind of this slow build up. And I keep saying like you got a romance a guy or a girl right now, right? Like literally, I mean, I'm sure you get DMs. I literally got DMM yesterday. It's like, hey, find me a job.

It's like, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So you got to have some coost right now. Oh yeah. Kenneth comes in here. Thanks for continuing to show your experience, Anthony expertise every time I've tuned in making this text so relatable. Jordan comes in here, I'm curious, who tells you better at communicating their work? Who can't juniors or self-taught juniors? Are they interested in question? I think that's a good question. I mean, I think I would have to go with the self-taught juniors because think about what you have to do in order to be self-taught, right? Like at some point, like reading books isn't enough.

You need to actually tap folks to get experience and to get a lay of the land, understand like what's effective. And so I think that if you have the courage to be self-taught, you generally will also adopt the courage to start conversations with people to be able to get the information that you need. And I think if you can, a lot of documentation is just terrible, right? A lot of articles is just terrible. There's a lot of bad writing out there. There's a lot of bad information, right? And I think one of the hardest things about being self-taught is that you've got more access to more information than you ever have before, but it's less organized, I think, than it's been before and less authoritative.

And so filtering through all of that is a real challenge. And I think someone who can do that probably knows how to hold a conversation, right? And to talk about things that work and don't. And to be able to explain like what they're doing and all that stuff. And so, and I think it's been my experience too that when I compare bootcamp folks to self-talk folks, truly self-talk, the self-talk folks do a better job on average of being able to talk through things, explain things, break things down, kind of work through a bit Bob and they have more tenacity as well. Cause you have to remember that a lot of boot camps have catered to, hey, you wanna get a $200,000, $300,000 job in six months?

That attracts a certain kind of clientele, right? And a certain kind of person, the person who wants to take shortcuts to get to success fast, right? And I'm not saying everybody in boot camp is that way, but clearly in the marketing, right? there's this desire to attract people who maybe want the shortcut to get to success faster. And when you graduate from bootcamp not getting that, what do you do? You know what I mean? Then now you really gotta buckle up and do the things. And so it is, I think it's important that self-taught folks develop more confidence around what they have, but I also think that it's important for bootcamp, Jun used to really become self-taught individuals as well.

And I think that's one of the things that a lot of folks are learning is that in this climate, we all have to take way more responsibility for our education than we have in the past. That was good. That was good. Let's, as we, I kind of, last 10 to 15 minutes again, Tom flies any time I hang out with you. networking, right? And again, like the reason why I type of Anthony on the show is, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of people who are really good when it comes jobs or stuff. Anthony's really good at breaking stuff down. Networking right now, what does networking look like for people?

Not only boot campgrads, but just anybody, junior to senior, what is networking look like? We talked a little bit backstage about conferences kind of going to, not going away, maybe going away a little bit, but just talk about the give the general estate of networking right now. Yeah, yeah. So I'm very hopeful that folks are taking kind of the social out of networking. And let me explain what I mean by that. Like a lot of us when we think about networking grew up pairing that with social networking as in, I need to be on Facebook, I need to be on LinkedIn, whatever that right. And I send a message every now and again or throw my information up there and then I'm good.

But networking so much more than that. It's about developing genuine relationships with people. It's about what you do online, but also what you do. offline, right? And it's about leveraging all of the different avenues that are available to you for connecting with people, whether that be local meetups, whether that be conferences, etc, etc. So I find that we're now kind of entering a phase where tech folks and engineers and non-technical hotel is really, you know, we're taking this responsibility and the skill and really developing it more than we have before. And I really appreciate that, right? I think that that's good. You know, the fact that we even have like tech influencers who are taking advantage of platforms like IG and TikTok to talk about and expose and give visibility to what it's like to be in tech.

It's cool. Of course, there are some shenanigans out there, obviously. But the kind of expression that you see in TechNow is a lot different than it was 10 years ago. And with each success of decade, I think it humanizes the trade more than it has been humanizing the past. So all the geek, dork with glasses, pocket protector, all that stuff is being shed, as we now understand the tech is being cool. But, you know, I say all that to say that we, when we're networking, we've got to be thinking about how we are solving people's problems. It's not about me. It's about what I'm giving to others and what I'm supporting them in and leading with that.

So if you kind of say, I need a job, you've already lost me. me. But if you say, hey, I noticed that you have a need for blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's how I check those boxes. It can help you, you know, get a return on investment quickly. I'm all ears, right? Because you started with the problem that I have and you're positing yourself as a solution to that problem. You know, and then also one thing that I've, I like that I need to get part of the sector. I can, yeah, I've made commitments in my life and that's one of them to absolutely avoid that.

But you know, I was thinking about the fact that in networking and developing relationships and showing my value, there are, I'm a big fan of micro-mentorship. And what I mean by that is I don't need to have months long relationships with people in order to consider them mentors. I can have a five minute conversation with you and if I'm listening very carefully and being thoughtful, I can gain experience that can save me time and money down the road. And so a lot of times if I can just get 10, 15 minutes or somebody maybe in the conference tall or at a local meetup or something like that, maybe at a dinner, like I'm going to take it and I'm going to run with that.

And so, you know, these are all things that are aspects of it. But you know, for those who may be listening, one practical thing you can do is like go and join a live audio space on X or on LinkedIn. I mean, actually ask you. Huge value. Yeah, right. Go craft a LinkedIn post around the latest thing that you worked on or learned, right? We talk about learning in public. Networking is part of is the primary reason why you do that, right? It's so that you can connect with other people who are interested in your learning journey and may become interested in how you're growing so that maybe they can open up a door of opportunity for you.

Part of the reason why I'm able to work with the Blue Camp I'm working on, working with is because the founder saw what I was posting, saw what I was talking about and decided, oh, Anthony is the solution to the problem that I have. Had I not been posting, had I not been regularly updating my audience on the things I was involved in doing and the little achievements along the way, I don't think I would have had that opportunity. And so, these are the things that Network can give you and it's not an overnight thing, of course. I'm cashing in on, on at least a decade of very intentional networking on my part.

And unfortunately, I know that some folks are kind of learning too late that you got to make those investments before you need to cash in. I want to get to this comment from Lawrence. So again, there's a question that's coming as well. Companies are significantly less interested in background as they are day one readiness. I mean, this is, I mean, this is huge. Lawrence is another guy that just absolutely spits bars when it comes to practicality stuff. like this is, it's so true. People don't care, companies don't care about where you came from. Yeah. Or where'd you go? I'm not gonna finish that cotton-eye joke.

But they care about what you bring to the table day one. And so I think that's, I think it's so true. I got, we got a question here. Do you have advice on what to do if you talk to a recruiter after applying to a job online, they, they tell you they will organize maybe a second interview, then you see someone high up high range from the company looks at your profile. is it a DM this hiring manager or even if you're just applied to see somebody from the company look at your profile afterwards, thanks. I have thoughts on this. Yeah. I mean, for me, I would 100% do it.

I wouldn't be creepy about it. Hey, I noticed that you looked at my profile yesterday at 2 PM, you know, Pacific time. I wouldn't do that. But I would say, hey, you know, I happen to notice that we have common interest or I really enjoy your company. I thought I'd reach out to maybe ask you about X thing and just be very, very specific about what that ask is. It could be about like, hey, what are three problems that your team is facing right now? Yeah. Could you just maybe give me some insight? Because I'm applying and you're curious to know. So I think having a battery of good questions that you can ask someone in that situation, like have it in a dock or something like that, just keep it off to the side.

And then when you have that opportunity, you know, go ahead and throw that in there, that can be super useful. You know, and remember that like, the hiring manager knows that there are, that these tools are available, right? And to the point where I have gone to look at people's profile in an incognito window because I don't want them to see that I was looking at their profile. Well, and I posted this the other day, I think one of the perks about LinkedIn Premium, which I think they raise their right now, but I still think it may be worth it if you can afford it, like give up some coffees and stuff, but you can see who's looking at your profile, which is really impactful because, back in the day, I used it like a developer was looking at my profile, I just, yeah, I'm like, hey, I saw you were looking at my profile, you're looking for a job by chance, right?

And I think it's a great tool. I do have to say on this question here And that if you are working with a recruiter already, I would work through that recruiter. Because what happens is it depends on how chill the hiring manager is. But if this is a strict hiring manager and you got go around the recruiter to try to message as hiring manager. So I've seen it in the past, hiring managers get freaked out and basically disqualify you. So like be aware of that. If you're working with the recruiter, message the recruiter back, be like, hey, a hiring manager was looking at my profile, do you have any updates on this?

If you're doing it alone and you just submitted your resume to the job posting and that hiring manager or town acquisition person is looking at your profile, that's okay to message. So that's just my caveat there. I think that's smart advice. And that's the thing is whether managers are reaching out on your profile or not, you should always ask the recruiter for the after you talk to someone who works at the company Yes, to get insight like it's just that's a no brainer thing that you should do every interview loop you get into a hundred percent Are there any strategies for making an impact on Twitter?

Oh buddy? I think this is an entire live in and of itself It really is. I mean like I said I recommended the audio spaces. That's great because you can Listen to subject matter experts but then also when you get the opportunity to grab the mic you get to kind of engage in these conversations Publicly that can that can give you opportunity. Obviously posting the stuff that you're working on on Twitter That's important just like it is on LinkedIn The trap with Twitter is is like avoiding the hot takes yes, right? That's that's the like oh I want to jump on this, you know, I got some thoughts about the whole kindred you know, Drake beat from a blah blah blah and then you start like going crazy and you know what I'm saying?

Like, you don't stay out of that. Like if you first have to decide if X is the platform that you want to use for promoting yourself professionally, right? And if it is, then you realize that that's going to come with some compromises or some sacrifices. And I think it's very hard to use it in a personal, like I don't care what anybody thinks kind of way, but then also say, yeah, but I'm also trying to get jobs, because folks aren't gonna be able to separate the two. So I think we have to be super careful there. But then last of all, it's just connecting with people in the industry.

There's a lot of tech folks who are on Twitter. I mean, Taylor, you're there, I'm there. A lot of my tech friends, I'll probably talk with them more on X than I do on LinkedIn. And so there's a real opportunity to develop more personable relationships on X than on LinkedIn. And so I think that's just another thing to consider. Yeah, absolutely. I take advantage of lists. I have a list, go look up a list in your profile. I think it's under, I think it's still its own section of called list. It's a great way to kickstart your follower count or to- Lawrence Lockhart has a list.

I know he has lists. He's put me on one or two of them. Yeah, I have a list too. I think if you're looking at it from a marketing funnel perspective, because I'm doing a lot more marketing and kind of content stuff now, like LinkedIn is kind of your top of the funnel, like post, post, post dispersed content at scale. I think in my opinion, X is kind of more of like middle where you're building more like tactical relationships, leverage the DMs, right? I mean, literally y'all, like you don't understand something, like LinkedIn and If you use it properly, you could talk to any CEO, any founder today.

I mean, I could shoot my shot with Satya Nadella. Yeah. Well, they respond, probably not. But what I'm saying is I could still message him today, right now. So again, like really, really, really love. I really love the DM feature. I've met so many amazing people. Anthony, I swear, I think we met over Twitter. I think initially, I think. You're not. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think we did. I think we did. I just slim your DMs and I go, hey, I want to be your friend. So you're all right. And I will tell you this on on X one thing that I super appreciate is that I've learned more tech stuff from being on Twitter or X than I have on LinkedIn.

Yes, I think that's legit. Like from builders who are just like, Oh, we released this new feature on Netlify or we've got these new changes coming from Angular, right? The first time I learned about Angular signals was on Twitter, not on LinkedIn. Wow. So there's kind of like a stack of like maybe there's access first in terms of like just being aware of the new latest and hottest and YouTube and everything else. Yep. Yep. All right. Let's wrap up here. I love the result. I'm just going through the Kelly sister. I just like Kelly user Twitter for me. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. 100%. I was gonna tell.

use your Twitter for me. Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna tell you to tell Kelly that I said hi. I will. Yeah, 100%. For learning on LinkedIn, I have go to groups tons of tons to learning groups, not much on the feed. Yeah, I kind of an interesting. Yeah, type type five again, Twitter and LinkedIn. I'll maybe groups to steal. Yeah, groups are still kicking for sure. So I mean, again, like get involved, right? Kind of my core pillars. Anything I'm curious to your thoughts is you got to have your resume just upload the job sites, right? Dyson did career builder. That's, you're probably not going to find a job there, but you got to do it.

Second off, you got to leverage social media, right? LinkedIn, Twitter, if you want to pick one, that's fine, but you need to be on it. Two Slack or three Slack discord's getting least one. Yeah. Close communities, yeah. Yeah. Go, uh, go to streams, right? Exit, ex lives, like those are the new meetups. This right, what we're doing right now is a meetup as well. Like these are the new meetups. to look at that. And then my fifth one is job apply. So those are kind of my five pillars. That's all that. No, no, I agree with you. And here's the thing is I think when people say, when people hear, you know, you need to do more networking they hear you need to become a social media influencer.

Correct. And I'm 100% not saying that, right? You don't need to be a social media influencer launching your YouTube channel just to get a job. That's not what we're saying here. What we're saying is take advantage of the tools you have at your disposal, right, for whatever works for you. If you're just like, you know, I'm more audio room person, fine, do audio rooms and, you know, maybe tweet or post every now and again. If you were more like you like to be on live streams and watching a video, fine, do that. If you're more, I want to read articles and then maybe provide my own thoughts on things that I've read, you can do that.

There's a whole lot of ways that move, that you can move that works for you. You just need to figure out what that is and be intentional about developing the skill because networking is not a skill that you just wake up out of bed. Right. No, it's actually the most. You got to practice it just like you do coding problems, just like you do for technical interviews and whatnot. And so I think learning how to develop those formerly called soft skills, but what I now prefer to call power skills, fostering those power skills are sometimes just as important as the technical skills that you're also developing.

And so I think that today's savvy tech person is going to be aware both those things and work on developing them well. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Let's go ahead and wrap up here. Rapid fire for questions. And again, I always tell people this who have families, dad, moms, don't say family. I know I know you love your family. But for the answer to this question, don't say family. What do you like to do outside of work for fun? Bible study. Bible study. Love that. Love that. Awesome. Are you doing solo? you in a group both nice love it love it power community. Am I right?

There it is. Second question if you could not do something in tech right you can't do something in tech and money was the same like money was not a problem what would you do outside of tech? Oh, that's not just a brew campus still in tech so you can't say that. Yeah yeah yeah I don't know pastor church. There you go. I love it. I love it. I would attend that church. 100% would absolutely attend that church. Third question, any tools, technologies that you're tinkering with, that you want to highlight and or things you've read pieces of content from an educational perspective that you really like right now?

That's a really great question. I'm gonna say that right now, I've realized that I still need to lean into AI machine learning a bit more. And so, you know, at this part of my life, I'm just learning how to develop more of a proficiency around using it for information acquisition and education. Not necessarily building with it. But if I can like code twice as fast, you know, getting AI to help generate some of the boilerplate for me, like I'm all for that. And so I've I've been investigating really how to use those tools more productively to, you know, multiply my output. 100%. Last question, we'll wrap it up here again.

Thanks y'all for being in the comments. It was a good conversation. As always, again, the show's called Guidance Council 2.0 because we had some in middle school high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have Guidance Council's turned to an ASCII career advice question. So Anthony, what would you tell young Anthony May's biggest career advice that you would tell young Anthony? Don't be scared. I've heard a lot of that from a lot of people lately. Yeah, don't be scared. I mean, in times admittedly are scarier now than they were when I was coming out. Sure. But still, you have more than I did when I was coming out.

And you have the ability to, I think, leverage that to get farther than I did faster. But it does take time. There's still these unchanging universal principles around what it takes to be successful that will never change. I don't care what the economic conditions are. I don't care what the social conditions are. If you work hard, if you are honest with yourself about where you need to grow and taking the time to grow in those areas, pulling people in to help bring you along, you'll be fine. Absolutely. I love that. I love that. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. Anthony, if people want to find you, where's the best places to find you?

Anthony D. Mayes on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on pretty much everywhere. That's how you find me. AnthonyD. Mayes.com. I'm happy to come and speak on your stage if you're looking for a speaker. And yeah, that's the way I do it. If you can't remember all that, just type in content in Google. number of searches wrong. I love it, I love it. Well y'all, thank you again, again, off tomorrow and Thursday. Thursday, we have unicorn finders in the morning and then Friday. I will be streaming. So really cool announcement. I will be streaming from Ganyo's platform. We just launched a product today. It's called Discover Talent. We basically turned our entire database into a publicly searchable ATS for hiring managers.

So if you're a hiring manager, you can literally just sign up on our profile, peruse our talent. Obviously, you can't take it for free. We get notified. But you can at least plug in all of your restrictions. If you're a hiring manager of cost and location and all that, see who we have and then you can call us to make that match. So it's a really cool feature. I'm going to be going live once a month on Gennio's platform now. We're going to be walking through this feature real time. So if you are in hiring, in my opinion, I think this changes the game in hiring.

No company that I know is basically opening up their database and letting the public search. So incredible tool, excited to roll this out. But y'all have a great one, Anthony, obviously stay on so I could buy you backstage. Y'all have a great one. We'll see y'all Thursday. Peace of you, Rinder. 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 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 T.S. and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.