recruiter turned software developer w/ brooke sweedar

full transcript

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, Brooke. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Hi guys, I'm Brooke Sweetar. I am a software engineer, a bootcamp graduate. And yeah, as Taylor touched on, he and I are kind of kindred spirits in a way because I spent a decade as an executive recruiter, not at all in tech, in the manufacturing space. And I decided to make a switch. I was done with recruiting. I was kind of unemployed for a long time. And so I knew I had to go somewhere else and I just realized and I didn't want to do recruiting anymore And I've been dabbling and learning how to code a little bit on the side just as a passive interest for a while But I decided you know what if I'm going to be making this drastic change I might as well Make it drastic and try and break into the tech industry since I'm going to be starting from scratch no matter what direction I go in really So yeah, I decided to do a six month full stack web development program bootcamp And it was for me a very positive experience.

I'm happy to say that. I know not everybody can, unfortunately, that's done a boot camp. Mine was awesome. It was great. I had great teachers. So yeah, graduated, made great grades with that. But along the way, I also decided to start networking, specifically on LinkedIn, which I really, ironically, even as a recruiter just didn't do, really didn't spend much time on there. So I started with 180 connections in February of 2024 and I just crossed 18,000 followers last night, which- Let's go. Thank you to everybody. Oh my gosh, it's huge. I never imagined any of this or certainly never doing content creation, which now I do all the time.

That's right. And then my buddy Dan, who's at my last company, congrats on getting out of business. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot to unpack in this conversation. For those of you watching, please ask any questions. You know, man, I want to get started. I guess I want to get started of kind of the, what made you get out of recruiting, right? I think there's a lot of people in today's world that want to start something new, whether it's even in the same field, and then there's our guy Ben, shout Ben Pyle for getting broken, I connected. And then Jason, it's good to see you, Jason, my community evangelist at Torc, it was great to see you, Jason.

So a lot of people, like, and Jason, Jason's another prime example, right? Jason, former film guy was in the film industry and jumped in the tech. It's very hard to make that jump. It's very scary. Let's start high level. What words have encouraged what you give people that want to jump into a new industry? Oh my gosh. Yeah, so it is scary. It's terrifying. And especially for me, like I had, I've been working for the same company since I was 17 years old. And so for me now, I'm now I'm 29 and it was absolutely the scariest thing I've ever done. It was also the best thing I've ever done.

And it pushed me out of my comfort zone. It also taught me about strengths. I didn't know that I had, and that was a really cool and tangible that's come from it. I just, like I said, never saw myself doing so many of the things that now I'm doing on a daily basis, but I love the me that I am now. I'm very proud of me now because to be honest, Taylor, like there were a couple of years towards leading up to me making the switch where I felt like I was kind of living the same day over and over again. I loved the company that I worked with.

That's really why I stayed for so long was I loved the people that I worked with, but I really didn't feel fulfilled in, from a career aspect. I felt like I was really doing anything I was particularly proud of. So I knew I just had to make a change. And betting on myself was, it was scary. It was hard. I really didn't have a lot of confidence. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know anyone in tech, which is part of my story. At least I did, right? Cause at least I was an engineer at a career. You were in manufacturing, which is like, not even in the same room.

No. No, not at all. I knew I was starting from scratch. And I also knew from scrolling through Reddit, which don't do, by the way, never do that. But that- Like you weren't if you're sick. It's like the worst idea. Literally, of course, and then you're convinced you're gonna die, but it's like, I knew that breaking into tech, especially during this difficult market was probably not necessarily the smartest thing to do, but I was determined. I just knew I had to try. I had to try. So let's talk about. So one of the things that I try to pride myself on the show is not getting too theoretical and a little bit more practical tactical stuff to give people things take away.

What are some basic building blocks that you did to really start to game a metum from a networking perspective, because again, at least I was in the tech industry, you weren't even in the tech industry. And I want to continue to reiterate that because it's a very, very hard jump, right? The probably the most technical thing you dealt with was CAD software, right? So like, you know, like very different type of industry. So what were the fundamental building blocks that you implemented to start to really gain more traction in the tech industry? Absolutely. And that's such a good question and so powerful. So I decided to start local.

That was just what I did, like on LinkedIn. And what I mean, I also was relatively new to Louisiana too. So that was a whole other thing. So I was like, I don't even really know what I'm doing. New industry and new city. Yeah, literally a new life building for myself. And so I decided to just use LinkedIn search feature and look up software engineer, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and see. Really? Yeah. And because I'd already enrolled in the bootcamp, I didn't start my active networking until like three weeks into the boot camp and I was like, okay, I need to start networking now because I felt I don't want to do this boot camp and then suddenly I've graduated but I still don't know anybody.

No one knows me and I'm just another person. And that's what 90% of people? That, yes, huge. I mean absolutely like that's a very common experience for boot campers. So I always try and that's actually a lot of my audience is either boot campers or career switchers such as myself and I'm like, don't wait. Start now. Don't wait. Yeah. So I'm so thankful that I did that because, oh my gosh, it's just so paid off. But yeah, so then I would send personalized DMs and just introduce myself. Hi, I'm a bootcamp student. I'm just looking to connect and network with other professionals in the industry.

Like I'd love to have network. I love this. I love these conversations. I love the tactical tactical stuff. I feel like people can't even, okay, all right, all right, let's go even a little further back. Are you sending LinkedIn, are you sending connection requests in the notes for these or are you sending LinkedIn DMs? And did you get LinkedIn premium? Right, so at first I didn't, but then I looked into premium because I kept getting ads for getting premium. And so there was like a, yeah, there was a 50% off at the time discount if I paid for a year of career premium. So I decided to do that.

And then I was able to send a lot more DMs because of that. I'm glad I did. I probably want renew my premium just to be honest. But for the time. Well, you're going to have a great point. Do you recommend premium for job seekers? It is a little bit of a hot. This is a little bit of a controversial tape. But we like hot takes on a Tuesday morning. No, that's fine. I'm fine with that. So it's like, I'm glad that I did it mainly because I was able to send as many messages. So for that, yes, but now I'm at the point where I don't send out that many messages anymore.

I've sort of built up, I have a lot more inbound than I do outbound for the most part. And from the job board standpoint, I haven't found much value in that. I've hustled through the applying and marketing yourself as a top applicant or mark this job as a top job for you. And I haven't gotten anything from that. any interviews that I've had have come from my organic networking. They've come from the relationships that I've built on LinkedIn. What about, so what, you message people and then it was like, let's have a call. I think people are weird like, what do I talk about? Yeah.

What did you talk about? Yeah. So my initial posts, like post to the public, to the ether which by the way, at the start was nobody. I just want to clarify, like I may get 18,000 followers now, but like I started from zero. And so I would just started posting about what I was learning in my bootcamp, you know, showing off my crappy little calculator app that I was building, but learning the fundamentals, right? And I felt so shy about doing that mainly because also too, I was kind of like lurking on very well established tech professionals who had years of experience, by the way, like we see successful people and we see the finished product, right?

We don't see how they started out. And so I felt like, man, is anyone even gonna like care? Like, is this stupid, am I wasting my time? But I could not get over. The more I started posting the comments that started coming in and then also the private people messaging me who were much more experienced and saying, hey, I see what you're doing. Great work, keep at it, don't give up. Like, I know this market's really tough. If I can help it anyway, let me know. Like, I have, if there's someone I can introduce you to, like people messaging me, not me asking for anything.

And so that was very unexpected because I hadn't networked before. I didn't understand the power of it. And I always thought like, you know, your network is your network like, okay, the most cliche thing in the world, but it's so true though. It's so true. Yeah. So having some conversations, did you have a specific structure? Did you be like, were you like, and we're gonna move on to content creation here in a second, But like, like, did you like, all right, I'm gonna try to have three calls a day. Like do you go recruiters, do you go recruiters style and like, try to have those three calls a day or something like that?

So actually it took me a while to do, to start doing calls or I called them coffee chats, you know, they're different. At first I was just focused on, okay, actually my initial goal was reach 500 connections. That was my first LinkedIn goal. Cause once you passed 500 it just says 500 plus. So that was my threshold. So again, I started local just reaching out software engineers mainly because I felt they would be more likely to say yes because I was still a stranger But at least I had something in common with them, you know, and then my next step was Looking up so I did full stack Academy.

That was the boot camp that I did. They're pretty big So I started looking up other alumni from full stack So all over the US, right? So then I had a common ground with them and I was like hey, I'm enrolled in full stack Let's let's connect or I'd love to hear about what your experience was whenever you thought whatever. So that was, I mean, I sent out probably like 50 invites a day. This is after I got premium. So I was really aggressive. Yeah, absolutely. So I had the conversations, got to the connections. What I'm trying to make sure I'm like following, like making sure we kind of break this down for people.

Sure. So I had the conversations. What is one thing that you learned? What is maybe kind of a common theme you can share having these coffee chats? How can people better prepare themselves to have these chats? Right. So I actually remember my first ever coffee chat and I was so nervous because I was about to be on camera with a stranger. And again, it was terrifying. Yeah, you know, and I had not done certainly not any sort of video content. Yeah, I mean, you're great. I mean, your delivery is fantastic. You're delivering fantastic. I appreciate that, but I remember prepping and I was just at my computer.

I was so nervous with like what if what if I don't know what to say so I do think doing a little bit of homework beforehand is just a good idea. If you're you don't want to waste people's time if someone is taking the time out of their day to have a coffee chat with you that someone you're trying to learn from or could maybe help you down the line in your career have some questions and I will say like a common psychology tactic I don't care what industry and people like to talk about themselves always always it's human nature we are our own favorite topic um so stick to that you know hey I see that you've been with this company for this many years what do you like about it you know how how is your experience then or you know I talked to other boot campgrads and I would ask them for tips to success or you know or what they liked or didn't like about their boot camp experience and I learned a lot from that one of my favorite things too regarding tech, I started doing homework on deciding if I wanted to work for big tech startups.

That's another hot topic too and there's a lot of controversial opinions. So I talked to employees both. I talked to entrepreneurs who are co-founders at startups and I also talked to some really brilliant big tech engineers who were very kind to give me the time of day and I asked them about what they liked, but they didn't like what the culture was like, how competitive, what's the burnout like for you to get a feel, because man, that one-on-one is so much more valuable than any article you're gonna read or YouTube covering the topic. Absolutely, Johnson, you can absolutely ask questions. So come on, ask away.

I think you could like, I think you could absolutely, I don't, I think you could crowdsource your way to a job by just doing copy chats and learning all the things you've learned. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. So, all right. So we had the copy chats. We're doing that. When in the world did you decide to do content podcasts? Cause of course, like listen, if you've watched me for any extent, you'll be like, Oh great. Here comes Taylor with a content and document the job, just search journey and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but telling you it works. Talk about like, like what was the light switch moment there?

Yeah, so it was a very specific moment for me. I got really lucky and I ended up connecting organically with Nick Costentino and he is a Microsoft engineer. Super smart guys. So I ended up just having a DM chat with him and he has a YouTube channel and he was like, hey, do you wanna talk about your bootcamp experience on my YouTube channel? And I was like, oh my God, like I literally remember reading that message in just panicking, because the thought of, first of all, him even asking me, because I don't wanna say I'm nobody. Every person is a valuable human being, but I'm just saying I was like, why was this guy even giving me the time of day?

He's a total sweetheart. But he also saw what I was doing with my posts, no video content as of yet, but he liked how I was talking and showing my work in public. So, and how I was growing a following even without the video content at the time, pretty rapidly. So he liked that. And I agreed, which was one of the scariest things I ever did and also one of the best because it encouraged me to say yes to pretty much everything since then. Um, and it was a wonderful experience. He was a very gracious host. He made me feel very comfortable. So yeah, I'm on his YouTube channel and that was my first ever video anything.

It was great. I love that. So that was the moment. We were like, all right. I'm going to do this myself. Yeah. And so then, um, in my first video actually had nothing to do with tech. I ended up showing people my favorite items. I have this decorative bookshelf. It has all kinds of cool things up. I don't know. I did like, and just get to know Brooke, and here's, like I want to patch them when I was 16. And like, I don't know, but I felt like, maybe people wanted to get to know me as a person. So I made like a five minute video.

That was my first video. I love that. And I think it's so important. I mean, what are your thoughts on, so I think every book, I mean, listen, If not everybody probably has the, probably the experience to go live. I mean, I didn't necessarily, but I'm saying like not everybody has to, but I honestly think documenting your job search journey is probably one of the coolest things you can do. Yes. To interview any thoughts, any tips, tricks for people who are maybe just sitting on the sidelines and have wanted to document, but don't know how to get started or anything like that. You know, I would say baby steps, because I think whenever you mention content creation, it can feel like this just.

Yeah, like Mr. Beast or something like, you know, you know, and to be honest, most especially on LinkedIn, like most of us are just looking for work, like let's be real, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the platform there for? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so there are a lot of people who just don't, they don't want to edit videos. They don't want to deal with it. But I will say this, it's powerful. If you choose to do it, it is so powerful. I think it's worth taking the risk because I think it'll likely pay off in ways you wouldn't expect otherwise. But I always recommend baby steps for people.

So if you don't post often, start posting more often. If you don't, if you lurk, there are a lot of lurkers on LinkedIn, engage in the comments section or, you know, attend live streams from people that interest you and ask questions, be present and connect with the other people who are also attending and asking questions. You could say, Hey, I saw that you attended, you know, Taylor's live with Brooke Sweetard loved how you talked about your experience with this. It's so natural. It doesn't have to be like a pitch slap. It doesn't have to be this cold experience. You can really build these relationships organically without necessarily having to go live on your own or put forth some massive production.

Yeah, absolutely. Johnson brings up a good question here. How do we get freelancers to get consistent clients? have some clients, but it wasn't consistent. I have thoughts on this too, but definitely obviously wanna. Sure, so yeah, I'm very new to freelancing. I actually literally like the last day of the year agreed to my first freelancing gig. And to be honest, I've had offers for freelancing for months and I've said no to every single one. That's just me because I was holding out for a full-time role. I said yes to this particular one because this guy that I've partnered with, he's a trusted friend and there's a lot of respect.

And I knew like, I knew he was gonna be there for me. He knew I would deliver. Like it was just a very mutually exclusive thing. So, beyond that, like I know there are a lot of people who use the boards like Upwork and Fiverr and all these other ones. I'm not familiar enough to give any expertise on that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would say Johnson, just based off my experience, I mean, and I, I hate to say dude, if you're in a freelance man, you gotta learn how to market yourself. I think the biggest problem of freelance is they don't have to market themselves.

So like you got to be networking every day, doing calls, and get really good, really good, really good with your questions. So I'm broken to test this as a recruiter. We've got really good at asking questions, right? And I think as a freelancer, you have to get to the root of somebody's problems. And so getting on calls and knowing what questions ask informing those questions beforehand, I think is incredibly important. I think Ryan brings up a great point, interacting with chat in the live community. I mean, listen, I've never met Ryan in person. Ryan, if we've met in person, I'm sorry, I forgot. But for the most part, I don't think Ryan, I've met in person yet.

If Ryan came up to me in person, I'd give him a big ol hug. I've never met him, but you know why? He's always on my chats, always. The thoughts on this, Brooke? Yeah, oh, absolutely. There are several people that are legitimately always on my stuff too. And it's everything is sales, guys. And I know we don't like to think of it that way, but it's absolutely true. And so whenever you're looking for a job, you're the product that you're trying to sell. Like, and so that goes back to marketing. And the truth is people want to work with people that they like and that they feel that they have some sort of trust.

So if you're putting yourself out there and you're showing your expertise, you're showing your knowledge and everything else online, it's going to create that reputation. I mean, your personal brand is an extremely valuable thing. Well, John, since someone pushed back a little bit, Definitely we are looking for work, not really in the content. Yeah. Totally get it. But I'm telling you, if you want to do freelance, you're going to have to get comfortable putting yourself out there. And unfortunately, unfortunately, whether you like it or not, you got content is just the word to put shit out on the internet. That's it. Right. I want to go shout out to my girl Jordan, tune in.

Rasta, I met Jordan. She's not been posting consistently. I love seeing her face on LinkedIn, right? Dear, but the thing of the matter is, is that we live in a digital world today. If you are not posting, you do not exist. And I hate to say that that sounds really mean. Thoughts on that, Jordan? I mean, not Jordan, sorry. Our next guest. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, business deals and relationships, especially in this remote forward world since COVID. And especially in tech. I mean tech has always been more remote-friendly compared to other industries, right? But that that is only Expanded and it's only going to continue to that's that's just the reality of things We have the technology to get things done remotely.

You don't have to be in office for for most things and so Yeah, you have to learn how to build relationships with people that you're not sitting across a coffee an actual coffee table from you have absolutely so When it comes to kind of where you're at right now, where you at near journey still You know what what what are some more things you're learning lately? You have any difficulties right? I know we're talking about positive things But like we have been problems with anything kind of kind of give state of the union right now worth with with Brooks We'd are yeah, so I am still interested in a full-time developer role I have a preference for that over freelance I although I will say this freelance opportunity that I'm currently working on is fantastic and has been great real world production experience for me to add to my resume and help target me for interviews so not negating that at all it's just a preference so I'm very interested in working in a startup environment and I've been very fortunate so for a lot of my job search I was fully employed so I was not afraid to say no to a lot of things like really really holding out and then I decided to start freelancing and cease working at my previous employer oh my gosh, that was so scary, but it's fine.

And so also I've taken it as an opportunity to kind of step away from the job boards, to be honest, and lean more heavily into my network and those actual connections too. And I'm in talks with some potential other opportunities, which is great, but it's all come from my networking. And also it's allowed me to spend more time on my content creation, which I've fallen in love with. That's not going to be everybody's journey, everybody's journey, but it's mine and leading to me launching my own podcast this Friday, actually. There you go. There you go. So follow Brooke, subscribe to our podcast. Always pause for people kind of getting into this realm of work because it is interesting.

I am curious if you've seen this and as a fellow recruiter, maybe you could test this. I feel like right now in today's world that you have to now have the experience before you get the job. That's crazy. I don't disagree with you, but it's, you know, reading through, especially like on the actual job boards, like any entry level developer role. I mean, yeah, very much quotation marks. It's like three to five years experience. I'm like, okay. So, okay. And I did, I have had lots, lots of offers for, I'll call it work, but you know, for free. on things or offered equity or just for experience, I'm not going to trash on that too hard.

Like I said, I've been in an unfortunate position where I've just said no, because I didn't want to do it. I wanted to get paid and hold out for that. Yeah. I think right now, and again, I think free work's interesting. I know I've talked about it and I always do a caveat of A, if you can't do it, don't do it. But I also, I also would say, if you can do something for even one to five hours a week for free, on top of, you know, on top if you do a serving job or your whatever, right? Like, because I'll never forget this guy who I worked with years ago, he had a great resume.

He was a two-year developer, you know, kind of that sweet spot, that two years of experience, right? And it's like, I interviewed him. I was like, hey, man, like, you know, love your background. I was like, you know, I kind of screened them. And I was like, so how much were you making most recently? He goes, I wasn't. And I said, I'm sorry, what? He goes, I wasn't. I go, what are you talking about? He goes, the last two years, this has been kind of like 10 hours a week type thing. And the fact of the matter is when I looked at his resume, he looked amazing.

So, yeah, I know it's a controversial topic. You need to do what's best for you and your family or your spouse or your partner. But unfortunately, with how competitive the market is, is if you are just relying on your capstone project and not doing anything else, you will not get very far. I agree. I really do agree with you. You do need to have more to bring to the table. And again, again, that goes hand in hand with also talking about competitive edge marketing yourself. You know, it like a tree falls in the forest, but no one's around. You know what I'm saying? Does it, does it make us sound the same principle applies to it?

If even if you are doing all this work, if you're not talking about it showcasing it, if no one's going to see it again, recruiter brain, I looked at like 200 plus resumes a day for years. And I did not spend very much time on each one. You know, I know what to look for. and if it didn't match, it's a piece of paper. It wasn't a human face. However, if it was as an example, like a candidate I've worked with in the past, they come across and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember this guy, absolutely. Changes everything. So when your content, whatever that means, building in public, comes across someone's feet and you're consistent and you're establishing your reputation, it's no longer, oh my God, it becomes, oh, hey, look what they're doing.

That's great, they're learning this new skill I'm glad to see them covering this milestone or gaining this certification. Whatever that means for you, you're no longer going to be a stranger. And you might very likely become the person that someone thinks of, oh, there's a new job opening at my company. This person could be a thing. It's all this. It's all the top of mind, baby. Top of mind. Jamie, love to hear Taylor's thoughts on Brooke. I mean, I'm for it. I think job boards are the worst. I think job boards are a time suck right now. I just think, I think you can apply to 100 jobs and I think you could DM 10 people and I think you're gonna have better success with DMing 10 people.

But again, it's hard because in today's society, we confuse activity with productivity. Yes. Right? So it's like we don't feel like we're doing anything if we're just messaging and talking to three people a day. We're like, how's that gonna affect me? but we feel better submitting our resume blindly to 500 postings, right? And job boards are, job posting specifically. The job boards, you can still put your resume on job boards. I'm all about putting your resume on job boards, but in terms of mass applying, I'm against it. Another question for Brooke, what you take on AI versus software engineer in terms of job allocation? I'm kind of curious what you mean by job allocation.

Maybe it has to do with the talks of AI taking over, you know what I'm saying? Or using it during your job search. I don't know. Oh yeah. I don't know. Johnson, you want to clarify. Johnson, if you want to clarify for us, and we'll come back to it. We'll come back to that. Johnson, clarify for us. Katie, another pivot as well. Pivoting is so hard. Position yourself to showcase the transferable skills and translate to the language of the job you want, plus learning what metrics are important to the job you want. Thoughts on this, bro? Yeah, absolutely. Plus learning what metrics are important to the job you want.

Yeah, so be intentional with what you're learning. That was actually a really tricky thing too. And again, I'm so glad I was networking and got guidance on this because there are so many languages, so many frameworks, a lot of thoughts and opinions on what you should be spending time on, what you shouldn't, what you're wasting your time on. And again, just as you said earlier, you confuse activity with productivity. You can spend a lot of time doing some surface level tutorials on 20 different things and you're not, you're not going to get anywhere. So I always say people ask me like, you know, what should I do?

It's like pick a language, pick one and stick to it until you understand the fundamentals and you can build things with it and then do like a building block learning on top of that and expand outwards. You know, it is good to pay attention to trends, but at the same time, like just don't spread yourself too thin to be all over the place. That's not a good tactic. 100%. This is interesting. Stephen fellow recruiter friends. A while thought here way off topic have internships taken place of entry level jobs. I mean, possibly, possibly. I don't, you know, again, I'm kind of out of the day to day recruiting world now in terms of like active, active jobs.

But I would imagine that if a company has a good internship program that would diminish an actual job posting for entry jobs. Yes, I would say that's correct. Luke, you can watch this in the future. It's going to be on Brooks LinkedIn after this. You can go check out Brooks LinkedIn and it's all across all of my platforms as well. Luke, thank you so much. Everybody's asking, yes, playback, playback is available. It's going to be all my stuff. YouTube LinkedIn has come Brooks LinkedIn. That's why I love streaming live, like kind of a content thing. When you stream live, the whole conversation stays on the platform, right?

And this, I've posted about this for a while, that if you're a company or an individual starting, I would always live stream first. We're always live stream first. Brooke, what else? We're already kind of wrapping up time. It's crazy. Any other words of wisdom, tips, anything else you want to share? Yeah, I think especially for people who are starting out or trying to break into this industry, On top of just the content networking, I will say sincerely like do not be an island in your journey It's tough the market is tough and it's very competitive and honestly I've I think I would have had a much more difficult time or maybe even still wouldn't be here if I hadn't had these actual support Both from seasoned people who were just being like, it's okay You're not in your mind.

We know it's difficult like how can we help you to also other other people who are trying to do what I'm doing. It's just as an encourager, you know, having those private one-on-one conversations and being like, hey, do you have any advice for, you know, interviewing my resume? Like these real conversations, because scrolling through, like I said, these articles are sometimes watching these videos on YouTube and whatnot, it can just, it can feel like this impassive wall, but having these real one-on-one connections, friendships that you will develop as you network that's just going to happen if you're doing it correctly. Man, that's that's been priceless and honestly been a huge thing in my arsenal to keep me going to be honest.

Absolutely, absolutely. All right. As we wrap up here, please ask any more questions. But Brooke, I do kind of go a little rapid fire here. So a little, a little fun little questions. Again, thank you for coming on and spent your, your, your awesome and seriously best of luck. And again, my network is your network. So if you see anybody I'm connected to, please let me know I'm making directions. So first off, Valentine's Day is coming up. Men that are married have plus ones that are dating. Valentine's Day is upon us. Hopefully you made your reservations. But Brooke, what's like your go-to candy, right? And even if you're not a candy person, just appease me here.

What's kind of your go-to Valentine's Day candy? That's actually easy for me. It's toedlerone, the original flavor of toedlerone. Yeah, those are great. Those are my wife, Tanya, I've never had one. And those are great. Delicious. Fantastic. Love that. Who is doing something, I guess, really cool in your world that you want to give a shout out to? Oh my gosh, so many people. Oh, I'm so nervous. OK, two people. One, Maho Pacheco. He works for Microsoft. He's building this really awesome product called Vocal Cat to help people like me, who are content creators that are one-man bands. It basically helps you cross post seamlessly.

So that's a really cool thing you should check out. And I will also say my good buddy, Vinay Gajar, he lives over in the UK. He's actually looking for work. He's an experienced software engineer. He is one of the kindest people in the world. And he does like all kinds of community volunteering. He shows up to almost all of my lives too. I'm so sad he's not here today, but he normally is. So I'm in a hue, he's fantastic. And you should connect with him or hire him. Cause he's love. I love that. Obviously you're getting into your journey as a developer. What are you working on right now?

Talk about maybe some tools you're working on, maybe some frameworks you're working with. Just kind of give us a little view of that. Yeah, so actually my freelance gig has gotten me out of the React world, which is pretty much what I've spent most of my learning in building time in, which has been interesting and I think good experience for me. And now I'm actually working with Alpine.js. Okay. And yeah, it's a lightweight framework that of course is outside of React. Oh my God, my new high. I'm so glad you're here. Oh, I'm so happy. Anywho, yeah. And also dabbling and learning Go, very new, very new.

But I think it's gonna be really, really good. Cause I'm more of a front end gal. So kind of digging into the back-end side of things. It's just, it's not gonna hurt. I love that. What was that cross-posing app called? Oh, Vocal Cat. Vocal Cat, like a kitty cat. So. And is that a V or a F? like your vocal cords. Like gotcha. Okay. Awesome. Love that. Love that. You know, kind of a kind of a super random question. What's one thing lately that you've done that you just like really enjoyed, whether it's a meal out, whether it's a, whether it's, I don't know, playing in Louisiana snow, like just, just kind of something you've done lately that you really enjoyed.

I actually am going to give the shout out to my snow day. I'll tell you, I spent the entire day outside in my backyard frolicking. Like, I mean, just, oh, let's go so much fun. And here in Louisiana, that was so rare. So that was, that was just nice. I love it. All right. Last question. The show is called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, you don't really have anybody or anything to turn to and really ask for general career advice. So if you could go back in time, I know you're kind of starting your journey again, which is, this is a kind of an interesting question.

But even over the last little bit where you've been, you know, kind of getting the software development side of things, if you go back and tell Brooke before she left recruiting a piece of career advice or a piece of tactical job advice, what would you tell Brooke before she dove into software development. development. Oh my gosh, I would say don't get in your own way. And I think, I think especially for women to be honest, I think sometimes the having that confidence in yourself, betting on yourself and trusting that you are actually equipped to take this risk and to face the unknown, it's worth it.

Do it. I know it's scary, but do it. Like honestly, I wish I'd done this earlier, but I didn't and at least I did it at all. So I'm very, I'm very proud of everything that's come from it. And like I said, now here I am. Like a year ago me would not recognize me today. And, you know, podcast host of the Tech value podcast and content creator software engineer. It's great. I love that. I love that. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us this morning, Brooke. Thank you so much. Stay on so I can say about you backstage. But y'all have a great Tuesday.

I was going to have the great Aaron Francis on the show. But on Thursday, but we had to postpone. I'm actually flying down to Atlanta to do 36 hours with my right hand woman Brianna. We have a lot to tackle for Torquing Q1, Q2. So I'm flying down to Atlanta doing all hands with Brooke with Brianna. So no lives for the rest of the week for me. So we'll see y'all next Monday. But again, go connect with Brooke. Go subscribe to our podcast that's coming out Friday, right? Friday. Friday and y'all have a great one. We appreciate you. Thank you. Peace. 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 Tdastin on all social media handles.

And I hope you have a fantastic day.