Pybites Podcast

#181 - From Olympic Lifting to Data Engineer: Tim Frazer’s Unconventional Path to Success

• Julian Sequeira & Bob Belderbos

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Tim Frazer shares his remarkable journey from a homeschooled kid on the Canadian coast to an entrepreneur in Philadelphia. He recounts his early life, influenced by two contrasting educational philosophies, and how this paved the way for his career in operations and software development. 

This episode delves into the parallels between sports and coding, as Tim shares his journey from yoga all the way to Olympic lifting, drawing lessons from the competitive sports mindset. We hear how feedback loops and embracing imperfect journeys has been crucial in Tim's personal and professional development, teaching him the importance of setting ambitious goals and the 'human' skills necessary to thrive in the world of technology and entrepreneurship.

Tim's social media links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamtimfrazer/

Bluesky: Tim frazer (@tfrazer.bsky.social)

Substack: Tim Frazer | Substack

Books / what we’re reading:

Tim:

I just came from a conference recently in Texas that was amazing and a lot of it was around like the human skills is what we started recalling, and not just soft skills. Soft skills imply that it's like less than right, but it's these human skills of like translating and working and sifting through everything Like that's still at this point like very much a human thing. We're very humans, are very chaos oriented bang.

Julian:

Humans are very chaos oriented. Hello and welcome to the PyBytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian.

Bob:

Sequeira, and I am Bob Beldebos. If you're looking to improve your Python, your career and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. The podcast for you let's get started. Welcome back everybody to the PyBites podcast. I'm Bob Beldebos and I'm here with a very special guest, tim Fraser. Tim, welcome to the show.

Tim:

Thanks, bob, it's been a minute.

Bob:

Yeah, yeah, we go back quite a few years. So Tim here is a software engineer, architect, entrepreneur and has done many things. We got to know each other in PDM because you were in PDM, I think, in 2021.

Tim:

Yeah, it was way back. I really liked it then.

Bob:

Yeah, that's a yeah. We work together and you know you grew your software skills and mindset and all that. So today I want to talk a bit about your tech career background, how far you've come, what you're doing coaching, industry trends, entrepreneurship. We'll see how much we go through, but maybe for the audience you want to start with a quick intro.

Tim:

Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, thanks, bob, very warm welcome. I think for me it's just to give everybody context, like you know why me, and like my journey through, like becoming a software engineer, data engineer, architect, and you know starting my own business engineer architect, and you know starting my own business. I think that, um, I, I fell into software engineering during the days of, like, my dad bought a 386 yes, I'm that old, uh and me stealing it away from him, uh, you know, realizing that I could eventually, you know, as I progressed around stealing time on the computer, that I could cheat in video games if I just learned a little bit of coding was probably like the soft intro for me into coding.

Tim:

But my background is actually like I'm a homeschooled hippie kid off the coast of Canada is where I grew up. So you know less than 3000 people. There weren't many tech nerds in my circle. My kids, my parents very strong vegetarians when I was growing up and that was a good portion of my life. But I always loved technology. I was kind of like that weird kid that just loved tinkering and computers was just absolutely the most amazing thing. So, yeah, I grew up off the coast of Canada, west coast. And then I um, how did I even get here? I'm just trying to think, god, I feel so old sometimes, but uh cause.

Bob:

Now you're in your, you're in New York right now, right.

Tim:

Uh no, I'm actually in Philadelphia. But I decided to do even crazier. I bought an old, old house and now for Europeans listening to this, that's like you know, it's over a hundred years old and New York was not. Not. I don't make that kind of money. I'm a successful entrepreneur, not that successful. So, yeah, I moved from Canada to New York City as a software engineer.

Tim:

So how I got into it was like I kind of fell into it. I was doing operations at a company in Canada and operations just means doing everything Millions of Excel spreadsheets and then buying stuff. And I got my first dose of working for a startup that way Because a friend at a yoga class introduced me to the company and they needed somebody to fill out Excel sheets and talk to factories and do all kinds of stuff. But I got more to doing it, um, you know, by hand. So I quickly started coding python, because there's this fancy thing and you know excel sheets and um. And then I learned how to use and work on like erp systems, like net suite. So then I learned how to code on those things. Same thing. I was just like. I just felt doing the same thing over and over again was like not not conducive to my brain, um, and so I just learned how to do those kinds of things and it turns out people like paying you to do those things, uh, I wasn't very good at it, uh, but I was good enough that people would constantly, you know, hire me and then, uh, you know, I would I work my way up through the company and learn how to solve bigger and bigger problems.

Tim:

And that's actually how I ended up in New York City, because I was working for a startup at that time and they went more or less bankrupt, as most startups end up doing, and it was an e-commerce startup up in Canada, and I won't say their name, but it was an exciting time. It was a very intense time of my life, and I won't say their name, but it was an exciting time. It was a very intense time of my life, but they gave me enough skills that I could get an interview with this really cool company, this startup that I will mention, called Bonobos. They gave me a great chance, but I had to go learn Ruby on Rails and I knew nothing about Ruby on Rails and it's not Python but I learned enough really fast. The manager gave me a chance and brought me to New York City and I was in West Coast of Canada. Somebody actually paid me to move to New York. I was super pumped and excited and I brought my accounting and analysis background to help them with their logistics. So that's kind of how I combined my business and software engineering together.

Tim:

And while I was there I was working in Ruby on Rails and in Ruby there's this weird team, the data team, and they were just solving some really complex problems and they were coding in Python and this whole time I'm like self-taught. I never did a coding camp or anything like that. I was just like I guess YouTube was around at the time and books I know books, lots of books. I ended up working for the data team a lot and so I started learning python and doing that and that's actually how I ended up getting into pdm, because I didn't have time to do a coding camp full-time. I wanted something practical and, um, I think you and julian, you guys were on a podcast.

Tim:

It was like 100 Days of Code. I think a lot of people find you that way and you guys I'm not sure when you guys launched PDM, but I think it was like relatively new from like the PyBytes time and I was like, wow, this is super smart, like this is what I need. I need like this feedback loop because, like I love and believe in coaching very much, like more than traditional teaching, sometimes, like the most important piece is the feedback loop If you're doing something, and yeah, that's. That's how I met you.

Bob:

Awesome. So, yeah, there's a couple of things there. Let's go back to the start. You said homeschooling. I don't get to to, uh, homeschooled people often, so how, how has that influenced, um, how you learn things and and develop?

Tim:

uh, yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a good question. Um, I'm fine with chaos, like my parents were like. So my mom was an artist, uh, um, and you know, studied fashion, design and, um, you know. And then my dad has a diplomas in chemistry and physics. Um, it's a very different ways of seeing the world. A good combination? Yeah, very different.

Tim:

So you know, like, my mom taught me how to like sew teddy bears or, uh, quilts, and my dad would be like, okay, as a 14 old, you need to do your taxes. And I was like, great, so I'm just going to use software. And he was like nope, and gave me a pencil. He was like you've made enough money mowing grass and like babysitting at 14. And I had just done a small job at a grocery. He's like we're going to teach you how to, how to, how to do this and we're going to do this by hand. So you know very opposite views of how to do everything. So what I got from that is like because I also could like follow my interests, and it wasn't contained to say like you know, 90 minute class or whatever. It was.

Tim:

My mom very much believed in most people who will find things that they're interested in and double down on learning on those things. So that was kind of like they gave me this crazy passion for learning. Like I read so many books, I write my own sub stack, I write and talk to people from all over the world, talk about mentorship, that I do and things like that. So what it's given me is that just like foundation to essentially have like no fear about learning. Like you can mostly learn anything, especially now. Oh my God. Then it was like books, uh, and also like don't ask for permission. Like my mom enrolled me in like university coding classes when I was like 13, because she didn't believe in aid restricting anything. So she just like secretly enrolled me using her like her age or whatever, uh, and just like hook me up, that's awesome, yeah.

Bob:

So in a sense here you almost got to focus on the things that were more, most useful and you like the most from the start, almost like taking a shortcut because you didn't have to learn all the boring stuff yeah, I mean, that's the thing is like my dad believed in the boring stuff.

Tim:

Like he was like you're gonna learn how to like literally chop wood Like I grew up on an island where you chopping wood was a thing. He was like you're gonna learn how to do practical stuff, like getting under a car and like how does it work. And uh, my mom was like, okay, well, you also need to learn how to draw and paint um kind of stuff. So, yeah, it was a. It was a very I at the time. It wasn't, it didn't. My head was not unique because, like, I had a bunch of homeschooling friends at the time. It was just normal. And then I yeah.

Tim:

There, you go. Yeah, Well, my wife is the opposite. Like she, she did private school and PhD and and a very deep thinker. It's so many in like certain aspects, like absolutely amazing thinking patterns. But yeah, we're very opposite on some things. I definitely have the opinion of like, oh, I can solve this, and then just go off on long tangents of thinking on things.

Bob:

Yeah, interesting. So going back to the code show, so you got pretty far by yourself coding and there you hit a wall right, like you definitely oh yeah, to produce scripts and code, but you missed that feedback loop. Um, yeah, now, before joining the, our coaching. Um, you and coaching go back a long time, right, because you're you have been doing, uh, power lifting as well. Uh, is that where you met coaching, or was it even before that?

Bob:

maybe you can talk a bit about that experience

Tim:

yeah, for me for coaching, like it started way back. I mean I learned it from my mom, obviously feedback loops, but also like um, you know, I mentorship, like I would get mentored in lots of different subjects. Um, when I was younger and you know, the expectation when I was growing up was like well, if you learned it, you also have to learn how to teach it. So I mean more formally is probably when I was like doing yoga. So I had arthritis when I was really young on both my knees, really bad, and so I learned yoga, you know, from a teacher on this hippie island, from a teacher on this hippie Island, and that was like a really important thing because it taught me the relationship between like a mentorship and like teaching in a more practical way, I would say it helped me get mobility back and I really liked that. So I very quickly learned how to, you know, try to teach that way right, like how do you take what could be a very dense subject like why you breathe and the health and focus and everything around it, and condense into a pattern of movements and then slowly explain over time why it's important, and then you know, through crazy things through my life, I ended up coaching CrossFit and getting certified.

Tim:

That led to me going and doing powerlifting. I also got certified. I don't know why I like them. I don't have an education, you know, formal university group. I got certified for these coaching things and then I also fell into Olympic lifting and I compete in Canada for a while in my 20s, clearly related to yoga. But I just follow what I'm interested in and I did that for years. I ended up being a judge, so I would go to competitions and Olympic lifting and judge people whether they did it right or did it wrong. Uh, and then, you know, meddled in that Um, and then I probably, and then I taught that too for a little while. Um, not not full-time. I never did any of those teaching full-time, cause I also had a career running at the same time that actually paid the bills for me.

Bob:

Yeah, yeah, wow, cool. I didn't know about the competing or I might you might have told me that, but that I want to hone in a bit on that. Like, uh, there's a lot of mindset right with competitive sports, so, um, yeah, what is?

Bob:

can you give us one mindset le sson from that, because it's probably going to equally apply to people wanting to be and become successful in any career

Tim:

I think that, um, the reason why I compete now I mean there's no real competing in yoga, but in like a lot of other states, like powerlifting it's a clear mark, um it, it drives you to focus right. You have a time frame when a thing needs to be done, whether you're ready or not. Right, like projects and companies. And I think that we all get a little bit obsessed with perfecting something and trying to adjust the timelines.

Tim:

So if you sign up for a competition with your money and you tell a few friends, boy, the pressure comes down like, oh, now you gotta, now you gotta show up. Now doesn't mean I haven't failed, like got injured or you know, or got sick or something like that. But or you know, or I wasn't as prepared as I liked. But you know, I think that's a little bit like real life, like roadblocks happen and sometimes you don't. So you know, there are many times where I'd miss the podium or I would. I would get more fun and enjoyment actually of coaching other people on my team and working with them and finding that was the rewarding piece, and sometimes I like winning gold or sometimes silver.

Bob:

But yeah, yeah, yeah, more to journey than than the actual yeah, I mean yeah, exactly at the time.

Tim:

You may not appreciate the journey. I'll tell you that, like god, lift, like weight lifting, just like coding. Honestly, sometimes it's just like you're just doing. You just got to get the reps in I know no one likes hearing that no one likes hearing it, but you know how to get good at coding. You code. You can read as many books as you like, but you know that's why. You know you and julian have the have that nailed down.

Bob:

It's just like even with ai, and we'll talk about that later, I think, but still gotta get the reps in yeah, we can, we can talk, yeah, so maybe you can make the translation to pdm like when, when you joined pdm and you needed that coaching and guidance, was that kind of similar. What happened there? That you became focused, you had a goal and and you had that critical feedback. What was the? What transformation happened?

Tim:

yeah, I mean working with, like julian. Like I felt like man with my background. I felt like such a you know fish out of water. Like I almost felt like I had faked my way into multiple careers via software, which, like I almost felt like I had faked my way into multiple careers via soft furniture, which is irony. Ironic because, like I had actually interviewed on technical components multiple times at that point, but I still felt like I never and I don't think most of us ever escaped that we're like someone's gonna find you out or some imposter syndrome yeah, it's oh what no way.

Tim:

Um, and a lot of people, most people suffer from this, um, some people don't, but I am constant and I think those are the real imposters.

Tim:

Yeah, I know I'm a, I'm the real imposter.

Tim:

Everybody else is faking their imposter syndrome. I think for me it was just like why I came to pdm is because I knew I needed, you know, proper feedback and like handholding and like I worked with you and, um, there's another guy I worked with, uh eric. He gave me some really good feedback. But it was like really just practical ways of thinking about software that you know you're working at these software companies and and if you're really lucky and I was, uh, that they would like sit you down and talk about like how to build real software. But generally most of the time they you know their they don't have time to talk about it. They kind of expect you to just figure it out. And I felt like as much as I like the time pressure and the crunch to prove myself that maybe a more structured way of learning that had a tighter feedback loop that I would ever get in most coding camps and I've actually coached at coding camps but in in my career would be something much more in my interest, and that's what PDM did for me.

Julian:

Cool.

Bob:

Yeah, and I think it's also the one-on-one component, because you mentioned bootcamp. Absolutely that's too core driven and then I think the efficiency drops yeah it's really hard.

Tim:

It really hard, uh, to do the cohort model. Like it's useful, it can be useful, but like the one-to-one component, uh, of teaching. Like even when I was coaching an olympic lifting, like I would take large chunks of my time to sit down with people and figure out their goals, like what do they want to compete in? And and I would drive them to like finishing a thing even if they weren't comfortable or they felt ready. And I felt very much the same thing when I was in PDM. It's like okay, well, you're going to finish your thing and you know it doesn't have to be external. Like maybe the thing I was working on was actually more of an internal tool in my company, but like it gave me the domain expertise that I felt comfortable with.

Bob:

Awesome, and since you've well well, you have always been coaching, but you're also coaching now in in software, right, so tell a bit about um your your coaching work on the other side yeah, I mean for me for coaching wise, like so one of my goals was to kind of lift people up, um in more marginalized spaces or people that don't have access.

Tim:

To say, a person that's worked at such large companies Like I worked at, you know, got Bonobos and Walmart and multiple startups at this point and um, and having that expertise, so like I've been doing a lot of mentorship and coaching for people abroad, so like less people in India and in Africa, um, some people in Brazil, uh, and they're just kind of like helping people in their journey.

Tim:

And I started this a couple years ago, um, when I felt also isolated during covid, like I just wanted to connect to more people because I've been circling around with like lots of senior engineers at this time and we all speak the same language at this point, but I felt like, um, I don't know, pay it forward really, um, maybe I could help someone else out there. So you know, I think about this point, I've coached it must be almost 100 people now. Yeah, at one point my calendar was getting a little too packed. That and I have two young kids, you know, under under four now and so packing it in was it started to be quite, quite the level of gymnastics.

Tim:

So I'm not doing this much right now. I'm working on a new program I'll talk about in a second, but, um, that's been quite, uh, it was quite good. It was good I learned and also like learning and getting feedback about me as a coach and mentor like what worked and what didn't work was like super important. So I've had to rethink on um, how I coach, uh, which is what.

Bob:

What did you learn there? What changed um um?

Tim:

I mean you probably already knows this, but like you know, I'm used to when I was coaching mostly it's physical stuff, it's a lot. I would say it's pretty, you made it or you didn't make it. But like you're talking, software engineering and and and other forms of output like that, I would argue it's a little bit on the creative side, like it's a little harder sometimes in changing people's habits. I also worked at a behavior change startup for a couple of years and that gave me like more insight that most of software engineering is its habit and introspection and asking the questions like are you solving the right things? You know, constantly at the the top of mind.

Tim:

So for what I've learned personally was that people generally like to be told what to do and which is a mentor is, is, is not really what you're supposed to be doing. So that can be very uncomfortable for people because they typically come to you and and they're like well, what should I do next? And I don't say you shouldn't give somebody concrete advice, that's fair. But I think at the same time, getting to their why they're doing what they're doing is sometimes much more important, and then giving them maybe something more specific to follow up with yeah, yeah. Getting to their why they're doing what they're doing is sometimes much more important.

Bob:

And then giving them maybe something more specific to follow up with. Yeah, yeah, I usually do. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I struggled as well at the start doing the coding for them right Too much, and I totally got away from that, because you know that's not how they're going to learn.

Bob:

So you really need to empower them or have them learn how to solve problems and be able to figure stuff out and also think what's next. And, as you say, you cannot always say, well, no, go implement this and that and that and then make very specific tasks, especially if they go more for a senior software engineer. They need to be able to, you know, think about the next steps as well. So it's sometimes a fine line right between telling them what to do versus making them that they are able to do that themselves. Right? So that can be tough, right? Yeah, I mean, you know that can be tough, right?

Tim:

Yeah, I mean, you know personally my career. When I left, you know, bonobos and Walmart, I joined a startup behavior change startup and they gave me the opportunity to be a lead software engineer data engineer actually and that gave me the opportunity like I'm greenfielding, I'm building stuff from scratch, right, and I'm working with people, but I was in the lead position. So it was like my responsibility to articulate and build the thing. And then I quickly realized over time like I actually need to build a team. So I went to the CTO at the time and he one of the best, craziest bosses I've ever worked for just gave me shed loads of responsibility. He was like, all right, you know, cool, that sounds great. Now give me an articulated view. All right, let's go hire some people. Do you want to? You know, do you want to become a manager, which I've been wanting to for a while, because I was really interested in the people part.

Tim:

So, you know, during my what was it?

Tim:

Two and a half years in that company, I got promoted several times into director and I had words of like 12 people reporting to me at one point, which is very different way of thinking.

Tim:

All of a sudden, you know your manager, but you also have to be a coach a little bit, because your software engineering and like how much you know all those things we talk about in leadership is like really is important.

Tim:

And also you know understanding, like the deliverables of your team members that you're working with, but also, like I had senior staff members and also you know understanding, like the deliverables of your team members that you're working with, but also, like I had senior staff members and like you know, and I promoted several of them and I was like, okay, well, no, it's actually it's on to you to figure it out. Like I can't tell you absolutely everything you need to solve. You, you actually need to go into business and talk to them what problems we're going to solve. Um, yeah, and giving them enough and also not coding for them, which is very hard to do, because I was my backer yeah, yeah, right, and then also having the humility to learn that you're not going to be able to code as much as they are. So they probably are the actual subject matter experts at that point.

Bob:

Yeah, sounds like a lot of mindset and soft skills. So point yeah, sounds like a lot of mindset and soft skills. So we're always focusing on the tech skills, right, but this is all this is so much more right.

Tim:

Yeah, I just came from a conference at data conference recently in texas. That was amazing, uh, and a lot of it was around. Like the human skills is what we started recalling, and not just soft skills. Soft skills imply that it's like less than but I would call them humans. It's not really good, it's just what it is.

Tim:

We've all been told like that, right, but it's these human skills of like translating and working and sifting through everything like that's still at this point, like very much a human, a human thing. Um, we're very, um, humans are very chaos oriented yeah, yeah, it's um, it's ai changing that.

Bob:

I'm going to change that. Parts, parts of it.

Tim:

Ooh, that's a philosophical piece. Yeah, ai doesn't think the way we think, right, it's mindless and it's just like 24-7, seven days a week and spawn off millions of different things. But yeah, I mean, I use it in all kinds of work. I use it for some of my contracts depending on the security level that they have and access to data and then my own personal projects. I probably run anywhere from six to eight different kinds of AIs just to help me get more stuff done and, frankly, none of it's particularly good at this point. But you know it's useful. It's just a tool.

Bob:

Yeah, they say more like an add on. Still, yeah, it's just a tool.

Tim:

Yeah, they say more like an add-on still, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you've ever had like Clot or anything else like that, translate your meeting notes, you'll know it still misses quite a lot of context and a lot of things. I'm seeing some amazing and interesting things in the space and I'll be honest, like two years ago I was actually working on um, LLMs and and and behavior change and how those work, um and machine learning, you know, more deterministic outputs, Uh. So, yeah, I've been working on the stuff for a while. So, uh, yeah, it's, it's fairly fascinating. I don't think I'm going to have to bring a nugget. That's not. That's new, uh, new in our workspace here. I think you guys talk a lot about it.

Bob:

Yeah, but are there any other trends in the industry you're keen on and we should follow, or do you think we should pay attention to what's going to be really crucial? I mean, it could be AI, but it can also be other things.

Tim:

I think just that it is useful. Everybody should be learning it. I mean, everybody's been quoting this so far, but you're going to be the engineer. The only engineer is going to be replaced are the engineers that don't know how to use AI with the code. It's just like not knowing how to use a debugger. Right, come on, like let's get going. I think it's like great, it's like right at this time. It's just an amazing search engine I use. That's, you know, can be wrong, like like stack overflow might, might be wrong, it might be hot garbage, uh, but I think, like you know, it solves the 70 70 problem which is getting started. Like, yeah, way, like you know, I would get to code all kinds of projects but then like finishing it, oh man, yeah, that's the hard part. I code all kinds of projects but then like finishing it, oh man, yeah, that's the hard part. And I think a lot of people dodge that question, like take it from beta software to production software. It's a far different realm.

Bob:

So I think that's a very long stretch.

Tim:

I think you and I both use it probably every day, but like getting it to the point that you understand it, we're a distance away, I think a lot further away, kind of like the self-driving cars and Waymo and take out the marketing and all that jazz.

Bob:

Yeah, it still requires so much expertise.

Tim:

Yeah, some parts of the industry. So I would say for taking the marketing gloss, like practical applications, applications. There's just so much text and data obviously I work in the data field these days and there's just so much stuff that's like not modeled correctly or for software, and I think for me it's like we're gonna see like the cambrian explosion of software, like everywhere. Not all of it's gonna be good, obviously, but it's kind of. Whenever I remember I guess I'm old enough we're like ruby on rails came out and everybody's like, well, now we can't employ enough ruby people, like we're gonna unemploy thousands of ruby developers because rails just does so much.

Tim:

I think it proved out to be very, very different story and I can't really predict what the outcomes are going to be. That's, that's nonsense if anybody claims they can, but I think that, uh, the trends are fascinating, um, to see where this could be useful. I'm a glass half full kind of person, so I think that, um, there's so many things even in my personal life I think they're going to be. I could just write custom software right. The most software we use today is half software. It does like 60 or 70 what you use and then you get a ton of other junk. You never wanted like tons of stuff but like niche software to manage like small businesses or families, uh, scheduling like there's just so many things and things that you can do now that you just like. Honestly, you just couldn't build the software. It just took too too long and too many resources to get to even like a beta.

Bob:

Yeah, fortunate times, interesting times, it is interesting times, right.

Tim:

I think the one trend I don't like actually that I'm seeing right now is not understanding what people are making. People will just go bash their. I mean, I guess sure, it's really awesome to go to ChatGPT and just get it to iterate a million times on your Python code, but you do need to spend a little bit of time to understand why it's working. Otherwise, when you need to make precise changes, you may not know what you're trying to change or what you're breaking I. I've seen that quite a few times recently with um junior and even intermediate engineers that are creating software these days. They just they don't understand what they've made, and so when you ask them like a pointed question about a certain thing, like just complete no understanding yeah, yeah, I was taking the shortcut and not taking that deeper understanding yeah, like I'm seeing some engineers they'll, like, they'll start the framework and then they'll, uh, they'll go back to their code and just rewrite it now that they understand.

Tim:

Right now they're like, oh, now I know what I want to do, which I think there's tons of value there, tons of value, but, um, making production ready applications like thinking finance, like in in medical and all these other things. I think you go really fast using these tools, but, like, damn better, be damn sure you're doing it right, because I don't think anybody's going to want to know their banking budgeting app is, uh, reporting incorrect numbers. When you're about to make a life, life choices, yeah exactly.

Bob:

Well, we're coming on time and I wanted to ask you about content creation, community growing, entrepreneurship, so maybe we need to have a part two. But, um, we always close off with the books and I know you're a voracious reader, so, um, maybe cannot ask you for a whole list, but, uh, may I just practically ask you what you're reading now or maybe have read recently, like one or two book, book tips.

Tim:

Yeah, yeah, let me think right now. I'm trying to trying to think so. Like content creation, yeah, I just started getting into the content creation place. Like I think most of us, or at least I work mostly remotely and have worked mostly remotely. Sometimes I go on site for clients, like I do right now, but, like you, start to become in your bubble. I live remotely. Sometimes I go on site for clients, like I do right now, but, like you, start to become in your bubble.

Tim:

I live in philadelphia now. I was living in new york, so, like the, the community is different, right, but I still want to be connected to all these like minds, like there's you're in spain and julian's off in australia. What's he doing over there? Um, and I have like friends now all all over the place, right time zone, be damned, um. And and then also I, I like I don't know what I don't know, and so I started writing on my own blog a little bit you know, sub stack, like we all do these days, but things that interest me, um, and then I started writing a little bit on LinkedIn, uh, which I find a little bit less toxic uh than uh than Twitter, sorry, x.

Tim:

And a little bit on blue sky and I found through that I found like so much community, um, and other people that are interested in solving similar problems as me, um, so I've just I found it just really interesting, uh, and I don't really believe I use like AI to help me like my grammar, maybe a little bit might like help me my thinking, but I believe that the actual output should be, should be me writing.

Tim:

So that's why a little slower these days than every you know all the robots out there, um, and then, um, in entrepreneurship, like so, I run my own consulting company and I have quite a few clients now, maybe more clients than I have time, uh, which has been really rewarding and absolutely amazing, and maybe we'll bring my wife in here. Christina also went on the PDM and is also working on some big names and she helps me a little bit to keep me focused to get all the work that needs to get done. We're working on building applications, obviously in Python for us, and using AI in large language models and things, but we're very conscious about the problems that we're wanting to solve. That should be a couple of months. We'll have some stuff to show off to Bob.

Bob:

Bobby, yeah, we, we definitely want you both on, and we can maybe talk about that in a dedicated one.

Tim:

Yeah, very different journeys, very, very different journeys. And then I think, books, oh man, oh, I have so many books. I'm just, I just read so much right now. I mean, I'll be honest like I read a lot, but I also fall asleep with a book on my face or my kindle half the time. Um, yeah, see two young kids.

Bob:

10 30 at night, just boring. I read for inspiration, not for remembering too much, yeah well, I'm a copious note taker.

Tim:

I take tons of notes and stuff. Um, I I did tiago forte's second brain, so always taking notes and stuff. So one of my thing is um uh, some of my favorite authors that write recently was um, would be like um scott young, so I'm reading uh, get better at anything that's from uh, ultra learning as well. Right, I think yeah it's ultra learning it's.

Tim:

It's the same kind of vein, even though I'd like obviously I read and and learn a lot, and I'm self-taught. I always think that you can always like figure out how other people are thinking, figure out the most recent research about learning and getting getting better. Better at that. Um, another book that I'm reading uh, I actually think it's really good. It's called money for couples from Rumi Tseti. I think a lot of people underestimate uh, what money means to them, uh, and how to work with your partner and your family and talking about it. I think that uh is super important. We spend a lot of time in our life earning it, spending it. We don't really talk about it, and I think that's awesome.

Bob:

That's very exciting. Yeah, he has a Netflix series about that as well.

Tim:

Sure did, sure did. I was supposed to be on his podcast with my wife, but I think we chickened out when I realized I think we was supposed to might have potentially led to being on Netflix and I was like, oh no, I'm comfortable sharing a lot of things, but cool.

Bob:

Now those folks will work. We can always link more or you can put a little reading list together. But yeah, those, those are awesome. Yeah, I want to thank you for hopping on and sharing. I think we definitely need to do another one. But any final closing words?

Tim:

Yeah, no, I mean thank you to Julian and Bob for giving me the opportunity and the platform to kind of get the career I wanted to. I honestly didn't think that I would be a successful engineer. Didn't think that I would be a successful engineer but with the help of your community and and and gas, it really, really truly helped me be more certain about what what I wanted to work in and do Awesome.

Bob:

Well, it makes my day Happy to hear. And, yeah, again, thanks for hopping on and we'll we'll keep in touch and we'll link your Substack and socials so people can reach out, and of course, you know, absolutely, and also, yeah, anybody who's listening.

Tim:

If you're in Philadelphia, I'm part of the Data Philly group. That's where I'm going to be doing my stuff more in person, less digital. I find it more rewarding recently. And so, yeah, just reach out. Um, I find it more rewarding recently, uh, and so um, yeah, just reach out to me on the socials. I do mentor um at least one person every single week. I usually randomly choose from a list.

Bob:

That's awesome, cool. I'll reach out to Tim Tim. Thanks and uh talk soon hey everyone.

Julian:

Thanks for tuning into the pie bites podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. A quick message from me and Bob before you go To get the most out of your experience with PyBytes including learning more Python, engaging with other developers, learning about our guests, discussing these podcast episodes, and much, much more please join our community at pybytescircleso. The link is on the screen if you're watching this on YouTube and it's in the show notes for everyone else. When you join, make sure you introduce yourself, engage with myself and Bob and the many other developers in the community. It's one of the greatest things you can do to expand your knowledge and reach and network as a Python developer. We'll see you in the next episode and we will see you in the next episode and we will see you in the community.