Episode 8 - RailsConf: HomeEdition Podcast Panel

A live podcast recording from RailsConf: HomeEdition 2022!

The panelists discuss what they're up to, if you can still build a career in ruby (spoiler: You can!), and how our ecosystem can benefit from more Ruby frameworks and podcasts!

Moderated By:

• Brittany Martin, The Ruby on Rails Podcast

Panelists:

• Aaron Francis, Framework Friends
• Andy Croll, Chats in the Cupboard
• Brian Mariani, The Ruby on Rails Podcast
• Drew Bragg, Code and the Coding Coders who Code it
• Jason Charnes, Remote Ruby
• Jemma Issroff, The Ruby on Rails Podcast

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Transcript

0:05

Welcome to the rails comp 2022 at home podcast panel. We're excited to be bringing you this from our homes. The panel is running alongside the Clover Brook farm animal meet and greet virtual experience. So if you picked us, I'm not sure why you did, but we're so glad to have you here today. So we're gonna meet each of our panelists one at a time. So first off I'm Brittany Martin, and I'm one of the co-hosts of the Rubion rails podcast. And I'm calling in from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Next, I'm gonna call on each panelist and have them introduce themselves where they're calling in from, and perhaps what they're known for. All right. So first off from framework friends, Aaron Francis, Hey, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. My name's Aaron Francis, like you said, I'm the cohost of a podcast called framework friends where we talk about rails and Elle and all kinds of different stuff. And I am calling in from Dallas, Texas. And what do we know about you, Erin? What are you known? In this community being a Lael developer, I also work at a small software company called tu. Awesome. Excellent. Next up is gonna be Andy Kroll from chats in the cupboard. Yeah, I'm Andy, my friend Vida. He and I make an excuse to talk to each other and we record it for the benefits of the whole internet or seven of the whole internet. I am calling it from Brighton in the UK where it's bedtime. So hopefully there won't be too much background sounds from my. And what are you known for Andy? That's a good question. What am I known for you? Tell me. I spoke at the in person rails comp and I run Brighton Ruby in the UK, which is happening in 15 days. Hooray. And also, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna wave the wise guide at me. Yeah. So I still people with it. That's amazing. So for the COVID interrupted Brighton Rian 2020, we got physical copies of wise poignant guide printed and attendees to that. Copies of that. So, uh, yeah, I did that too. It's one of my favorite possessions. Next up is Brian Mariani from the Ruby on rails podcast. Hi, I'm Brian Maria, founder of mirror placement, very specialized niche recruiting service that connects Ruby developers with Ruby employers. We've been doing it for 16 years and also co-host on the Ruby podcast. The big thing for us has always been to provide a lot of value and really limit the noise when it comes to engineers, looking for jobs and employers looking to hire those engineers. Awesome. Where are you calling in from Brian? From Boston? Massachusetts. Do y'all like how I'm saying calling in, like we're actually physically on the phone calling in, because I like to think that we are next up is drew brag from code and the coding coders who code it. Hi everyone. I'm drew, like Brittany said, I'm the host of code and the code and coders who code. I'm calling in from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So the literal opposite side of the state from Britney, super excited to be here. Excellent. And next up is Jason chars from I hello. My name is Andrew Mason. I am from Phoenix, Arizona, and I am known for being friends with Jason char. Okay. we have an nap pastor amongst our myth. I'd love it. Andrew is my co-host. He's not here today. Neither is Chris, but I'm in Memphis and I would say remote Ruby is probably the thing you might know me from. Oh yeah, for sure. That's the other podcast talking about rails and Laville right. Is this is the official Laville podcast of the rails community. I love this. Last, but not least is Gemma ISRA from the Ruby on rails podcast. Hey yeah. Thanks for having me calling in from New York, New York. I think something I, I hopefully am known for is I'm one of the co organizers of w NB dot RB, which is a women non-binary Ruby community. Excellent. Well, I'm so glad that you all are here today, so I'll be acting as moderator. What I plan on doing is going through some opening questions with each of our panelists. And then we are also lucky in the fact that we have guests who are gonna be supplying questions that we're gonna do about halfway through the episode. But first I am going to start with Erin. So Erin, it's been several weeks since you've started Attu. I know you're doing some really exciting things there, and I would love to hear just how it's going so far and maybe explain what super is to the listeners who don't know what it is. Yeah, absolutely. So I. Just recently started at twofold. It's been, I don't know, maybe a month or two now, and two is pair programming software. So it's screen sharing software, but it's really, really focused on the developer use case. So it's really high resolution so that you can actually see text on your pairs computer when you're trying to pair program versus just pixelated text. The latency's really low so that when you're typing on your pairs, computer, It actually feels like you're typing and not like you were typing eight seconds ago. So that's our pitch and it's been working really well. I think developers really from the outside, before I joined, I could tell it was a well-loved company and now being inside and seeing like all the feedback come in, developers really like tools that are focused specifically on developers. And I find that to be as a developer, a lot of fun and. I actually joined as a marketing engineer. So I am by trade a software developer by schooling. I'm actually an accountant, but by trade I'm a software developer and I joined as a marketing engineer. And so my job has been more like as a developer, I kind of know what developers like. And so my job is to do things that developers would find interesting and bring attention to two. And so. Our big thing so far has been, we are working on a couple of different experiments. We borrowed a whole bunch of money from. Through stripes, capital loan program. And we're gonna spend all the money on marketing and see if we can make more money than we spend, which I guess is kind of how marketing is supposed to work. So it's been a lot of fun. I'm not traditionally a marketer. And so I'm kind of figuring it all out as I go. And the team is amazing and been the CEO super supportive. And so it's basically just been a whole experiment so far. I love the way that your job is getting very, very slowly cooler over the years. It's like accountant software developer, marketing developer. So yeah, exactly. Well, that exciting job next, right? Yeah. Well, I could tell you this, never back to accounting that much in there for sure. Next question is aimed at Andy. So why does it matter to you that we had a successful in person rails comp and we're doing this from the at home version. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on. So basically I don't really like online conferences, sorry, everyone for me, as someone who runs an in person conference and ran a virtual thing, when COVID hit, I just really miss the people. Like it's all about the simple primate. Andy wants to see other friendly primates who do similar stuff to him who understand what he does for a living, cuz my spouse doesn't. So it's just really nice to be amongst like your people. Also, it gives me a chance to travel and eat in new cities. So that's always good. Yeah. But it's always about the people for me. So as a follow up question, do you think conference participation is gonna keep people in this community? Uh, I don't know. It helps me, it helps land me in a community. It helps like reconfigure the way that I think every year or so, like I like to go there and be challenged or to meet people who I've only seen online and kind of go, oh, they kind of thing like that. That person writes funnier than they are, or that person is funnier in person than they are when they write it down or like, whatever that is. Right. It's kind of making my flat screen three dimensional in my head. So I dunno if that keeps people in the community, but it does for me. I love that. Now, Gemma, as a virtual community organizer, do you have any advice then on how attendees of a virtual conference like this one could get the most out of. So I think what's really interesting about this breakdown is it's not only virtual. It's also about a month after the in-person version. So I think speaking as a, as a speaker at conferences, sometimes when you're speaking at a conference, you sometimes are like really distracted by that talk. And when people come up to engage with you, maybe after the talk or before the talk, your mind is kind of focused on the talk, but right now we have this experience where. Everyone who talked at the conference has done it a month ago and is not distracted by that right now. So I think it presents a real opportunity to engage with speakers. I don't know if they're all on this platform, but on Twitter you can definitely find many speakers or maybe on hop in itself, but actually like have longer form conversations with them about what they're working on and what interested you from their talk. I love the fact that I'm speaking on the second day and I'm not stressed about it. That's the worst thing. If you end up speaking on day three, that suck. So, yeah, not speaking on day three. Well, no speaking on day two, but like I've already done it. It's amazing. So, Jason, I know for a fact that you spoke on day three, how was that? I got to enjoy about an hour of the conference. So it was cool. The first time I spoke at rascal was in 2017 and it was the very like last slot. So that was stressful. At that rails comp Aaron Patterson was the last keynote. So I knew some people would at least stay for the whole conference. And that made it a little better, but no, it was good. It is tough going the last day. Just, I don't know. I get a little less nervous every time I speak, but I still, the day before get a rush of nerves. Well, I give a lot of credit to the people who go to the conferences who are looking for jobs, because I think there's so much opportunity there to network and to go to the job fairs and. Now Brian, you are resident job expert. So I wanted to ask you this question in front of everybody, but what is the difference between a career and a job? And can you actually build a career around working in Ruby on rails? I think the difference is that a job often feels like work. Something that you might have to do. You'll get paid for it. It may not be your favorite thing, but it's a job. A career is a craft that you dedicate your life to. And when you find it, you know it, and that's what I love to see every day. And I, I feel so fortunate cause I have a front row seat to watching people really leave their jobs behind and embark on a new career. And that could come in a variety of different ways. You can get someone who's been, who knows, you know, a lifelong job of developer. Let's say, who says, I heard about Ruby and I used him once on the side project and I would love a chance to. Ditch Java and moved to Ruby full time. Like, I would be much happier doing that and they go for it and they do it. And I can help'em with that, which I love. It's like super fulfilling on mine. And then a lot of the code schools and boot camps and whatnot have completely changed the game. Just allowed people who were in a completely different career to shift gears sometimes drastically, so, and get into software development and whether or not you could build a career on Ruby. Well for the past 16 years, I certainly have alongside all the engineers out there, but I mean, you can really build a career on any language or platform, of course. And I think more than anything, if you're a software engineer, you're building a career around solving problems, and if you're passionate around solving problems, you can do it a lot of different ways. You can do it with data. You can do it collaborating with different folks, but you can absolutely do it through code. And again, for the past 17 years, if you chose to do it in Ruby, you've been meaningfully employed and we really don't. Any of that demand relenting, it might sound like a broken record, but I continue to be as busy as I ever have. And last month we actually set a record in my 16 years of running mirror for having the most clients, which speaks to the most demand we've ever seen specifically in the Ruby community. And we've heard about some layoffs and whatnot, but not a ton, but whatever reason I'm having as many company phone calls with folks who are looking to hire as I ever have. So hopefully that trend continue. That's awesome. So, Brian and I have talked about this before most of the rules, I think you would agree with this, Brian probably at least 90% are Ruby UN rails. And so I wanna jump over to Jason because I know Jason is actually pretty passionate about Hemi. Hemi is here and it's been progressing and Jason, what's it gonna take for Hemi to make it? And what is even making it mean? I know that I specifically mentioned this topic. I have a lot of thoughts on this recently. So there's a blog post by Jared white about like, what would it take for Rhoda to win? And then that led to a tweet from Peter, from Ron RB or dry RB. Also Hanmi asking like, okay, well, what does it take for like H NMI to win? And I want to frame it as win here. Not necessarily meaning like unseating rails, right? Just. Making is a viable option. And a lot of the comments I read on that were about version two's been sitting for a while. I know they're actively working on it, but it's not been necessarily like, Hey, grab this and try it out. And so I think that's gonna change soon from reading some of Peter's responses. And I know Tim Riley is actually taking like six weeks or something just to work on open source. So I think actually more people having the opportunity to use it will actually help progress it. But also I think that one of the other comments I read, I'm basically just regurgitating Twitter, if you can't tell. But one of the other comments I read was about like, it kind of finding a way to position itself in the ecosystem. And I thought that was really interesting. My boss Shami was saying like, yeah, something about, if it. Make a very clear use case for this is good for like X, Y problem. I think that's gonna be really impactful as well. So I'm still really excited for version two. I know it's taken a little while, but the ideas that tsunami has around, like the way they architect apps, like it's different from rails, but I really think it's fascinating for like long term maintainability. I have an interesting take. So I've met Lu the original Hani chap, and I I've met Tim, I think as well, like over the years, I think they are really great. And I know for a fact they're doing great stuff. Like a friend of mine has a whole business built on a Hani app, but obviously we know that Stripe is a Ruby shop, but not a rail shop. So like there are successes out there that I personally know of. I think where Hemi and rotor to a lesser extent, struggle, I think is that sort of their, the origin of them feels like. You like rails, but it's not quite to your taste. One of the whole things about rails is it's all the batteries that sort of included apart from a user model, right? Aaron, that's kind of rails this thing in that way. It's beginner friendly. So like part of the thing is like, there's the sense with the Hani folks where you are graduating onto a, this is a more opinionated, slightly more rigid way of doing a Ruby framework. And I think it doesn't quite have that entry point yet, which I think is Brailles is great thing. It's like the 15 minute world. Yes. One thing that actually, before I even got really into TMI, both Tim and Peter have wonderful conference talks. You can find online about blending, objector programming and functional, like blending those concepts together. And that's actually, what kind of turned me on to Hanmi is like they started working on H NAMI for version two and bringing some of those concepts. And I think. I think they were fascinating. And like, to your point at that time, I kind of felt when I was reading about it, I was bumping up against the rails way. And like, that kind of felt like an alternative. I think there's definitely things they can learn that both frameworks can learn from each other. And I think the wider, the tent, the better Brian, have you ever gotten requests for Hanmi? Not yet. Yeah. We keep our ears to the ground on this sort of thing. I wouldn't be surprised things can change quickly. I know this happened with Elixer a while back, just a lot of Ruby developers, very interested in Elixer and it sort of came and surged quite a bit and then tailed off, but I'm gonna be keeping my eyes and ears peeled now. Yeah. I'm gonna use that as a measurement of whether or not Brian's getting requests for it, or if Andrew and Aaron add a third cohost on framework friends, just for Hanmi that's gonna be my line. So drew, I wanted to ask you, so you are our newest addition to the Ruby podcast community, and I wanna know how it's been going so far. And do you have any lessons to share to listeners? We know there are listeners out there who are thinking about starting podcasts. Yeah. It's been going really well so far. I've been getting a lot of good feedback. Listenership is growing, so I must be doing something right. I think the thing I'm doing right is shutting up and letting the guests talk. So I think that's the key is talk less. Let them talk more. I think as far as like recommendations or things I've learned. I'm pretty much just gonna regurgitate everything that Jason, Chris and Andrew said in their talk for rails comp is like, keep it simple, try and get consistent with it. I foolishly started it without a co-host and I'm regretting that decision. Soloing it as hard. But yeah, if you are thinking about starting one, go for it. There's so many different ways to. Your foot in the door. Buzz sprout is my podcast host of choice because it uses routes and there's still a ton of space. I run out of podcasts to listen to every week, listening to them. And there's so many awesome guests out there. Just waiting for an opportunity to talk. So you're thinking about starting one, go for it. Any more advice to share? Yeah, I'm not sure this is necessarily advice, but I, I think that two conversations we're having are actually really similar. The one about frameworks and this one about podcasts, right? I think an argument for more frameworks and diversity and frameworks is that they can then learn from each other. And even if frails is still the dominant one, and there's a strong case to be made for that to happen or not, there are also strong cases. Frameworks still grow by diversity and existence of other frameworks. And I think similarly, all of us can say more podcasts entering this space is better for each of our individual podcasts, too. Right. It allows us more of an opportunity to learn from each other and to figure out if we want our own niches or where, what we're doing makes sense. And so really appreciate more podcasts coming in too. What do you think? And. First of all, how have you ever got to the bottom of your podcast cue? That seems amazing to me. Well done for me. I think the thing that I did mostly is just like, get an editor, either get an editor or don't care. Those are the two options. Don't do it yourself. So if Vida, he and I, we don't wanna commit to doing it all the time. So we do like seasons of four. So like we'll meet up every week for four weeks and then we'll get them all. And we'll, we'll drop'em all at once, which is I it's different style to most folks, but it means that we can sort of squeeze it into our lives. But yeah, getting an editor, the first four episodes were done by me and apparently they were all right, but like, I did not enjoy that. I listened to my own voice. I mean, ass much as I like listening to my own voice as I'm talking, which I do. I didn't like listening to my own voice, played back. But, yeah, that's the second season. I just got a recommendation from Jason, for the editor who does all of this and who will be editing this. So, um, hi Paul. Thanks. Who likes listening to their own voice? You are a different person, Andy. I appreciate you so much for that. And now I wanna hear what Aaron thinks here. If I had a voice like Andy's I would like listening to it. I know that much for sure. Yeah. I think Gemma was talking about. Frameworks and podcasts are kind of similar in one regard. I think that's a lot of what Andrew and I talk about on framework friends is how we can all learn specifically in our context, we talk about how each framework ecosystem, whether that's Lael or rails or lecture, whatever each ecosystem. Has relative strengths and can learn from the other ecosystems, even outside of the technical things. I think we can learn a lot of from Lael on the marketing, the Lael marketing and branding and cohesiveness is really, really good. And I think we can learn a lot from that in other ecosystems. And you look at a lecture and they just have some of like the most technically interesting things that they're doing. And. Three or four levels above my head, but we can still learn from these other ecosystems. And that doesn't mean I'm gonna go be an lecture developer, but that does mean I can look at what they're doing and say like, oh wow, that's amazing. I wonder if I could port that over to my language. And I think the same goes for podcasts. Everyone has a unique point of view. And the more people that we have out there talking about it, I think the broader and more diverse points of view we're exposed to, I think the better off we're all gonna be. So if you wanna start a podcast, go do it, love that. And the reason that I like framework friends so much is I do get to hear concepts about Lael though. I'm curious if you have any recommendations for even just breaking out of the Ruby community and listening to other ideas in other communities. I like the change log a lot. They tend to have a lot of great content, but do you have any other recommendations, Aaron? A lot of my other recommendations are gonna be Elle specific. And so if you're interested in that there's Elle news, which keeps everybody up to date on the latest changes in the framework and the ecosystem and that kind of thing. There's another one that Taylor, the creator has done one for a while called the Elle snippet. He doesn't do it quite as much anymore, but there is also a Elle podcast and they do theirs in seasons. And right now they're going through notable packages in the ecosystem. And so each different episode, they're bringing on a new package, author and diving deep into. What does package do, who would use it? Why would you use it? That sort of thing. So those are some of the ones Bel specific ones that I enjoy. Okay. Awesome. Well, drew, I have two questions for you. I hope you're ready. One's from me. And then one is from a listener. So the first one from me is, does that mean you're gonna be on the dating market at some point for a cohost? And what are you looking for? I have been thinking about it. I don't know what I'm looking for, which is why I haven't gone out and done. Ideally, I would just steal Andrew Mason and I'd be done with it. Cause he's the whole reason why the podcast exists anyway. But yeah, I don't know. It would definitely be nice to have someone even just as a regular guest, almost, just so that when I don't have time to like bring in a new guest and like set that all up, just someone to chat with or someone to even do. Some of the guest interviews when I get slammed at work would be awesome, but I have to figure out exactly what I'm looking for in that front, before I actually start going down and finding someone, okay, so listeners should keep an eye on Twitter. And if you have any recommendations, I mean, my recommendation for you is to know what you do well and find the person who's gonna be the opposite of that. So I think that's great. So the Lister question is from Tim Carey, he wants to know drew what's up with you components. They're awesome. You should use them. If you're struggling with components, partials and organizing views in your rails app. I think Joel has done a great job developing that system. We are actively implementing it at work. It's one of the projects I'm kind of in charge of and it's going really well. So I can't say enough nice things about it and yeah, you should definitely check it out if you have not already. So Brian, I think we talked about how there is still so much demand for Ruby and rails developers right now, and really for developers in general. Do you have any tips for employers who are looking to hire right now? Yeah, a couple tips, just a couple like unique things that I saw work well recently, one, which I may have brought up once on the Ruby podcast, but maybe not is the idea of using a reverse reference that really worked well. And I've been advising. Like almost every client now, especially when you get to the end of the stage and they have a developer, they really would like to hire it is very helpful to actually send references to the candidate. And there could be all kinds of reasons. In this one particular case, the CTO was just a great mentor and he had been a great mentor to a lot of people and it was kind like the right timing to sort of send the candidates some references to, because his big thing in that situation was that he thought he could be very good career wise for that engineer. She took'em up on that. And if an engineer, she was sold on that, like she really talked to some of the people that were mentored by the CTO and saw their career trajectory and growth and what they had to say. She talked to them and it really made a big difference. So that's kind of a cool thing, right? Everyone always asks the candidate for references, but the candidate never really asks the employer for references. So I thought that was interesting. The other thing I would say for both companies hiring and for develop. Get a ly account. that is like the number one thing, cuz it is so hard to book interviews. And a lot of times I get stuck in the middle and now you have no problem doing it, but it's so tough. People's schedules change so fast and times up the essence when you're hiring. So the sooner you can just give all the autonomy to the developer and say book, whatever works for you. It's such a simple thing. More employers are doing it now. Not as many as I would love at least of my clients. So I always advocate for that as well. Ly is big. I agree. I think it's a courtes. And this podcast is not sponsored by them, but I am a huge fan of the art of product podcast. And so I'm a very loyal savvy cow user and two user. So I just really bought in there because if you listen to an episodic podcast like that, you really just start to cheer them on. And so then you kind of wanna use the product. So it's very clever what they've done and they're incredibly committed to what they do. Now, Jason, I wanna ask you how can podcasts stay connected with their listeners nowadays, just because we have more than 60 people watching this, and this will be far wider once we publish this out there. So how can we stay connected to our listeners? There's so much of the Ruby community. That's on Twitter that that's like always my go to I left Twitter and then realized I didn't talk to anyone in Ruby anymore and came back. It was like total mistake. So that's actually. The thing we do the most, I recently started just like tweeting from the remote Ruby account, asking people what they wanna talk about. And once you filter out, most of the people who are just trolling us, we've taken those and made whole episodes out of it. And that's been a really good way to feel connected is because sometimes like after we record it, we can just like tweet that episode back to someone. And it's, I don't know. It just feels like real interaction outside of that really it's. The conference thing too, like going to conferences and actually like meeting people who listen, cuz I often say a lot of times it feels like we're just recording into the void. So when people come and talk to you and be like, oh, like this episode or like this life event or somebody like I was getting on the elevator at rails comp and they were like, bet. And that was a thing we told people to tell us and rails confident. I was like, holy crap. There's a lot of just little interpersonal ways. So I have an upcoming episode where I have Nick Schroer, one of the co-hosts of the young rails podcast, attempt to explain Twitter spaces to me because I'm a grandma, but I will also admit too that I'm not good at discourse either. So if there are discourse that I should be in, like, does anybody on this panel know like, are there other places to be other than Twitter? Because to me, Reddit only gets exciting in our slash rails when someone randomly comes by with a train gift and they think that's what that's for. it's, those are the best. But otherwise I don't get a ton of value out of Reddit on that front. What do you think drew? The Gora discord is a really good one. I think you might have to be a subscriber, which you should be anyway, but yeah, that's a reactive one. I do way more lurking than posting in there, but it's a very active group. Do you any advice, Sandy? I'm just thinking Ruby talk. It's gotta be a thing, right? I hear TikTok is big with the kids. I'm a 42 year old ball, man. Well, the hell of, I know Does anyone else have any other suggestions for connecting with your listeners? I think open source is another way to do it. The open source community is pretty active and vibrant, and there are ways you can pair with people or just contribute in open source communities and meet more folks doing Ruby. I think that's a great segue into asking you, Gemma, how have you been enjoying working on Ruby itself? I love it. I feel very fortunate to be able to work on the internals there. I feel really lucky and it it's been so interesting and I think I've been. Trying as I go along to also make it easier and more straightforward for others to contribute. Cuz I think. Ruby itself. It's not the most straightforward how to even install it or get it running locally or things like that. And so hopefully, yeah, more folks will be interested in doing that. If it's made a little more approachable, I've asked you this on a podcast before, but I love the tips. It's actually, the reason I reached out to Gemma to even have her on the show was the tips that she posts in Ruby weekly. Review weekly is always just like such a highlight for me. And I'm curious, like where do you get these ideas from? I'm always looking for new ideas. So if anyone has please shoot them my way at first, it was just reading docs and being like, oh, I hadn't heard of this or this method. Wasn't something I knew about. Also a lot of it comes from pairing, which now that I'm working on Ruby, I'm writing more, she than Ruby. I'm getting less of it from pairing, but just pairing with people I think is such a good way to learn. Not only about Ruby, but just their workflows and things like that. And you'll pick up little commands. People will write, or little things they'll do or, or things you thought were well known that they didn't know or vice versa. And that's a really good source of tips. So I, this is the entire reason I write my blog. I have a newsletter. Was fortnightly. And then it's currently on hiatus whilst I was doing a Ruby talk, but yeah, a similar thought thing. Like it was things that I was realizing I was writing these quite, I'm not gonna use eloquent, but eloquent PR reviews of like, don't do it like this. How'd you thought about doing like this? What about using this technique? Actually, the Ruby idiom is more like this and I was like, I'm wasting these in my private PRS, I should be putting these out into the world. And so that's the entire reason that I have a newsletter thing, my blog. So, yeah, that's that simple sort of thing. It's just like, oh, did you not know that? Or I can't believe I've been programming in Ruby for 12 years and I've just come across this method that does a thing that I've been writing some by zine page full of code to do so. Yeah. Always learning. That's good. So on the topic of communication, I'm glad that we're recording this because I've always wanted to ask Erin this Erin, how are you so good at Twitter? Oh, I spend a lot of time on it. Yeah. That's funny. Cuz as Andy, as you were talking about doing this and then using it as a newsletter, I was thinking, I bet everyone here does stuff all day long at work that would just make incredible content on Twitter and. I think that's part of what I do is I've trained my brain to kind of have like content brain where I can look at something that I'm doing and be able to pull that out and turn it into like a little snippet to share. One of the things I learned maybe a year or two ago was you never know what other people are gonna find. Interesting. And I was doing a lot of self limiting. I was being the blocker on what I was sharing with people and. Once I removed that, I was like, I actually have no idea what people will find. Interesting. I'm just gonna share more stuff. That's when it really started to hit for me, because I would share something that I thought was just totally obvious and a throwaway and it would go crazy. And I would share something that I thought was really smart and really clever. And people were like, yeah, I don't get it. That's stupid. And so I just kind of decided. Okay. My job here is not to decide what other people will determine as like too easier or whatever my job is to find interesting things that I'm doing, package it up in an accessible way for Twitter, which is kind of like a art in itself, and then just share it. And if it goes nowhere, that's fine. Cuz I'm gonna share something else, you know, later today or tomorrow or whenever. So Brian, how much does it matter about actual community content that someone's putting out in terms of finding a job? Because I had a friend the other day that was prompted for their link to their Facebook page. And it's just like, no, I would not provide that. So I'm curious what your take is there? Gosh, the more, the better it's usually matter of time, people can dedicate. Time to do it, but yeah, for engineers, I always tell'em anything you can share, whether it's your code or whether it is a blog or whatever it might be. It's just gonna go so far for you and with the code. It's tough. Cuz sometimes people can work for years on stuff that's proprietary and they're not able to share it, but more and more people are like going outta the way, especially young developers or people early in their career. That's like the number one piece of advice I have is show off your skills. However you can like just get something out there. Public. That has made a big difference because otherwise, especially if you don't have a ton of experience just coming out of a bootcamp or just outta college, wherever it might be, it could be a little bit of a struggle, but when you can show something, some involvement, some engagement that it does, it goes a long way. It's just a matter of, depending on the seniority level, how much time folks have to do it. What do you think Andy also take dates off blog post. This is my number one rule for life is take dates off blog posts, cuz nobody needs to know that those five posts that you wrote in a month when you first set your blog up were the only posts you wrote. So maybe put the date on it, but it's small at the bottom. Probably the advice you're giving is still relevant. So take your dates off blog posts. And the other thing I just say, this is literally the reason I ended up running conferences. So I lived in Singapore for six years. I did Ruby and res over. And I came back to the UK and I knew nobody. So I just thought what's the easiest way to get to know people. I was wrong. It was really, really hard work, but that's similar sort of instinct where I like putting yourself out there. That's the only thing you can do. Right. Brian was talking about people working on internal apps and not being able to share. I think that's very true for a lot of people, but I think if you take, maybe it's just like a half step further, you'll find that you're solving pretty normal problems. Even if you can't open source the code or whatever, you solved a problem that a bunch of other people are having. You can take the code and generalize it into like a learning or a takeaway or some sort of abstraction. Put it into one of those online code format, make a pretty screenshot, whatever, and say like, Hey, here's what I learned. This is the pattern that I used. And so even if you're in a spot where you're like, I don't know, what's the worst, like working inside of a bank, you'll never be able to share like open source, any of the code you wrote. I bet every single day you learned something or did something in a clever way or came across something that you thought was interesting. You could go right from scratch in one of those little screenshot editors. And then just share just like the general takeaway for the record. Aaron Brian brought me a developer who was working inside of banks. I know, I know who I was gonna offend by saying what's the worst probably working in a bank. What do you think Gemma? Yeah, I think there's also a way to share content. That's not specifically code sharing your workflows or your processes or things like that. That won't be proprietary. Also, just that talks are a great avenue to do this, whether it is code you wanna share or processes or how you manage or how you thought about architecting, a bigger project or anything like that. Always apply to talk at conferences too, because I think that also gets you to what Brian was saying. It gets you like a wider surface area or a bigger net that companies can notice you from? Yeah, actually I've been pairing a fair amount with Andrew Mason from time to time. And he recently, I forget what was going on, but he got real mad about something I had set up in my editor. Uh, he was mad and I, I said that I don't really know how to set up this editor. I kind of just install an extension I need, and then it just sits there and he. Started tweaking things and he made it so much better. And I was like, wow, that's not even code related. But now my entire job has gotten much easier by implementing something that he was like, this is annoying, change it. And I was like, actually, this is amazing. Any thoughts there, Jason, I just wanna say to, if you were looking to create more presence for yourself, don't start a conference to do that. I know Andy mentioned conference and I was thinking about Southeast Ruby and don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Friends. Don't let friends start conferences. Well, still start a conference, but don't do it for like money or notoriety or any of that stuff. Just do it. Cuz you like wanna hang out with folks. That's a good reason. Like Andy was saying like he just didn't know mini Ruby devs. Also like if you do wanna start a conference, drop me an email. I will help you. I have a lot of experience in this. If you're thinking about doing it, do it. It is fun. You just need to put guardrails on yourself. Mm-hmm it can be a little financially scary, but I think more regional conferences is better than to a couple of massive events. It'd be nice to have more regional conferences back. Shout out to Andy who still puts on Brighton. Ruby. It is no small feat to put on a conference, but to keep doing it, give that man an award. You've gotta be a massive egomaniac. That's the trick. All right. Can't compete with that kind of go. Andy, how do you do it? Are you organizing it yourself? Do you have people you can rely on? Do you have sponsors? Just any sort of tips there? I'm so curious, like how you pull it off. So I deliberately limit myself to what I offer. I do one day I do one track. I keep it relatively small. So there was a good chance that I was not gonna get back on the horse. After the COVID break. It's easier to keep it going. If you are focused, I'm very focused on breaking even so. I do my maths front, get a little spreadsheet out and I work out how much ticket Price's gonna be, how much I think I can get for sponsorships. I've been fortunate. There's a few good Ruby shops in the UK. People like free agent and cook PADD who have sponsored me for years. And so generally I can sort of ping the VPN engineering or the CTO or their marketing person. And I go, so thinking of doing it again, would you and principle be interested in throwing me some money to make it happen? And that really helps you need sponsorship. Don't do food. Food's really expensive. Do it somewhere, people can go get their own food. Like the city that I live in and yeah, just constrain yourself. I mean, I actually don't have much help. I do everything myself. Like egomania I get help on the day. So my friend Nadia comes down, she does, uh, registration and I lean on venues that do a lot for me as well. So yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that I do to make it easier. So I'm not doing lots of stuff, but also I do things like my whole punch 200 badges, which is what's coming up for me in the next two weeks. They literally sat down here by the side of my. So I design the badge and then I whole punch it and then I put the Landard on and then everyone wears them. And then it's all good. Awesome. Well, Jason, you are gonna take us home with a closing thought there, so it's gotta be a good one. It's gotta be good. I'm gonna over promise and under deliver. I was just gonna say, even listening to Andy right there. I learned so much about what I did wrong for three years with Southeast Ruby. So I think that's all very good advice. That's my deep. That's awesome. Well, I have had so much fun having this conversation today. Big thank you to our panelists today. Brian Gemma, Andy drew, Aaron and Jason. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to all the people who are listening live at rails conf at home. We so appreciate you. Thank you to our listeners. And if you have any follow up questions for us, you know how to find us. We'll link it up all in the show notes, but thank you so much and have a great conference, everyone. It's just me. You should go. What are you still doing here? It's over black people.