Matt McInnis - Go Make Stuff!

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Bekah Hawrot Weigel: 00:05

Hello, and welcome to Season 5, Episode 8 of the Virtual Coffee podcast. I'm Bekah. And this is a podcast that features members of the Virtual Coffee community. Virtual Coffee is an intimate group of developers at all stages of their coding journey. And they're here on this podcast, sharing their stories and what they've learned. And we're here to share it with you. Here with me today is my co-host, Dan.

Dan Ott: 00:29

Hello, Bekah.

Bekah: 00:31

Hey, Dan.

Dan: 00:31

Today, we had [chuckles] a really- a really fun episode. We sat down with Matt McInnis. He is a ... I don't know. A data scientist, a full-stack engineer, a founder, used to be a math professor. He- he had a real -- he has had a very interesting journey and a very interesting career. So it was very cool to hear his -- can I just say very a couple more times [laughs]? I'm excited though. It- it was- it was- it was a fun time to sit down with Matt. I don't know. He's had a cool career-

Bekah: 01:03

Yeah.

Dan: 01:03

-and so many at different things he's like gotten- gotten into. And he's built a lot of different things and, yeah. It was fun- it was a fun conversation.

Bekah: 01:12

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, his journey is super interesting, going from math professor to working at some really big tech places. And talking about how he got those jobs by building things that were useful to him, I felt like was super inspiring to anybody who's trying to break into tech. But just to see how he developed his career and followed his interest is really ... I don't know, inspiring, I guess.

Dan: 01:40

Yeah, absolutely. And it- it hit home for me a lot. It's- it's one of those things that I- I never did consciously, and I don't think Matt did really either. He- he was -- he would build things that would help him, you know, help himself. So he talked about what he built, something that was like helping to buy tickets or sell tickets. And-

Bekah: 01:55

Yeah.

Dan: 01:57

-it wasn't like a scheme to make money or a scheme to get a job [chuckles], you know? It was just a thing that helped him -- his- his own, like, life, you know? He wasn't trying to sell the product or do any of the things that you hear about these days a lot. He just was like interested in built something. And then some people heard about it. And, well, you'll hear about the rest [laughs]. But it was cool.

Bekah: 02:21

[Chuckles] Yeah.

Dan: 02:21

It hit home for me. I- I -- that's -- building projects is just like -- that's- that's -- my -- that's always my advice to people too, is- is- is just build things that you're either interested in, or could help yourself. And the rest will come sort of naturally. So, it was- it was cool. It was -- we -- I had a good time talking to him.

Bekah: 02:37

Yeah. It was fascinating episode. And we hope that you enjoy it and we're going to start it the same way that we start every Virtual Coffee, with our names, where we're from, what we do, and our random check-in question. So, enjoy. Today's random check-in question is, if you could appear on any game show, what would it be? I'm Bekah. I am a technical community builder from a small town in Ohio. And game show ... I don't know. If there was a "Sudoku" game show, I would like to try that [chuckles]. I don't think that's a thing. So I guess I'll go on "Wheel of Fortune"-

Dan: 03:25

Peep- pretty --

Bekah: 03:26

-or, I don't know. "Price Is Right". I feel like I'm -- as an adult, I've gotten better at that. Like [chuckles], "Oh, I know the price of that." But ... I don't know. I think I'll stick with "Wheel of Fortune".

Dan: 03:38

"Wheel of Fortune". Well, it seemed like a fun- a fun time, you know?

Bekah: 03:42

It doesn't seem so stressful.

Dan: 03:43

I- I feel like- I feel like a "Sudoku" game show would be pretty boring to watch [chuckles]. But before they compete it- before they compete it. But because, well, I can tell --

Bekah: 03:50

I mean, like some kind of obstacles they threw in, right?

Dan: 03:53

Ooh.

Bekah: 03:53

Like, what you fill in one row, then something happened, and you get slimed. Like [Bekah and Matt laugh] --

Dan: 04:00

Slimed [chuckles].

Bekah: 04:01

Did you ever watch "Double Dare" [chuckles]?

Dan: 04:03

Oh, man. Okay. So, hi. I'm Dan. I do front-end development, mostly, and live in Cleveland, and ... oh, yeah, yeah. Game show, "American Gladiators" is the first thing that popped into my head.

Bekah: 04:17

Ooh. I did [crosstalk] -- that's what I'm doing [laughs].

Matt McInnis: 04:17

Oh, how are you doing, sir?

Dan: 04:20

[Laughs] I- I always wanted to do -- especially the one -- the, like, thing I feel like they ended with it. But the- the watery run around, shooting the, like, the Nerf guns at the, you know, and the -- like the- the gladiator person is up on the top shooting Nerf gun stuff at your tennis [??] balls. I- I don't really know. I haven't watched it, obviously, in a long time, but [laughs] --

Bekah: 04:35

"American Ninja Warrior", too. I forgot. Ugh.

Dan: 04:37

"American Ninja Warrior" is cool. It -- that seems a lot harder though. But it would be cool to try. I would definitely try that for sure.

Matt: 04:43

But would you be a contestant or one of the gladiators, if you're in the show?

Dan: 04:45

Well, I mean, now I'd have to start- I'd have to start as a contestant, you know?

Matt: 04:47

Yeah. [Unintelligible].

Dan: 04:48

I- I can't -- I'm not gonna just like swoop in and, you know? I gotta- I gotta earn my- earn my way up, right? [Dan and Matt laugh] But yeah, I feel- I feel like -- plus it get the -- well, did the contestants have the ... what do you call them? Like a ... not a jumpsuit, but the ... we called these things, that they were ... or like, that wrestlers or anything?

Matt: 05:07

Yeah, I think it's a suit. I think it's a jumpsuit.

Dan: 05:08

No, no, no.

Matt: 05:10

No, there's a name for it, isn't that [laughs]? What's the thing? We make it --

Dan: 05:12

We need Nick here [chuckles]. What's the thing that like wrestlers wear, like- like --

Bekah: 05:16

A singlet?

Dan: 05:17

Nah -- yes, singlet maybe? I don't know.

Matt: 05:19

I think there's another word for it, but it's- it's not leotards, is it? No.

Dan: 05:23

No. I mean, it's basically leotard, but it's like singlet.

Bekah: 05:26

It was a singlet. Singlet is what you're wearing at wrestling.

Dan: 05:28

I don't know [chuckles]. I don't know. That doesn't sound right, but you're probably right [Bekah and Matt laugh]. We- we'll ask Nick after- after the- after the podcast [laugh].

Matt: 05:37

Yeah. I -- good to be here, guys. Thank you for having me. I'm Matt. I'm a developer from Toronto, Canada. I run a small company called Typist where we make educational software. And if I was on one game show, my first — like, you know, "American Gladiator" wins — but my first reaction was "Kids Street". It's this old game show. I don't know if I -- like, if I was 12 years old again, I think it, you know, and everyone kind of clapped over their head, like there is this, like, thing that they did if they got a question, right? And if you won, it was like every kid's dream, you got to go into like this middle platform. There was like stock, like a toy store? And you had like two minutes to just grab-

Dan: 06:10

Oh, man.

Matt: 06:10

-whatever you wanted.

Bekah: 06:11

Ooh.

Matt: 06:11

It was like -- yeah. So my sisters and I, we would watch "Kids Street" and we be like, "How do we get on this TV show?" And we never quite cracked the egg on that one. It was very- very disappointing childhood, I guess, you could say [laughs]. Yeah. I'm kidding. But it's a, yeah, kid's dream. But, you know, I, you know, also second Dan's answer, cuz that sounds awesome.

Bekah: 06:30

Wow. I have never seen "Kids Street" before.

Matt: 06:34

Like -- yeah, there's this funny kind of Canadian, you know, from Canada. This is funny Canadian subculture around some things. Like, there are these really kind of weird things that pop up every now and then that are extremely popular. Like, "Household", everybody knows them. Even like music and bands sometimes. They were fueled by this entertainment industry that, like, out of Toronto. But like, these companies called MuchMusic, and they're related subsidiaries, but are just totally unknown in the US. And it -- which is funny because the US is just a two-hour drive from where I'm living. Like, it close, right? Like, we're- we're right there. We- we go to Buffalo Bills games all the time. It's across this, you know, it feels like it's across the street. But you go down there, and they're like, "Oh, they tragically hip." And it like, every -- like, you know, half of Canada is all time favorite band, and people in the US are like, "Who?" like, "Who is that?" You know, it's -- there's these things. So "Kids Street" might be one of them too. And, you know, all these like kinda old TV shows for kids, especially.

Bekah: 07:25

Yeah, I need to check it out. I- I, like, pulled up the -- oh, it is a Canadian's children's game show. So --

Matt: 07:33

It is Canadian. I -- ah, you guys missed out. This was epic. Like [Bekah laughs] -- and it would have been -- it would have like -- it would've been way better if the US had done it [laughs]. Like, the mall would have been cooler. Like, it would have just been -- like- like, production quality would have been way up there. Like, where's Nickelodeon at when-

Bekah: 07:48

Yeah.

Matt: 07:48

-for "Kids Street" [laughs].

Bekah: 07:49

I love it. It looks very 80s. I need to check this out [chuckles].

Matt: 07:53

Yeah, it was cool [chuckles].

Bekah: 07:55

Well, thanks so much for being here with us today, Matt. We always like to get started with your origin stories. So, if you could give us what the story is that brought you here to today, where you are in tech.

Matt: 08:09

Yeah, thanks. Thank you for having me, Dan and Bekah. Yeah. You know, I-I guess it-it -- like starting -- focusing on the tech side of things, I, you know, graduated -- I did degrees in math. I love math. I think it's still my Twitter handle [chuckles]. I -- and I -- and, you know, I went -- I decided that, like, the change I wanna make in the world after graduating was I wanted to improve the way that people learn mathematics at the post-secondary level. I- I just, you know, my -- their programs that I took were massacres. We had such few people finish relative to how many started. And, you know, I worked all the way through university, and math help centers, and as a TA, and I saw people in non-math disciplines kinda drop out of their like early childhood education program because they couldn't complete their stats course. And I thought that was crazy. Because if it's taught properly, I don't think math is hard, you know? Put that strong caveat, if it's taught properly. And so I really wanted to kind of affect change there. I took a job. I applied everywhere for these -- in Canada, we call them 'math professorships' at community colleges in Canada. In US, it's probably known as a 'math instructor' at the community -- in the community college system. And, so, I took a job in Saskatchewan. I moved from the small town of Aurora, Ontario — where I grew up — to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, which is 40,000 person town, like in the, you know, it- it was really awesome. I loved it out there, and I had some family there too. And that's where, you know, I- I guess my journey to tech started. I, you know, I was a math person. I really had no experience with tech at that point. I was, you know, 24 ... 23, 24. And I- I just started wanting to make things. I remember the first thing I wanted to make was I had read, you know, a book that's now very popular Malcolm Gladwell's "[The] Tipping Point". And he described like "Sesame Street" in the 80s. And how they would, like, engineer this TV show. They would bring kids in, and they would put "Sesame Street" on one screen, and this thing called the distractor on the other screen. And every seven seconds, this distractor would display these still images that would switch. So every seven seconds, a different image. And you'd put like 20 kids in the room, and the researchers would just look at their eyes and be like, are they looking at the distractor? Are they looking at "Sesame Street"? And then, they would go back and they'd graph it after they'd done, like a couple of cycles of kids. And they'd see what are the parts of the TV show that kids were disengaged with, that we need to re-engineer? And that was like the first that I was like, "Man, if they could do that in the 80s, why can't, like in --" you know, this was, I guess, like, 2010. I'm like, "Why can't we do that, like, in real time, live, while I'm teaching in class?" And that was -- my first project was I wanted to build something that did that. And I had learned that Hasbro had put out this toy called the hi- like the Star Wars force trainer, where everything was ridiculous [chuckles]. So I -- we'd have like a headset that you'd put on. And it turns out this thing could actually take a, like a low level EEG reading of brain activity, like if your brain was active or not. And then, like, the toy would connect wirelessly to this base unit that had a fan, that would spin a ball up and down in this toy. And so it like, hence the force trainer, is you concentrate really hard, and you can use the force to move this ball up and down [laughs]. Like, really cool toy, right? And I said, "Well, if I could just get the electrical signal out of that into my computer and graph it, that would be the whole thing." And that was my first foray into tech, was -- I, like, started -- I was like, "Okay. Well, how do I get the electrical signal out? And how does- how does electricity work? And how does circuits work?" And, you know, I learned about microprocessors, and the Arduino had to like just come out at the time. And so I started like getting these -- like, yeah, I found that kids' books for Arduino are actually way better than the ones they are making for adults. So that -- I got all these like kids' books and started like doing these experiments. And then I- I needed, you know, these wires solder. So I'd go down to the electrical department and be like, "Hey, guy. I was teaching like math for electricians as part of my job there." They're like, "Hey, can you do some soldering for me? And like, put these --" And it, you know, at this point, it would like kind of become this, like, project, and I gotta working after, you know, on the code side. I learned that there's this language called Processing, which was Java based that could do the graphing pretty easily for me if I could just pull the signal in. And I got that working. And then I, you know, like six months later, presented it at a conference down in Saskatoon — one of the cities in Saskatchewan. And at that point, I was hooked. And, you know, from there, I- I just -- I really wanted to continue making things that would make me a better teacher. And that drove me for a long time. And then, you know, a-a couple of years after that, I- I started doing reflection of what do I want in terms of a career, and a lifestyle, and like, what are the things I'm after? And that really kind of led me to getting interested in, you know, code as a career. And there weren't really, you know, bootcamps and Coursera. I don't even think they had been really created at that point, or launched, or, you know, the whole suite of the EdEx, Udemy, Coursera, awesome websites for these things, right? So it was a lot of learning. It was -- I, you know, I did that all while I had a full-time job. And, you know, fast forward a-a number of years, I launched Typist — the company I now have run — I made a little small passion project that I sometimes call it. At the same time, I -- AI exploded. And this was maybe six or -- a six-ish -- six, seven years ago now. At AI, if nothing else, is a combination of computer science, and it's like a really strong math background. And, you know, back then, more emphasis on the math, but today maybe more emphasis on the computer science side. And- and so, I-IBM came knocking and said, "Hey, we are trying to hire AI expertise." And I -- and at that point, I had some projects that like, I was experimenting a lot in AI. And so they brought me into -- they offered me like dream job to go in and be on this new open source team that they're putting across Canada. And I'd get to work with all their -- these huge companies, and help them do AI better, and solve these problems. And that sounded like a blast. So I did that for a number of years. And then later, I moved over to Microsoft to do a similar type work, like more- more hands. I wanted to get deeper into projects, and Microsoft gave me that opportunity to go deeper into data science projects with, you know, companies. And all for free. Like, these companies would just parachute me in. Or IBM would just -- Microsoft would just parachute me in, and it's like, "Yeah. We- we're gonna help you do data science better because if you do it on our cloud, we're gonna make a lot of money." So I'd get to go, and just like pick my projects, and go onsite. I get like a badge. It was awesome. And, you know, and build out these data science projects. And all the while, on my evenings and weekends, building out Typist, trying to get it to the place where it could support, you know, a basic income for me, and I could work on it full-time, which eventually happened. And- and, you know, that sort of switch over process was scary and, you know, different than I'm -- had imagined it would be. But eventually, my boss at Microsoft was like, "Matt, you gotta go do this. You- you -- it's there." Like, "Go do this thing." And- and I- and I did. And I -- and that's what I've been working on for the last three or four years.

Bekah: 14:55

That's- that's amazing. I have to ask about that switch. Cuz I feel like that sounds like s-s-s -- very scary [chuckles]. Like, giving up all of the stuff that you've been doing with a team, with all of these resources, and then just jumping into this entrepreneur journey. I- I know that you said that you had some encouragement, but like, what really pushed you to go all in on Typist?

Matt: 15:27

Ah, you know, it was -- it- it was really, really hard. You know, I- I- I guess, like, one of the big factors was I thought that we- we had a project lined up for Typist. And- and Typist -- maybe this is the appropriate time to kinda speak to what it is. We make software for community college students who are taking a certain set of courses. So our- our first product was for community college students who are taking keyboarding courses. And those are people studying programs to be law clerks, or legal assistance, medical assistance, or even executive assistants. And very -- and, you know, there's interesting demographics in those programs, such as -- a reason I'm really passionate to work on and honored to build software for that group. And then we have this second product, which at that point, Bekah, was -- I was really -- we had scoped it out. And it was the -- and this thing called 'document production'. So, you know, people that go in these fields need to be able to make a professionally formatted business letter that has these exact traits and the -- it's sort of a vocational skill. And in that particular field, it's rated as like a top three employment skill to -- by all every industry survey that's ever been done. And it's really, really hard to teach. And I -- we had -- one of the colle- I've been like kinda kicking the tires with the people who are using our keyboarding software, and be like, "Hey, does anyone wanna partner to build this with us? And by partner, just like give us feedback, tell us- tell us what to build, like whiteboard. And- and ideally, if we build you something that you really liked, be the, you know, the person to use it and give us the reference so that we can maybe expand this." And I -- and that was a big part of the decision was I had all that lined up. And so for the six to seven months prior to that, and this was the final push, I had outsourced the development of it to a really great developer who -- it -- like, grades, you know, really, really talented Rails developer. And we had a prototype. And we went back to this college and presented this. And I'd take vacation days anytime I had to go take meetings, right? So all of my vacation for those like four years was consumed by Typist. And so I'd take a vacation day. I'd go, and we'd present this back to the group. And they had said, "Yes. If you can build it and it can do these things, but we need these changes, you know, we'll use it." But at that point, I looked with -- like- like, how we had constructed the software. And I said, "It's not gonna get us to the finish line." We were, you know, specifically we'd built it in Rails, and it -- like, it all works with file IO. So either you need to upload this file and then we would go compare it to this other file. And they're both Word documents, which are incredibly hard to work with.

Bekah: 18:03

Mm-hmm.

Matt: 18:04

And we, like, you know, the- the way all the existing previous software, like, if there's a typo in a paragraph, you lost all the marks of the paragraph, because doing fuzzy matching is like really, really hard. And we just -- I- I sat there and I'm like, "We can't do this in our web server." This -- it takes like 20 seconds to process a single file, we'll be in classes, they'll do a test, they'll get 30 uploads at once, we'll never be able to handle the spike in traffic, we'll never be able to -- we- we don't wanna web server sitting idle for it. And I just, long story short, knew and I -- we had to rebuild the software completely from scratch. And we had five months to do it. We had gone in and already produced like -- we already done the demo and been like, "Yeah, it's working. Look." And I knew that we had to throw away everything that we'd done, and build it from scratch, and -- which we did. So that was like the imme- there's an immediacy which helped, I guess, make that decision of like, I'd -- like -- so when I went in and had that conversation with my wonderful, wonderful boss, I was scay [??], and I was explaining this all to her. She's like -- I'm- I'm like -- I was scay [??], I've like, "If we're gonna launch this thing and this could push Typist over the mark of, like, it could support a couple employees, I've got to go now. Like, I- I- I can't wait till next week. I've- I've got to start, right now." And she's like, "Yep. Do it." And at that point, I ... like almost on the spot gave my notice. I talked to my wife and- and that was the jump. And it was a hard summer, by the way [chuckles]. It was tough.

Dan: 19:28

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty intense. [Chuckles] I mean, obviously I don't [Dan and Matt chuckle] ... but it seems like it worked out, right? I mean, kinda betting on yourself and -- I mean, it-

Matt: 19:38

Yeah.

Dan: 19:39

-might be wasn't much of a bet. Have you -- did you have a good idea of -- so you said you had to, you know, tear it down and- and rebuild it. Did you have a good idea at that, like, moment of like what it was gonna look like when you were finished rebuilding it or were you just like, we have, like -- are start from scratch, and I have no idea, you know?

Matt: 19:56

Yeah. We- we knew that -- and- and I did. And maybe, you know, I -- and I'm happy to speak to the kinda the details of it, because I think they're interesting if that's ... you know?

Bekah: 20:03

Yeah, sure.

Dan: 20:04

Yeah.

Matt: 20:05

So, like, we, you know, I mentioned we couldn't do this on web servers. Because like, you know, the really simple use case was that if 20 students are doing a test, and they all upload their documents at once, and they take 25 seconds to process, web servers just can't do that. We would have to have like this incredible scale that would just be so expensive, we couldn't run the business. And so, the -- my- my theory was that we needed a couple of things. We needed to not be using Ruby because like a- a Node based system made a lot more sense in the way that a Node event loop works, you know? And- and the second thing was we needed a way to deploy these sort of algorithms that we were building in a way that can handle these spikes in traffic. And at that point, sort of lamb- this Lambda architecture which is, you know, all the clouds have a product for this. So in Microsoft is called Azure functions, in AWS is called Lambda, in -- you can have -- net- Netlify just launched one, I think, actually, and Cloudflare has one called Cloudflare functions too. But they basically work that like something happens, and these -- they spin up your code, and they do the thing you want it to do, and then they spin down, and you can throw a thousand at them. And they, you know, a thousand instances will spit up, you'll pay for the time they're up, and then they'll turn off, and you're done. And so that was kind of what I knew was that we had to rewrite this into that -- this Lambda type architecture that could handle these spikes. We had to use -- we had to switch languages. So we had to use a language that was compatible there in -- while supported, and Ruby wasn't supported at all. So that had to go to JavaScript. And then there was, you know, to your question, Dan, there- there were questions that I was really, really concerned about, which were, how are we going to go in and like that problem on evaluation? So if you're a student, you upload this document, and you're off by, like, two characters, we couldn't take off all of the marks, right? So we had to be able to go in and compare the texts. We expected students to type in the text that they did type, and take off some of -- like of -- like type of marks of as proportions to do that, and give meaningful feedback on the other side. And at that point, I had no idea how we're gonna solve that problem. Yeah, which we, you know, later figured out a way to. And even just converting, like, how do we even -- so, you know, just as a quick comment, DOCX files are really hard to work with, but here's like a fun thing you can do. If you're on a Windows machine, take a DOCX file to your desktop, rename it to .zip. And then extract it, and you'll see the general how these struck- files are structured. In- inside, there is all this kind of markup that will be a little bit familiar to you if you've seen XML or HTML before. And you can see all the stuff in there. So we knew that we had to like deal with that problem too, which we didn't know how we were gonna handle, because we were using these Ruby libraries that kind of abstracted that away for us.

Bekah: 22:44

Mm. Yeah. So you made this career journey, I guess. So from math and then you were doing AI, data science stuff, and then Rails back-end stuff, and- and now JavaScript and React, right?

Matt: 23:01

Yeah. And- and, you know, I think the first part of that would be like, it's worth expanding on, like, it was -- like when I started learning code, it, like -- I, you know, data science is generally on in Python and R. Like, those are the language for data science, and heavy emphasis on Python these days. Like, academic, C's are, but nobody else really does. And so the -- like, I really didn't know a ton of Python, but it's such an approachable language. I really, that -- like that seven years of learning code, like, you know, I- I breezed past it in a sentence, but that was really hard. It was a lot of evenings and weekends. I was working full time that whole time, I, at some points, had like even taking on contract gigs, doing statistical consulting for some stuff. And- and it was webdev that I was learning during that time, Bekah. And it was, you know, I had started the -- with a -- like [chuckles], you know, I started with HTML, and CSS, and had like -- learned that, and built a personal website. And it was like, you know, these projects, all the way through, like I wanted -- like at the time people were downloading TV shows and movies and stuff, maybe [chuckles], you know, maybe they shouldn't. But it was like really hard. So, like, if I wanted to go -- if I download the new season of "The Office", I wanted to search "The Office", and have it organized, like Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, and then get rid of the ones that were like somebody holding their camera, and do others. So, does a website to do that? And it was like so basic. It was a single PHP file that just went and like kind of scraped the Pirate Bay, and then analyze the file names. And then, I- I had no idea how to use databases, so it would just stick the results [chuckles] into like a text file [laughs]. I'm like, "Go, daddy." So it was -- like, that's where I was starting from. And-

Dan: 24:41

That's awesome.

Matt: 24:42

-it was -- so there's like, there's that. There were ... oh, like, oh my god. There's so many other. Like another one that was fun was when I was teaching at the college, you'd put all your marks into like an Excel doc. So I was like, "Okay. Well, I want, like, to give my students more contextual feedback on how they're doing in the course." So I put it into a Google doc and I was like, "How do I get this thing to send email?" And then that was like, one of the first things I had written in JavaScript, was to like, go take all my students, and if they're like -- if they've not done well on the first two quizzes, send them an email that's like, "Hey, you know, John. I- I saw you didn't do very well in the first few quizzes. Here are my office hours. There's also the math help center if you need support. I'm here for you. Like, you know, like, really wanna help you turn this around [chuckles]." And then, if they were doing really well, they'd get like a more positive note with different content. And there were -- I had like six different templates, and then I would just hit go, and then everybody would get an email from me, and like my five [unintelligible] sections or whatever. I [laughs] --

Bekah: 25:33

[Laughs] I- I- I need that 10 years ago. That would save me so much time. Wow. That's amazing.

Matt: 25:40

It's great. But like, the part that I felt guilty about, Bekah, it was I'd get these responses, and be like, "Wow. You -- thank you for taking the time to write me this email [all laughs]." Yeah. You know- you know? I -- it was -- but they were like --

Bekah: 25:53

I thought that's a -- wait. Is that not a product for teachers? Because if it's not, it totally should be.

Matt: 25:58

It should be.

Dan: 25:58

Was it just like -- that's like-

Matt: 25:59

Yeah.

Dan: 25:59

-a CRM, right? A CRM, except for students, is like, you have all the automated- automated mail campaigns and stuff, you know [laughs]? Except you're- except you're emailing students. It's amazing.

Bekah: 26:09

Yes. Yeah. Okay. But this -- I [Matt laughs] need to Google this after we're done. Because-

Dan: 26:10

It has to exist.

Bekah: 26:11

-if- if it is a thing, I need to tell everybody that I know — that still a teacher — about it. And if not, then that's my new project [chuckles].

Matt: 26:19

Yeah. It's, you know, so that was like -- there were these projects on the way, right? And they were all usually connected to something I wanted to see in the world. Like -- and another really big one I took on, that was like less code, but it was, you know, it was my first experience with Rails was, you know, we had -- I was teaching at the college and I was helping to volunteer coach this marketing team, which I don't know what I was doing there. I was, like, the math guy, right? And I -- but I wanted to get my students more experiencing the actual -- like, the part of marketing that really is interesting to me is the analytics of it. There's really rich analytics and the math is just super fun to look at, but there is like, Google Analytics was out there at the time. But it was really hard to get experience with actual data. So I thought, "Well, what if we could get like a website up that would, you know, have a bunch of data that students could just mess around with? And we could like do stuff. We could go put posters up and drive traffic." And- and then like, I was also really interested in — and still am — in volunteerism. And I said, "You know, I've had these great, wonderful, like life-changing experience volunteering. Like, you know, what if we could drive more volunteers to charities?" And, you know, I was also really attracted to short video format. So, I sorta took the summer off and I emailed the -- sort of CEOs of charities in Toronto, and said, "Hey, I- I went on, you know, Facebook and Craigslist trying to find a videographer who involved here with me." And I did. And we went -- my- my pitch was like, "Hey, we're gonna take your CEO. We're gonna go onsite where volunteerism is happening. We're gonna shoot like a 45 second to one minute video of you telling volunteers why it would be so great to volunteer with your -- ther- your organization." And we did that. And we did like five of the biggest charities in Toronto. And we put them on a website I call [chuckles] -- that I called Where The Good Is. And then we took the marketing ever since. We promoted it around the college, and then, like, we'd Google in with [unintelligible], that they would like drive the traffic to the website, we got to analyze it all. And it was really fun. And that was, like, my first website in Rails. It was a static web page with just a bunch of videos, but it was a great way to learn. And- and- and there's probably like a million other projects that a little, you know, similar. But those -- that's what I was learning. That seven years was -- I was really getting into web development. I loved it. I loved making things. And the more relevant they were for me, the better. And, you know, my last one, which was like a full Rails app — that was just a static page, right — was this -- I wanted a Chrome extension. So my wife, my -- who was my girlfriend at the time, we could just hit a button in Chrome, and we could share the webpage that we're looking at with like a little note. And it would just like jumped to the other person's browser. And so I built a little app that did that. And that was like the first, you know, full ... like real, meaningful, like, web app, you know? Like, they did stuff on the back end and use the database. And- and, you know, during that time also, courses started coming out. So I took wonderful database course from Stanford, and then, the University of Washington has amazing courses. And- and that allowed me to kinda get to the bottom of how these things worked, which I was incredibly curious about. Like, the hardware/software interface course from the University of Washington is just straight up one of the best courses I've ever taken. Like -- it's like how it, like, it tackles the problem of -- like, how does the code you type in Python change things in a computer, and how does the computer work it all? And that was like the missing gap that I needed to kind of address. And that was a wonderful experience. And- and yeah, that's what -- like, that seven years was like. And- and then towards the end of it, the- the project that I made, that kind of got the attention of IBM was, I had like -- had -- this is [chuckles]- this is -- am I- am I rambling here? I feel like I'm talking about --

Bekah: 29:39

No. This is great.

Dan: 29:40

No.

Matt: 29:41

The -- had I -- the ever big baseball fan, I've got my little Blue Jays hat in the background on- on the yellow shirt behind me. And- and we love going to the Home Opener, which is the first baseball game of the year. And I had gone, and we buy tickets, but they always sell out, so you have to buy resale. And resales like three times the price. And we paid -- that one year, we paid like $110, which was outrageous at the time to sit in like $20 seats at, like, the top of the stadium. And I was so upset by this, you know? I was ... really. And then, you know, one of my friends can come. So I had to -- like, I tried to scalp the ticket. So I was like outside the stadium [Bekah giggles] instead of like -- and I, like, had, you know, a couple of bottles of juice to give myself the courage to do it [Matt and Dan laugh]. And- and so, I'm- I'm standing outside the stadium with my best cover and I was like, "Tickets? [Bekah laughs] Do you guys need tickets?" And I remember there's this -- I'd -- like, of all -- there's 50,000 people there, of course, like a friend walks by, and he's like, "What in the hell are you doing?" and "What in the heck you do?" And then I'll -- there -- I never forget this mom and her daughter. The daughter must've been like 17, 18 years old, right? And they're- they're walking by and I'm out there just, "Tickets," [Bekah chuckles] and, "You need a ticket?" And she's so politely says, "No, thank you." Everyone just ignores it, and she just, "No, thank you." And she looks at me, and then looks down at my shirt, and I've got my University Western shirt on [Bekah chuckles], and she doesn't -- like, her face just drops. And she looks at her daughter who's, like, also got a Western shirt- [Matt and Bekah laugh] shirt on. It just had this, like sad look of horror as they walk into this thing, you know? Like, "This is what my daughter is gonna be." I've -- but anyways, that whole experience has really upsetting. And, so I'm like -- well, you know, I learned that if you bought season tickets for, like, all 90 games in a season, then you would get like a 15% discount, and then I could get the $20 ticket. And so, of course, you know, what- what's a reasonable thing to do is spend $9,000 on season tickets. Yeah. So I basically took 2/3 of my savings in my bank account, and I funded the money on season tickets. But my theory was, I could sell them at face value to my friends. And since I got this like 15% discount, that would more than make up for the gap. And- and Pam and I could go to like three or four games for free, which is all I really wanted. And -- but to do that, I needed to figure out how to price all these tickets. And so I wrote a Electron desktop app that went and scraped all the data from bluejays.com, and scraped all the data from StubHub, and I wrote an algorithm to -- it like, you know, if you scrape StubHub one day, and you scrape the next day, you can figure out what tickets are not there anymore. And then you can figure out what's sold and for what price-

Bekah: 32:15

Oh, wow.

Matt: 32:16

-since you knew [??] all the things. And so I built a really nice clean data set, and then I trained an algorithm to price my tickets. And, you know, again, I have this Electron app. And I just click a button, it'll price on my tickets, send an email to my friends, and- and then people just earmarked what tickets I want. And- and it worked. And I did that for, you know, I've been doing that for four, five years now, or six years, I guess. This is -- there's like two year gap that I, you know, decided not to do it because of COVID. And- and then that got the attention of IBM. I mean, like, "Hey, that's a really awesome project. And that's what kind of opened that door." But it was, you know [laughs], all these --

Bekah: 32:55

That's -- when I- when I was leaving education to come into tech, I made money. I- I remember the most money I made, I bought and resold Justin Bieber tickets on StubHub [Bekah and Matt laugh]. And it was a lot of research. Again, that would have been something that would have been very useful to me during that time.

Matt: 33:18

Oh, yeah.

Bekah: 33:18

Wow, that's amazing. Justin Bieber also made me a lot of money, so I don't hate Justin Bieber. He's great [chuckles].

Matt: 33:24

He's Canadian, yeah. He's from down the road there. The --

Bekah: 33:27

That's right [laughs].

Matt: 33:28

And we have a lot of mixed feelings about Justin Bieber. But they're generally positive. He's- he's doing his best [Matt and Bekah laugh]. I'm glad he did well by you, Bekah. That's good.

Bekah: 33:37

Yeah. Wow. That -- there ... I don't know what to say other than that's amazing. And oh, what I did wanna say was, for -- we have a lot of people who are listening to the podcast, who are coming into tech, and I really love all these stories that you're telling, because all of the things that you made were useful to you, and they made sense for you to make. And so there's always that question of like, "Well, what am supposed to be doing? And what am I supposed to be building?" And you- you don't have to build an Electron app that analyzes what to price your Blue Jays tickets at [laughs], but like find that thing that's meaningful, and then go for that, and- and see where that takes you, and who notices you based on that.

Matt: 34:20

Totally. And, you know, I have a- a friend -- I've- I've had these experiences where I, you know, while I was at the college, Bekah and Dan, I, you know, I connected with this group called Hacker Paradise that facilitates these remote sort of work experiences. And they were, you know, it turns out that was really impactful for me. And there's a- a- a woman I met there who is amazing. Her name is Nicole Keller, and she has had this really, really cool career path. But one of the things she was doing down in New York was, running coding classes for kids. And the thing that I -- I brought to visit. Pam and I had gone to New York and, you know, called up Nicole, and then like, "Hey," and she just like, "Oh, yeah. I'm working. I'm doing this coding class for kids." And I'm like, "Can we come see? That sounds awesome." And we went in, and it was like the attic of this church. Like, you know, in- in, like, mainland, New York. And we -- so I'm just going to say mainland New York. New York island. What is -- what are you guys call it [laughs]? What ... Manhattan! That's it!

Dan: 35:11

Manhattan. Yes [Dan and Bekah laugh].

Matt: 35:12

Yeah. Manhattan. And we [laughs] -- and it was, but, like, the thing I loved, Bekah, was that they started the kids who were -- like, they were just building static sites, and they use like a website builder. They were like as young as like eight, nine years old, but they started them with -- they had gone to the UN's ... and I forget what it's called, but like, basically these are like our principles, and they had asked the kids, like, "What's one thing that you'd wanna affect change with, and let's build a website to do that." Like, they- they started -- they didn't start with teaching JavaScript or teaching HTML, and CSS. They started with like, what's the change you wanna see in the world?

Dan: 35:45

Mm-hmm.

Matt: 35:46

And how can we use these amazing tools to do this? And I think that for people who are getting into tech, you know, it's -- and there's a lot of people that are coming in for many, many reasons into tech. And especially now. It's like -- I think people are realizing that you can have this great lifestyle with it, which is wonderful. And that's a great reason to come into tech. There- there's these other things that are connected to it. I- I think one thing I'd love to introduce to that sort of, you know, thought processes, that this is a tremendously powerful thing. You can make computers do stuff automatically, and that's awesome. And it can really affect positive change on the world. And so, you know, as you're figuring out what your learning projects are, think about what you -- like, what you wanna change about the world. Like, you- you know, can you make something for your f- your friend group? Can you make something for yourself? Can you automate something that you're doing regularly? Can you make something that would be just really funny or cool, you know? Like- like, what do you wanna make? And- and I think if you start with that, like, that can be really powerful. Because, you- you know, if- if you're self-taught, one of the biggest challenges you're gonna face, and one of the biggest challenges I faced is how do you do it regularly? There would be weeks I, you know, couldn't bring myself to have the energy to code at like 9 o'clock at night, right? And- and to continue that learning -- learning is so hard. And it's such an emotionally challenging journey too. But if you're connected to something that you just wanna see out there, that- that's a deeper level of motivation than, you know, than somebody on one side [??] can be out there. I think that's powerful.

Bekah: 37:18

Yeah.

Dan: 37:18

Yeah. I- I- I love that a- a lot. And, you know, and this is -- we actually -- we just released Roger's episode. We talked to him a couple of weeks ago, and- and he- he said a lot of the same things. He- he has sort of a -- I mean, not the exact path, but like self-taught, and- and solving his own problems, sort of thing, to learn coding. And so, I was -- I'm on the same boat too. I think my first website ... well, that wasn't like a GeoCities site, it was like my -- site for my band, right? It was like in Flash or whatever.

Matt: 37:49

That's awesome.

Dan: 37:49

Just the -- yeah [chuckles]. I mean, it's fine. But, the- the -- we -- nowadays there's so many learning, like, opportunities, or the bootcamps, and everything like that. And there's so much -- so many different choices to- to make, so many different paths you can take. And I -- it -- when- when I came up, it's -- there was nothing, you know, nothing like that at all. There was some books that were out of date as soon as they hit the shelves, and, you know, and then the internet, right, and blogs, and- and things like that. But, I found success the same- the same way it was. Doing things that like were either fun, or, like, I wanted to fix, right? And you were tell the story -- w- when you were talking about the- the automated spreadsheet, the thing that, you know, there- there -- I was thinking in my head, this -- it's like a- a curse and a blessing of- of people who learn program- like, once you start down the path, like, once you've figured out some stuff is that you start seeing this everywhere. Like, "Oh my god, that -- I could make this easier [chuckles]," right? And it's like -- and it's- and it's -- when you do it, it's like a blessing, right? But it's, obviously, I have this -- for me anyway, I don't -- maybe this isn't for everybody. But it- it's like [chuckles], I start to think about it all the time, for everything. And sometimes it gets out of hand, sometimes [laughs] I'm automating things that don't actually take me that long, probably. It -- probably the work is taking longer than it did, but, you know, it's- it's ... I don't know. It's such a -- once you get into that habit of thinking that way, and like -- and the making things, it's -- it can be such -- it can- it can improve your life. And like you say, you can improve- you can improve little annoying things, or little things, you know, like small things with your family, or your friends, or, you know, large changes too. And it- it's- it's cool. Well, there's so many apps, so many possibilities out there.

Matt: 39:34

I mean, are there- are there any other projects that you've done, Dan, that are, you know, particularly redundant, or [chuckles] maybe like, not the most, you know, effective use of time, or any -- do you [unintelligible] --

Dan: 39:47

Oh, well, I -- how many color lights case here behind me? [Dan chuckles, Bekah laughs].

Matt: 39:50

[Laughs] Quite a few actually.

Dan: 39:51

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Back in- back in -- I was -- every time we start -- like, there was a two months or something where I -- so these are all like hue light bulbs, and there's- there's one you can't see too. And I've spent so much time -- cuz I hated the lights in here. I had -- before these, I just had, like, lights. Like, lamps. Everywhere. And never could get the lighting right. And then I got these, you know, so I have -- now I got these hue, I'm like, "This is the perfect solution. Hue bulbs. Cuz you can connect, you know, you can connect them with your phone or your, you know, there's probably a- a web, or a Mac app, and all that stuff." A-a-and so I replaced all of [chuckles] the bulbs with these things. And now- now there's too many op- like, now it's like [Dan and Bekah chuckle] there's too much to do. Like, I can -- I have too many options. There's too many colors, too many, like, ways. I can turn them up and down. And also, I -- and I kinda -- exactly how I wanted it. But then, it was like, okay. Well, it's still a pain for me to, like, open my phone, and like, to push the button, you know [chuckles]? So it's like, time to these -- like, time for automations. I finally bought -- oh, you can't see it, but I bought -- so, hue has this, like a button that you -- it is just like a little- a little click button. And you can put it on the wall, or you can put it wherever, and you can set that to do whatever you want, when you click it different ways [laughs].

Matt: 41:00

Cool.

Dan: 41:01

So I have that on my wall now. So I -- yeah. I- I spent like five days of- of being happy. I'm- I'm like, "Huh? This is- this is it. I have it." And like, just this morning, I sat down, and I'm like, "I should change the colors of these lights- these lights [all laughs] right now, but --" So it was -- I sometimes struggle with being satisfied with- with things. But, I still -- it is -- it's also fun though, you know [all laughs]?

Matt: 41:28

Man, it -- the -- Bekah, you, like, you have a -- and, you know, Virtual Coffee, I think it would be totally fair to call that like a- like an amazing project that both of you have created. It's the community I love and love being part of. And so, like, does that -- is it sort of -- the same sort of thing that has happened with you, Bekah, where you've had these things that you've taken on, and you've made, and resulted in these learning experiences? And I'd imagine Virtual Coffee has been an amazing learning experience. Even for yourself [??].

Bekah: 41:52

Oh, for sure. It's been a learning experience, and it's been great. I feel like I'm always dropping things. We have the maintainers channel. And so you -- there- there will be times where I just, like, drop a bunch of different ideas. Like, these are all things that I think we should be doing. And a lot of times, like, I'm writing out all of the processes, or what this means, or what support we need. And then, obviously, we don't do all of those because there's only 24 hours in a day [laughs], and it's just not possible. But -- and that was like, I- I got four hours of sleep last night. And it was because last night before bed, I- I was having this idea about a tech summit that I wanted to be doing. And I was like messaging Kirk and Nick Taylor about that. Like, "Hey, is this a- is this a idea that's too out there? Or is this something that maybe is useful, or good, or worth, like, talking about?" And then I fell asleep. And then, it was like three in the morning, I woke up, and my brain was like, "All right. Yeah. Let's- let's figure this out right now [laughs]," like, no. But I feel like, you know, it's a lot of that, but learning has been really great. And now I feel like I'm going down this -- I- I don't like Notion, I have not liked it anytime I've used it, but like my methods of storing all of these ideas and writing about them is just unsatisfactory now. And so I've started going down the Notion rabbit hole of like, "This is- this is what I need to do. And I need to automate these things to my Notion, because I know that I can." So, I feel like you could probably automate like hi- what your lights look like through Notion, right? If you just select what mood you're in, and then it will automatically set your lights. So, Dan, you should try that [chuckles].

Dan: 43:45

Yeah. Last time I messed with Notion, I had like a nervous breakdown trying to get everything exactly like [chuckles] --

Bekah: 43:51

Kirk is making me a template. So [chuckles] --

Dan: 43:53

Yeah. That's the- that's the issue I have with Notion is- is -- it's a great product and it's a very, very cool initiative. There's just too many possibilities, and it's too pop- it's like possible to get it -- it seems possible to get it perfect [chuckles]. And it's like, when that- when that, like, perfect thing gets in my head, it's hard to -- sometimes hard to let it go. So [chuckles] --

Matt: 44:13

Yeah. We- we've spent a lot of time in Notion too. We, you know, it's ... things that are highly customizable are often not the best tools, right? Like, it's, you know, I appreciate software that has opinion sometimes.

Bekah: 44:23

I say that --

Dan: 44:23

Yeah. My- my -- oh, go ahead, Bekah.

Bekah: 44:26

It -- my -- right now, I've just collected way too many different ways of doing things. Like, you know, I've got all these apps to help me with planning or note taking or, you know, whatev- there's just way too many of them. So I feel like I'm just very ... all or nothing kind of person. And so [chuckles] I- I can't have all of these. Now I just need one thing, and Notion is the- the one thing to rule them all up, apparently.

Matt: 44:58

[Chuckles] And so then, you know, in -- circling back, like, Bekah, you have this awesome job. You're an amazing community manager. Did you have those skills before you started the Virtual Coffee or was that something that you learned and kind of just figured out, go into the process?

Bekah: 45:13

When I- when I was in undergrad, I- I graduated in three years. So I took a bunch of credits, but I was also in 10 clubs, and I was an officer in like five of them [chuckles]. So, I- I feel like it's been a lifelong journey of community building, and many points where I've tried to reject that. Like, please let me just be in a hole by myself [chuckles] and not talk to people. But I keep coming back to it. I feel like I finally hit the point where I'm like, "Okay," like, "This- this is a skill set I should utilize it and- and figure out how I can best do that thing." So, yeah. It's- it's ... I guess part of me.

Matt: 45:57

That's really cool. I, you know, I think that, like, one of the things that, you know, I was hard to figure out, and I'm- I'm hope I think it's okay. I'm kind of like left turning the conversation a little bit. One of the things that was really hard to figure out in- in running a business is like, how do you hire? And you need to figure it all out from scratch. Because, like, we had hired a bunch of people that make stuff at IBM, but it was all a very catered experience. Like, we had -- we outsourced all of the hard out of front work [??]. And we got these, like, just like 50 incredible candidates, and we would divide them up on our team, and figure out who's gonna do round one, round two, round three, right? And that like, interviewing is easy, but hiring is hard. And hiring is all that other stuff. It's like finding people and evaluating them. And- and then, you know, you read about all the bad things that happen to hiring process, and you don't wanna do those, and you wanna do the good things, and you wanna get the right person, and then the right people. The thing that has always stand out to me is personal projects. And it's- it's probably not surprising given the history I just described, right? Like, I -- like, I value them a lot. But I think that when somebody comes in, and they say, "Hey, I made this thing, and here is why I made it, and here's -- like, how it's important for, like, small businesses, especially," that is so helpful because it's like, the person's thinking about a need on the other side of what they're doing. And like, you know, it- it's -- we don't have, like, tickets where we're working through. We're too small. We, you know, we don't have a ton of process around things. But, like, when people come in, and then I imagine this is the case for you, Bekah, and you do this amazing community management, and all this other stuff. And you have Virtual Coffee as this incredible example of you doing that, in tech, at scale. And- and I just -- that's awesome.

Bekah: 47:34

Yeah. I -- and that's what led to the job that I have right now. I wasn't looking for work. My team lead reached out to me, and it was based on Virtual Coffee. And somebody else had — who I'd interviewed with, who had reached out to me last summer ... because they knew about Virtual Coffee — recommended me. Like, I was on the top of the -- their list. And so, once he started looking into Virtual Coffee — I think he watched some of our Lunch and Learn videos and read blog posts — like, there- there is a -- my community building resume is out there because of all of the things that we do. And so, yeah. It is. It is like a project. I hadn't really thought about it that way, but it is this- this living resume of all of the things that I've been working on.

Matt: 48:24

Totally. And- and Dan, watch out. Cuz, like, Phillips is gonna come knocking, and gonna say, "Hey, [Dan and Bekah laugh] I heard all these things you're doing with our light bulbs [laughs]."

Dan: 48:33

Yeah.

Matt: 48:34

I'm, like, the CTO. [Unintelligible] you [laughs].

Dan: 48:35

And they gonna come, and say, "Hey, buy this product [laughs]. This product will finally solve all of your problems."

Matt: 48:42

[Chuckles] Oh my god. Yeah. I hope all the -- our conversation in this podcast has an index cuz it'll go to these Google searches. I mean, this is gonna be all Philips hue light bulbs.

Dan: 48:49

[Laughs] Right.

Bekah: 48:50

But we are open for sponsorships, so --

Dan: 48:54

Yeah. That's right.

Matt: 48:55

[Unintelligible] Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's -- that's really interesting. I think the -- those personal projects, they- they really standout. And, you know, and certainly there's merit if you're going to a bootcamp, and going through that, you -- like, you wanna stay on task, right? And if you're gonna get great learning, great feedback by building something that it -- like the bootcamp is saying, "Oh, we're gonna build like a, you know, shopping cart," that's totally cool, right? But those- those other pieces of like, "Hey, I've got this skill sat down. I can use it to just really do anything I want," it- it is just so attractive to me in a hiring process. Like, it really separates people out. And I'd imagine that's been the experience for both of you from what you've described too.

Dan: 49:33

Yeah. And- and like, if you are -- if your only project is coming out of a bootcamp or what you did in the bootcamp, and everybody else is trying to get a job too, you know, everybody is going to have the same set of projects, right? And so, that's- that's another thing is doing those. And maybe it's -- maybe there's not enough time to do it while you're in the bootcamp, you know? Maybe kind of do it after, but the -- those personal projects, I- I totally agree with you, Matt. It- it- it says- it says so much about ... you, without even speaking [chuckles]. And then it also gives you something to talk about, that's easy to talk about because you did it, and you know- and you know it. So it's not a theoretical thing or, you know, school assignment that you weren't connected with, you know? And it -- and again, it doesn't have to be world changing or a successful product or anything like that, right? You- you were talking about that Chrome extension that you made. That's literally just you and your wife [chuckles], right?

Matt: 50:26

Yeah.

Dan: 50:26

And that- and that's it. Like, but it -- that's- that's- that's a cool project. And I would like -- like, I enjoyed hearing about it, and I would, if I was hiring, I would also enjoy hearing about it. Don't -- you know, you didn't, like, sell it to somebody, or, you know, it doesn't have to be some, I don't know, huge thing. It's- it's just a- a thing that you decided to do on your own, and- and you figured out how to do it. And that's- that's the cool part for me.

Bekah: 50:47

We just wrapped up a hackathon at Deepgram. And one of our participants had, I think, five submissions. And this is a month long hackathon. And the submissions were all interesting, and they were all beautiful. The design was really great. I'm really terrible at design. And the- the fact that all of these looked really wonderful were meaningful, and interesting projects was great. But I interviewed that participant for a blog post highlight. And being able to hear the stories behind it, to hear how he communicated, what he did, his approach, how he did it, I -- that's -- he's a person in the top of my book that I would recommend for a job. But I know that he's looking, and he's going to be more actively looking soon. And so when anything comes up, I know that I'm going to reach out to that person. So, you know, if it doesn't catch the eye of somebody who's doing the hiring, it might catch the eye of somebody who's in a position where people reach out to them and say, "Hey, do you know anybody?" Like, "Yes, I do. This person would be really, really great for this role."

Matt: 51:57

Yeah, that's- that's really interesting. And, you know, and another sort of related thing that I hear a lot of hiring managers articulate, and there's famous examples of this, too, is- is like a really strong indicator of success in a businesses or in a particular role is how -- has that person achieved a success or excellence in a completely different area, right? And, you know, the -- Shopify has this famous example where their CEO gave an internship or a job to someone because they are like ranked in the top 50 at StarCraft, you know?

Dan: 52:27

That's awesome.

Matt: 52:28

And there's like similar sort of conversation in- in sales, like, you know, this other sort of area around people who have had a-athletic success, you know? So there- there are people who are sales managers, they were like, "Oh, you were division to athlete and track?" Like, that's a really strong indicator for this other type of thing. And I- I think like you also see it in like volunteers. I'm like -- the stuff you did when we're describing in university, Bekah. Right? It's interesting, these signals. Because the way that we typically interview is like in front of a whiteboard [chuckles], and we just -- we know it's- it's- it's a hard process to take on anyways. All- all I have to say.

Bekah: 53:09

Yeah, it is- it is really hard. And I think, even hearing a lot of conversations around hiring where people are trying to do things, there -- there's still so much of the process where we're stuck inside this box. So, rather than, like, really trying to ... rethink how we do the entire process, we're like, well, we're gonna rethink, but we still have to do all of these things. And we have to ask these questions because you have to [chuckles]. You- you don't have to. That's not -- what is that ... indicating? And how does that tell you whether or not that's going to be a good person for you to work with or a good team for you to join? How do we rethink the way that we're ... doing hiring? How we're onboarding new people? How we are looking at junior developers in this hiring process? I can't -- in- in my mind, it has to be -- there's a much bigger shift that needs to happen than, you know, these tiny changes that we keep seeing happening.

Matt: 54:14

Yeah. I, you know, I -- there's a part of me that -- and I- I wanna sort of say this in the, like, the best possible way that I'm -- I- I wish that people generally were more deliberate about what they wanted out of a job. And this has been something that's been incredibly important for me. And, you know, there's these books that like, sort of get you thinking on these topics, but like, really early on, for me, was it -- that- that juncture where I'm like, oh, like, a career in tech in- in -- specifically, there's a shift I had, you know, a couple of years after learning code where I -- I've very deliberately, I wanna run a business. I- I wanna run a technology based business. And that wasn't for the sake of wanting to do that. It was because of these other things that I wanted. I sat -- literally had a moment where I sat down, and I say, "What do I wanted in my work life?" And, you know, for me, they were things that were connected to autonomy. I wanted, like, in a perfect world, I would work where and when I wanted to. I would -- like, I- I ne- was always confused that we had this like 40 hour a week box that we often live in. Like, why does that- why does that have to exist, you know? Like, what are the reasons that the edges of that box are there? And like, I -- what if one week I wanna work less? And one week I wanted that type of control to, you know, there were these -- I- I wanted to work on any type of problem that I wanted. I- I wanted to have the potential for financial independence, you know? These types of things. And that put like, you know, to me, that was really helpful because it determined the types of jobs that I wanted to work at and- and why. And so when I started applying to -- and I -- like, I think I applied to, you know, putting IBM and Microsoft aside because I- I never actually put an application into either company. It -- they -- like, once you get in, it -- I just wanna go there, but it's a different process. And -- but I did apply to two technology companies to be a programmer. And that -- my purpose in applying to them was, you know, the- the conventional wisdom that working at a startup will help you do a startup later. And that's what I wanted. I wanted to run my own business. So I was applying to a very particular type of company because the purpose of that learning was to help me do this thing later. And, you know, the funny thing about people who are junior devel- developers and who are graduating like in 2022, is in a very short period of time, they're the hiring managers. And, you know, I -- like, I -- my gut feeling is that if people were approaching that process with like a very deliberate set of values and intentions, that hiring would change on the back end, later. Or maybe not, you know? [Laughs]

Bekah: 56:48

Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that. And it- and it can be really hard, especially with so many people looking for jobs on the market right now. And -- I knew that I spent a lot of time telling people, when you join your first team, it should be about the people, and not the project. Because I've seen so many people jump into, I -- particularly, EdTech companies. I don't know. I just -- generally EdTech that's really toxic or what, but just really bad experiences. And there's been the whole, like, mission trade-off thing. "Well," you know, "We've got a great mission." Well, but you're doing a terrible job of managing a team, being kind to other people [chuckles], you know? Like, those things matter.

Matt: 57:38

Yeah. You know, I- I -- if I was, you know, the key -- talk about EdTech, and I completely echo that sentiment, I think it's totally correct. And video- video game industry is notorious, right?

Bekah: 57:46

Yeah.

Matt: 57:46

For -- like, it's not being a great place to work. If there was one thing that I learned working in big tech, like, you know, going from a college where you're, you know, you, like, you make this amount of money, you need a $1,500 raise a year, and it's unionized, and X, and Y, and Z. And then, like, I remember the week that I joined IBM, they, like, flew me down to Silicon Valley for two weeks. We had this -- then we had, like, this event. And there was like this music, and it was just all catered, and it was all free, and it was crazy, the amount of money. And I got the opportunity to work with you. It was really great. I loved both of those jobs. Loved, loved, loved both of them. And I think, one of the things that I've learned is, that a lot of the things that we want in an employer, a really, really strong indicator is the health of the business. If you wanna- if- if you wanna work, you know, my- my wife works at Shopify. She loves it there. And, you know, they have -- Shopify makes so much money that they can hire people, that all they do is think about diversity and equity. And they hire another -- they have a whole team that all they do is think about culture. And they have whole teams that do all -- do nothing but, you know, run an internal events and try to make that a great place to work, you know? You can do that if you've got a ton of money.

Bekah: 59:01

Mm-hmm.

Matt: 59:02

And, you know, in terms of diversity in tech, my AI team at Microsoft, we were extremely diverse by every standard. We had more women than men, and- and that's an AI where -- like, its AI and data science is enormously behind computer science. It's where computer science was like 15 years ago. But we were able to have a diverse team at Microsoft because we could outbid everybody, you know? We- we could go hire the best, and the best one are to work for us. And we can afford it. And there's a million other examples like that. So, it's like, I think going full circle, a lot of EdTech can be a really tough place to work because that's a really, really hard business to be in.

Bekah: 59:42

Mm-hmm.

Matt: 59:42

And you're- you're pinching every corner. And usually, you are. And same with the video game industry is, it is like, you know, if that game does well, congratulations. But if it doesn't, you -- it -- like, it's really -- it's a tough environment to work in. So, you know, if you wanna have a really great place to work, I think the best, most simple indicator you can look at is, like, how much money did they raise in the last round, if it's a startup. If it's a publicly -- big publicly traded company, is it growing? Look at their stock chart for five years. Does it go up? You know, if it does, probably a great place to work. If it's flat, it- it, you know, you might be getting like -- you might not have budget to go to that next conference. It's ... you know? And similarly, people might not be attracted to work there, in the same.

Bekah: 00:23

Yeah, I think that's great advice. I wanna thank you so much for being here with us today and having this conversation. There's a lot of really great takeaway cuz I feel like -- from all these stuff that we talked about here. Is there anything that you wanna share before we leave, or any last words of wisdom for our listeners?

Matt: 00:42

No. Thanks everyone. The -- thank you, Bekah and Dan, for having me. It's- it's great. If nothing else, I think one of the things we all take away from today is build personal projects. Go make stuff. Like, you know, the- the old Y-Com motto, make- make stuff people want, right? Make stuff you want.

Bekah: 00:55

Yeah.

Dan: 00:56

Yeah.

Matt: 00:56

It's cool. And share it --

Bekah: 00:57

Share with us too. We wanna see 'em.

Matt: 00:59

Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for having me.

Dan: 01:01

Thanks, Matt. This is awesome.

Bekah: 01:03

Bye.

Dan: 01:06

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Virtual Coffee podcast. This episode was produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel. If you have questions or comments, you can hit us up on Twitter at VirtualCoffeeIO, or email us at podcast@virtualcoffee.io. You can find the show notes, sign up for the newsletter, check out any of our other resources on our website, virtualcoffee.io. If you're interested in sponsoring Virtual Coffee, you can find out more information on our website at virtualcoffee.io/sponsorship. Please subscribe to our podcast, and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.