Product People

Should you double down on your strengths, or learn something new?

Show Notes

This is a great chat with Samantha Geitz, a Senior Developer at Tighten, and the founder of BetaFish.

Topics in this episode: 
  • Should "business/marketing" people learn programming?
  • What's the difference between messing around and being a serious programmer?
  • Do regular programmers Google for answers?
  • Why English Majors can make great programmers.
  • If you want to learn hard things, do you need to be in a classroom?
  • Why should take a mental health day when you need it.

Announcement:

  • Want to speak at a tech conference? I'm doing class called "public speaking for geeks." More info here.

Show notes

Stuff from Justin...

Thanks to...


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Creators and Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
⚡ Bootstrapping, podcasting, calm companies, business ethics. Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Guest
Samantha Geitz
New name, who dis

What is Product People?

A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them

Speaker 1:

Hey, folks. It's me, your buddy, Justin Jackson, back with another episode. It's been a little while. I think the last one published is back in June. Now we're sitting here November 2, a few days after Halloween two thousand eighteen.

Speaker 1:

Folks, I have a great interview for you today. Samantha Geitz is on the program. She is a senior developer over at Titan, and she's also working on her own bootstrap startup called Go Betafish. We get into all of that today. I met Samantha at LaraCon in Chicago.

Speaker 1:

I was emceeing and she was speaking, and I thought she would be a good guest to explore some of the questions I have around learning to program, you know, impostor syndrome, all of these things I'm experiencing right now as I'm trying to teach myself some programming. I've been doing some livestreams. We get into all of that. One quick note. I am doing a live class for geeks who want to learn public speaking skills.

Speaker 1:

So regardless if you want to get up and speak at a tech conference or just give better presentations to your team, if you want to give better product demos, whatever it is, I wanna help you learn the skills and get the confidence you need to speak better in front of people. And, the focus is going to be, you know, helping you to maybe get a gig at a tech conference or, you know, a bigger meetup or a tech event. And I wanna prepare you for those kinds of talks. But, really, if you are looking to level up your skills in this area, it's gonna be a great class for you as well. All of the details are over at megamaker.co/speak.

Speaker 1:

So head over there and sign up for the waiting list. By the way, this is going to be a live class. So every single day for a week well, four days for a week, we'll be going over the material together. You'll have time to practice. You'll have time to ask questions.

Speaker 1:

You can even some folks will be able to come live on the video with me and, you know, work through some stuff. It's gonna be really good if you're looking for a structured way to level up your speaking skills. Megamaker.co/speak. Alright. Let's get in to this talk with Samantha.

Speaker 1:

It's a really good one. Hi, Samantha. How's it going?

Speaker 2:

Doing alright. How are you?

Speaker 1:

I'm doing well. I was just telling you offline that I have a cold, but I folks, this is Samantha Geitz, and we met in Chicago. Did we meet in New York? Were you at LaraCon in New York?

Speaker 2:

I was. And, yeah, I think we met at least briefly, but

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Definitely Chicago is is our origin story.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I remember because I remember you gave a talk. It was on Vue. Js. Right?

Speaker 1:

It was. The the thing I remember from your talk is you you were saying, I normally talk about React, but today I'm talking about doing, I think, testing in Vue or something like that.

Speaker 2:

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Maybe just for the folks at home, just introduce yourself, tell folks what you do, and then we'll just go from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure. Well, my name is Samantha Geitz, and I'm a senior developer at a company called Titan. We're a consultancy that does a lot of Laravel work, which is a PHP framework. We also do a lot of Vue and React as well. But my co senior is a big Vue fan.

Speaker 2:

And we've actually had like, we call them dev battles and we just kind of livestream us writing applications like in a competitive way. And it's really, really fun. So I kind of, have a name for myself as this person who actively likes to like, shit talk view just for fun. How does that work?

Speaker 1:

Is that, like, you're actually are you live streaming these, or this is just inside of Titan?

Speaker 2:

We are. We get on Twitch. We live stream them. Our first one was we had to build like a Twitter clone, so we didn't really know what we were building. We just kind of walked into it and Matt Stauffer, who is the owner Titan, just kind of dropped it on us.

Speaker 2:

Then we just had, I think it was an hour to just get as far as we could. The second one is a three parter and we're building iOS apps in React Native and NativeScript. So neither of us really know those that well. We basically are just kind of figuring it out on Twitch, like in real time. So it's really fun, and it's really lighthearted.

Speaker 2:

It's, I mean, just kind of a like, why people are into sports, just kind of a rivalry thing for fun.

Speaker 1:

If if you go to battle.titan.co, that this is what it is. Right?

Speaker 2:

That's

Speaker 1:

Titan Dev Battle? That's the one. Okay.

Speaker 2:

We have to get the second ones rescheduled. We were supposed to have it a couple weeks ago, and then some real life emergency happened, and I had to put it on hold. But soon Okay.

Speaker 1:

So and is this something you folks just do for fun? Or Yeah. Is it it's just like and is it during work hours? Or it's like after work, you

Speaker 2:

It's

Speaker 1:

you go live and do it?

Speaker 2:

It's during work hours. So Titan, has this thing called 20% time. So we only work thirty two actual billable hours a week. And then the remaining eight hours of our week, we can basically spend working on anything for professional development. So we can learn something new.

Speaker 2:

We can write posts for the blog. We can get on Twitch and embarrass ourselves in front of the Internet writing code. Like, I mean, kind of anything that's going to benefit us as programmers or benefit Titan in some way. So, that's where a lot of our open source stuff happens too is on 20% time. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

Great benefit.

Speaker 1:

And that actually resonates with me. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I've been forcing myself to do these live streams, and I've just called them dumb programming questions. And the idea is I've been a geek for a long time, but I'm not very good at programming. And it's always been, this debate inside of my head. Do I do I invest in this, or do I just keep investing in the things I've always done?

Speaker 1:

And I'm almost, well, I'll be 40 in, like, a year and a half or something like that. I was like, I I just gotta figure this out. I think I I think that I should at least, give it a go. But for me, the only way I can give it a go is saying, I'm gonna go live right now. Anybody that wants to show up can watch me stumble through this, hopefully help me out.

Speaker 1:

And that's how I'm gonna learn. I've got it's it's a way of forcing myself to learn. And I've been surprised. I thought I don't know what your livestream experience has been, but people are really have been really nice so far. So and I don't know if it's because I'm playing a little bit of a village idiot.

Speaker 1:

Like, you know, I have no I know more than I let on, but because I'm being I'm just I'm saying, I don't know what I'm doing, people have have been very, like, oh, well, you know, you gotta do this or you gotta go here. Or, the first time I went live, I Adam Wavin had to call me on Skype because I got stuck in Vim, which apparently is a

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Kind of a rite of passage or something.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It is. I still get stuck in VIM all the time.

Speaker 1:

Can you tell me a little bit of, like, your programming story? How did you get into programming? What was the kind of gateway drug? How did you get good at it? Like, what what was the process like for you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. For sure. So, when I was a teenager, I kind of messed around a little bit with web design, but it was very much like cobbling together, like WordPress and Joomla and other CMS sites. And I ran for a while this, like, because of what I really always have wanted to be when I grew up as a writer. I'm sure at some point we'll end up talking about the side hustle I just came out with for

Speaker 1:

that. But,

Speaker 2:

yeah. So I ran a community for writers, just like a forum board that was kind of actually relatively popular. But I never really saw myself going into programming as a career. I think a lot of women have weird baggage around computer science where they think it's not for them. Like it's just always something that's, you think there's a lot more math involved and you look into a computer science classroom and it's all dudes and it just doesn't feel accessible.

Speaker 2:

And I've done a lot of mentoring with, like, teenage girls trying to get them into programming and computer science, and they, they all kinda say that too. So I know it's not just me.

Speaker 1:

But Yeah. What and what was it about, like, what was it about the web that got you interested in even building websites? Like, was it because you were a writer or was it, you know, you just wanted to run, you know, community sites? Like, what was it about that that kind of enticed you?

Speaker 2:

I, I took over the forum from somebody else, and it was just kind of this really brittle thing. I mean, I was having a lot of issues with it, I just kind of rebuilt it from the ground up using like Joomla and I was like simple forums or something. But it was very much like this kind of duct taping together things that other people built. Like, I didn't really understand how any of it worked under the hood. There's just a very low barrier to entry on that, you know.

Speaker 2:

So it's a great template you go download, so you don't really need to know a lot of CSS or anything. Yeah. And that felt really different to me than just, like, web application development, like, the kind of person who could build something like that, like, just from the ground up.

Speaker 1:

I I have to stop here because this is the this is the piece I wanna explore a little bit. It's just an honest question I have, which is, like I said, I've grown up. I've been messing around with computers and computer things. And would you and I maybe you'll get into this right away here, but what's the difference between kind of messing around like I've always done and actually getting into programming? Is it just you just keep messing around forever and then you you you kind of fall into more, you know, more complex problems?

Speaker 1:

Or is it about deliberate practice? Like, do you have to, like, is there a point where you have to say, okay. I've messed around as much as I can. Now I've just gotta sit down and learn some concepts.

Speaker 2:

I think that messing around is not yeah, I mean, I still feels a lot of times like I'm messing around and just kind of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. My opinions about the best way to do things has changed so much over the years. I think a lot of people when they're first starting get into this almost like paralysis where they just go through a million tutorials because they feel like they need to understand everything about it. And then they go to sit down and actually build something and realize they still really don't know what they're doing. They just feel like they've wasted all this time and they're not smart enough.

Speaker 2:

I've seen that happen with so many people who are first learning. So I think just looking for really manageable projects to do, whether or they're actually going to make any money. But getting your hands dirty as early as possible and just struggling against any problems you run into. Having a community of people you can pull in for help is huge too. So you're not spending, you know, eight hours on something where an experienced programmer can just take a peek and be like, Oh yeah, you forgot a semicolon there.

Speaker 2:

And that's what that error message means.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally. So what, sorry, I want to get back to your journey. So you're a teenager, you're messing around with Joomla and this forum software. What was the next step for you?

Speaker 2:

So I went to college and I was an English major. I really didn't see myself going into computer science. It just seemed hard. Like I just, I don't know, like I just wouldn't be interesting. So I wanted to be an English teacher and I got all the way through my English curriculum and then started on education curriculum and took one class and went, Oh, I've made a horrible mistake.

Speaker 2:

I would be a terrible, I'd be a terrible high school English teacher. Just don't have the patience for it.

Speaker 1:

What was it about that class that that told you that?

Speaker 2:

I went to a Catholic high school in like a really nice area. And I was in like AP classes and, you know, go to school, like excited to learn about like Shakespeare or Flaubert or whatever. And just this realization of like, oh, kids don't wanna be here. Like, no one's gonna be excited about this. So that one kid a year I get, I'm gonna have to deal with just 20 who make me miserable every day.

Speaker 2:

And I just, I don't have the kind of personality to just deal with that day in and day out, deal with parents. And I think just, I mean, teaching is hard. I have friends now who are teachers and man, they are saints. Like they provide such a valuable service, but I feel like I would just be that mean old lady teacher by the time I was like 25.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. That it, I, we just went to parent teacher interviews and we have, we have four kids, but we have two that are in high school. And man, those, parent teacher interviews, you just interview parents all day. Like the parents, teachers were exhausted.

Speaker 1:

Like they're just at the end of their rope, you know? So I, I don't think I could be a teacher either. So yeah, so you decided, okay, I'm not going to take that. I'm not going to go into education. What was the next step?

Speaker 2:

Plan B was to go get my doctorate and teach at the college level where I feel like you have a much, you don't have to deal with this much crap from kids. They're being, they're not doing this supposed to do. Kick them out. You don't, you're not like allowed to talk to the parents. It was.

Speaker 2:

So that was my game plan. But, my last semester of school, I was working at Best Buy like thirty hours a week. So my schedule was really weird. And the one elective that fit into my schedule was computer science. So I finally was like, the trigger and like, all right, I'm gonna take this computer science class.

Speaker 2:

Just to create my degree. And I loved it. I was like, oh man, okay, this is what I want to do. I, I went back and got a master's in information science, which was kind of like a weird programming project management study, how people learn and disseminate information and how to best write software for that. I wasn't really a lot of actual programming coursework.

Speaker 2:

I'm pretty much self taught, but it set me up, I think, to kind of just jump into the industry and eventually kind of move into like more of a senior and like project manager role, which is a lot of what I do now. And that is like day to day coding anymore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Okay. Well, that brings up a couple of questions. So what was it about that computer science class that made you say, this is what I want to do? What happened in that class that kind of lit you up like that?

Speaker 2:

It was fun in a way I just really didn't expect. With a C plus plus course, I was the only girl in the course. And the professor, my first day, he knew I was an English major and he kept me aside and he said, oh, if you need extra help, you know, let me know and I'll stay after and help you. And by week four, I was like tutoring, like 25% of the class. I just really took to it.

Speaker 2:

I loved it. It just wasn't, wasn't what I expected, but I was never really exposed to it either. I never took any actual programming coursework. Was kind of just feeling like I was putting together all these pieces I barely understood. I saw my dad do some stuff when I was like younger and we'd work together on like building tic tac toe games, I was a kid.

Speaker 2:

Like, I didn't understand it in any way. I just always which is weird because I know I'm smart. I just always kind of felt like I would never really be good at it or be boring or something. Well,

Speaker 1:

this is encouraging to me because I feel like I too was really into English and really into writing. But I was also a geeky kid that at some points had tried programming and had tried to figure out c plus plus, had tried to and one of the questions in the back of my head has always been, I wonder if I had just gone and forced myself to take a class or if I had the right teacher or whatever. Because it is a hard thing, but for me to learn hard things, I almost need to have, you know, be in a classroom. Be have I I tell like, the the reason I think I got good at writing, even though I liked it, was because I had this English AP teacher that made us write an essay every single week. I would have never done that.

Speaker 2:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:

So yeah. So that's encouraging to me that there you you felt like you had a little bit of exposure as a kid, but it wasn't until you were in college and then, know, almost by happenstance, you know, ended up in this class and then you just loved it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was definitely. And I've wondered if, I mean, I had to face the reality after I graduated of just having an English degree. I was making like 26 ks a year working in admissions at the university of Missouri graduate school. And if I would've somehow found my way to it anyway, just because I like computers, I always have. I'm a gamer.

Speaker 2:

I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I don't know

Speaker 2:

if I would've.

Speaker 1:

The challenge for me is if you like computers, but you're good at writing, you just end up in marketing. Or or at least that's that was my

Speaker 2:

Typical writing, maybe.

Speaker 1:

That was my experience is that I just ended up in, you know, product management, marketing, the the the stuff that didn't have to do with code as much. And yeah. Anyway, okay. So that was my first question. The second question is why did what made you go back and get your master's?

Speaker 1:

What was what was the the push behind that?

Speaker 2:

It was kind of a hail Mary because so I had all this, student loan debt from my undergraduate degree. And like I said, I was making absolutely no money as an English major. Like I would take home $1,400 a month and like 700 of that was going to student loans. And I was like, man, I really want to go into this, but I need to get a second job and that's not going to leave me time to teach myself anything. And then I'm also going to be trying to get jobs in the industry with an English degree, which actually now that I'm in the industry, I think would have been fine.

Speaker 2:

But at the time it felt insurmountable. Like, why would anyone hire me with this unrelated degree? And I just kind of deferred my loans for two years and just tried to get pushed that bar far as much as I could. And like, Okay, I am somewhat qualified now, I guess. So I'm going to try to get some junior level developer job.

Speaker 2:

Thank God I did and just kind of been all uphill from there.

Speaker 1:

Wow. Okay. So

Speaker 2:

more set, but you know, what are going to do?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Okay. So you, you went and took information science. So you've done a little bit of programming now in that c plus plus course, a little bit of programming in your master's course, but not much?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Not much. It was all very, like, introductory level type stuff. And, we we took like a flash course in 2011 or '12, like by this point, like it wasn't even on iPhones anymore. Like it was very much, we never used like version control or anything.

Speaker 2:

I'd have group projects. We were passing around files on Dropbox. It was definitely, several years behind the industry. Okay. So I taught myself rails.

Speaker 2:

So that was actually like kinda how I first, like started building web apps was just, were a lot of great resources to learn that at the time. And, so I did that and some WordPress freelancing to kind of pay the bills.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Sorry, this is while you're doing your master's program. You're you're like, okay. There's Rails is out there. WordPress is out there.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna start learning Rails. Maybe pick up some WordPress gigs.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. There were not a lot of, like, freelance rails gigs. And I was living in Columbia, Missouri at the time too. There's I mean, a lot of people needed WordPress freelancers. So it was kind of one of those, like, I would learn enough WordPress to like build some sort of, you know, client side or whatever.

Speaker 2:

And then I really wanted to do like actual web application development. And my first job in Chicago, I was kind of hoping was going to be a rails job, but then I I knew I knew WordPress. So I just ended up doing WordPress. I never actually have worked professionally as a Rails developer. Gotcha.

Speaker 2:

But that's why got into Laravel, was I knew a lot of PHP from WordPress, and then it just kinda leveraged that into, okay, well, I'm gonna do the PHP Rails, so.

Speaker 1:

So I wonder if that's the other key too is because so much of this has to do with practice. Is that what helped you learn? It's just you were on client projects, and so now you're you're programming in PHP every day. Maybe take me a little bit through the learning process. Like, was it just showing up every day and getting saying you have to do this and you had to figure it out?

Speaker 1:

Like, how did it work?

Speaker 2:

I think yeah. I think that's a lot of it is when you're You are building something very specific. If you're just learning and you don't have a good roadmap for yourself and you get frustrated partway with your project and you abandon it to go on something else, or you feel like you need to do more tutorials or whatever, I think it's really easy to spin your wheels. And one of the nice things about. Being a junior developer at a company is they will give you very specific tasks.

Speaker 2:

Ideally, they'll give you some sort of mentorship if you do get stuck on those tasks. But yeah, you have to figure it out. It's very much sink or swim. And I worked, mean, I worked a lot of hours. Like when I first started, I almost burned myself out just trying to kind of keep up with whatever pace I imagined I needed to be at to really like be proficient as a developer.

Speaker 2:

And it was hard. I mean, it was definitely hard. It it was also, you know, agency settings can be kind of tough a lot of times if there's not this, this very like conscious effort to like limit the number of hours people work. Sometimes promises are made to clients and, you know, sometimes people who don't understand really how long it actually going to take to do that. So your developers kind of just have to either push back on that or work a ton of hours to meet those deadlines.

Speaker 2:

So

Speaker 1:

You you know, there's that whole debate about I was and I was just talking to Derek Rimer and Ben Ornstein about this. They have a podcast called Art of Product, and they're both building products. So Ben is, like, a really good Rails developer, And he brought up this question. Do I learn design? You know?

Speaker 1:

Because he's he's jealous that Derek, who's a developer, knows some design. And he said, man, you can just get so much further ahead. And, and then they both look at me and they go, man, you're so good with on stage and you're so good with writing. And and there's always this debate about what do we focus on. Do we double down on what we're already good at?

Speaker 1:

Or do we, kind of sacrifice these short term gains for something that might benefit benefit us in the long term? I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Speaker 2:

I think I, at some point had to give myself permission to not know everything and be the best at everything. Programming is something that's so wide and it changes constantly. And you can be the expert in something one day and then have it completely fall out of favor and have to learn something brand new. And I think you always kind of have to approach it with a certain level of humility, just knowing you're in an industry with so many smart people and none of them are going to be the best at everything either. They may totally be better than you at a couple of different things, but you're probably going to have something that you do bring to the table that they don't.

Speaker 2:

And that may be writing and just being able to break down technical concepts. Like, I write a lot of blog posts for Titan, like tutorial series and stuff, and try to break down these concepts in a way that is easy for beginners. And you know, I have developers on my team. I'm one of two seniors at the company and there are developers on my team that, you know, even Laravel, which we all use, like if we just had a trivia like head to head, they would just destroy me. Because I just, you know, I'm not source code diving with every new release like they are.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, you know, I have a lot of architecture experience because I've been on so many different projects over the last. You know, eight years, so I can kind of see blind spots. And that's part of the reason I have the position I have is I'm good at interfacing with clients. And it's a big part of tackling that kind of imposter syndrome of just feeling like you're a fraud because you don't know as much as other people. But I think it's really important to figure out things you do bring to the table.

Speaker 2:

And if you decide you want to learn something new, then just, you know, see if you like it or not. And you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be the best. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2:

To be, know something about design and UX and maybe, you know, not be a world class designer.

Speaker 1:

Totally. And in some ways, it's been very freeing for me now to and I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or I don't know. But I just I really stopped caring what people thought. So in the past, I might have especially when I was a product manager and you're interfacing with designers and developers and business people all the time, You you basically wanna make it seem like you know what they're talking about all the time, and maybe I faked it a little bit too much. But now I I I just feel like what for here's a good example.

Speaker 1:

So like I said, I've been using command line forever. I was I was using Telnetting into the university's Unix system when I was 10. But I don't know everything about the command line, and so I've and I've never exposed that part of me before. But when you're doing it live, of course, people can go

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

What the heck are you navigating? You know? So in the first tutorial, like I said, I got stuck in Vim, and I didn't even understand, like, CD squiggly. That brings you back to is that the right word? CD squiggly?

Speaker 1:

What is that thing? It's a

Speaker 2:

it's Tilde?

Speaker 1:

That what it is? Yeah. CD tilde brings you back home. Right? CD dot dot brings you up a level or down a level.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And so those were two things I had either forgotten or didn't know anymore. And part of me wanted to make excuses like, no. No. No.

Speaker 1:

You don't understand. Like, I've been doing this a long time. Like, I but the other part of me was just like, let it go. And it's okay if you don't know this stuff. You're gonna learn way more if you just kinda open yourself up to to saying, like, teach me.

Speaker 1:

Sure. I I don't know. I've got lots of gaps. And, yeah, I think there's this obviously and maybe, again, maybe it's stage of life, but there's there's things that we're naturally good at and that maybe we got that got refined through school or a good coach or whatever. But I think sometimes it is like, I kind of want to try, you know, public speaking or I wanna try I wanna try some programming.

Speaker 1:

I don't have to be a Taylor Otwell level programmer, but Right. I would love to be able to build my own to do list. I guess that's the that's the current, kind of project of choice. And in Ben's case, Ben Ornstein, he said we said I said, I think design is like, getting the fundamentals of design is way more in your grasp than some other things. And he started using Tailwind and found that just Tailwind CSS had enough kinda built in.

Speaker 1:

It was kinda like design on the rails for him, and he was able to figure it out. You know? And now he's he's happy. He felt like he tackled this hard thing. And as he uses it more and more, he's gonna understand more and more fundamentals of design and, you know, kinda go from there.

Speaker 1:

It's it's it's interesting. Yeah. Are are there things like that for you, like, where you're you're like, okay. I'm gonna push myself. Now I'm a senior developer.

Speaker 1:

I've done all these client projects. What are the things where you're now pushing yourself?

Speaker 2:

Public speaking is definitely one of them. I'm actually, today, going to be putting out a blog post on the Titan blog about it. But I did a lot of public speaking earlier in my career and just kind of stopped because I have horrible, horrible stage fright. Like

Speaker 1:

Oh, really?

Speaker 2:

Oh, man. Yeah. I hate it. It's awful. One of the things that really, really helped me, I did three different conference talks this year, was kind of reframing how I had to see myself.

Speaker 2:

If you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be that expert and to have that facade of just knowing everything, If you make a mistake, it feels like you're just undermining everything. Like, why would anyone wanna listen to me if I'm not that expert? And if you kind of just think of it as like, I'm just a smart person, like telling other smart people about this thing I think is really cool. And I did some research on and we're just kind of having a conversation. It's a lot easier to, I mean, obviously everyone's still going to have some level of anxiety about public speaking, but it's a lot easier to get on that stage if you don't feel like you had to be an expert and you just kind of approach it with like some level of humility.

Speaker 2:

And that's what got me through that live coding talk, which is being very open with everybody in the audience. This is not a thing I'm great at, and I might screw up and we can all have a good laugh if I do, but like, you know, I'm just gonna try to show you this other concept that I'm really excited about. And hopefully you guys learn a thing or two and it's entertaining. It was very freeing just to not have that burden.

Speaker 1:

Totally.

Speaker 2:

Have to be the Samantha Guides expert. And if I screw up, it's gonna just why would anyone take me seriously ever again?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Not the case.

Speaker 1:

The the ego is so heavy. It weighs so heavy on you. And you can almost tell when people are trying to protect their ego.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And it it it's it's more clear. And again, it's not easy because I still wanna be cool and liked and all of those things too. But just be when I have been able to let it go and that even what you said is perfect. Like, listen, like, I'm I'm smart enough to have done the research and the work that I've done. And I've I've talked about this, you know, on Twitter and blog posts and in conversations many, many times before.

Speaker 1:

I can do this. Can I can I can share what I'm working on? Adam Wavin tweeted out the other day. They're all in Australia at LariCon, and he said he really liked the format of David Hemphill's talk. Here are some interesting problems I've had to solve and how I solve them.

Speaker 1:

It's just that's so freeing because anybody can learn from that. Right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I think you hit a point as a programmer where you have enough successes under your belt and you'll have some failures too. When you're tackled, like there are times I get a client project or, you know, something else, some other challenge where I'm like, I have no idea how to do this. And this is going to be the time I screw it up. And it gets easier when you know that every time you've had that feeling you've managed to overcome it and do a good job.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a lot easier to kind of tell yourself like I need to learn this new thing and it seems really intimidating, but I've learned all these other new things and I'm really Okay at them now. Yeah. I it's, that's a really hard thing for someone first getting into programming is because they don't necessarily have that. They don't have that trust in themselves so they can figure it out and do a good job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2:

They're surrounded by all these other people who just know so much more than them. It feels like just, you're never going to catch up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. Although the, the one thing about, when, when people do drop their guard, we've been talking about, like when they, they let go of their ego, it actually does benefit the whole group because now all of a sudden, there's more freedom to share. We're not so tightly holding it all together. And, you know, so for example, a lot of people say, man, you're so good on stage, Justin. You seem so natural.

Speaker 1:

You seem like you're enjoying it. But there are times, like, were times at LaraCon where I was shaking uncontrollably. And, it just happens on stage sometimes. It I don't if I don't know if it's, like, stage fright or stage excitement, but and it's like to me, I'm like, what's happening? Like, my my body is shutting down.

Speaker 1:

And when I share that with people and say, like, this happens to me on stage all the time. They're like, what? Like, how I can't ever imagine that happening to you. And I've just learned, like, in those times, I'm like, okay, this is happening. I just gotta, like, calm down and just keep going.

Speaker 1:

It will subside. It won't be around forever. But, but sharing that with the community and hearing people, you know, other people who have, who are way better public speakers than me say, oh yeah, like I, you know, I some of some of them say I don't get stage fright, but this happens to me or, you know, everyone has their thing. And it's so much more freeing for a community of people. I think this is why I like, Laravel so much is I've never been in a community like that where the people just, it just feels like the guard is down more than it's up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I I feel that way too. And about mental health issues too. I feel like that's something that's been relatively dignitized in the Laravel community compared to other communities out there. As something at Titan, I've tried really hard.

Speaker 2:

I yesterday took a mental health day and I put in the thing that I was taking a sick day for a mental health day because I just had a lot going on right now and I'm stressed out and I'm not going to do good work today. And I've had conversations with all of our developers. Like if you need that, I will make sure you get that and get the space to do that and reschedule meetings. But it's really important to take care of yourself first because we're all human. I mean, none of us are just robots who are just churning out code.

Speaker 1:

Well and think about how much healthier that is. Like, I've had so many days where I should have taken a mental health day, but what I did instead is I showed up at work, and I'm just trying to hold it all together. And it's exhausting.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Speaker 1:

So as soon as someone, breaks open that thing that that was hidden or not talked about or obviously, there's limits to all of this. There's there's tension between what should be open and what should be private. But I think it especially with mental health, that like, when that, how do I say this? Like, when it when that piece got broken open, like, when it when it was in the public sphere, it felt like a giant exhale. Like, just like

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Like, everybody's been holding themselves in. And now, first of all, you have this understanding of, oh, I'm not the only one that feels that way. So just knowing other human beings experience that is so freeing. And then two, okay. Well, now we're talking about it.

Speaker 1:

Like, so now it's out in the open. And that mental health day, I've never I haven't even heard of I haven't heard of that before. I think that's such a great idea.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, we have, you know, ten days of sick time a year and your brain can get under the weather too. I mean, it's, you know, part of one system. I really think that taking a day for your just general wellness or two, I mean, you can't. It's the kind of thing you often just can't power through.

Speaker 2:

Even if you do, I feel like it just accumulates just like debt, like this mental health debt that sooner or later, you're just going to just end up in some massive burnout, funk, depression or something. And it's better to just kind of stay on top of your general wellness.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Okay. I want to get to your product. The my my I have two podcasts. I have Mega Maker and Product People.

Speaker 1:

And the problem is that I just really like getting to know the people part. But I'm also interested in what you're doing with Betafish, especially because it's about writing. So can you tell us a little bit? It's gobetafish.com.

Speaker 2:

It is gobetafish.com. Yes. Betafish is a platform to connect writers looking for feedback on their unpublished work with professional beta readers. One of the things as a writer, I mean, specifically for me as a fiction writer is it's really, really hard to get feedback in a timely manner. And you have situations where you finish a book and you're so excited and you send it out to your friends and family or.

Speaker 2:

Randos that you met on internet forums, whatever else. And then it's just crickets and you're sitting there like, is it cause it's not good? Is it because you don't have time? I mean, Or, you know, they'll get back to you. Like, yeah, I liked it.

Speaker 2:

It was, it was really good. Yeah. And you're just like, okay, what about it? What didn't you like? And yeah, so that's something that I've struggled a lot with.

Speaker 2:

So I had the writer forums and I mean, are a lot of those out there, but it's hard when you have a long book. You know, you post a chapter by chapter generally, and people who are there from the beginning will just kind of drop off and other people aren't going to jump in at chapter 20 and give you anything valuable. Hiring professional editors, most of the time you're paying thousands of dollars per round. So you might get like, you know, there's some really great feedback and then you make changes and then. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Like, is it ready to go?

Speaker 1:

So

Speaker 2:

I'm trying to have a very low barrier to entry to get feedback, enough that we can pay the readers a decent amount of money for what they do. I mean, I want to make at least whatever the lowest minimum wage in the country. Like I, that's my bar for the readers. So, and we're trying as hard as possible to have W2 employees instead of ten ninety nine. So we don't want to be some crappy gig economy race to the bottom thing where people are making $3 an hour.

Speaker 2:

That just doesn't align with my values as human.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So when people sign up, they can sign up as a writer or a reader. But the idea is that these are going to be very discerning readers that get paid for reviewing the work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. We're in the hiring process right now. We're going to start interviews next week, but, we're looking for people who have some using air quotes here, paid reading experience. So people like English teachers, librarians, people publishing industry experience, people who have just kind of given feedback in a structured way before. It's a very vague concept on purpose.

Speaker 2:

Because I, I think, you know, people who maybe haven't been paid, but you know, have other experience because they'll bring valuable things to the table. I mean, it's kind of a thing. We're going to have a lot of quality control in the process too, where if customers aren't happy with the feedback, they can reach out and we'll make sure that's taken care of. But yeah, I want people to be able to because the lowest bar is like $25 for up to 5,000 words. So I have this book and I just want to submit the first chapter and try out the platform, see how it works.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's beer money. Yeah. And you know, from there they can decide whether or not they want to go for the full it's 0.2¢ per word. So most books will be about a 100 to $200 per reader.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I like about what I like about this is it taps into an anxiety that all writers have, whether you're new or you've been doing it for a while, which is, is this any good? Am I on the right track? Do people like this? And so when and I I noticed here, it says it doesn't have to be a novel because you're a fiction writer, but it can also be a a container for drafts of a short story, academic paper, or a nonfiction piece.

Speaker 1:

So this is just writing in general.

Speaker 2:

It is. I think we're going to mostly target the fiction market right now just, because part of what we do is we allow writers to ask, for the shorter tier five questions, for the longer tier 20 questions. Because most of the time when you're trying to get feedback from a beta reader, you have very specific things you want to know. We're not doing line edits. Like we're not going through and fixing, you know, typos and language.

Speaker 2:

Like you need an editor for that. Our, our kind of like pitch is, you know, wouldn't you rather find out from us than Amazon reviewers? Because the self publishing market is huge in this country. It's I think it was, I wanna say it's like 2016, it was like 780,000 registered self published ISBNs.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

And that's not even people like me who like finished a book and never published it or people who publish directly through Amazon because they don't use ISBNs or people who go the traditional route. It's a huge market.

Speaker 1:

Why didn't you publish your book?

Speaker 2:

So I, I finished it and entered it into a writing competition and actually made it to the final round. The reason that I was given that it didn't actually make it all the way through, where it would be like reviewed by editors, was that it was too long. It's 190,000 words. So which for fantasy it's, it's a weird industry because you have a lot of popular writers like George Martin's books are 380,000 words plus, you know, Harry Potter the same. And most of the books I love are really long and they just say for new writers, it should really be around the 100 to 120,000 mark at most, if you want to get traditionally published.

Speaker 2:

I was kind of starting to work on splitting it into two and then life just got crazy and just kind of fell off of it. But now that I'm kind of getting back into this space, I'm really excited to start writing again. I'm just hoping that actively operating in this community of writers is going to just kind of give me the push to finish my own projects.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like what I'm doing with programming. You're now you've started this application and this community, really, and now you've gotta walk the talk. You've gotta actually be submitting your own writing, and, you know, that's gonna be part of the testing.

Speaker 1:

Is is it just you is it just you doing this?

Speaker 2:

I, I have a business partner, so I started it myself. And, I mean, you wanna talk about things that you aren't good at and think about spending time getting good at. I am awful at business. I'm not good with money. I I just I don't like it.

Speaker 2:

It stresses me out like I am a product person. I am a user interface person. And I brought on one of my best friends from high school who's an accountant, Lisa Soroka. And she, so she's kind of handling that side of it for me. I don't have to, you know, just, I don't want to spend time like looking at spreadsheets and figuring out how much I can spend on marketing.

Speaker 2:

I just, that's not where I want to be putting my time. Yeah. I'd rather be doing beta reading and building cool new features and talking to writers about what they want. And we do these, like, daily inspiration images on our Twitter. It's go beta fish if you want that little bit of writer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I'm I'm looking at it right now. Yeah. This is cool. And and you're just going to, bootstrap it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I, we our biggest challenge is going to be scaling, I think, specifically because we do want readers as employees. So we can't just bring on a ton of contractors whenever we want. And there's also, we have, we worked with some lawyers to kind of make sure that everyone's IP is protected properly. And you know, there are situations where like writers are using reader feedback and then the readers are going to them for royalties and part of it.

Speaker 2:

And a lot of gig economy companies are running into issues with ten 99 where they're getting audited because they're just not supposed to be contractors a lot of the time. So our biggest challenge is going to be scaling our numbers of readers in a way that matches demand, but ensures somewhat consistent part time work.

Speaker 1:

So

Speaker 2:

yeah, that's, we we don't have great answers for that yet. I we're working on coming up with better answers for that.

Speaker 1:

I think you're I think you're onto something here, though, because I so I really like to observe trends. So what what are the things that I just see popping all the time? And there's a few things like that. There's these like, these online writing groups that you're talking about are massive. I didn't realize I'm not into fiction writing, but there's so many people that write fiction for fun.

Speaker 1:

Like, they're just doing it, like and there's that big contest every year or what is it called? I wanna say nano

Speaker 2:

NaNoWriMo. It starts November 1.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Yeah. So can can you explain that to me? What is that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So that is a contest. I use the word contest. I don't even know if contest is the right word. You're only really competing against yourself.

Speaker 2:

But it runs the entire month of November. It's, I've been doing it since 02/2004. Okay. But basically the goal is to write 50,000 words in one month, which is kind of the low end for like how long a novel should be. And you're getting, you're getting really prizes for winning aside from just, you know, bragging rights.

Speaker 2:

And there's some like sponsors who have discounts and stuff that you can get access to. But it's just a really great way to just make yourself sit down at the keyboard every day and just produce work. Because if you don't, if you skip a day or two, you will fall so far behind and it's really, really hard to catch up. So yeah, it's about shutting off your editor. Your internal editor that says, this isn't good.

Speaker 2:

You have to go back and fix and tinker and you just have to keep pushing forward to just get a draft done. It's really, really fun.

Speaker 1:

So your excitement is clear. Like, you love this thing. And, like, Nano NaNoWriMo has a 176,000 followers on Twitter. Like, this is a huge event. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Over 200,000 people took part in 02/2010. So there's a big group of potential customers for you here, both on the reading side and on the writing side, it seems.

Speaker 2:

Yes. And that's part of our concern about handling unexpected surges of work. You know, a situation where, yeah, we have like the NaNoWriMo discount or something, and then all of a sudden a thousand people want it. Like, I don't I don't have a great answer for how to handle that.

Speaker 1:

And Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's it's kinda one of those things that we can't over optimize until it happens.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. But you have a few good things going here. Like, are certain there are certain customer groups that are just bigger, easier to reach, and more profitable than others. And, you know, the first thing you generally wanna look for is mass. And when I see evidence like that, well, they're and not just, a big group of people that could be interested, but a big group of people that are already in motion.

Speaker 1:

Like, they're already 200,000 people are already participating in the equivalent of a a marathon for writing. If that's true, they are highly motivated to write, to get better at writing, and they all have a a goal in mind, which is they wanna publish on Amazon. They want people to they wanna be a published author. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So you've got that already. That's that's clear. And then, the there the easy to reach part, it just seems like these groups are already formed. It feels like I could go on Facebook and I could if I looked up fiction writers or writing groups, there would be some very, very big groups. And so they've already congregated.

Speaker 1:

All you have to do is go and introduce this thing that you're doing. Right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I I'm not trying to necessarily a 100% replace writer forums or I've been a long time, like a critique group of six of us, I think. And that sort of thing is invaluable. And if writers have access to that sort of community or just dedicated group of their own beta readers, that's awesome. But yeah, there's just this need that I myself felt.

Speaker 2:

And I was thinking about doing beta reading myself professionally or to just as a side thing to supplement my income and then had that, wait, no, I'm a developer. I can build a tool for other people to use and also do it myself. So yeah, I think it's something that can live alongside everything else. I'm not trying to replace editors. I'm not trying to replace forums.

Speaker 2:

But if someone just really wants quick feedback in a time frame that they It's just an easy way to get that, and specifically, like, what they want to know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And so tell me a little bit about the tech. I'm assuming you've built this in Laravel.

Speaker 2:

I have. It's mostly Laravel. There are a couple of React components to go throughout for the questions is drag and drop functionality. So that's the kind of thing that's just way easier in something like React. But yeah, I mean, it's mostly just a layer of a lap.

Speaker 2:

It's pretty straightforward. There's nothing too crazy going on in there really.

Speaker 1:

It looks like you're also using tailwind.

Speaker 2:

I am. I, I did a redesign in tailwind. I was using foundation. I've been working on this on and off for two years. Finally in the last maybe six months or so, got really serious about pushing this out the door.

Speaker 2:

So it just looked kind of dated and I love Tailwind. I'm a huge fan. I just, just redid it in Tailwind, and, oh, man, any developer listening to this, like, use it for your next project. It's great.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's kind of fun. So and what what stage are you at with Betafish? Like, are you, like, what yeah.

Speaker 1:

What stage would you say you're at? Are you at the point where you're, like, trying to get more users? What what kind of obstacles are you running into?

Speaker 2:

What's Where are you at at? Just launched last week. Okay. So our biggest thing right now we have about, I can actually like tell you, I think it's like 40 users have signed up, which gives them, we've done no actual marketing. We've just kind of posted on Twitter.

Speaker 2:

It's pretty Okay. We're trying to get some readers lined up is our big thing because right now, anything that comes through, I have to do. And that's not scalable for me. I have a full time job that I love, and I would love to do this full time someday. And I think my dream life right now is like this and work on my writing.

Speaker 2:

And my boyfriend is also trying to start a little side business. That thing's cool. I know we don't probably have a ton of time left, but it's like a grow your own blockchain application.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, tell me a bit about that. What's it called?

Speaker 2:

It's called Coinpress. Coinpress? Okay. It's basically a way to so it's just this app you install on your desktop. And I'm building the web and API portion of it.

Speaker 2:

But you can just set up a coin and just basically roll your own. So what we're really hoping is that developers will use that as a base for their blockchain projects. Because all of the research and discovery you have to do is built on top of Ethereum. Yeah, it just makes it really easy. And basically, Coinpress just has a 5% share of your coin.

Speaker 2:

If they want, or I say they, like it's not my boyfriend. He wants kind of a model like, he uses Epic who has unreal, for video games and they don't take any money out of it until it hurts, hits a certain threshold. And that's kind of what he wants to do, is just give developers tools to build really cool stuff. And if they do really well, the ships kind of rise on the same tide.

Speaker 1:

Is he a developer as well?

Speaker 2:

He's actually an IT guy who has an MBA and is using this teach himself programming.

Speaker 1:

Oh, sweet. Cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Did some stuff back when he was a teenager too and just hacked together stuff in like Pearl. And in his thirties, he just decided he kinda wants to learn development. So he just is in C, C sharp. And he just that's how he's learning. He's just building this cool thing.

Speaker 1:

Wow. See, this is encouraging. I'm I I feel like I'm I'm it's probably just like anything when you know other people are just starting out. It's encouraging. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It feels like I wanted to talk a little bit more about

Speaker 2:

I think you asked me for Betafish, like, how that was going, and then I got sidetracked.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Like, because I I'm bootstrapping a a product on the on the side, and there there's parts of it that are challenging. So, yeah, you're right now, you're trying to find readers. Oh, I was gonna say that's that's a pretty good perk, though.

Speaker 1:

If people sign up right now, they can get Samantha to do the reading. You sign up now, before she's able to hire any readers, she'll read your book.

Speaker 2:

If you sign up now and specifically say you want me as a reader, I think for fairly lengthy amount of time, I could definitely do that for you. We have some great people in the pipeline, though. We've been looking at the applications, and we're getting just awesome, awesome candidates. I'm super, super excited to start talking to them next week. But yeah, once we do that, I think we're going to kind of double down on figuring out a marketing strategy.

Speaker 2:

We've talked about it some. We can run limited social media ad campaigns and just kind of calculate what the return on that's going to be. But with Nano this year, I think we're going to participate as writers more. My business partner has dabbled a little, she's not like an English major writer type. But she wants to do it just to be in the community and just kind start of organically getting ourselves out there and then probably double down on that once we actually do have some readers ready to go and just make sure we're scaling in a way that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

I don't feel the need to just put the accelerator to the floor and just go 80 miles an hour right away. Because, like, this is a side hustle right now. I'd love it to be my full time thing, but I can't just, like, quit my job that I love. Capuzzo aforementioned student loan debt.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. And there is something about, especially when you're building a product, growing organically, this has been kind of a a the topic du jour on Twitter on what do we call this? On bootstrapping Twitter. The this idea that sometimes, for example, when you get money, when you get investment, it it means you have to accelerate so fast.

Speaker 1:

And you're you're pushing really, really hard for to grow this thing that might not have found its legs yet. So you might launch, you know, go Betafish and your your hypothesis might be fiction writers are gonna love this. But you might get real fiction writers in there, and it's like, oh, wow. These are actually not the customers we want, or these are not actually. There's so much discovery that you get when you're just going at a reasonable pace.

Speaker 1:

Right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. One thing I've thought a lot about because, I mean, I I'm coming at this. And I've done some validation in terms of talking to other writers and stuff. And the feedback on the idea has been pretty unilaterally good. But I'm doing beta reading outside of Betafish for Matt Stauffer's second edition of Laravel up and running.

Speaker 2:

And I was thinking whether or not, you know, it's kind of a separate offering or because I don't think our current model makes sense with it, but technical writing, like so many people are self publishing programming books and to be a beta reader for that. I mean, book is going need, I mean, a junior level book is going to need junior level people who can come at it with fresh eyes and see if it makes sense. Something like Laravel up and running, you know, I'm bringing my Laravel expertise to the table and making sure that everything's kind of airtight. I think that's if that's probably a direction we would pivot. If the fiction writing thing wasn't working out, I think we would probably try there or just expand there in general.

Speaker 2:

Cause I think that's a separate market with separate needs, but also one that doesn't really have a great solution for this. Sometimes you'll see these self published textbooks and it's on a topic you're really excited about. It's just it needs polish. It just it clearly needed a couple of sets of eyes on them. It's also you need to go more, like, line by line in-depth with that.

Speaker 2:

So it'd have to be a little bit more expensive than our current thing, is kind of a read a book, get feedback, like, high level.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's the cool thing is that you might you could explore in these different spaces And because I could see that too. Like, first of all, I think there's a lot of technical people that would love to read books, before they're published

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And would sign up just to, like, oh, I wanna read Matt's book. Will you be a beta reader? Yes. I'll be a beta reader. And that's already kind of built into the culture of, you know, I'll be a beta user.

Speaker 1:

I'll try this. But on the other hand, like, those books, yeah, if they're not, if they haven't been refined over time, then what could have been a great book ends up being not that not that great. And that is the tricky part too. We we experienced this with Transistor because our hypothesis was this is going to be podcasting for businesses and brands and you know? But there's all also this poll from just hobbyists and people that wanna start a podcast for fun.

Speaker 1:

And as soon as you start to dilute who this is for and what it's for too much, it, you kind of lose all of the the benefit of that. Right? And so eventually, you're gonna have to decide is go beta fish. Is this for fiction writers or is this for everybody?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It would have to be for tech writing such a it's just like a separate platform almost because the needs are different between fiction writers and tech writers. So not to say we couldn't do both, especially if this were going to be something I wanted to pursue. It's like my full time job. Yeah, our current format just doesn't make sense for it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And even looking at, like I I people should go check out, I think it's go beta fish on Twitter. Right? Yep. So if you look at the the the feel of what you're posting, it it feels like, oh, this is targeted towards people writing fiction.

Speaker 1:

Right? This is Mhmm. Targeted people that are you know, this is what they're doing. And if you had to all of a sudden expand that into something else, it just now you've got mixed messages. Right?

Speaker 1:

Like, is this doesn't quite fit. But you could take what you learned with Go Betafish and build something else that, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. I think this is just the the niche I know really well in tech writing. I guess it's something I would probably also be able to build an awesome platform on that, but I would rather be really good at meeting a very specific need for a group of people than try to just please everyone in an attempt to, I don't know, have a wider customer base and make more money. It goes back to that accelerator to the floor thing. There's a need that we are absolutely trying to fill in the best way that we know how and in a way that you know, make sure readers are fairly compensated for their time and can bring that level of expertize consistently.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, that doesn't mean that it's a platform for everybody. It doesn't mean it's a platform for all fiction writers. Yeah. Just because I would have totally used it and built around that conception. Like, you know, if I still were in that critique group, I probably wouldn't be as tempted to spend money on something like this.

Speaker 2:

But a lot of writers don't have that in a consistent way.

Speaker 1:

The nice thing is that, for sure, there are people listening to this podcast that are programmers, but are also aspiring fiction writers. So there's a little bit of overlap in this community you're already in, and, it it might be a different hat that they put on, but there's a lot of geeks who are into reading, fiction and especially fantasy and are also have it in the back of their mind of, oh, I would love to write something like that too. So you've it it's nice when there's a little bit of overlap in the Venn diagram.

Speaker 2:

I think there's a lot of overlap between the parts of your brain that you use for programming and use for storytelling in general. I mean, programming is just rhetoric for computers and just trying to craft something from nothing. Was one the things that really surprised me when I got into programming was I kind of always thought like writing would be almost like an escape from that. And just a way to like, know, get my brain, do something else to unwind from a day of programming. And it's really hard to do both because it does use kind of the same parts of at least my brain.

Speaker 2:

But I'm also thinking at any given point in time about the user stories that, you know, can make a feature the best it can be. And, I think, yeah, I'm sure there is a ton of, I mean, both of the, owners of Titan are English majors too. So Wow.

Speaker 1:

See, that's what I was I was gonna say. I I don't wanna read Laravel up and running. I wanna read Laravel for storytellers.

Speaker 2:

Watch out, man. I'm coming for you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, this has been great, Samantha. Thanks so much for taking the time to to talk with me today. I'd like to have some recurring guests, because the the thing I'm trying to explore is still building products and what that takes. But this this new adventure I'm on, which is trying to learn something new, in my case, programming.

Speaker 1:

And this has been really encouraging for me just to hear from another English person that, you know, and just about your journey. Quickly, is there anything else you'd like to shout out? Any your Twitter or your website or anything else?

Speaker 2:

Well, my Twitter is at Samantha Geitz. It is quite a lot of shit posting, though. So be warned if you follow me. It's a very different brand and tone than Betafish, for sure. But yeah, other than that, if you are interested in my thoughts on public speaking, I'm putting out a blog post today on the Titan blog about it.

Speaker 2:

So I go a little bit more into kind of how I go over my anxiety on that. Something to keep an eye out for.

Speaker 1:

I'll link that up when I publish the podcast. And I I think we should also say, I've passed a few people onto Matt, but Titan is not always hiring, but they're always interested in like, if you are interested in working in programming, Titan seems like a great place to apply.

Speaker 2:

It is the best company in the world. It's so good. Yes, we are not actively, actively hiring, but we do have on our titan.co website a page about all the amazing benefits of working at Titan, the 20% time and just this amazing supportive culture. We have a wellness stipend. We have a student loan stipend.

Speaker 2:

Like it's, it's a great company. So, definitely hit us up if you're looking and, at least start the conversation and put put put yourselves on our radar for sure. Yeah. Or hit me up directly on Twitter.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. For sure. Awesome. Thanks again.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Cool. Well, I'm glad I got another episode out. Thanks again to Samantha for being such a great guest. And, yeah, go check out all of her stuff. All the links are in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Thanks again to Stryker for our theme music. Thanks to Transistor dot FM, which is my little startup for doing the hosting for this podcast. And, yeah, please go and check out that live class that I'm doing public speaking for geeks. It's at megamaker.co/speak. Talk to you soon.