WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.539 Michele: You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by 00:00:03.539 --> 00:00:05.009 switching to Flight control. 00:00:05.460 --> 00:00:10.850 Flight control is a new deployment platform by the creator of blitz .JS 00:00:10.850 --> 00:00:16.950 that solves the age old Heroku versus AWS trade-off by bringing the Heroku style 00:00:16.950 --> 00:00:19.740 developer experience natively to AWS. 00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:25.430 The beauty of Flight control is that it doesn't require any AWS skills, but 00:00:25.430 --> 00:00:30.620 since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and 00:00:30.620 --> 00:00:33.080 tweak anything should the need arise. 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:37.190 Flight control works with any language or framework. 00:00:37.490 --> 00:00:40.670 It supports servers, static sites and database. 00:00:41.660 --> 00:00:47.360 Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code Software Social to get 00:00:47.360 --> 00:00:50.510 20% off your first three months. 00:00:51.010 --> 00:00:53.290 Colleen: Welcome back to Software Social, Colleen here. 00:00:53.620 --> 00:00:56.620 I am super excited to bring you a special guest today. 00:00:56.890 --> 00:01:01.840 Nate Berko pec, who is the leading rails performance expert. 00:01:02.020 --> 00:01:03.730 He has his own consultancy. 00:01:03.850 --> 00:01:04.930 He has written a book. 00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:05.950 He has a workshop. 00:01:05.980 --> 00:01:07.720 He's pretty much done all the things. 00:01:08.020 --> 00:01:09.760 Nate, thank you so much for coming on today. 00:01:10.180 --> 00:01:10.820 Nate: Thanks, Colleen. 00:01:11.050 --> 00:01:13.930 Yeah, a special guests, like, cause I had a, like an upgrade 00:01:13.930 --> 00:01:15.550 from the normal guest category. 00:01:15.550 --> 00:01:18.250 Is this like, Oh, that's really, really nice. 00:01:18.703 --> 00:01:22.843 Colleen: So Nate, I actually didn't ask you on, because I wanted to hear 00:01:22.843 --> 00:01:24.463 all about your rails experience. 00:01:24.463 --> 00:01:26.713 I knew who you were because I'm a rails developer. 00:01:26.713 --> 00:01:26.983 but 00:01:27.128 --> 00:01:27.548 Nate: tricked. 00:01:27.548 --> 00:01:28.388 This is a setup. 00:01:28.873 --> 00:01:30.043 Colleen: It's totally a set up. 00:01:30.128 --> 00:01:30.518 Nate: Gotcha. 00:01:30.518 --> 00:01:31.688 Journalism here, huh? 00:01:31.988 --> 00:01:32.258 Hmm. 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:35.440 Colleen: While I was, you know, internet stalking you. 00:01:35.500 --> 00:01:36.460 It's not weird at all. 00:01:37.905 --> 00:01:40.725 I came across your talk alone across America. 00:01:41.225 --> 00:01:42.485 Nate: Ah, yeah. 00:01:42.545 --> 00:01:43.295 Yeah. 00:01:43.895 --> 00:01:45.035 Colleen: I loved it. 00:01:45.535 --> 00:01:45.715 Nate: No. 00:01:45.715 --> 00:01:46.315 Thank you. 00:01:46.405 --> 00:01:46.945 Thank you. 00:01:47.315 --> 00:01:49.975 Yeah, that was a, what does that format called? 00:01:50.185 --> 00:01:52.345 PechaKucha um, you heard of that? 00:01:52.845 --> 00:01:55.575 Colleen: not until I found your talk and I was going to lead with that's, what 00:01:55.575 --> 00:01:57.075 it was called, but I can't pronounce it. 00:01:57.075 --> 00:01:57.315 So 00:01:57.390 --> 00:01:57.900 Nate: Yeah. 00:01:57.918 --> 00:02:01.108 You know, actually I don't even know like where that comes from. 00:02:01.128 --> 00:02:05.608 It was started like this Japanese architectural firm and like Japanese 00:02:05.608 --> 00:02:09.817 people really love coming up with words that are on amount of Pia. 00:02:09.817 --> 00:02:11.552 So I think that's where that name comes from. 00:02:11.552 --> 00:02:13.922 It's probably trying to imitate some kind of sound, but I 00:02:13.922 --> 00:02:15.092 don't know what that would be. 00:02:15.092 --> 00:02:19.278 Anyway, the format is people give talks and they're 20 00:02:19.278 --> 00:02:21.588 slides, 20 seconds per slide. 00:02:21.708 --> 00:02:22.278 Auto advance. 00:02:22.348 --> 00:02:24.112 Colleen: Oh, wow. 00:02:24.997 --> 00:02:28.477 Nate: uh, That's like what, six and six minutes and 40 00:02:28.477 --> 00:02:29.407 seconds or something like that. 00:02:29.433 --> 00:02:34.095 So that was the format of that particular talk which is fun. 00:02:34.095 --> 00:02:36.495 Actually, I really like the auto advancing slides idea and it's 00:02:36.495 --> 00:02:40.762 actually something that I've done in conference talks since without saying 00:02:40.762 --> 00:02:43.982 anything or telling anybody, but mostly have my conference talks since 00:02:43.982 --> 00:02:46.136 then have been like a 32nd auto slide 00:02:46.491 --> 00:02:47.601 Colleen: Really? 00:02:48.101 --> 00:02:49.781 That seems like a terrible idea. 00:02:50.326 --> 00:02:53.386 Nate: It really keeps you moving, and it really keeps you on track. 00:02:53.656 --> 00:02:54.106 Yeah. 00:02:54.556 --> 00:02:55.426 I like it actually. 00:02:55.476 --> 00:02:59.196 I also like just not having stuff in my hands when I'm talking, 00:02:59.446 --> 00:03:02.036 like when I'm giving a talk, but anyway, I got off track. 00:03:02.066 --> 00:03:02.786 That's the format. 00:03:03.341 --> 00:03:03.671 Colleen: Okay. 00:03:03.671 --> 00:03:06.401 So for the listeners, it's a short talk. 00:03:06.401 --> 00:03:07.121 You should look it up. 00:03:07.151 --> 00:03:11.981 It's linked from his website, but essentially the story is that when 00:03:11.981 --> 00:03:15.211 you were 19, you were on shark tank, and you failed miserably. 00:03:15.515 --> 00:03:15.995 Nate: Sure. 00:03:16.495 --> 00:03:22.706 Colleen: I don't want to over exaggerate, but, and so then you bought a motorcycle 00:03:23.516 --> 00:03:26.336 and motorcycle across the country. 00:03:26.639 --> 00:03:27.179 Nate: Yeah. 00:03:27.239 --> 00:03:29.129 And two times since. 00:03:29.215 --> 00:03:35.005 But yeah, that first trip was the big one from Tennessee to Washington. 00:03:35.125 --> 00:03:40.171 And it's was on this thing called the Transamerica trail, which is this informal 00:03:40.591 --> 00:03:43.438 kind of put together route by the guy. 00:03:43.485 --> 00:03:46.290 And he sells, you know, he based sells the route online. 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:51.681 The route is almost a hundred percent as much as can be gravel and dirt roads. 00:03:51.741 --> 00:03:56.871 So that's the concept is to ride dirt from Tennessee to Washington. 00:03:57.371 --> 00:03:58.271 Colleen: So you were what? 00:03:58.271 --> 00:03:59.171 20. 00:03:59.201 --> 00:04:01.931 So this is where you in college then where you out of college. 00:04:02.396 --> 00:04:03.626 Nate: No, I was definitely out of college. 00:04:03.656 --> 00:04:05.516 I think I was probably 22. 00:04:05.516 --> 00:04:06.026 Colleen: Okay. 00:04:06.334 --> 00:04:09.904 Nate: The gap there is I buy a motorcycle after shark tank and then I blow it 00:04:09.904 --> 00:04:11.824 up and then two or three years pass. 00:04:11.824 --> 00:04:13.804 And then I go on this ride on a different motorcycle. 00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:15.279 Colleen: Oh, okay. 00:04:15.399 --> 00:04:15.909 Got it. 00:04:16.409 --> 00:04:16.799 Okay. 00:04:17.034 --> 00:04:19.254 Nate: You kind of leave some of these details out in a six 00:04:19.254 --> 00:04:20.754 minute 42nd talk, you know? 00:04:20.789 --> 00:04:21.179 Colleen: Sure. 00:04:21.179 --> 00:04:24.269 You don't have a lot of time to, you know, auto advancing slides at all. 00:04:24.329 --> 00:04:25.439 You got to stay on top of it. 00:04:25.739 --> 00:04:30.909 So What struck me about this talk was the focus on identity. 00:04:31.269 --> 00:04:35.739 You started saying you were always someone who wanted to be entrepreneurial 00:04:36.189 --> 00:04:40.588 and kind of that failure at shark tank kind of changed your identity. 00:04:40.588 --> 00:04:41.698 Then you got the motorcycle. 00:04:41.728 --> 00:04:43.228 So you had this new identity. 00:04:43.498 --> 00:04:45.148 Can you talk a little bit about that? 00:04:45.148 --> 00:04:48.262 Because I feel like that is so applicable to like literally everyone. 00:04:48.262 --> 00:04:53.466 Nate: Well, this is kind of the lens I had started viewing that experience 00:04:53.466 --> 00:04:57.777 through after I read I actually don't know the title of the book growth mindset. 00:04:57.777 --> 00:04:59.877 I think it's just the name of the book by Carol Dweck. 00:04:59.883 --> 00:05:04.252 The idea is that some people have this, a fixed mindset and other 00:05:04.252 --> 00:05:05.992 people have growth mindsets. 00:05:06.071 --> 00:05:11.133 Fixed mindsets are concentrated on identity on I am this, I am that. 00:05:11.613 --> 00:05:17.253 And we'll reject experiences which do not fit that identity. 00:05:17.523 --> 00:05:21.681 So if you have a fixed mindset, and you think you're an entrepreneur, someone 00:05:21.681 --> 00:05:25.881 tells you, you're not in a way that's very difficult to deny, that becomes something 00:05:25.881 --> 00:05:29.541 that is difficult to integrate into this identity that you've created, right? 00:05:29.571 --> 00:05:30.711 Because you are an entrepreneur. 00:05:31.071 --> 00:05:33.931 That the example she gives us the smart kit, the high achievers. 00:05:34.666 --> 00:05:38.092 Uh, You know, they go through school and they're always told, oh, you're 00:05:38.092 --> 00:05:41.673 so smart by their parents or by, you know, the school system or whatever. 00:05:41.913 --> 00:05:45.443 And then they meet a challenge that they finally can't beat. 00:05:45.533 --> 00:05:45.833 Right. 00:05:45.833 --> 00:05:48.143 You know, they got a 1200 on their sat or something. 00:05:48.143 --> 00:05:48.413 Right. 00:05:48.923 --> 00:05:52.875 And, that experience is not possible to integrate in a fixed mindset. 00:05:52.875 --> 00:05:53.985 You can't deal with that, right? 00:05:53.985 --> 00:05:54.975 Like you're a smart kid. 00:05:54.975 --> 00:06:00.039 So like you can't get 12 hundreds on SATs and then that kind of can drive 00:06:00.039 --> 00:06:01.599 you in a lot of different, bad, direct. 00:06:02.046 --> 00:06:06.386 The drive you to cheat or to do something bad like that, like to give up. 00:06:06.496 --> 00:06:10.076 That's a big kind of thing that I did a lot when I had a fixed mindset was 00:06:10.076 --> 00:06:15.999 I would not attempt experiences that I thought I would fail at because I didn't 00:06:15.999 --> 00:06:20.369 want to have an experience for that, but challenge that identity, right. 00:06:21.277 --> 00:06:26.622 So I think a lot of my experience since then has been to try to push myself more 00:06:26.622 --> 00:06:33.590 into a growth mindset, which orients your identity, if anything, around process. 00:06:33.634 --> 00:06:38.984 So not being someone who is smart, but someone who is a hard worker, cause you 00:06:38.984 --> 00:06:40.634 always, you control the process, right? 00:06:40.634 --> 00:06:45.720 I could control being somebody who doesn't give up or you know, works as hard as 00:06:45.720 --> 00:06:47.100 they can gives their best all the time. 00:06:47.100 --> 00:06:47.310 Right. 00:06:47.310 --> 00:06:48.760 That's something that's under my control. 00:06:48.818 --> 00:06:49.058 So. 00:06:49.713 --> 00:06:55.610 I can kind of safely attach to that in a way that you can't to a fixed mindset. 00:06:55.790 --> 00:06:56.349 So Yeah. 00:06:56.379 --> 00:07:00.159 I mean, with the motorcycle, like it was something that I didn't 00:07:00.159 --> 00:07:02.379 really know if I could do or not. 00:07:02.649 --> 00:07:06.049 I didn't really know if I would go all the way to Washington. 00:07:06.199 --> 00:07:11.499 Like, as I said in the top, I probably had like a couple thousand miles 00:07:11.499 --> 00:07:14.979 of motorcycle experience before I took off on a 10,000 mile trip. 00:07:15.009 --> 00:07:16.449 Completely alone and unsupported. 00:07:16.505 --> 00:07:17.809 Colleen: It seems like a great plan by the 00:07:17.959 --> 00:07:18.769 Nate: yeah, Yeah. 00:07:18.834 --> 00:07:20.424 I mean, I knew there wasn't any real danger. 00:07:20.424 --> 00:07:22.764 Like the worst thing that could possibly happen would be like, I leave 00:07:22.764 --> 00:07:26.914 it the bicycle, the motorcycle and the ditch, and like take a plate home. 00:07:26.964 --> 00:07:29.694 That was probably the like, or get injured just somehow, like, those are the 00:07:29.694 --> 00:07:30.894 worst things that could possibly happen. 00:07:30.894 --> 00:07:34.254 So, that's actually not that bad, like as far as a floor there. 00:07:34.292 --> 00:07:38.882 So like that I think was a kind of a first step that I was taking 00:07:38.882 --> 00:07:40.939 towards orienting my mindset to. 00:07:41.439 --> 00:07:45.039 Colleen: So, okay, so this is I've elementary school aged kids, 00:07:45.249 --> 00:07:48.519 and this is the thing they're trying to teach us to teach them. 00:07:48.519 --> 00:07:48.789 Right. 00:07:48.789 --> 00:07:52.989 So when they color a picture now, instead of saying your picture so beautiful, 00:07:52.989 --> 00:07:56.229 you're supposed to say stuff like I can see you used a lot of different colors, 00:07:56.229 --> 00:07:58.089 or I can see you really took time on that. 00:07:58.292 --> 00:07:59.252 Do you think it works? 00:07:59.455 --> 00:08:00.025 Nate: I don't know. 00:08:00.295 --> 00:08:03.685 I don't know my kids only a three months old, so we'll have to catch up 00:08:03.685 --> 00:08:05.755 in like 10 years and like, we'll see. 00:08:06.295 --> 00:08:08.515 We'll see like what happened and what didn't happen. 00:08:08.785 --> 00:08:11.845 Colleen: But I feel like, so I've heard so much about growth mindset, right? 00:08:11.845 --> 00:08:12.775 I've read atomic habits. 00:08:12.805 --> 00:08:13.675 I haven't read that book. 00:08:13.675 --> 00:08:15.445 You recommended I'm going to. 00:08:15.745 --> 00:08:18.655 I think a lot of people who are really good in school, and I think 00:08:18.655 --> 00:08:23.095 for people like us who are starting businesses being good at school does 00:08:23.095 --> 00:08:28.225 not correlate with being good at business necessarily is my opinion. 00:08:28.429 --> 00:08:32.389 So I feel like this concept of growth mindset, like you hear a lot about it, 00:08:32.389 --> 00:08:34.719 but it's really hard to, believe it. 00:08:35.015 --> 00:08:35.435 Nate: Hm. 00:08:35.435 --> 00:08:40.573 Well, I think that business is very much not like school because 00:08:40.873 --> 00:08:44.473 there's nobody laying the track in front of your locomotive, right? 00:08:44.473 --> 00:08:45.213 There's nobody there. 00:08:46.023 --> 00:08:46.353 Okay. 00:08:46.353 --> 00:08:47.553 Now you just have to do this. 00:08:47.583 --> 00:08:51.423 And then as long as you get a 99% on this test, you'll succeed. 00:08:51.513 --> 00:08:51.843 right. 00:08:52.143 --> 00:08:54.783 Just keep, keep laying that track in front of a kid. 00:08:54.783 --> 00:08:57.363 And that's how they get from kindergarten to grade 12. 00:08:57.363 --> 00:08:57.633 Right. 00:08:57.633 --> 00:09:00.953 It's like just hitting the track that's laid for them, but like, there's 00:09:00.953 --> 00:09:05.683 nothing like that for anybody, you know, that's starting their own business. 00:09:05.733 --> 00:09:08.133 There's some people that could tell you, like, hey, this thing worked for me, 00:09:08.163 --> 00:09:09.953 like I don't know, might work for you. 00:09:09.953 --> 00:09:12.395 But you know, even if you followed all that advice, it wouldn't work. 00:09:12.475 --> 00:09:15.625 Everybody has their own specific situation that like no one can 00:09:15.625 --> 00:09:16.585 lay down that track for you. 00:09:16.585 --> 00:09:17.485 It does not exist. 00:09:17.558 --> 00:09:23.446 So yeah, I think being able to teach someone or to have a mindset that 00:09:23.446 --> 00:09:28.873 allows you to safely explore in that way, like to be able to, you can 00:09:28.873 --> 00:09:31.303 stick to, if there was gonna lay on the track for you, you're going to 00:09:31.303 --> 00:09:32.473 have to try stuff it doesn't work. 00:09:32.713 --> 00:09:32.953 Right. 00:09:32.983 --> 00:09:36.280 And that was something I was really bad at was trying things that might 00:09:36.280 --> 00:09:40.390 not work or having things not work out and then having to integrate that 00:09:40.390 --> 00:09:44.470 into, okay, well, what am I going to do better next time or whatever? 00:09:44.470 --> 00:09:46.330 Like, I couldn't have that experience. 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:49.970 The only experience I wanted to have was success, because that was what I thought 00:09:49.970 --> 00:09:52.370 I was with someone that had success. 00:09:52.671 --> 00:09:53.271 Colleen: Right. 00:09:53.271 --> 00:09:57.621 So did you have any of those as you were kind of transitioning into this 00:09:57.621 --> 00:10:02.331 growth mindset and trying new things, did you have any like public failures. 00:10:02.331 --> 00:10:04.421 Nate: I mean, the shark tank was definitely the one that stuck 00:10:04.421 --> 00:10:05.891 with me the hardest for sure. 00:10:05.967 --> 00:10:07.047 Colleen: Yeah, that's pretty public. 00:10:07.367 --> 00:10:08.497 Nate: Yeah, it is. 00:10:08.574 --> 00:10:09.084 I don't know. 00:10:09.084 --> 00:10:11.424 I mean, I think that's probably the big one. 00:10:11.924 --> 00:10:13.964 I can't think of something else off the top of my head. 00:10:14.094 --> 00:10:14.864 I'm sure there is. 00:10:15.161 --> 00:10:20.321 Colleen: So, okay, so you did shark tank, you did personal growth motorcycling, 00:10:20.381 --> 00:10:25.301 and slowly over time, you establish yourself as an expert, as a rails expert, 00:10:25.301 --> 00:10:28.211 and specifically a performance expert. 00:10:28.391 --> 00:10:32.441 Talk about the decisions to start a consultancy. 00:10:32.441 --> 00:10:34.481 Is it just you, or is it you and other people? 00:10:34.781 --> 00:10:35.771 Nate: It's always been just me. 00:10:35.771 --> 00:10:36.191 Yeah. 00:10:36.489 --> 00:10:39.519 Colleen: So talk about some of those decisions on those path 00:10:39.549 --> 00:10:44.259 versus building, you know, another monitoring app or something like that. 00:10:44.259 --> 00:10:48.039 Like the choices you made when you decided to go independent in that way. 00:10:48.339 --> 00:10:52.498 Nate: Well, I had worked at a couple of different startups, 00:10:52.498 --> 00:10:53.798 like right out of college. 00:10:53.798 --> 00:10:59.069 And, basically I got a little bit burned out on that in terms of, like, I 00:10:59.069 --> 00:11:04.623 realized that working for someone else in Like an employee at a star or very 00:11:04.623 --> 00:11:08.103 early, very, very early stage, like, you know, five to 10 employees kind of 00:11:08.103 --> 00:11:13.230 startups, just wasn't something that lined up with like what I wanted to do. 00:11:13.230 --> 00:11:15.720 I didn't want to work 60, 80 hours a week. 00:11:15.720 --> 00:11:21.069 I didn't want to, you know, work for half market rate, you know, to maybe get 00:11:21.069 --> 00:11:22.659 a lottery ticket to a billion dollars. 00:11:22.689 --> 00:11:25.369 I was like, oh, it doesn't really make sense to me. 00:11:25.534 --> 00:11:25.924 Colleen: Right, 00:11:26.016 --> 00:11:29.046 Nate: I got out of that and then, I don't know, I just sort of fell into 00:11:29.046 --> 00:11:32.886 contracting initially, cause it was like, well, I gotta do something to, you 00:11:32.886 --> 00:11:34.836 know, pay the bills and fill up the time. 00:11:35.256 --> 00:11:37.836 And I knew a lot of people in New York from the startup seat. 00:11:37.866 --> 00:11:41.256 So like I just was okay, Hey Nate, come and help us with this. 00:11:41.256 --> 00:11:41.886 Help us that. 00:11:41.960 --> 00:11:45.380 I kind of did like hot, you might call it like hot, a hot seat consulting, 00:11:45.380 --> 00:11:46.460 like just try and warm body. 00:11:46.490 --> 00:11:48.680 That's what I was thinking of warm body consulting for about a year. 00:11:48.680 --> 00:11:52.590 Just like, you know, filling in on rails projects, wherever I could. 00:11:52.657 --> 00:11:54.662 And then I just started writing. 00:11:54.742 --> 00:11:56.542 I just started writing about performance. 00:11:56.542 --> 00:11:59.842 Actually, no, I think even before that it was probably, 00:11:59.842 --> 00:12:00.772 this was around the same time. 00:12:00.772 --> 00:12:02.476 This was like the summer of 2015. 00:12:02.524 --> 00:12:07.254 Mike Dalessio who now works at Shopify was running Gotham Ruby conference 00:12:07.254 --> 00:12:13.794 at the time Go Ruco, and he called me like a week before Go Ruco, and 00:12:13.794 --> 00:12:16.764 Mike and I had known each other from the New York City Ruby meetup group. 00:12:17.061 --> 00:12:19.531 And he was like one of our talks canceled. 00:12:19.561 --> 00:12:20.281 Can you fill it? 00:12:20.571 --> 00:12:23.241 So like seven to 10 days? 00:12:23.241 --> 00:12:25.111 I don't remember what it was before Conf. 00:12:25.131 --> 00:12:30.171 Was like put together a 15 minute talk and I was like, all right, I'll do it because 00:12:30.171 --> 00:12:31.761 I'd never done a conference stock before. 00:12:31.761 --> 00:12:31.911 So. 00:12:31.911 --> 00:12:34.101 I was like, oh my God, this is my big shot. 00:12:34.281 --> 00:12:36.271 Gotham Ruby conferences, a single track conf. 00:12:36.291 --> 00:12:39.531 So it's like 600 people in the main room watching your talk. 00:12:39.531 --> 00:12:39.801 Right. 00:12:40.091 --> 00:12:41.651 Colleen: Everyone is coming to your talk. 00:12:41.681 --> 00:12:42.191 Nice. 00:12:42.376 --> 00:12:45.496 Nate: don't really remember like how I was on this track at the 00:12:45.496 --> 00:12:50.376 time, but I running on this hot take of turbo links is actually good. 00:12:50.766 --> 00:12:54.096 And that was an extremely hot take in 2016. 00:12:54.866 --> 00:12:57.416 Nobody believed that turbo links was a good idea. 00:12:57.476 --> 00:12:59.996 You know, everyone was like, DHH, push this into rails. 00:12:59.996 --> 00:13:00.956 It's BS. 00:13:00.986 --> 00:13:04.016 It doesn't work because Ember was really hot at the time. 00:13:04.226 --> 00:13:05.888 And everyone's like use Ember. 00:13:05.888 --> 00:13:06.658 Embers cool. 00:13:06.658 --> 00:13:08.188 Don't use turbo links, whatever. 00:13:08.368 --> 00:13:10.138 And I was like, actually I think turbo links is pretty cool. 00:13:10.288 --> 00:13:13.691 So I built this to do app in turbo links. 00:13:13.721 --> 00:13:17.201 And I just wanted to show like, hey, if the server response time is good 00:13:17.496 --> 00:13:22.379 Uh, turbo links app can work almost as fast as a like a service, client 00:13:22.379 --> 00:13:24.569 side, Ember powered app or whatever. 00:13:24.872 --> 00:13:26.799 And the commerce talk was about that. 00:13:26.862 --> 00:13:29.468 It was about sort of like the performance limits of turbo links. 00:13:29.468 --> 00:13:31.088 How can you make it as fast as possible? 00:13:31.268 --> 00:13:36.102 And then I turned into a blog post and that blog post DHH retweeted cause he was 00:13:36.255 --> 00:13:39.855 clearly looking for some like hot takes to amplify our turbo links to that point. 00:13:39.855 --> 00:13:39.995 Right. 00:13:40.005 --> 00:13:42.335 Cause everyone was just like down turbo links at the time. 00:13:42.335 --> 00:13:43.505 So I'm sure that. 00:13:44.285 --> 00:13:46.715 It was the right take for the right re Twitter. 00:13:47.068 --> 00:13:49.498 And then at that, that really blew up. 00:13:49.558 --> 00:13:52.691 So I had tons of people reading that post. 00:13:52.780 --> 00:13:56.703 And then I just sort of fell into a rhythm of like, okay, every two weeks I'll 00:13:56.703 --> 00:13:58.443 start writing about performance stuff. 00:13:58.623 --> 00:14:01.263 And it was partly just what I was interested in at the time. 00:14:01.623 --> 00:14:03.783 And then I realized what a huge uptake it was getting. 00:14:03.903 --> 00:14:05.823 And I was like, okay, this is really hitting a nerve. 00:14:06.543 --> 00:14:07.065 Colleen: Yeah. 00:14:07.540 --> 00:14:10.420 Nate: was is that there's so much anxiety, more at the time. 00:14:10.420 --> 00:14:13.900 This is almost hard to remember now, but at the time there was a ton of 00:14:13.900 --> 00:14:16.420 anxiety around Ruby on Rails performance. 00:14:16.420 --> 00:14:19.840 It was like, oh my God, it rails doesn't scale. 00:14:20.290 --> 00:14:25.442 And I will have to rewrite my application in Scala and whatever cause like 00:14:25.662 --> 00:14:31.082 Git Hub and Shopify, we're not that big in 2016, like they were just not 00:14:31.082 --> 00:14:32.492 the behemoths that they are today. 00:14:32.972 --> 00:14:39.109 And Rails sort of hadn't recovered from losing Twitter to Scala in 00:14:39.109 --> 00:14:40.879 2010 or whenever that happened. 00:14:41.269 --> 00:14:44.169 And so there was like this big, like anxiety. 00:14:44.169 --> 00:14:46.929 I could feel in the community about like, oh my God, it's not fast enough. 00:14:46.929 --> 00:14:50.489 I got to start writing some other hot language or framework. 00:14:50.786 --> 00:14:51.933 And I didn't like that. 00:14:51.933 --> 00:14:53.403 I was like, I don't think this is true. 00:14:53.703 --> 00:14:55.293 And I like writing Ruby. 00:14:55.293 --> 00:14:57.093 So like, I'm going to figure out how to make this work. 00:14:57.173 --> 00:15:00.433 I always hated the mindset of like, I have to switch. 00:15:00.763 --> 00:15:04.693 I have to switch frameworks or languages that I'm writing because the market 00:15:04.693 --> 00:15:07.603 says I have to, or it's not fast enough. 00:15:07.633 --> 00:15:08.743 I didn't like that mindset. 00:15:08.743 --> 00:15:10.543 So I was like, okay, I'm going to set out to prove this wrong. 00:15:10.846 --> 00:15:12.536 And, I just kept writing about that. 00:15:12.556 --> 00:15:15.646 I kept writing about web performance and I realized like, 00:15:15.646 --> 00:15:17.486 this is like a really good market. 00:15:17.496 --> 00:15:18.386 I really liked performance. 00:15:18.386 --> 00:15:22.948 I really liked writing and talking about it because it's so, it's so definite it's 00:15:22.948 --> 00:15:25.048 so like, it either is faster it isn't. 00:15:25.178 --> 00:15:27.638 It's very quantitative in that way. 00:15:27.638 --> 00:15:30.478 And I really loved like, take this thing from three seconds and make 00:15:30.478 --> 00:15:32.518 it 300 milliseconds, you know? 00:15:32.608 --> 00:15:36.738 Um, So it was a combination of right place, right time, right person, which 00:15:36.738 --> 00:15:41.538 is, you know, as any success story sounds in 2020 hindsight, you know. 00:15:41.613 --> 00:15:42.123 Colleen: Yep. 00:15:42.153 --> 00:15:42.693 Always. 00:15:42.693 --> 00:15:43.033 Right. 00:15:43.055 --> 00:15:48.455 So you started writing and then you had a lot of success writing and 00:15:48.455 --> 00:15:51.605 then two people just started reaching out and like, hey, can you fix this? 00:15:51.901 --> 00:15:52.801 Nate: Yeah, pretty much. 00:15:53.391 --> 00:15:56.531 I should go back sometime and like, look through all my old client 00:15:56.531 --> 00:15:59.171 reports and like figure out who the first person was in the last 00:15:59.171 --> 00:15:59.591 Colleen: That would be 00:15:59.591 --> 00:15:59.951 fun. 00:16:00.071 --> 00:16:01.751 Nate: first one I did, but Yeah. 00:16:01.751 --> 00:16:05.241 I started just really getting a lot of cold reach outs, and I when 00:16:05.241 --> 00:16:07.731 I was putting together all these blogs and stuff, I was like, okay 00:16:07.781 --> 00:16:11.626 I think this is a good opportunity to create kind of product revenue. 00:16:11.626 --> 00:16:12.786 So I'll make a course. 00:16:12.816 --> 00:16:13.446 I'll make a book. 00:16:13.866 --> 00:16:16.266 And that became the complete guide to rails performance, which 00:16:16.266 --> 00:16:19.536 released like nine months after that conference talk that I gave. 00:16:19.566 --> 00:16:22.919 So it was a nine month period of a lot, a lot of, a lot of writing. 00:16:23.664 --> 00:16:24.174 Colleen: Yeah. 00:16:24.174 --> 00:16:25.374 What year was that? 00:16:25.374 --> 00:16:26.314 How long ago was that? 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:30.529 Nate: So I think that was the summer of 2015 that I did the conference talk. 00:16:30.529 --> 00:16:34.097 So the complete guide that rails performance came out in March of 2016. 00:16:34.407 --> 00:16:35.277 So almost six years. 00:16:35.579 --> 00:16:37.859 Colleen: And then, so then you followed that on with workshop. 00:16:38.162 --> 00:16:38.672 Nate: Yeah. 00:16:38.732 --> 00:16:40.052 I remember the first one of that. 00:16:40.052 --> 00:16:43.731 I remember the first workshop I ever gave was at Getty Images. 00:16:43.911 --> 00:16:48.166 So I remember Getty Images, found me and were like, can you come to 00:16:48.166 --> 00:16:50.026 Madison, Wisconsin and give a workshop? 00:16:50.446 --> 00:16:51.646 And I was like, hell yeah. 00:16:52.146 --> 00:16:53.016 Business travel. 00:16:53.106 --> 00:16:56.596 And like, this is like cool executive stuff now. 00:16:56.596 --> 00:17:01.267 So yeah, it's my glorious Madison, Wisconsin set up, and I remember, 00:17:01.267 --> 00:17:04.597 like in retrospect I had no idea what I was dealing with that workshop. 00:17:04.669 --> 00:17:07.889 It was just like, I dunno, it must've been awful to take, but 00:17:07.889 --> 00:17:09.261 yeah, that was the very first one. 00:17:09.261 --> 00:17:11.801 That must've been the summer of 2016 or something like that. 00:17:11.872 --> 00:17:17.390 And that workshop basically kind of just kept changing 00:17:17.390 --> 00:17:19.820 and being revised and edited. 00:17:19.820 --> 00:17:20.213 And yeah. 00:17:20.243 --> 00:17:25.581 Now I've probably given that workshop live to hundreds of people 00:17:25.611 --> 00:17:29.531 now, now asynchronously, cause I sell it online to hundreds. 00:17:29.830 --> 00:17:31.740 Colleen: So have you resumed traveling yet? 00:17:31.860 --> 00:17:32.280 Post 00:17:32.340 --> 00:17:32.940 Nate: haven't yet. 00:17:32.970 --> 00:17:33.540 I haven't yet. 00:17:33.540 --> 00:17:36.660 My first trip will be to Sin City Ruby in a month. 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:37.740 Colleen: Oh, I'll be there. 00:17:38.203 --> 00:17:38.923 I'll See I'll see. 00:17:38.923 --> 00:17:39.283 you there. 00:17:39.723 --> 00:17:43.763 So I think a lot of our listeners are trying to break 00:17:43.763 --> 00:17:44.933 free from the nine to five. 00:17:44.963 --> 00:17:49.133 And a lot of people like that story you just described sounds you make 00:17:49.133 --> 00:17:50.693 it sound like it was really easy. 00:17:50.883 --> 00:17:53.643 You're like, I just did this thing and then people are calling me. 00:17:53.947 --> 00:17:54.997 Wasn't really easy. 00:17:55.297 --> 00:17:58.597 Nate: Well, I think my memory of that time was like, I didn't 00:17:58.597 --> 00:18:00.847 really bill for nine months. 00:18:00.847 --> 00:18:02.347 I didn't have like 00:18:02.917 --> 00:18:04.777 a lot of billable work While I 00:18:04.837 --> 00:18:05.137 Colleen: while you were 00:18:05.317 --> 00:18:05.647 Nate: Yeah. 00:18:05.797 --> 00:18:06.077 Yeah. 00:18:06.187 --> 00:18:10.016 I don't really remember having a lot of like hourly at that time, because 00:18:10.016 --> 00:18:13.886 I remember like my last client cut me off and like their startup blew up 00:18:13.886 --> 00:18:15.116 and like he didn't pay the last check. 00:18:15.116 --> 00:18:17.456 It was like kind of a bad breakup and. 00:18:18.081 --> 00:18:18.771 Colleen: That sounds like it. 00:18:18.831 --> 00:18:19.311 Yeah, 00:18:19.646 --> 00:18:23.636 Nate: And I think after that summer, it was like, after, as I was writing, I don't 00:18:23.636 --> 00:18:24.866 remember how many other clients in there. 00:18:24.866 --> 00:18:27.146 So I don't know how much billable I was doing at that time. 00:18:27.146 --> 00:18:32.570 And like writing is a lot, a lot of work, and probably nine months to 00:18:32.570 --> 00:18:37.870 write 130,000 words in retrospect is pretty quick for non-fiction. 00:18:37.960 --> 00:18:41.939 So I don't even know if I could have done too much more, but yeah. 00:18:41.939 --> 00:18:49.049 So I guess, you know, I think there's a little bit of luck in the thing that I 00:18:49.049 --> 00:18:53.399 wanted to write about was the thing that the community desperately want it to hear. 00:18:53.609 --> 00:18:53.969 Right? 00:18:54.173 --> 00:18:55.733 That didn't have to be true. 00:18:55.973 --> 00:19:01.093 So the fact that that was the way it worked out was important. 00:19:01.093 --> 00:19:05.793 But I think also, like, I think a lot of it is listening, like paying attention 00:19:05.793 --> 00:19:07.083 to what the community cares about. 00:19:07.083 --> 00:19:12.483 What are the things that people are, you know, writing a blog posts about 00:19:12.483 --> 00:19:15.183 that sound like they don't have an answer to, you know, like what are 00:19:15.183 --> 00:19:20.730 the things that continue to hit the top of the Ruby subreddit or whatever? 00:19:20.730 --> 00:19:24.260 What are the things that people seem to be struggling with, but 00:19:24.260 --> 00:19:25.460 don't have a clear answer for it. 00:19:25.460 --> 00:19:27.440 I knew that performance was one of those things. 00:19:27.440 --> 00:19:31.595 So it was part for tourists that was something that I wanted to do. 00:19:31.595 --> 00:19:36.035 But I do think that, especially as I was writing continuously every couple 00:19:36.035 --> 00:19:39.845 of weeks and posting stuff like that was probably deliberate of honing a 00:19:39.845 --> 00:19:42.935 message of, okay, what are the things that people want to hear from me? 00:19:43.385 --> 00:19:45.660 And how do I provide that? 00:19:45.740 --> 00:19:50.638 One of the things that I've always pushed has been front end performance, or you 00:19:50.638 --> 00:19:54.118 might call it full stack performance, like trying to analyze the performance of 00:19:54.118 --> 00:19:58.888 a rails application from the perspective of the browser, not from the perspective 00:19:58.888 --> 00:20:00.298 of the rails application itself. 00:20:00.658 --> 00:20:04.978 So the reason I do that is because human beings don't just like 00:20:05.248 --> 00:20:07.588 read raw HTML from a rails app. 00:20:07.668 --> 00:20:09.968 The browser has to like turn it into a webpage. 00:20:10.143 --> 00:20:14.133 But I've definitely realized people don't want to read that despite the 00:20:14.133 --> 00:20:16.623 fact that I think it's actually the most important part of performance. 00:20:16.673 --> 00:20:21.143 I've learned in my message to sort of like lead with these goodies of like, 00:20:21.143 --> 00:20:25.073 Hey, try this one weird setting and you'll make your rails at 10% faster. 00:20:25.073 --> 00:20:28.133 And then like feed them the vegetables, if like, okay, but you 00:20:28.133 --> 00:20:31.763 actually need to fix your front end performance this way or whatever. 00:20:31.763 --> 00:20:32.046 Right. 00:20:32.046 --> 00:20:36.566 There's a lot that you learned from writing and publishing on a regular 00:20:36.566 --> 00:20:39.536 schedule because you'll see like what blows up and what doesn't. 00:20:40.036 --> 00:20:40.456 Colleen: Yeah. 00:20:40.606 --> 00:20:40.996 Right. 00:20:40.996 --> 00:20:45.436 So it sounds like really the process of writing helped you start to engage 00:20:45.436 --> 00:20:49.846 with the community and it helped you start to kind of open that loop with 00:20:49.846 --> 00:20:53.326 people to see what people wanted, which I'm sure you don't want to use the 00:20:53.326 --> 00:20:54.796 term marketing, but it is marketing 00:20:54.971 --> 00:20:55.751 Nate: oh, no, it is a 00:20:55.881 --> 00:20:59.001 Colleen: Yeah, where you can be more specific. 00:20:59.001 --> 00:21:03.081 So is that you're doing the workshops. 00:21:03.081 --> 00:21:04.011 You have the book. 00:21:04.071 --> 00:21:05.661 Is that what you're still doing now? 00:21:06.556 --> 00:21:07.036 Nate: No. 00:21:07.083 --> 00:21:10.713 So our, our first child was born in November. 00:21:10.713 --> 00:21:11.313 Um, 00:21:11.718 --> 00:21:12.648 Colleen: That's super exciting. 00:21:13.083 --> 00:21:17.523 Nate: And after I've come back from parental leave here now in February, 00:21:17.561 --> 00:21:22.420 I am on more or less, a hundred percent time contract with Gusto. 00:21:22.420 --> 00:21:29.373 So, Gusto is my more or less full-time client nowadays. 00:21:29.403 --> 00:21:34.728 So working on making their payroll experience faster for their customers. 00:21:34.728 --> 00:21:37.218 Colleen: So tell us about that decision. 00:21:37.718 --> 00:21:38.018 Nate: Huh. 00:21:38.408 --> 00:21:43.058 Well basically last year, I mean, I was, the kid was coming and I was just 00:21:43.058 --> 00:21:44.888 thinking like, I love contracting. 00:21:44.888 --> 00:21:45.338 It's great. 00:21:45.338 --> 00:21:48.578 But, I would like to have more stability in my income. 00:21:48.638 --> 00:21:52.310 I'd like to have like a little bit more stability of you know, money coming in. 00:21:52.310 --> 00:21:57.930 So the other thing is like, especially after doing this for six years now, is 00:21:57.930 --> 00:22:02.750 that I think my, like, this may sound surprising, but some of my technical 00:22:02.750 --> 00:22:05.270 skills have just not grown anymore. 00:22:05.357 --> 00:22:09.857 Basically, 95% of the time when I get brought in on a contract, 00:22:09.947 --> 00:22:13.697 I am like the most experienced rails developer in the slack chat. 00:22:14.177 --> 00:22:17.733 And that's partly, I think because of my clientele and partly just the 00:22:17.733 --> 00:22:21.293 atmosphere of being brought in on a short term contract is like, we're 00:22:21.293 --> 00:22:23.953 paying this guy a lot of money to solve problems in a really short time. 00:22:23.953 --> 00:22:25.903 So everybody like pay attention to this person. 00:22:26.413 --> 00:22:29.323 And it's not really an atmosphere for me to learn. 00:22:29.593 --> 00:22:29.953 Right. 00:22:30.118 --> 00:22:30.478 Colleen: Right. 00:22:31.018 --> 00:22:34.568 Nate: So I think in the last couple of years, I'd felt like my 00:22:34.568 --> 00:22:38.268 technical skills had not really grown as quickly as they used to. 00:22:38.338 --> 00:22:44.088 So having a long-term job or contract, I thought it would be a good opportunity 00:22:44.088 --> 00:22:49.114 for me to really like dig my teeth into a problem long-term, and to do 00:22:49.114 --> 00:22:53.388 it with a larger group of people that were as experienced as, as I was you 00:22:53.388 --> 00:22:58.708 know, like at a company where there's 20 employees, just like, by whatever 00:22:58.708 --> 00:23:02.368 law of large numbers, there's like one person at my experience level. 00:23:02.368 --> 00:23:04.228 Right, but at Gusto, there's 500 engineers. 00:23:04.228 --> 00:23:07.118 So there's like 20 people, and have those people have like 00:23:07.118 --> 00:23:07.928 more experience than I do. 00:23:07.928 --> 00:23:08.258 right. 00:23:08.288 --> 00:23:08.768 So. 00:23:08.928 --> 00:23:09.348 Colleen: Right. 00:23:09.652 --> 00:23:14.562 Nate: That opportunity to really work closely with people who have tons of 00:23:14.562 --> 00:23:18.735 experience and different experience than me was something I was looking 00:23:18.735 --> 00:23:25.145 for and also to have, you know, time horizons of like a year to work on 00:23:25.145 --> 00:23:28.375 a problem and really dig into it. 00:23:28.705 --> 00:23:32.705 Maybe build new tools, like really almost push the boundary of the 00:23:32.735 --> 00:23:37.535 profession in a way that I can't do on like one week, two week kind of contract. 00:23:37.573 --> 00:23:41.533 So I was looking at those, you know, kind of interviewed a lot of places, 00:23:41.533 --> 00:23:44.443 both for normal jobs and other stuff. 00:23:44.503 --> 00:23:48.367 And Gusto came back to me with saying like, hey, we'll bring you 00:23:48.367 --> 00:23:51.457 on as a consultant, but you can, you know, do 40 hours a week. 00:23:51.757 --> 00:23:52.807 And I was like, that's perfect. 00:23:52.884 --> 00:23:55.019 So that was the setup we ended up with. 00:23:55.322 --> 00:23:55.682 Colleen: Okay. 00:23:55.682 --> 00:23:59.282 So I have a somewhat unrelated question, but when you go on job 00:23:59.282 --> 00:24:02.852 interviews, do you still have to do the normal interview process or you 00:24:02.852 --> 00:24:05.102 just kind of like get in the back door? 00:24:05.552 --> 00:24:07.472 Nate: Depends on the, depends on the place. 00:24:07.552 --> 00:24:12.720 I had places where my first conversation was it the CTO and I had places 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.223 where I went through a normal interview funnel of like four rounds. 00:24:17.253 --> 00:24:20.223 You know, people I'd doing coding challenges with 00:24:20.223 --> 00:24:21.493 people I'd never met before. 00:24:21.495 --> 00:24:22.275 That kind of thing. 00:24:22.275 --> 00:24:24.475 So I did all of that. 00:24:24.520 --> 00:24:24.970 Depends. 00:24:24.970 --> 00:24:26.200 It's dependent on the place. 00:24:26.498 --> 00:24:26.918 Colleen: Okay. 00:24:27.418 --> 00:24:27.598 Yeah. 00:24:27.598 --> 00:24:31.598 That's such an interesting thing, because I think, as an independent developer, 00:24:31.868 --> 00:24:37.268 people just give you jobs, like based on your public persona or what you've 00:24:37.268 --> 00:24:39.158 written, especially you I'm sure. 00:24:39.158 --> 00:24:40.118 I mean, it happens to me. 00:24:40.538 --> 00:24:43.238 So I was just wondering like what that actually looks like when you're like, 00:24:43.238 --> 00:24:44.768 I want to do this for at least a year. 00:24:45.068 --> 00:24:45.728 That's interesting. 00:24:46.031 --> 00:24:46.481 Nate: Yeah. 00:24:46.531 --> 00:24:48.151 I think it's interesting. 00:24:48.451 --> 00:24:55.451 I think, the more the company in question, like understood my specialty 00:24:55.481 --> 00:25:02.161 and like my sort of what I can do and bring to the table, the more I was 00:25:02.161 --> 00:25:05.141 like off of the normal interview track. 00:25:05.147 --> 00:25:10.007 And the more that it was like, people kind of thought, oh, this is Nate, and he's a 00:25:10.007 --> 00:25:12.527 really famous Ruby developer, whatever. 00:25:12.527 --> 00:25:15.827 Then I sort of would just get shunted into a normal interview path. 00:25:16.109 --> 00:25:19.409 My skillset particularly is really weird. 00:25:19.479 --> 00:25:21.489 It's very specific, right? 00:25:21.539 --> 00:25:25.939 If I was just like a normal working in, so at Gusto, right. 00:25:25.939 --> 00:25:29.466 We have lots of different areas where people work, but if I was on 00:25:29.466 --> 00:25:33.716 a different team, let's say doing, we have somebody at a Gusto right now 00:25:33.716 --> 00:25:35.186 is doing a lot of work with PAC work. 00:25:35.336 --> 00:25:37.886 So we're trying to modularize all our Ruby code or whatever. 00:25:37.886 --> 00:25:43.076 If I was on that team, I would not be nearly as useful, not even close. 00:25:43.436 --> 00:25:43.856 Right. 00:25:44.066 --> 00:25:46.616 I'm sure I'd be a competent senior staff developer. 00:25:46.616 --> 00:25:46.886 Right. 00:25:46.886 --> 00:25:50.806 But like, that's not even close to the kind of value that I 00:25:50.806 --> 00:25:53.936 provide doing specifically what I do with the rails performance. 00:25:53.936 --> 00:25:54.206 Right. 00:25:54.235 --> 00:25:59.395 Then when I'm doing the thing that I'm good at and like that I am have 00:25:59.395 --> 00:26:00.805 specialized in, you know, that's where. 00:26:01.156 --> 00:26:01.576 Colleen: Yeah. 00:26:01.576 --> 00:26:02.446 That makes sense. 00:26:02.446 --> 00:26:03.526 That absolutely makes sense. 00:26:03.545 --> 00:26:07.535 So how are you adjusting to life with a newborn and a new job? 00:26:07.985 --> 00:26:08.525 It's a lot. 00:26:09.025 --> 00:26:12.685 Nate: Yeah, well, luckily or our newborn is a little angel, 00:26:13.185 --> 00:26:14.486 and she can do no wrong. 00:26:14.486 --> 00:26:17.332 So, you know well, I think we got lucky with her. 00:26:17.332 --> 00:26:18.592 She's just a really good sleeper. 00:26:18.622 --> 00:26:21.083 So I have not been as sleep deprived as I expected. 00:26:21.453 --> 00:26:22.323 Colleen: That's unusual. 00:26:22.658 --> 00:26:22.958 Nate: Yeah. 00:26:22.958 --> 00:26:23.378 I know. 00:26:23.408 --> 00:26:23.828 I know. 00:26:23.858 --> 00:26:24.848 I know we got lucky. 00:26:25.107 --> 00:26:27.927 So, you know, everything else, like we can handle, right? 00:26:27.927 --> 00:26:30.867 If I get sleep, it's like, okay, everything else, we can figure it out. 00:26:31.497 --> 00:26:34.040 But, the sleep uh, we figured it out now. 00:26:34.070 --> 00:26:35.990 I think we we've pretty much got that down. 00:26:35.990 --> 00:26:39.735 So that's, that was the hardest part of that adjustment and work. 00:26:39.765 --> 00:26:40.095 Yeah. 00:26:40.095 --> 00:26:43.065 I think, the biggest adjustment for me at Gusto has been 00:26:43.065 --> 00:26:44.835 like, it's a big app, right? 00:26:44.835 --> 00:26:45.645 It's a huge app. 00:26:45.675 --> 00:26:48.585 Tons of people it's like 10 years old. 00:26:48.615 --> 00:26:52.535 So like some of the lines of like, when you see the blame, it's the 00:26:52.535 --> 00:26:54.335 CTO wrote this 10 years ago. 00:26:54.335 --> 00:26:55.625 That kind of place, you know what I mean? 00:26:55.935 --> 00:26:56.295 Colleen: Yeah. 00:26:56.575 --> 00:26:56.815 Yeah. 00:26:57.355 --> 00:27:01.908 Nate: it's very easy to get bogged down in that kind of environment. 00:27:01.908 --> 00:27:05.948 So like really go off on tangents or everything turns into this massive 00:27:05.978 --> 00:27:09.393 eight degree yak shave of, you know, something that you thought that was going 00:27:09.393 --> 00:27:11.731 to take five minutes, it takes 10 hours. 00:27:11.796 --> 00:27:15.932 I've got so many right now where it's like I'm shipping rack mini profiler 00:27:15.932 --> 00:27:24.114 in production, and one test out of the fricking 20,000 that at Gusto fails when 00:27:24.114 --> 00:27:29.604 I, when I add this one, like basically three lines of code and now I gotta go 00:27:29.604 --> 00:27:30.744 figure out what's going on with that. 00:27:31.584 --> 00:27:33.894 It's like this completely random part of the app. 00:27:33.974 --> 00:27:34.834 It doesn't even make sense. 00:27:34.844 --> 00:27:36.044 Why is this thing blowing up? 00:27:36.044 --> 00:27:36.344 Right. 00:27:36.344 --> 00:27:45.736 So any change at that scale of application potentially can break 0.001% of the app. 00:27:46.516 --> 00:27:49.572 So it's hard to stay focused in that kind of environment. 00:27:49.572 --> 00:27:55.399 It's hard not to like, just go off and dig to the bottom of every hole to, to, 00:27:55.399 --> 00:28:01.699 to, to completely try to understand or fix every single problem in its entirety 00:28:01.699 --> 00:28:02.989 before you move on to the next thing. 00:28:02.989 --> 00:28:04.980 But that's not really my job there. 00:28:05.010 --> 00:28:08.940 My job is to fix particular, make particular pages faster. 00:28:08.940 --> 00:28:13.906 So you know, kind of keeping on that, track has been an interesting. 00:28:14.307 --> 00:28:14.787 Colleen: Yeah. 00:28:14.787 --> 00:28:17.607 Do you think, so this you're doing this for a year. 00:28:17.607 --> 00:28:18.747 Is that how long you committed? 00:28:18.797 --> 00:28:20.207 Nate: I mean, that's how long the contract is. 00:28:20.237 --> 00:28:22.127 We'll see if they need me for another year. 00:28:22.557 --> 00:28:24.957 Colleen: So you'll just decide, you don't know what you want to do next. 00:28:24.957 --> 00:28:27.207 If you want to stay, if you want to go, it's too soon to say. 00:28:27.507 --> 00:28:28.257 Nate: Yeah, yeah. 00:28:28.337 --> 00:28:28.837 Too soon to say. 00:28:28.847 --> 00:28:30.367 Too soon to know if I would. 00:28:30.457 --> 00:28:30.757 Yeah. 00:28:31.057 --> 00:28:31.247 Yeah. 00:28:31.567 --> 00:28:32.587 I mean, I just got started. 00:28:32.697 --> 00:28:36.267 We're recording this like three, this is like the middle of my third week. 00:28:36.267 --> 00:28:36.537 So 00:28:36.692 --> 00:28:37.292 Colleen: Oh, okay. 00:28:37.292 --> 00:28:38.162 You're got it. 00:28:38.192 --> 00:28:38.312 You 00:28:38.522 --> 00:28:40.262 Nate: Because with performance work, for sure. 00:28:40.262 --> 00:28:40.622 Right. 00:28:40.682 --> 00:28:45.332 I do think unless the company, which it could continues to grow 00:28:45.362 --> 00:28:50.792 basically at a pace where they create problems faster than I fix them. 00:28:50.792 --> 00:28:51.122 Right. 00:28:51.452 --> 00:28:55.900 But like performance work definitely does have a marginal, 00:28:56.197 --> 00:28:57.637 marginally decreasing value. 00:28:57.787 --> 00:28:58.087 Right. 00:28:58.097 --> 00:29:02.627 If I really set out and achieve all the things I wanted to achieve 00:29:02.777 --> 00:29:04.877 in this first year at Gusto. 00:29:04.927 --> 00:29:09.817 It could totally be possible that it's like, Hey, like all the really valuable 00:29:09.817 --> 00:29:11.267 performance problems here are solved. 00:29:11.287 --> 00:29:12.277 Like, thanks. 00:29:12.327 --> 00:29:13.287 And that would be fine with me. 00:29:13.287 --> 00:29:14.517 I'd be totally fine with that. 00:29:14.567 --> 00:29:16.934 But maybe the company continues to grow and like, then the 00:29:16.934 --> 00:29:18.044 frontier is just pushed. 00:29:18.074 --> 00:29:21.550 It's like, okay, well now we've got this other stuff broken or, oh, now we 00:29:21.550 --> 00:29:25.512 need this to work for people companies that have 10,000 employees like, 00:29:25.812 --> 00:29:27.312 okay, well that's a whole new world. 00:29:27.312 --> 00:29:27.612 right. 00:29:27.822 --> 00:29:32.409 So it would kind of depend at them on the moment, you know how much I was 00:29:32.409 --> 00:29:37.288 able to accomplish and how much the business, the situation needed me. 00:29:37.898 --> 00:29:38.348 Colleen: Yeah. 00:29:38.438 --> 00:29:40.868 Are you still doing workshops while you're working full time? 00:29:40.948 --> 00:29:41.215 Nate: am. 00:29:41.395 --> 00:29:41.875 Colleen: Cool. 00:29:41.875 --> 00:29:42.235 So. 00:29:42.465 --> 00:29:42.825 Nate: Yup. 00:29:43.075 --> 00:29:47.425 Colleen: You've just had quite the interesting career trajectory with the 00:29:47.554 --> 00:29:49.534 you know, kind of everything you've done. 00:29:50.254 --> 00:29:52.444 Are there any things you would have done different? 00:29:52.944 --> 00:29:53.424 Nate: Hm. 00:29:53.551 --> 00:29:54.981 I don't know. 00:29:55.050 --> 00:29:56.610 I don't think so. 00:29:57.290 --> 00:30:04.139 One thing that I think worked out really well for me was I started off with a two 00:30:04.139 --> 00:30:08.309 or three, like in-person traditional jobs. 00:30:08.339 --> 00:30:12.056 I was a developer or whatever, had a small team, but like, it was still just a job. 00:30:12.056 --> 00:30:15.536 And only after that was when I started consulting. 00:30:16.036 --> 00:30:19.125 And I think some people try to skip that step, right? 00:30:19.175 --> 00:30:22.315 They want to get out of maybe cause, the first job is always the hardest, 00:30:22.525 --> 00:30:26.025 like, you know, with somebody who maybe came out of a bootcamp or something and 00:30:26.025 --> 00:30:27.385 like they try and get that first job. 00:30:27.405 --> 00:30:29.365 That is 100% the hardest one. 00:30:29.412 --> 00:30:34.122 And they maybe look at like, oh, I could just go on E-Lance or whatever 00:30:34.182 --> 00:30:36.462 and you know, start doing jobs on there. 00:30:36.822 --> 00:30:36.972 But. 00:30:37.472 --> 00:30:42.092 I am glad I didn't go that way because I think you can get stuck in a hole of 00:30:42.122 --> 00:30:46.282 working for kind of these low value clients, not learning that much, cause 00:30:46.282 --> 00:30:47.452 you're on your own most of the time. 00:30:47.499 --> 00:30:51.099 I was really glad that I kind of only launched into freelancing after 00:30:51.099 --> 00:30:54.189 I had this like extensive personal network and at least a little bit 00:30:54.189 --> 00:30:56.079 of programming experience and resume. 00:30:56.213 --> 00:30:58.403 So I'm glad I did that, that way. 00:30:58.433 --> 00:30:59.903 I'm very happy. 00:30:59.903 --> 00:31:01.623 I've written as much as I have. 00:31:01.650 --> 00:31:05.550 I think my writing has been a major factor as to why I've ended up where I 00:31:05.550 --> 00:31:07.490 have, maybe I would have written more. 00:31:08.190 --> 00:31:09.150 You could always write more. 00:31:09.150 --> 00:31:11.370 I could always have written more blog posts and written 00:31:11.370 --> 00:31:13.168 more frequently or regularly. 00:31:13.168 --> 00:31:16.438 There is no marginally decreasing returns on writing, for sure. 00:31:16.468 --> 00:31:16.960 I think. 00:31:16.960 --> 00:31:18.972 I could always have produced more content. 00:31:18.985 --> 00:31:20.215 And, and that would have been great. 00:31:20.215 --> 00:31:21.249 So I don't know. 00:31:21.299 --> 00:31:23.762 Those are the things that come to mind, but I don't think I have something 00:31:23.762 --> 00:31:25.562 that like, I would have changed. 00:31:26.062 --> 00:31:29.728 Colleen: Yeah, I was listening to the founder of balsamic was on indie hackers 00:31:29.728 --> 00:31:34.348 a while back, but he talked about that in terms of even starting a SAS, 00:31:34.348 --> 00:31:38.338 cause he worked at Adobe for like six years before he started his business. 00:31:38.558 --> 00:31:41.628 I keep hearing that and I think that's really good advice to give to people. 00:31:42.093 --> 00:31:44.103 However you learn, go get a job. 00:31:44.133 --> 00:31:47.956 If you can first to help you get on the path of freedom, the path of 00:31:47.956 --> 00:31:49.126 freedom, I'm going to start calling it. 00:31:49.126 --> 00:31:49.336 That 00:31:49.356 --> 00:31:49.476 Nate: it's 00:31:49.476 --> 00:31:50.436 a path of freedom. 00:31:50.646 --> 00:31:50.926 Yeah. 00:31:51.056 --> 00:31:53.616 I wasn't even that long for me, it was like two years, I think, 00:31:53.676 --> 00:31:55.326 maybe the beginning of my career. 00:31:55.430 --> 00:31:59.590 And also I think to some extent, like, because it was in New York City and I 00:31:59.590 --> 00:32:03.680 was going to meet ups every week and making like, I didn't realize at the time 00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:05.434 wasn't network, but it was, you know. 00:32:05.434 --> 00:32:08.314 That was how I, that was how I met Mike, who gave me the conference 00:32:08.314 --> 00:32:10.054 talk, which then led to the blog post. 00:32:10.054 --> 00:32:10.234 Right? 00:32:10.261 --> 00:32:11.521 Colleen: I love that, by the way, I 00:32:11.561 --> 00:32:14.843 Nate: know, like, Yeah, I think that is, that is helpful. 00:32:14.903 --> 00:32:18.593 I think it's definitely more difficult, not impossible, but definitely more 00:32:18.593 --> 00:32:22.884 difficult to start from a place of a hundred percent remote from the start. 00:32:22.884 --> 00:32:26.244 Colleen: Yeah, well, Nate, I think that is a good place to wrap up. 00:32:26.274 --> 00:32:28.794 Thank you so much for coming on software social today. 00:32:29.094 --> 00:32:31.254 If people want to find out more about you, where can they go? 00:32:31.550 --> 00:32:32.570 Nate: Yeah, speed. 00:32:32.570 --> 00:32:38.052 shop.co is my website for my performance consulting and everything 00:32:38.172 --> 00:32:39.432 that I do is linked from there. 00:32:39.732 --> 00:32:40.242 Colleen: Awesome. 00:32:40.302 --> 00:32:40.842 Thanks. 00:32:41.045 --> 00:32:41.675 Nate: Alright, thanks.