Aaron Francis

I joined a bunch of Rubyists (which I am not!) to talk about our experience at RailsConf.

Transcript

Aaron

00:00:02 – 00:00:06

You're listening to the Ruby on Rails podcast.

Brittany

00:00:07 – 00:00:34

You're listening to episode 425, and I'm your co host, Britney Martin. This is the live panel recording from RailsConf at home 2022. I'm gonna pre apologize here because I was so excited about creating a virtual conference experience that my audio sounds like I'm recording it from a massive conference room. In all seriousness, my backup recording failed out, but our editor, Paul, was able to piece the episode together for my video audio. Thank you so much, Paul.

Brittany

00:00:34 – 00:00:53

Luckily for you, the 6 panelists we have sound stellar and readily make up for me. With that, on to the show. Welcome to the RailsConf 2022 at Home podcast panel. We're excited to be bringing you this from our homes. The panel is running alongside the Clover Brook Farm Animal Meet and Greet Virtual Experience.

Brittany

00:00:53 – 00:01:16

So if you picked us, I'm not sure why you did, but we're so glad to have you here today. So we're gonna meet each of our panelists one at a time. So first off, I'm Britney Martin, and I'm one of the cohosts of the Ruby on Rails podcast, and I'm calling in from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Next, I'm gonna call on each panelist and have them introduce themselves, where they're calling in from, and perhaps what they're known for. Alright.

Brittany

00:01:16 – 00:01:19

So first off, from Framework Friends, Aaron Francis.

Aaron

00:01:20 – 00:01:33

Hey. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. My name is Aaron Francis. Like you said, I'm the cohost of a podcast called Framework Friends, where we talk about Rails and Laravel and all kinds of different stuff, and I am calling in from Dallas, Texas.

Brittany

00:01:34 – 00:01:37

And what do we know about you, Aaron? What are you known for?

Aaron

00:01:38 – 00:01:44

In this community, being a Laravel developer, I also work at a small software company called Tuple.

Brittany

00:01:45 – 00:01:49

Awesome. Excellent. Next up is gonna be Andy Kroll from Chats in the Cupboard.

Andy

00:01:50 – 00:02:07

Yeah, Andy. My friend Vida here and I make an excuse to talk to each other, and we record it for the benefits of the whole Internet or 7 of the whole Internet. I am calling in from Brighton in the UK where it's bedtime, so hopefully there won't be too much background sounds from my end.

Brittany

00:02:07 – 00:02:08

And what are you known for, Andy?

Andy

00:02:09 – 00:02:20

It's a good question. What am I known for? You tell me. I spoke at the in person railsconf, and I run Brighton Ruby in the UK, which is happening in 15 days. Hooray.

Andy

00:02:20 – 00:02:26

And I would also yeah. I think you're gonna you're gonna wave the wise guide at me. Yeah. So I oh, it's 2 people with it. That's amazing.

Andy

00:02:26 – 00:02:40

So for the COVID interrupted Brian Ruby in 2020, we got physical copies of wise poignant guide printed, and attendees to that got copies of that. So, yeah, I did that too.

Brittany

00:02:40 – 00:02:45

It's one of my favorite possessions. Next up is Brian Mariani from the Ruby on Rails podcast.

Brian

00:02:46 – 00:03:09

Hi. I'm Brian Mariani, founder of Mirror Placement, very specialized niche recruiting service that connects Ruby developers with Ruby employers. Been doing it for 16 years and also a cohost on the Ruby podcast. And the big thing for us has always been to provide a lot of value and really limit the noise when it comes to engineers looking for jobs and employers looking to hire those engineers.

Brittany

00:03:09 – 00:03:11

Awesome. Where are you calling in from, Brian?

Brian

00:03:12 – 00:03:13

From Boston, Massachusetts.

Brittany

00:03:14 – 00:03:25

Do y'all like how I'm saying calling in like we're actually physically on the phone calling in? Because I like to think that we are. Next up is Drew Bragg from Code and the Coding Coders Who Code It.

Drew

00:03:25 – 00:03:38

Hi, everyone. I'm Drew. Like Britney said, I'm the host of Code and the Code Encoders Who Code It. I'm calling in from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so the literal opposite side of the state from Britney. Super excited to be here.

Brittany

00:03:38 – 00:03:42

Excellent. And next up is Jason Charms from Monroe Ruby.

Andrew

00:03:43 – 00:03:51

Hello. My name is Andrew Mason. I am from Phoenix, Arizona, and I am known for being friends with Jason Charms.

Brittany

00:03:52 – 00:03:57

Okay. We have an imposter amongst our meds. I love it.

Andrew

00:03:57 – 00:04:08

Andrew is my co host. He's not here today, neither is Chris, but I'm in Memphis, and I would say Remote Ruby is probably the thing you might know me from.

Brittany

00:04:08 – 00:04:10

Oh, yeah. For sure.

Drew

00:04:10 – 00:04:14

That's the other podcast talking about Rails and Laravel. Right?

Andrew

00:04:14 – 00:04:17

This is the official Laravel podcast, the Rails community.

Brittany

00:04:18 – 00:04:23

I love this. Last but not least is Gemma Israff from the Ruby on Rails podcast.

Jemma

00:04:23 – 00:04:28

Hey. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Calling in from New York. New York.

Jemma

00:04:28 – 00:04:36

I think something I hopefully am known for is I'm one of the co organizers of WNB. RB, which is a women non binary Ruby community.

Brittany

00:04:37 – 00:04:56

Excellent. Well, I'm so glad that you all are here today. So I'll be acting as moderator. What I plan on doing is going through some opening questions with each of our panelists, And then we are also lucky in the fact that we have guests who are gonna be supplying questions that we're gonna do about halfway through the episode. But first, I am going to start with Aaron.

Brittany

00:04:56 – 00:05:08

So, Aaron, it's been several weeks since you've started at Tuple. I know you're doing some really exciting things there, and I would love to hear just how it's going so far and maybe explain what 2PL is to the listeners who don't know what it is.

Aaron

00:05:09 – 00:05:19

Yeah. Absolutely. So I just recently started at Tuple. It's been, I don't know, maybe a month or 2 now. And Tuple is pair programming software.

Aaron

00:05:19 – 00:06:05

So it's screen sharing software, but it's really, really focused on the developer use case. So it's really high resolution, so that you can actually see text on your pairs computer when you're trying to pair program versus just pixelated text. The latency is really low, so that when you're typing on your pair's computer, it actually feels like you're typing and not like you were typing 8 seconds ago. So that's our pitch and it's been working really well. I think developers really from the outside before I joined, I could tell it was a well loved company and now being inside and seeing, like, all the feedback come in, developers really like tools that are focused specifically on developers and I find that to be, as a developer, a lot of fun.

Aaron

00:06:05 – 00:06:39

And so, I actually joined as a marketing engineer, so I am, by trade, a software developer. By schooling, I'm actually an accountant, but by trade, I'm a software developer. And I joined Tuple as a marketing engineer. And so my job has been more, like, as a developer, I kinda know what developers like and so my job is to do things that developers would find interesting and bring attention to Tuple. And so our big thing so far has been we're working on a couple of different experiments.

Aaron

00:06:40 – 00:07:06

We borrowed a whole bunch of money from Stripe through Stripe's capital loan program, and we're gonna spend all the money on marketing and see if we can make more money than we spend, which I guess is kinda how marketing is supposed to work. So it's been a lot of fun. I'm not traditionally a marketer, and so I'm kind of figuring it all out as I go. And the team is amazing, and Ben, the CEO, is super supportive. And so it's basically just been a whole experiment so far.

Andy

00:07:07 – 00:07:15

I love the way that your job is getting very, very slowly cooler over the years. It's like accountant, software developer, marketing developer.

Jemma

00:07:16 – 00:07:16

Aaron

00:07:16 – 00:07:17

Yeah. Exactly.

Andy

00:07:17 – 00:07:19

Yeah. An exciting job next. Right?

Aaron

00:07:19 – 00:07:24

Yeah. Well, I can tell you this, never back to accounting. That much I know for sure.

Brittany

00:07:25 – 00:07:36

Next question is aimed at Andy. So why does it matter to you that we had a successful in person RailsConf, and we're doing this from the at home version? So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Andy

00:07:37 – 00:07:52

So, basically, I don't really like online conferences. Sorry, everyone. For me, as someone who runs an in person conference and ran at a virtual thing when COVID hit. I just really miss the people. Like, it's all about the simple primate.

Andy

00:07:52 – 00:08:08

Andy wants to see other friendly primates who do similar stuff to him who understand what he does for a living because my spouse doesn't. So it's just really nice to be amongst, like, your people. Also, it gives me a chance to travel and eat in new cities, so that's always good. Yeah. But it's always about the people for me.

Brittany

00:08:08 – 00:08:12

So as a follow-up question, do you think conference participation is gonna keep people in this community?

Andy

00:08:14 – 00:08:36

I don't know. It helps me. It helps land me in a community. It helps, like, reconfigure the way that I think every year or so. Like, I like to go there and be challenged or to meet people who I've only seen online and kinda go, oh, they kinda think like that or that person writes funnier than they are or that person is funnier in person than they are when they write it down or, like, whatever that is.

Andy

00:08:36 – 00:08:44

Right? It's kind of making my flat screen three-dimensional in my head. So I don't know if that keeps people in the community, but it does for me.

Brittany

00:08:44 – 00:08:53

I love that. Now, Gemma, as a virtual community organizer, do you have any advice then on how attendees of a virtual conference like this one could get the most out of it?

Jemma

00:08:54 – 00:09:28

So I think what's really interesting about this breakdown is it's not only virtual, it's also about a month after the in person version. So I think speaking as a as a speaker at conferences sometimes when you're speaking at a conference, you sometimes are like really distracted by that talk. And when people come up to engage with you maybe after the talk or before the talk, your mind is kind of focused on the talk. But right now we have this experience where everyone who talked at the conference has done it a month ago and is not distracted by that right now. So I think it presents a real opportunity to engage with speakers.

Jemma

00:09:28 – 00:09:41

I don't know if they're all on this platform, but on Twitter, you can definitely find many speakers or maybe on Hopin itself, but actually, like, have longer form conversations with them about what they're working on and what interested you from their talk.

Andy

00:09:42 – 00:09:53

I love the fact that I'm speaking on the 2nd day, and I'm not stressed about it. That's the worst thing. If you end up speaking on day 3, that sucks. So, yeah, not speaking on day 3 well, no, speaking on day 2, but, like, I've already done it. It's amazing.

Brittany

00:09:54 – 00:09:58

So, Jason, I know for a fact that you spoke on day 3. How was that?

Andrew

00:09:58 – 00:10:15

I got to enjoy about an hour of the conference. So it was cool. The first time I spoke at RailsConf was in 2017, and it was the very, like, last slot. So that was stressful. But at that, RailsConf, Aaron Patterson was the last keynote.

Andrew

00:10:15 – 00:10:30

So I knew some people would at least stay for the whole conference and that made it a little better, but no, it was good. It is tough going the last day. Just I don't know. I get a little less nervous every time I speak, but I still, the day before, get a rush of nerves.

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00:10:32 – 00:10:51

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Brittany

00:11:31 – 00:11:53

Well, I give a lot of credit to the people who go to the conferences who are looking for jobs because I think there's so much opportunity there to network and to go to the job fairs and whatnot. Now, Brian, you are a resident job expert. So I wanted to ask you this question in front of everybody, but what is the difference between a career and a job? And can you build a career around working in Ruby on Rails?

Brian

00:11:54 – 00:12:11

I think the difference is that a job often feels like work, something that you might have to do. You'll get paid for it. It may not be your favorite thing, but it's a job. A career is a craft that you dedicate your life to. And when you find it, you know it.

Brian

00:12:11 – 00:12:57

And that's what I love to see every day, and I I feel so fortunate because I have a front row seat to watching people really leave their jobs behind and embark on a new career, and that could come in a variety of different ways. You can get someone who's been who knows, you know, a lifelong Java developer, let's say, who says, I heard about Ruby, and I used it once in a side project, and I would love a chance to just ditch Java and move to Ruby full time, like, I would be much happier doing that. And they go for it, and they do it, and I can help them with that, which I love. It's, like, super fulfilling of mine. And then a lot of the code schools and boot camps and whatnot have completely changed the game, just allowed people who were in a completely different career to shift gears, sometimes drastically so, and get into software development.

Brian

00:12:57 – 00:13:20

And whether or not you could build a career on Ruby, well, for the past 16 years, I certainly have alongside all the engineers out there. But, I mean, you can really build a career on any language or platform course. And I think more than anything, if you're a software engineer, you're building a career around solving problems. And if you're passionate around solving problems, you could do it a lot of different ways. You can do it with data.

Brian

00:13:20 – 00:13:48

You can do it collaborating with different folks, but you can absolutely do it through code. And, again, for the past 17 years, if you chose to do it in Ruby, you've been meaningfully employed, and we really don't see any of that demand relenting. I might sound like a broken record, but I continue to be as busy as I ever have. And last month, we actually set a record in my 16 years of running Mirror for having the most clients, which speaks to the most demand we've ever seen, specifically in the Ruby community. And we've heard about some layoffs and whatnot, but not a ton.

Brian

00:13:48 – 00:13:57

But for whatever reason, I'm having as many company phone calls with folks who are looking to hire as I ever have. So hopefully that trend continues.

Brittany

00:13:57 – 00:14:14

That's awesome. So Brian and I have talked about this before. Most of the roles, I think you would agree with this, Brian, probably at least 90% are Ruby on Rails. And so I wanna jump over to Jason because I know Jason is actually pretty passionate about Hanami. Hanami is here, and it's been progressing.

Brittany

00:14:15 – 00:14:20

And, Jason, what's it gonna take for Hanami to make it, And what does even making it mean?

Andrew

00:14:21 – 00:14:48

I know that I specifically mentioned this topic. I have a lot of thoughts on this recently. So there's a blog post by Jared White about, like, what would it take for Rota to win. And then that led to a tweet from Peter from RomRB or DryRB, also Hanami, asking like, okay, what does it take for, like, Hanami to win? And I wanna frame it as win here, not necessarily meaning, like, unseating rails.

Andrew

00:14:48 – 00:15:04

Right? Just making it as a viable option. And a lot of the comments I read on that were about version 2 has been sitting for a while. I know they're actively working on it. But it's not been necessarily like, hey, grab this and try it out.

Andrew

00:15:04 – 00:15:33

And so I think that's gonna change soon from reading some of Peter's responses. I know Tim Riley is actually taking, like, 6 weeks or something just to work on open source. So I think actually more people having the opportunity to use it will actually help progress it. But also, I think that one of the other comments I read I'm basically just regurgitating Twitter, if you can't tell. But one of the other comments I read was about, like, it kind of finding a way to position itself in the ecosystem.

Andrew

00:15:33 – 00:16:01

And I thought that was really interesting. My boss, Jamie, was saying, like, yeah, something about if it could make a very clear use case for this is good for, like, x y problem. I think that's gonna be really impactful as well. So I'm still really excited for version 2. I know it's taken a little while, but the ideas that Hanami has around, like, the way they architect apps, like, it's different from rails, but I really think it's fascinating for, like, long term maintainability.

Andy

00:16:02 – 00:16:21

I have an interesting taste. So I've met Luca, the original Hanami chap, and I've met Ken, I think as well, like, over the years. I think they are really great, and I know for a fact they're doing great stuff. Like, a friend of mine has a whole business built on a Hanami app. Obviously, we know that Stripe is a Ruby shop, but not a rail shop.

Andy

00:16:21 – 00:16:41

So, like, there are successes out there that I personally know of. I think where Hanami and Rhoda to a lesser extent struggle, I think, is that that sort of their the origin of them feels like you like rails, but it's not quite to your taste. One of the whole things about rails is it's all the batteries that's sort of included apart from a user model. Right, Aaron? That's kind of Rails' thing.

Andy

00:16:41 – 00:16:55

In that way, it's beginner friendly. So, like, part of the thing is, like, there's a sense with the Hanami folks where you're graduating onto a this is a more opinionated, slightly more rigid way of doing a Ruby framework, and I think it doesn't quite have the entry

Andrew

00:16:55 – 00:16:57

point yet, which I think is

Andy

00:16:57 – 00:17:00

Rails' great thing. It's like the 15 minute world post.

Andrew

00:17:01 – 00:17:37

Yes. One thing that actually before I even got really into Hanami, both Tim and Peter have wonderful conference talks you can find online about blending object oriented programming and functional, like, blending those concepts together. And that's actually what kind of turned me on to Hanami is, like, they started working on Hanami for version 2 and bringing some of those concepts. And I think I think they are fascinating. And, like, to your point, at that time, I kinda felt when I was reading about it, I was bumping up against the rails way, and, like, that kinda felt like an alternative.

Andy

00:17:38 – 00:17:43

Now, I think there's definitely things they can learn the both frameworks can learn from each other, and I think the wider the tent, the better.

Brittany

00:17:44 – 00:17:46

Brian, have you ever gotten requests for Hanami?

Brian

00:17:47 – 00:17:53

Not yet. Yeah. We keep our ears to the ground on this sort of thing. I wouldn't be surprised. Things can change quickly.

Brian

00:17:54 – 00:18:05

I know this happened with Elixir a while back. A lot of Ruby developers very interested in Elixir. And it sort of came and surged quite a bit and then tailed off, but I'm gonna be keeping my eyes and ears peeled now.

Brittany

00:18:05 – 00:18:27

Yeah. I'm gonna use that as a measurement of whether or not Brian's getting requests for it or if Andrew and Aaron add a third co host on the framework friends just for Hanami. That's gonna be my line. So, Drew, I wanted to ask you, so you are our newest addition to the Ruby podcast community, and I wanna know how it's been going so far. And do you have any lessons to share to listeners?

Brittany

00:18:27 – 00:18:30

We know there are listeners out there who are thinking about starting podcasts.

Drew

00:18:31 – 00:18:43

Yeah. It's been going really well so far. I've been getting a lot of good feedback. Listenership is growing, so I must be doing something right. I think the thing I'm doing right is shutting up and letting the guests talk.

Drew

00:18:43 – 00:19:16

So I think that's the key is talk less, let them talk more. I think as far as, like, recommendations or things I've learned is pretty much just gonna regurgitate everything that Jason, Chris, and Andrew said in their talk for RailsConf is, like, keep it simple, try and get consistent with it. I foolishly started it without a co host, and I'm regretting that decision. Soloing it is hard, but, yeah, if you are thinking about starting 1, go for it. There's so many different ways to get your foot in the door.

Drew

00:19:16 – 00:19:35

Buzzsprout is my podcast host of choice because it uses rails. And there's still a ton of space I run out of podcasts to listen to every week listening to them. And there's so many awesome guests out there just waiting for an opportunity to talk. So if you're thinking about starting 1, go for it.

Brittany

00:19:36 – 00:19:37

Any more advice to share, Gemma?

Jemma

00:19:38 – 00:19:58

Yeah. I'm not sure this is necessarily advice, but I I think the two conversations we're having are actually really similar, the one about frameworks and this one about podcasts. Right? I think an argument for more frameworks and diversity in frameworks is that they can then learn from each other. And even if Rails is still the dominant one and there's a strong case to be made for that to happen or not, there are also strong cases.

Jemma

00:19:58 – 00:20:21

Frameworks still grow by diversity and existence of other frameworks. And I think similarly, all of us can say more podcasts entering this space is better for each of our individual podcasts too. Right? It allows us more of an opportunity to learn from each other and to figure out if we want our own niches or where, what we're doing makes sense. And so I really appreciate more podcasts coming in too.

Brittany

00:20:22 – 00:20:23

What do you think, Andy?

Andy

00:20:24 – 00:20:34

First of all, have you ever got to the bottom of your podcast queue? That seems amazing to me. Well done. For me, I think the thing that I did most is just, like, get an editor. Either get an editor or don't care.

Andy

00:20:34 – 00:20:51

Those are the 2 options. Don't do it yourself. So if Adi and I, we don't wanna commit to doing it all the time, so we do, like, seasons of 4. So, like, we'll meet up every week for 4 weeks, and then we'll get them all and we'll we'll drop them all at once, which is a different style to most folks, but it means that we can sort of squeeze it into our lives. But, yeah, getting an editor, the first four episodes were done by me.

Andy

00:20:51 – 00:21:07

And, apparently, they were alright, but, like, I did not enjoy that. I listened to my own voice. I mean, as much as I like listening to my own voice as I'm talking, which I do, I didn't like listening to my own voice played back. But, yeah, that's the 2nd season. I just got a recommendation from Jason for the editor who does all of this and who will be editing this.

Andy

00:21:07 – 00:21:09

So, hi, Paul.

Brittany

00:21:09 – 00:21:18

Thanks. Who likes listening to their own voice? You are a different person, Andy. I appreciate you so much for that. And now I wanna hear what Aaron thinks here.

Andy

00:21:18 – 00:21:18

If I

Aaron

00:21:18 – 00:21:58

had a voice like Andy's, I would like listening to it. I know that much for sure. Yeah. I think Gemma was talking about how frameworks and podcasts are kinda similar in one regard, and I think that's a lot of what Andrew and I talk about on Framework Friends is how we can all learn specifically, in our context, we talk about how each framework ecosystem, whether that's Laravel or Rails or Elixir or whatever, each ecosystem has relative strengths and can learn from the other ecosystems even outside of the technical things. I think we can learn a lot of from Laravel on the marketing.

Aaron

00:21:59 – 00:22:32

The Laravel marketing and branding and cohesiveness and and they just have some of, like, the most technically interesting things that they're doing, and it's 3 or 4 levels above my head, but we can still learn from these other ecosystems. And that doesn't mean I'm gonna go be an Elixir developer, but that does mean I can look at what they're doing and say, like, oh, wow. That's amazing. I wonder if I could port that over to my language. And I think the same goes for podcasts.

Aaron

00:22:33 – 00:22:46

Everyone has a unique point of view, and the more people that we have out there talking about it, I think the broader and more diverse points of view we're exposed to, I think the better off we're all gonna be. So if you wanna start a podcast, go do it.

Brittany

00:22:47 – 00:23:04

Love that. And the reason that I like Framework Friends so much is I do get to hear concepts about Laravel, though I'm curious if you have any recommendations for even just breaking out of the Ruby community and listening to other ideas in other communities. I like the changelog a lot. They tend to have a lot of great content. But do you have any other recommendations, Aaron?

Aaron

00:23:05 – 00:23:34

A lot of my other recommendations are gonna be Laravel specific. And so if you're interested in that, there's Laravel News, which keeps everybody up to date on the latest changes in the framework and the ecosystem and that kind of thing. There's another one that Taylor, the creator, has done one for a while called the Larabell snippet. He doesn't do it quite as much anymore, but there is also a Larabel podcast, and they do theirs in seasons. And right now, they're going through notable packages in the ecosystem.

Aaron

00:23:34 – 00:23:47

And so each different episode, they're bringing on a new package author and diving deep into, like, what does package do, who would use it, why would you use it, that sort of thing. So those are some of the ones, the Laravel specific ones that

Brittany

00:23:47 – 00:23:51

I enjoy. Okay. Awesome. Well, Drew, I have 2 questions for you. I hope you're ready.

Brittany

00:23:51 – 00:23:59

One's for me and then one is from a listener. So the first one for me is, does that mean you're gonna be on the dating market at some point for a cohost? And what are you looking for?

Drew

00:24:00 – 00:24:32

I have been thinking about it. I don't know what I'm looking for, which is why I haven't gone out and done it. Ideally, I would just steal Andrew Mason, and I'd be done with it because he's the whole reason why the podcast exists anyway. But, yeah, I don't know. It would definitely be nice to have someone even just as a regular guest almost just so that when I don't have time to, like, bring in a new guest and, like, set that all up just someone to chat with or someone to even do some of the guest interviews when I get slammed at work would be awesome.

Drew

00:24:32 – 00:24:39

But I have to figure out exactly what I'm looking for in that front before I actually start going down and finding someone.

Brittany

00:24:40 – 00:24:55

Okay. So listeners should keep an eye on Twitter. And if you have any recommendations, I mean, my recommendation for you is to know what you do well and find the person who's gonna be the opposite of that. So I think that's great. This episode is also brought to you by Scout APM.

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Brittany

00:25:31 – 00:25:48

As a special offer for Ruby on Rails listeners, Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Learn more at scoutapm.com/rubyonrails. So the listener question is from Tim Carey. He wants to know, Drew, what's up with Vue components?

Drew

00:25:49 – 00:26:08

They're awesome. You should use them if you're struggling with components, partials, and organizing views in your Rails app. I think Joel has done a great job developing that system. We are actively implementing it at work. It's one of the projects I'm kind of in charge of, and it's going really well.

Drew

00:26:09 – 00:26:15

So I can't say enough nice things about it. And, yeah, you should definitely check it out if you have not already.

Brittany

00:26:15 – 00:26:27

So, Brian, I think we talked about how there is still so much demand for Ruby and Rails developers right now and really for developers in general. Do you have any tips for employers who are looking to hire right now?

Brian

00:26:28 – 00:26:48

Yeah. A couple tips. Just a couple, like, unique things that I saw work well recently. 1, which I may have brought up once on the Ruby podcast, but maybe not, is the idea of using a reverse reference. That really worked well, and I've been advising, like, almost every client now, especially when you get to the end of the stage and they have a developer they really would like to hire.

Brian

00:26:48 – 00:27:16

It is very helpful to actually send references to the candidates, and there could be all kinds of reasons. In this one particular case, the CTO was just a great mentor, and he had been a great mentor to a lot of people. And it was kinda like the right timing to sort of send the candidate some references to because his big thing in that situation was that he thought he could be very good career wise for that engineer. And she took him up on that. And as an engineer, she was sold on that.

Brian

00:27:16 – 00:27:33

Like, she really talked to some of the people that were mentored by the CTO and saw their career trajectory and growth and what they had to say. She talked to them, and it really made a big difference. So that's kind of a cool thing. Right? Everyone always asks the candidate for references, but the candidate never really asks the employer for references.

Brian

00:27:33 – 00:27:52

So I thought that was interesting. The other thing I would say for both companies hiring and for developers, get a Calendly account. That is, like, the number one thing because it is so hard to book interviews. And a lot of times, I get stuck in the middle, and I have no problem doing it. But it's so tough.

Brian

00:27:52 – 00:28:11

People's schedules change so fast, and time is of the essence when you're hiring. So the sooner you can just give all the autonomy to the developer and say, book whatever works for you it's such a simple thing. More employers are doing it now, but not as many as I would love, at least of my clients. So I always advocate for that as well. Calendly is big.

Brittany

00:28:12 – 00:28:31

I agree. I think it's a courtesy. And this podcast is not sponsored by them, but I am a huge fan of the Art of Product podcast. And so I'm a very loyal SavvyCal user and Tuple user. So I just really bought in there because if you listen to an episodic podcast like that, you really just start to cheer them on.

Brittany

00:28:31 – 00:28:53

And so then you kinda wanna use the product. So it's very clever what they've done, and they're incredibly committed to what they do. Now, Jason, I wanna ask you, how can podcasts stay connected with our listeners nowadays? Just because we have more than 60 people watching this, and this will be far wider once we publish this out there. So how can we stay connected to our listeners?

Andrew

00:28:54 – 00:29:15

There's so much of the Ruby community that's on Twitter that that's, like, always my go to. I left Twitter and then realized I talk to anyone in Ruby anymore and came back. It was, like, total mistake. So that's actually the thing we do the most. I recently started just, like, tweeting for the remote Ruby account, asking people what they wanna talk about.

Andrew

00:29:15 – 00:29:36

And once you filter out most of the people who are just trolling us, we've taken those and made whole episodes out of it. And that's been a really good way to feel connected is because sometimes, like, after we record it, we can just, like, tweet that episode back to someone. And it's I don't know. It just feels like real interaction. Outside of that, really, it's just the conference thing too.

Andrew

00:29:36 – 00:29:57

Like, going to conferences and actually, like, meeting people who listen. Because I often say a lot of times it feels like we're just recording into the void. So when people come and talk to you and be like, oh, like, this episode or, like, this life event or somebody, like, I was getting on the elevator at rails comp, and they were like, bet. And that was the thing we told people to tell us at RailsConf. And I was like, holy crap.

Andrew

00:29:57 – 00:30:00

There's a lot of just little interpersonal ways.

Andy

00:30:01 – 00:30:01

So I

Brittany

00:30:01 – 00:30:27

have an upcoming episode where I have Nick Schroeder, one of the cohosts of the Ruby on Rails podcast, attempt to explain Twitter spaces to me because I'm a grandma. But I will also admit too that I'm not good at discourse either. So if there are discourses that I should be in, like, does anybody on this panel know? Like, are there other places to be other than Twitter? Because to me, Reddit only gets exciting in r/rails when someone randomly comes by with a train GIF, and they think that's what that's worth.

Brittany

00:30:28 – 00:30:35

Those are the best posts, but, otherwise, I don't get a ton of value out of Reddit on that front. What do you think, Drew?

Drew

00:30:35 – 00:30:49

The Go Rails Discord is a really good one. I think you might have to be a subscriber, which you should be anyway. But, yeah, that's a reactive one. I do way more lurking than posting in there, but it's a very active group.

Brittany

00:30:49 – 00:30:50

Do you have any advice, Andy?

Andy

00:30:51 – 00:30:56

I was just thinking RubyTok. It's gonna be a thing. Right? I hear TikTok is big with the kids. I'm a 42 year old bull man.

Andy

00:30:56 – 00:30:57

What the hell do I know?

Brittany

00:30:58 – 00:31:01

Does Does anyone else have any other suggestions for connecting with your listeners?

Jemma

00:31:02 – 00:31:13

I think open source is another way to do it. The open source community is pretty active and vibrant, and there are ways you can pair with people or just contribute in open source communities and meet more folks doing Ruby.

Brittany

00:31:13 – 00:31:18

I think that's a great segue into asking you, Gemma. How have you been enjoying working on Ruby itself?

Jemma

00:31:19 – 00:31:39

I love it. I feel very fortunate to be able to work on the internals there. I feel really lucky and it's been so interesting. And I think I've been trying as I go along to also make it easier and more straightforward for others to contribute. Because I think Ruby itself, it's not the most straightforward how to even install it or get it running locally or things like that.

Jemma

00:31:39 – 00:31:44

And so hopefully, yeah, more folks will be interested in doing that if it's made a little more approachable.

Brittany

00:31:45 – 00:32:00

I've asked you this on a podcast before, but I love the tips. It's actually the reason I reached out to Gemma to even have her on the show was the tips that she posts in Ruby Weekly. Ruby Weekly is always just, like, such a highlight for me. And I'm curious, like, where do you get these ideas from?

Jemma

00:32:01 – 00:32:24

I'm always looking for new ideas. So if anyone has, please shoot them my way. At first, it was just reading docs and being like, oh, I hadn't heard of this or this method wasn't something I knew about. Also, a lot of it comes from pairing, which now that I'm working on Ruby, I'm writing more C than Ruby. I'm getting less of it from pairing, but just pairing with people, I think is such a good way to learn not only about Ruby, but just their workflows and things like that.

Jemma

00:32:24 – 00:32:36

And you'll pick up little commands people will write or little things they'll do or, or things you thought were well known that they didn't know or vice versa, and that's a really good source of tips.

Andy

00:32:36 – 00:32:55

So I this is the entire reason I write my blog. I've a newsletter that was fortnightly and then is currently on hiatus whilst I was doing a Ruby talk. But, yeah, similar thought thing. Like, it was things that I was realizing I was writing these quite I'm not gonna use the word eloquent, but eloquent PR reviews of, like, don't do it like this. How do you thought about doing like this?

Andy

00:32:55 – 00:33:09

What about using this technique? Actually, the ruby idiom is more like this. And I was like, I'm wasting these in my private PRs. I should be putting these out into the world. And so that's the entire reason that I have a newsletter thing, my blog.

Andy

00:33:09 – 00:33:24

So, that's that's similar sort of thing. It's just like, oh, did you not know that? Or I can't believe I've been programming in Ruby for 12 years, and I've just come across this method that does a thing that I've been writing some Byzantine page full of code to do. So, yeah, always learning. That's good.

Andy

00:33:24 – 00:33:25

Right?

Brittany

00:33:25 – 00:33:32

So on the topic of communication, I'm glad that we're recording this because I've always wanted to ask Aaron this. Aaron, how are you so good at Twitter?

Aaron

00:33:33 – 00:34:14

Oh, I spend a lot of time on it? Yeah. That's funny because as Andy as you were talking about doing this and then using it as a newsletter, I was thinking, I bet everyone here does stuff all day long at work that would just make incredible content on Twitter. And so, I think that's part of what I do is I've trained my brain to kinda have, like, content brain where I can look at something that I'm doing and be able to pull that out and turn it into, like, a little snippet to share. One of the things I learned maybe a year or 2 ago was you never know what other people are gonna find interesting, And I was doing a lot of self limiting.

Aaron

00:34:15 – 00:34:44

I was being the blocker on what I was sharing with people. And once I removed that, it was like, I actually have no idea what people will find interesting. I'm just gonna share more stuff. That's when it really started to hit for me because I would share something that I thought was just totally obvious and a throwaway, and it would go crazy. And I would share something that I thought was really smart and really clever, and people were like, yeah, I don't get it.

Aaron

00:34:44 – 00:35:10

That's stupid. And so I just kinda decided, okay, my job here is not to decide what other people will determine as, like, too easy or whatever. My job is to find interesting things that I'm doing, package it up in an accessible way for Twitter, which is kinda like a art in itself, and then just share it. And if it goes nowhere, that's fine, because I'm gonna share something else, you know, later today or tomorrow or whenever.

Brittany

00:35:11 – 00:35:27

So, Brian, how much does it matter about actual community content that someone's putting out in terms of finding a job? Because I had a friend the other day that was prompted for their link to their Facebook page and she's like, no. I would not provide that. So I'm curious what your take is there.

Brian

00:35:27 – 00:35:42

Gosh. The more, the better. It's usually a matter of time. People can dedicate the time to do it. But, yeah, for engineers, I always tell them anything you can't share, whether it's your code or whether it is a blog or whatever it might be, it's just gonna go so far for you.

Brian

00:35:42 – 00:36:10

And with the code, it's tough because sometimes people can work for years on stuff that's proprietary and they're not able to share it. But more and more people are, like, going out of the way, especially young developers or people early in their career. That's, like, the number one piece of advice I have is show off your skills however you can. Like, just get something out there publicly. And that has made a big difference because otherwise, especially if you don't have a ton of experience just coming out of a boot camp or just out of college, wherever it might be, it could be a little bit of a struggle.

Brian

00:36:10 – 00:36:19

But when you can show something, some involvement, some engagement, that it does. It goes a long way. It's just a matter of depending on the seniority level, how much time folks have to do it.

Brittany

00:36:19 – 00:36:20

What do you think, Andy?

Andy

00:36:20 – 00:36:42

Also, take dates off blog posts. This is my number one rule for life, is take dates off blog posts because nobody needs to know that those 5 posts that you wrote in a month when you first set your blog up were the only post you wrote. So maybe put the date on it, but it's small at the bottom. Probably the advice you're giving is still relevant, so take your dates of blog posts. And the other thing I'll say, this is literally the reason I ended up running conferences.

Andy

00:36:42 – 00:36:58

So I lived in Singapore for 6 years. I did Ruby and Rails over there, and I came back to the UK, and I knew nobody. So I just thought, what's the easiest way to get to know people? I was wrong. It was really, really hard work, but that's similar sort of instinct or, like, putting yourself out there.

Andy

00:36:58 – 00:37:00

That's the only thing you can do. Right?

Aaron

00:37:00 – 00:37:36

Brian was talking about people working on internal apps and not being able to share. I think that's very true for a lot of people. But I think if you take maybe it's just like a half step further, you'll find that you're solving pretty normal problems. Even if you can't open source the code or whatever, you solved a problem that a bunch of other people are having. You can take the code and generalize it into, like, a learning or a takeaway or some sort of abstraction, put it into one of those online code formatters, make a pretty screenshot, whatever, and say, like, hey.

Aaron

00:37:36 – 00:38:02

Here's what I learned. This is the pattern that I used. And so even if you're in a spot where you're, like, I don't know, what's the worst, like, working inside of a bank, you'll never be able to share, like, open source any of the code you wrote. I bet every single day you learned something or did something in a clever way or came across something that you've thought was interesting that you could go right from scratch in one of those little screenshot editors and then just share just, like, the general takeaway.

Brittany

00:38:03 – 00:38:07

For the record, Aaron, Brian brought me a developer who was working inside of banks.

Aaron

00:38:08 – 00:38:13

I know who I was gonna offend by saying, what's the worst, probably working in a bank?

Brittany

00:38:13 – 00:38:15

What do you think, Gemma?

Jemma

00:38:15 – 00:38:39

Yeah. I think there's also a way to share content that's not specifically code. Sharing your workflows or your processes or things like that that won't be proprietary. Also, just that talks are a great avenue to do this, whether it is code you want to share or processes or how you manage or how you thought about architecting a bigger project or anything like that. Always apply to talk at conferences too because I think that also gets you to what Brian was saying.

Jemma

00:38:39 – 00:38:45

It gets you like a wider surface area or a bigger net that companies can notice you from?

Drew

00:38:46 – 00:39:09

Yeah. Actually, I've been pairing a fair amount with Andrew Mason from time to time, and he recently I forget what was going on, but he got real mad about something I had set up in my editor. He was mad and I I said that I don't really know how to set up this editor. I kind of just install an extension I need and then it just sits there and he started tweaking things, and he made it so much better. And I was like, wow.

Drew

00:39:09 – 00:39:18

That's not even code related, but now my entire job has gotten much easier by implementing something that he was like, this is annoying. Change it. And I was, like, actually, this is amazing.

Brittany

00:39:19 – 00:39:20

Any thoughts there, Jason?

Andrew

00:39:20 – 00:39:33

I just wanna say that if you are looking to create more presence for yourself, don't start a conference to do that. I know Andy mentioned conference, and I was thinking about Southeast Ruby and

Andy

00:39:33 – 00:39:37

Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Friends don't let friends know at conferences.

Andrew

00:39:38 – 00:39:52

Oh, well, still start a conference, but don't do it for, like, money or notoriety or any of that stuff. Just do it because you, like, wanna hang out with folks. That's a good reason, like Andy was saying, like, he just said no mini Ruby devs.

Andy

00:39:53 – 00:40:03

Also, like, if you do wanna start a conference, drop me an email. I will help you. I have a lot of experience in this. If you're thinking about doing it, do it. It is fun.

Andy

00:40:03 – 00:40:15

You just need to put guardrails on yourself. Mhmm. It can be a little financially scary, but I think more regional conferences is better than to a couple of massive events. It'd be nice to have more regional conferences back.

Andrew

00:40:16 – 00:40:26

Shout out to Andy who still puts on Verizon Ruby. It is no small feat to put on a conference. But to keep doing it, give that man an award.

Andy

00:40:26 – 00:40:29

You've gotta be a massive egomaniac. That's the trick.

Andrew

00:40:29 – 00:40:31

Alright. Can't compete with that kind of guy.

Brittany

00:40:33 – 00:40:40

Andy, how do you do it? Are you organizing yourself? Do you have people you can rely on? Do you have sponsors? Just any sort of tips there.

Brittany

00:40:40 – 00:40:42

I'm so curious, like, how you pull it off.

Andy

00:40:42 – 00:40:54

So I deliberately limit myself to what I offer. I do one day. I do one track. I keep it relatively small. So there was a good chance that I was not gonna get back on the horse after the COVID break.

Andy

00:40:54 – 00:41:10

It's easier to keep it going if you are focused. I'm very focused on breaking even. So, like, I do my maths upfront, get a little spreadsheet out, and I work out how much ticket process is gonna be, how much I think I can get for sponsorships. I've been fortunate. There's a few good Ruby shops in the UK.

Andy

00:41:11 – 00:41:29

People like FreeAgent and Cookpad who have sponsored me for years. And so, generally, I can sort of ping the VP engineering or the CTO or their marketing. So thinking of doing it again, would you in principle be interested in throwing me some money to make it happen? And that really helps. You need sponsorship.

Andy

00:41:30 – 00:41:39

Don't do food. Food's really expensive. Do it somewhere people can go get their own food, like the city that I live in. And, yeah, just constrain yourself. I mean, I actually don't have much help.

Andy

00:41:39 – 00:42:00

I do everything myself, like egomaniac. I get help on the day, so my friend Nadia comes down. She does the registration, and I lean on venues that do a lot for me as well. So, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that I do to make it easier so I'm not doing lots of stuff, but also I do things like I hole punch 200 badges, which is what's coming up for me in the next 2 weeks. They literally sat down here by the side of my desk.

Andy

00:42:00 – 00:42:07

So I design the badge, and then I hole punch it, and then I put the lanyard on, and then everyone wears them, and then it's all good.

Brittany

00:42:07 – 00:42:13

Awesome. Well, Jason, you are gonna take us home with a closing thought there. So it's gotta be a good one. It's gotta be good.

Andrew

00:42:13 – 00:42:28

I'm gonna overpromise and underdeliver. I was just gonna say, even listening to Andy right there, I learned so much about what I did wrong for 3 years with Southeast Ruby. So I think that's all very good advice. That's my deep thought.

Brittany

00:42:28 – 00:42:41

That's awesome. Well, I have had so much fun having this conversation today. Big thank you to our panelists today, Brian, Gemma, Andy, Drew, Aaron, and Jason. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to all the people who are listening live at RailsConf at Home.

Brittany

00:42:41 – 00:42:51

We so appreciate you. Thank you to our listeners. And if you have any follow-up questions for us, you know how to find us. We'll link it up all in the show notes, but thank you so much, and have a great conference, everyone.

Aaron

00:42:52 – 00:43:07

You've been listening to the Ruby on Rails podcast. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded to stay in the loop on Ruby on Rails and open source software. While you're at it, please leave us a review, and thank you for listening.

Andy

00:43:10 – 00:43:19

It's just me now. You should all go. What are you still doing here? It's over. Bye, people.

The RailsConf At Home 2022 Ruby Podcast Panel

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