Dust off your ugly sweaters because we’re getting into the holiday spirit on this episode of The Dev Morning Show (At Night)! Cassidy and Zach are looking back at their favorite moments from the show; discussing the best guest advice, answers that stuck with them, and their plans for the holiday season.
Dust off your ugly sweaters because we’re getting into the holiday spirit on this episode of The Dev Morning Show (At Night)! Cassidy and Zach are looking back at their favorite moments from the show; discussing the best guest advice, answers that stuck with them, and their plans for the holiday season.
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Episode Timestamps:
(01:32): Cassidy and Zach discuss the holiday season
(06:02): The hosts dive into their career backgrounds
(18:14): Favorite guest moments
(27:16): Dev Opposites moments
(40:46): Favorite advice from guests
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“People go for the big titles of being a manager of some kind because they think that's what they have to do. And that can really affect your team and affect your team's performance, that can affect so many different things. If you as a manager don't actually want to be a manager, or if you end up having a manager that just wants the title and power and the growth on their resume, rather than actually wanting to be in that kind of role.” – Cassidy Williams
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Links:
The Dev Morning Show (At Night) YouTube Page
Cassidy Williams: Hello everybody and welcome back to The Dev Morning Show (At Night). I'm your host, Cassidy Williams. I am here with my wonderful co-host, Zach Plata, and today we're going to be getting into the holiday spirit and looking back at some of our favorite moments on the show.
Zach Plata: I am so excited cuz there are so many just.
Picturesque moments during this, th all, all the episodes,
Cassidy Williams: but also there, there were so many good ones that were hard to, it's hard to pick from them because I, I genuinely enjoyed just chatting on so many episodes. And also so many of them actually did stick with me where I refer to them and I'm just like, I'm referring to our show.
That's pretty cool. .
Zach Plata: Heck yeah. . Um, To start, can we just talk about your lighting situation in the back of your room? It is Glow. Get in the spirit.
Cassidy Williams: Love. Thank you so much . We, we've got our, are you wearing ugly sweaters on? Yeah. Mine says fleece snay Dud. And it's got a little sheep on it.
Zach Plata: Mine is was on clearance.
Um, I got this, I got this years ago. It's, oh God,
Cassidy Williams: sorry. . Oh, it's like Stranger Things. I like it. It's
Zach Plata: a Stranger Things holiday esque kind of thing.
Cassidy Williams: Nice. Yeah, that was fun. . I think I got it. Like Thaty. That's pretty good. What's your favorite thing about the holiday season?
Zach Plata: Uh, I think it's the decorating. I, I think it's like the vibes of, you know, like when you're ready to put up decorations around the house and you put on like elf and you're sipping hot chocolate or whatever it is, sound.
It's just a vibe and
Cassidy Williams: it's, it's so cozy. Yes. I, I, I like the co Yeah. The cozy vibes are so nice. The, the food in general, like it's, I I love that. Just like eggnog and pumpkin pie are a thing that is common everywhere. Yes. Around this time of year, I just, that's all I want to eat and consume and it's great.
Zach Plata: So yes to pumpkin pie, and I'm going to be outing myself a bit here. You don't like igna. . I've never tried egg.
Cassidy Williams: You've never tried it.
Zach Plata: Zach, come to my house. I
Cassidy Williams: know. . Oh, are you kidding me? It's so good. I mean,
Zach Plata: it's not that I, I'm like disgusted by it or anything. I think it's just like I've never gone out of my way to try the thing.
Yeah. But I imagine it tastes like vanilla custard.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah, that's about right. Honestly, like, and I'm sure there's going to be like some purists out there who are just like, that's not what it tastes like. It honestly tastes like melted ice cream to me, which is great. Okay. It's drink. I'm down for that. A little bit thicker.
No, but it's, it's, it's so good. And I, I never really spike mine or anything. I tru, I truly just get it from like the grocery store. Mm-hmm. , an eggnog. Ice cream is another level. It's basically vanilla ice cream, but with like, , whatever that flavor is. I don't know what, what is, what is nag?
Zach Plata: I, I don't know. I have no idea.
There are ice cream flavors of this too. I'm sure there are buts. Gosh. All right. I, I'm sure I made a few like enemies today. It's funny. It's okay. Another new thing. Try for this first show. That's true. What, what are your plans for the holidays?
Cassidy Williams: We're mostly just sticking around here actually, which should be nice.
I nice. After we record this episode, we're doing like a little family trip and stuff, but that's before the holidays and then mm-hmm. , I, I think, yeah, we're just kind of sticking around home, which should be nice cuz a lot of times you travel to see in-laws or family or, or various people and stuff. And I think everybody's coming to Chicago this year, which I'm very happy about cuz I don't have to go anywhere.
Zach Plata: Yeah, trying to deal with lights and or long car drives, um, during a couple days, it's a nightmare. A pain
Cassidy Williams: does. The airports are not a fun time around this time of year.
Zach Plata: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Absolutely not. . Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: What, what are your plans.
Zach Plata: I am, uh, I'm gonna be one of those travelers, but I will not be flying. I'm gonna be driving nine hours to Kansas for my partners nine an hour holiday
Um, and it's gonna be, let me preface this. So we have a new puppy, right? Um oh yeah. We drove 45 minutes to the burbs for Thanksgiving. and my puppy puked twice. Oh no. And like once on the way back home. And so I'm like, I had no idea you have to like car train or whatever, a puppy. And now I'm like nine hours.
I am terrified what's
Cassidy Williams: gonna happen. That's gonna be a, that's gonna be a long trip. . Yeah, you, you might wanna do like some short trips for the next like couple weeks. That's stuff to, that's
Zach Plata: prepares. I wanna do that for sure. Like this weekend. Just do some like little training and build up. Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: Oh no, the poor thing,
Zach Plata: I know. Well, speaking of building up, it's time for our lovely. Sponsor to build up developers and companies, um, with awesome software. So The Dev Morning Show (At Night) is a sponsored podcast, means someone has to pay the bills around here, we're sponsored by LaunchDarkly. And LaunchDarkly is the first scalable feature management platform.
That means dev teams can innovate and get better software to customers faster. How? By gradually releasing new software features and shipping code whenever they. Fast tracking their journeys to the cloud and building stronger relationships with business teams. Thanks for the money, LaunchDarkly.
Cassidy Williams: Before we get into our favorite moments on the show in general, uh, we should give you a look into who the heck we are cuz we've been around on this show for a minute and we're strangers to you.
Um, . Zach, could you tell us about Rive and how you got to this point in your career, what you do? .
Zach Plata: Yeah, so at Rive, um, I'm a, I work in DevRel there. I'm their first DevRel hire, which is, uh, really fun and really interesting kind of, uh, situation, but hard too . Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's got a lot of challenges, but it's, it's been super fun.
Um, and I think what makes it fun is, um, the technology itself arrive. Um, TLDR is basically a, a way to bring like build like animated and interactive content in an editor. That's very much. Kind of figma, kind of after effects ish kind of thing, trying to bring back like, I think like flashback to the web and make the web fun again.
Um, and uh, the other part too, you know, building those animations is being able to export it out into your apps and websites and things. And so it's got like open source libraries that help you do that. And so I help try and, uh, build a community around, you know, um, people who are trying. Bring more fun and interactive, uh, content into their, into their, um, applications and all that good stuff.
And, uh, it's, it's been fun. So I, I've, I like Dev. I, I know we've, we've talked about this in the past with several different people, but it's like such a, a breadth of a field where like lots of one day you'll be working on documentation Lots. Yes. So many different hats. And, um, it's. It's been different because like before this I was mostly doing like front end web development for several years.
Mm-hmm. , um, working in, you know, JavaScript, html, blah, blah, blah. And now it's more of kind of a generalist role and it's, it's been interesting to learn of like, other things outside of JavaScript. I'm like, what ? Yeah. Um,
Cassidy Williams: well, and it's, it's, it's like both generalists and specific because you have to have specific skills to do the role cuz it's such a communication oriented role too.
Zach Plata: Exactly. And so yeah, my, like, when I'm trying to learn like all these new technologies, my first thing is like, okay, how do you do this in like Swift ui? But, and I'm thinking in like JavaScript terms, like, oh wait a thing, you know, , um, and it's, there's no dumb. It's fun. Um, yeah, it's a lot of learning. It really, it's truly like, I, I figured it, you know, be a.
an easy transition because it's like, oh yeah, I've been a dev. Like I could probably do this. But it's a whole new kind of, uh, tool set that you really need to, to do the job effectively. And so that's, it's been fun trying to transition into this .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, and it's, it's been cool too cuz I, I've like tuned into some of your streams and stuff and it's such a different kind of tool for developers cuz it's developers and designers that can play with it and build stuff with it and.
The website is cool. I really like just animations and stuff in general, and , you make me wanna play with it, so I guess you're doing your job well.
Zach Plata: Perfect. I think that's, I think that's
Cassidy Williams: my job. , you done send this clip to your boss?
Zach Plata: Yeah. . Boom. Raise Anyway. . Well what about you? How did you, you know, end up at Contenda as the CTO of all things and you know Yeah.
Where you got to in your career to get here?
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. And. as, as folks who have seen the show for a little bit. I did not start as CTO as Contenda. Mm-hmm. , when this show started, I was, I was working at remote before and I, I was really liking that role, but it was not as technical as I wanted it to be. And it was also just kind of in a weird time with like, the economy and, and, and various things where I wasn't.
Mm-hmm. able to fully do all of the interactions with developers that I wanted to do. And so it was something where I was, I was kind of doing the job, but I was open to possibilities. And then we had Lilly Chen on the show who was fun and entertaining, so Great, great. Um, which go find her episode. She's the monk who learned how to code, um, and, uh, , I, I had been hanging out with Lilly and chatting with Lilly a bunch for, for a while.
I, I've been an advisor for her startup Contenda forever, ever since it started. Mm-hmm. . And there was a point where she reached out and she was just like, Hey, so we've been thinking about how we need a CTO soon because of where we are fundraising wise, where we are technology wise. We need like some more leadership and stuff in the company.
Would you consider it and. It was kind of a no-brainer. It was something that I immediately was just like, dang. Yes. But I, I, I did have to think about it a little bit just cause I didn't want to act too rationally. But then after getting on the call with my sister and being just like, I'm thinking about this role, she's like, you know, you're gonna take it.
Just take it And ,
Zach Plata: she knows you. There you go.
Cassidy Williams: So anyway, I, I ended up in this role and so what Contenda. Uh, which, um, once again, if you've seen Lilly's episode, you know this, but I'm gonna tell you again anyway, is, uh, it's a generative AI startup that creates content from existing content. And so if I were to give a conference talk, record a podcast, write a blog, post, whatever we can take, That video and create a blog post about it, or take a blog or video and create a tweet thread about it or create highlight clips from it, and it does it all automatically with the power of ai and it's, Really interesting because first of all, I haven't touched artificial intelligence or AI in a few years.
And so it's, it's kind of like it's all coming back. It's all coming back now. a lot of a, of what is that things? Yeah. A lot of, a lot of stuff is coming back into my brain of, from the AI stuff that I used to work with several years ago, um, but also, There's so many AI companies out there now, and, and you see like people making art with things like Mid Journey and people writing, marketing copy, copy, copy with, uh, like Jasper and copy ai, and these are all these generative AI tools that are similar but different because the, that is more.
The phrase is like prompt engineering, where you kind of tweak your prompt a bunch to be able to get the output that you want. But with Contenda, we do no prompt engineering whatsoever because it's just pulling from. Your content. And so if your conference talk talks about a topic, the blog post will also talk about the topic, but it's also not a transcript.
And it also depends a lot more on actual technical accuracy because we include code samples in the output blog post, even if you don't show code samples in your talk, but you're describing code. And so it's, it's been really interesting to see the challenges of that, to work with the team on that. And.
Even just testing that, figuring out how to test accuracy of code samples has been a very, very interesting problem that the team's
Zach Plata: solving. And I think that code samples thing is the coolest piece. It's like mind blowing. It's like, yeah, I'm not even talking or about, you know, line by line. You know what you would type and this thing would just generate coat snippets about like what you're talking about.
It's kind of. that like, whoa, moment when, uh, what was it? GitHub pilot right? Came Oh yeah. Came out Pilot. And I was just like, you wrote that
Cassidy Williams: by yourself. Yeah. . It's scary. Tech technology is wild. Like I have to just say like, work in AI before AI replaces you. . Um, yeah. It's, it's been, it's been really cool getting to do that.
And the team is small too. I. I really like being at a small company. I, I haven't been at a very small company in, in a minute and it, it's been nice being at like a less than 10 people company and just kind of working fast and iterating with our smaller team
Zach Plata: too. Yeah. I feel like there's like a lot of freedom and, um, less like pressure of like ancillary politics or, you know, whatever Right.
Environmental thing might be going on that allows you to like really speak freely and share ideas easily and it's. , it's kind of like a, a little fun hackathon, but for your job, .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. And you, you get to really solidify and establish a culture at this stage. Mm-hmm. too. Mm-hmm. . Because a lot of times you kind of join a culture and you're like, how do I fit in and add to this?
But when you're on such a small team, it's just like, I'm creating this from scratch for better or for worse. Um, that's true. And, and there's, it's exciting to be at that point in the company and also in a leadership position. It's. Pulling in a lot of just knowledge from previous roles and being like, ah, yes, I've done this before.
I could be on this sales call because we don't have a salesperson. So that's, that's me and Lilly and, and saying like, oh sure I can be on this fundraising call cuz I've talked to VCs before. Right. And, and a lot of it is learning as you do it and a lot of it is just kind of hoping your learnings from previous.
Are
Zach Plata: enough. Right. And I think it's, it's pretty unique that you got insight into, you know, how the company is run and you know how it works as when you were from, from your advisory work with them, so, right. You know, as opposed to kind of going in cold and being like, well, is the grass greener on the other side?
You, you had an idea of, you know, what, what it all was. And so that's, that's pretty awesome.
Cassidy Williams: That's very true. And that's something that I. Uh, in general, people should try advisory roles if they can find them. That was something that I didn't actually know existed two years ago. Like, I think I first discovered what an advisory role was at like mid pandemic, which is such a weird time to say, but like end of 20, 20 ish.
Sure. Yeah. Um, where I, I was talking with someone and they were saying like, oh yeah, well I advise these companies. And I was like, what does that mean? Are you, are you just. chatting with founders on occasion, they're just like, well, it's a bit more involved with that and than that, and kind of learning how to.
give your expertise to companies in a way that's valuable to them and then mm-hmm. them providing value to do you, whether it be with relationships or, or with ownership in the company or, or things like that. And it was something where, once again, I didn't know it existed. And then after kind of saying, I like advising companies, I think it could be fun to do and kind of putting it out into the ether of the universe.
There's a lot of advisory rules out there if you look for 'em and, and say that you're open to them. And I, I think anybody out there listening, if that's something that interests you, you should try it out. Cuz it's really a fun way to be involved with a company without being in the every single day to day of it.
Zach Plata: That's a, that's a, that's really great advice. I honestly, before you entered your advisor role, I had no idea. Like, cuz I had just assumed like, oh, it's people that have like, Dozens and dozens of years of experience and Right. A lot of money to, to, to do all the investing and advising and stuff. But it, it's cool to hear your perspective about it and how, you know, accessible it is as a role.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. And like granted, you're probably not going to advise. Google or, or some really massive company. But there, there's so many startups that could use your expertise just because they haven't hired for a certain role before or they haven't done a certain thing before, they haven't had experience with X, Y, and Z.
And you might have the ex specific experience they need where. Even if it's just like a monthly call where you say like, oh, this is what I would do because this is what happened when I worked at this company, or this is what I would do because this is my inclination as a possible customer for you, or something like that.
Mm-hmm. , it, it's really helpful to them and it's, it's one of those things where it feels like you're giving back in a very, very meaningful way because it's actually affecting a company's roadmap and stuff. Yeah.
Zach Plata: That's awesome.
Cassidy Williams: All right, let's talk about the show. Thank you. Uh, let's look back at kind of some of our favorite moments from the show so far.
Is there, is there a guest moment that stood out to you, Zach?
Zach Plata: Okay. . This one was fun. It was with. Cami, your sister. Hey, uh, we were all, if y'all remember that episode where we had Cami on, um, she's a engineering manager at, uh, Meta, and she talked about her story of how she, uh, broke YouTube in France when she was at Google
So let's, let's take a look back at, at that clip and, and reminisce.
Cassidy Williams: What's a story of something that you broke? Oh, no.
Cami Williams: I do actually have a answer for this. That kept me up many nights. Oh no. So when I was a engineer, um, at Google, I mentioned that I am not a front end engineer and Luk . So I had to learn. Things kind of on the job and it, it definitely wasn't the first thing I pushed, but it was one of the first things I pushed, uh, to Google Slides.
Um, I like got code approval and everything. It was approved, so sent out the pr, um, everything seemed. . But then the next morning I had so many messages from people in France and it was because I broke YouTube in France. Oh gosh. Oh, . It was . I don't think it was all of France. It might have been a specific region, but I just remember thinking that I was gonna get fired.
Um, I didn't get fired, but it was absolutely horrifying. Oh gosh. And very sad because I had to then, , roll back my feature and start. scratch.
Cassidy Williams: Oh gosh. You could make a joke about that. It was like, oh, it was broken in a specific region of French. Everywhere else it was just sparkling broken, you know, like the champagne region and stuff?
Cami Williams: Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't get it at first. . There you go. . Gosh, maybe don't share that joke at a party.
Cassidy Williams: Fine. Maybe don't break YouTube in France too soon. Yeah, that was a, that was a pretty, that was a fun episode. It's, it's particularly fun because like I, I enjoyed the back and forth roasting. There were multiple times where, People messaged me after the episode saying like, this was the most sister interaction I've ever seen.
just, but it was, it was also just fun to kind of hear, hear that kind of background and, and also it's, it's nice and humanizing when someone breaks such a large website, Yeah.
Zach Plata: It, it really puts into perspective like, oh no, you broke your test environment. Well, you know, there have been worse things and it, it's good to talk about all these things and normal.
All of, all of the pain we suffer. Yeah. As software engineers and developers and yada yada ,
Cassidy Williams: they've been doing so many interesting things with the Metaverse stuff. Mm-hmm. and, and all, all of, all of this virtual world stuff, even though, uh, I think there's still a long way to go. The fact that it's a more of a normalized conversation has been really interesting in general, and, and hearing her talk about that was cool in like a professional manner, not just her calling me after work saying like, Ugh, I broke something to, or
Zach Plata: something like that.
Right, right. It, yeah. It's, it's, it's good to talk about it as like a learning experience and Yeah. You know, things happen. Yeah. But speaking of, have you ever broken something big? .
Cassidy Williams: I'm trying to think. My first week at Netlify, I broke the website , just like netlify.com. Um, luckily everybody was very cool about it and they said, Hey, welcome to Netlify.
As I was like, I'm so sorry. And I was able to do like one of those instant rollbacks. Yeah. And, and so that, that worked out well. . Yeah, that's, that's probably, that's the biggest one I can think of in recent times, but I know there's more. What about you, ? We
Zach Plata: just suppress it. actually though, I think I, I, I broke a login screen kind of once.
Mm-hmm. . Um, I was like, that's good. Tweaking some CSS things. Um, and I pushed it up. I was like, fine. I, I was just trying to move like, you know, those password inputs and they have like the i at the end where you can show your password, whatever. Um, I was trying to like move it over a pixel or something to align with the design.
I pushed it up. I was in the middle of, uh, conducting an interview for someone at the company, and then someone burst it in and they're like, Zack, you need to roll this back. You broke it on Firefox. And I was like, what? What? And I didn't check Firefox, cuz I don't test Firefox often as I should. But um, now you do
Now I do because the eye that was supposed just shift a, a pixel, it blew up in sp size and actually just took up the entire Oh. It overlayed the entire login form. And it was just like, oh, oops.
Cassidy Williams: It's always very humbling when something like CSS breaks a website. . Yes. Because you're like, it's not logic.
It's, it's like it's, it's just like making something look good and then you realize how powerful CSS can be. Yeah. That
Zach Plata: destroying, like, that's for all the people that are like, CSS is not programming.
Cassidy Williams: Just like, yeah, look at all these websites. I've broken with it. Then .
Zach Plata: Exactly. Okay, so going back, which guest answer kind of struck with you the most based on some of our questions?
Hmm. .
Cassidy Williams: I really liked speaking with Taylor Poindexter. Mm-hmm. , she had so many just awesome nuggets in general in our conversation. I really liked what she had to say about just being a manager and how it's hard to come by good ones, just because there's, there's so many good and bad ones out there, but you kind of have to find them.
Taylor Poindexter: Um, let's, let's hear what she has to say. I got into management because I knew what it was like to have a bad manager. I knew the impact that that can have on you. Uh, and I feel like I'm a pretty good people person and I'm very empathetic. And so I wanted to give that to other people.I'm basically just interfacing with my team and trying to figure out exactly how I can make their lives easier and how I can remove blockers for them. Um, in addition to obviously finding ways to make sure that our processes continue to become more.
. That was so good. I totally relate to that. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to what Taylor had to say there. Um, and I think it's really good that she kind of like, you know, has that background in, you know, I had a, I've had bad managerial experiences and I just want to, you know, be better for the people moving forward.
Zach Plata: It's like, right.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. And, and it's something that I think, especially before, I do think it's improving now, but a lot of people, In order to move up in my career and continue to improve in my career, I have to be a manager. Mm-hmm. . And so I'm going to be a manager, I guess, even though they might be more well suited for an individual contributor role, an IC role where they are coding, but they're doing more like architecture, big tech lead type stuff.
They're, there's so many options, but. , that's just, people go for like the big titles of being a manager of some kind because they think that's what they have to do and that can really affect your team and, and affect your team's performance. That can, that can affect so many different things. If you as a manager don't actually want to be a manager or, or if you end up having a manager that.
Kind of just wants the title and power and the growth right on their resume rather than actually wanting to be in that kind of
Zach Plata: role. Yeah, that's a, that's a good point. I think one thing when I started out my career, it was like, oh, you know, it'd be great if I could grow to the manager role. Like, you know, one just assumes, um, because I would, you know, be able to get paid more and, and, you know, have awesome benefits and stuff like that.
Right. Um, at one of my last companies, it. , um, they actually paid, like if you were at the same level, like entry level managers, um, the same as like the same like equivalent IC role. So it was like if you wanted to stay in IC route, like there, there really wasn't, um, uh, you know, you were encouraged to do so, and, you know, moving to manager was only if you really wanted to, you know, um, embrace that kind of role and career path.
Um, so there really was like no bias or, you know, big benefit to moving to like an. Kind
Cassidy Williams: of role. Yeah. I I love that. That is true cuz I want that to be prevalent everywhere. Yeah. Like that's, that's how it should be. And, and hopefully we see more of that in the industry cuz it would be better for everyone if everyone's stuck to their strengths and not just what they think they should be doing.
Agreed. Yeah. But in addition to the actual work stuff, we like to talk to our guests about their lives outside of their jobs, what hobbies they have, what they get up to on the weekends. Let's hear what they have to say.
Zach Plata: What is your go-to karaoke song? Ooh,
Chloe Condon: okay. I am an eighties girl. Yes. Eighties, nineties.
Keep going. briefly in a cover band in college, uh, or sub ooh, for fast times eighties. Um, I love, I mean, I think I've learned in my time with karaoke that you gotta do one that gets the crowd like pumped up. So I used to do ballads. I used to do, uh, total eclipse and like, how do I get you alone? But I now am in my Celine Dion era, so I'm really into, like, I drove all night, um, Some Dolly Parton I think is always a good choice.
Like you wanna leave them partying, like party in the usa also a bob if they're like, that's a great one. Yes. Depending on the crowd. Mm-hmm. , I feel like I also have to feel the energy of the room. If I'm at a piano bar, I'm gonna do like a maybe this time from cabaret kind of thing. Um, so yeah, it's all about the vibe.
We please go karaoke together cuz you have literally named every one of my favorite karaoke songs. Except for like a prayer, which is Oh yes, yes. Excellent.
Christina Zhu: During Covid, um, like many other people, I decided to pick up a Covid hobby. Unfortunately, it was not anything useful like crocheting or learning a new skill like cooking.
I decided to, um, become a gambler and get invested in Pokemon cards instead. So you're one of those I'm one of those, yes. I'm ashamed to admit it, but um, wow. I. Really getting into Pokemon cards cuz I had some when I was a child and I realized my childhood collection could have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And then I went home and my parents told me they tossed it away many years ago. So that was very heartbreaking. Um oh. So I went kind of real deep into that. You know, they're kind of like stocks. Um, they go up, they go, they really are. Yeah. They go up, they go down. No rhyme or reason to it. Um, so I did spend an embarrassing amount of money, you know, buying packs, um, and ripping o ripping them open, getting some cards, and then sending them to like these official grading companies to like look at my card and tell me like, yeah, this is a good card.
And then they like grade it from one to 10, and if it's a 10, you can resell it for. Way more money because 10 is like the highest score you can get. So yeah, that's a, that's a whole.
Chloe Shih: I really, I've been going back to voice lessons singing again. So I think it's been like an kind of an adult passion that I've had.
I really, really love singing My register's really high, so I do a lot of like Disney princess songs, but that has led me to really wanting to be a voice actress for Disney type roles or animated roles that, you know, have a, have, have this like aura of wonder and like longing. Yeah. coming of age and discovery.
So I've been trying to figure that out and I don't know how to do it. If you have advice, if anyone has advice, like I'm, I feel like a fish out of water, I really wanna do more of it. I love reading stories. I love like embodying a character and then I'm working on different vocal techniques too. I don't know, use my chest.
Oh my gosh. They'll make more, more articul. That, that's so cool. Yeah.
Zach Plata: it was bringing back to a time. Yeah. So we had that one conversation once where you were like, we should get vocal lessons. Chloe's here. She could give us vocal lessons.
Chloe Shih: I don't know about that now. I, I struggle with it, so I lowkey, you know how you always do like ad.
Oh yeah. Yeah. So whenever I do content and I work with brands on ad reads, I kind of use that . Mm-hmm. , it's like, okay for me to practice and I just record over and over again to see if I really like the sound of the word. Um, but like imagine if I could just do, I don't know, audio books, studio long form or yeah.
Animated shorts. I would be so joy. Yeah.
Thuy Doan: Outside of a developer, of being a developer, I mean, okay. I still think of myself as a baker, even though I haven't baked in a while. Ooh. I like to think of it as being on hiatus. I haven't, we are waiting for that stroke of inspiration, but at, at one time I was baking like cakes, like cupcakes, cake, donuts, tiered cakes.
I got into like buttercream painting and that was really fun.
Cassidy Williams: Buttercream painting.
Thuy Doan: Buttercream painting.
Cassidy Williams: I haven't heard that term together before. Like maybe I've seen it, but is it what it sounds? .
Thuy Doan: Yeah. So have you ever seen like acrylic paint? Like it's like if you see it in a painting, you could see the texture.
Like if there was a glob of paint on there, you could see that it's a glob paint. It's a similar idea, except instead of like painting on a canvas, you're painting on a cake. And instead of painting with acrylic paint, you're painting with buttercream. Oh my gosh. And then you get to eat it. Yeah. And then you get to eat it.
Zach Plata: I love what Chloe. Talked about with the karaoke choices.
Cassidy Williams: She and I have the exact same choices in karaoke songs, and ever since we recorded that episode, all we really do DM each other on Instagram is karaoke stuff. . It's like karaoke stuff, and the, the, the occasional meme about like Celine Dion or something, and.
It is. It is the core of our relationship now, and I am not sad about it. I'm very, very happy because I love singing those songs. Yes. As I sang Celine earlier in this
Zach Plata: episode, , what is your go-to karaoke song?
Cassidy Williams: My go-to is Total Eclipse of the Heart. Ah, classic.
Zach Plata: We love singing that one. What? And everyone can join in.
Everyone
Cassidy Williams: knows that song. I know, right? Especially if you're just like, okay, everybody do like the turnaround . And then you, you go deep in it. Ugh. And it's very fun too, like if that's not your first song, because you know what? Your voice gets a little rassier towards the end of a karaoke session. So like you can really go.
I really need you tonight. Like, and just go into it. Yes. So
Zach Plata: fun. We need to do another karaoke session, , we do soon
Cassidy Williams: here. We, I, I went to Korea recently and they have what's called, uh, it's Coin Karaoke, where you go in and it's, it's truly just like a little booth. They had tons of them, like at arcades, they were everywhere where you go in and it's 50 cents per song.
To just sing karaoke. And so people would be just like, oh, do you wanna sing for just like 10 minutes? And they just go and do it. And I loved that. That is so about the culture. So cool. It was so fun. Yeah. And we did the, we ended up going in and we were just like, yeah, let's just sing a few. And we did. I think we did a Madonna song and then let it go from Frozen.
Had a blast. And then we went out to. That is such
Zach Plata: a good time. .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. We need more of that here. Yeah,
Zach Plata: yeah. Come on us cities. Let's, let's pick it up.
Cassidy Williams: Let's make it happen. Let's get it. What's our next startup say? Yeah, .
Zach Plata: Okay. We'll talk after this. . We're not joking.
Cassidy Williams: Um, but yeah, Pokemon, you know, what, what more could you want? I, I love that Christina got so deep into, uh, people opening the card backs and stuff cuz it's such a specific thing to be into, but a lot of tech people are into the Pokemon opening card packs things. I've seen a lot of that and a lot of pandemic hobbies in general have come up that are very specific like that.
Zach Plata: for sure. . I only noticed that through TikTok. I had no idea. That was like a big thing in the tech industry. Yeah. But it is fascinating. Like I'll just be like, oh, why is this a thing? And like five videos later.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. It's, it's, it's a whole thing. And like there's, there's like the art and way of doing it. I, Uhhuh who knew there's, there's, there's a hobby for everything.
Zach Plata: I'm, I am
all. .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. Yeah, for real. The voice acting stuff that the other Chloe said, like, I, I wish I, I don't know anything about that world. Like she, she kind of gave us a little bit of insight into it, but it's that, I think it'd be so interesting to hear about just more of the lives of voice actors in general and Yeah.
How you get into
Zach Plata: that. . It's like, do you, because I know like with regular acting, you know, you usually, you get your head shots and you try and find an agent, um, and you know, they try and find you things and it's like, is it the same for, uh, voice actors? .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. We, we should have asked . We, well, and, and Chloe had such the per, such the perfect voice for Ah, yes.
Like Disney Princess, voice acting and stuff. That's good. I feel like if I ever tried to do it, it would be just like, that's definitely just Cassidy. But with a hired pit, , like, be the, the acting behind it is, is very impressive in
Zach Plata: general. Totally. Totally. Um, I went after her episode to like visit her TikTok as she referenced it a bunch, and I was.
Oh, this is like professional. Like these are, these are the people who, who know what they're doing. Yeah. . Um, and I was like, go, Chloe .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. It's a, it's a skill that like, you don't realize how deep a skill it is mm-hmm. until you like actually look into the art of it. Or you try it yourself and you're like, oh, I suck.
Oh, oh dang. These people know what they're doing. .
Zach Plata: Go Chloe. Yeah. . Um, and then tw um, buttercream painting. I think that was so
Cassidy Williams: fascinating. Fascinating. It's people are artists. Yeah.
Zach Plata: It's an art form. I, I would've never considered, but I'm sure is a huge thing on the baking shows, and I'm sure there's a big community around it.
Cassidy Williams: Um, you, you know that there's like some sub Oh. Genre of this kind of cake painting and stuff, and I'm all for it. I, I, I think that kind of stuff is so interesting, which reminds me, I don't know if you've ever heard of the subreddit, hobby, drama? No. It is a delight, and I highly recommend looking that up because all it is is it is people detailing stories of drama in very specific hobbies and you'll be just like, oh, I didn't know that.
Yarn Dying Hobby existed or something, and then you find out some drama that happened in the yarn dying community, and it's so entertaining.
Zach Plata: I Okay. That is literally what I'm doing with the rest of my Friday, cuz I know I love those. It's a, it's like the, the chess scandal that happened months ago. Yes.
With Magnus Carlson.
Cassidy Williams: That was, that was in Hobby Drama. I know all about it because of hobby drama. , did you
Zach Plata: hear about the um, I think it's the bass fishing scandal that happened? No. I mean, I'm gonna, maybe it's not bass fishing, but it was some fishing competition. Someone, you know, this like assumed winner was just winning all these things cuz they had the heaviest fish.
Every single competition there like the best of the best. And it was. , I think one of their competitions, they, they caught one and they're like, this weighs this much. And then someone in the audience called it out and was like, no, it's not. And the, the audience kept to like, examine it, examine it, or something like that.
This is all, by the way, third party told by my cousins over Thanksgiving. But, but still, um, inside the fish were like, other cut up fish and like, I think like Metal or they were stuffing things down this fish to make it way more, and it was like a whole scandal. They were. It, it went and, you know, wow, these people, you know, made money off of this thing, so they're in trouble.
Of course. Anyway, this sounds like very appropriate for that Reddit thread and
Cassidy Williams: Oh, yeah, no, I, I want to look up bass fishing on hobby drama too. Like I've learned about like beekeeping drama I've learned, I've learned about like the acrylic painting cup, community drama. There's. So many different things there and I love it.
It's like being on like a fly on the wall of the room. Mm-hmm. Where like people are arguing and you're not involved at all, but you're just like, Ooh, it feels juicy. Right. . And it doesn't affect me personally. . It's
Zach Plata: awesome. Okay. This is great. I, I'm glad something like this exists. .
Cassidy Williams: Yes. It's so good. Love the
Zach Plata: internet.
ev every, everyone's like outside hobbies. It was super fun. Just like hearing, you know what they do and it's like, yeah. Oh, I wouldn't have expected
Cassidy Williams: that. Right. Especially cuz like it again, it's the human side of software development because a lot of times people are just like, oh yeah, you code and. There you go.
That's it. But, but be able, being able to hear what interests people, what excites people, what kind of gets them going is it's, it's cool to be able to see that side of people in general that you just don't normally get to see. For sure, for sure. Was there any advice that you took to heart from any of the.
Zach Plata: Hmm. Uh, yes. My favorite one is from Sara Vieira, where she questioned whether or not type script is necessary in every single, single page application. Let's take a look.
Cassidy Williams: What's something that's underrated or overrated in the dev community in your opinion?
Sara Vieira: Something that's incredibly overrated. I feel like it's type script and code quality.
I feel like type script is good. Nothing, I don't, I don't precisely hate type script. I just think that we all need to stop, like we all need to stop, look around and wonder does this one, does this single page application that has two pages really need type scripts? Yeah. Does it really need type script in this style components?
It does not. , I'm gonna answer that for you. Right. That's my thing. What? Why did I say fake? That's my fake. So I do think it's very useful when it comes to like state management and um, design systems and stuff like that, right? But I'm like, I think it's good in big, in large teams because it like, yes, forces people to stay within certain boundaries and stuff, but on side projects and smaller things.
I agree with you. It's also like, it's also like, would you use prop types for this? No. Then why are you using type script for. . Like why? Yeah, that doesn't make sense.
Cassidy Williams: It's so true because I know the value of type script. Yes, I know the value of types and all of that, static analysis and all that, but sometimes it's overkill and you just need to ship.
Zach Plata: Yes, totally. For something that's just like a small marketing page or Yeah, or a small little
Cassidy Williams: one page tool. A little demo or a prototype that you might be building something, you might toss away anything. Sometimes you just don't need it. .
Zach Plata: Mm. I'm, I'm glad we can both agree on this . Yes. And what about you?
Was there any advice that you took to heart?
Cassidy Williams: Honestly, not as specific as type script, but I really liked, uh, Salma's advice, Salma Alam-Naylor. I, I really liked what she had to say about building first and engineering later. What is your golden rule for coding?
Salma Alam-Naylor: Build first engineer later. Ooh. It's built. So this works on a personal level, at a team level, at a product level, at a startup level, at any feature, iteration level.
Uh, just build something and get it out there. Don't overanalyze the types of code you are writing. Just don't, maybe add, don't add too many tests straight away. You know, just like get something out there and deploy it. Don't, you know? So if you've seen me, You'll notice I release a lot of websites after I've spent two hours on building some kind of prototype.
I'd have got no css, I've got no anything. I just, oh, let's put it online because I can . Right? And once it's out there, it's kind of like, it's a thing. It's like you've achieved something rather than sitting on it for months and months and months and months and months and obsessing over the quality of it and being a perfectionist, I'm like, oh, maybe that should go there.
Maybe just. Build it, get it out yellow, deploy it, and then if it works, if it's something that you wanna carry on doing, if you've got the data that says that maybe this is something that the world needs, then go and engineer it and, you know, separate your concerns and have one source of truth and make it dry.
But when you're just prototyping, just build it and don't, don't stress and see what happens. Very similarly, it's, it's good to just build something and not think about the overkill of scaling and, and, and adding too much. Yeah. Early. Like if you can just ship it, then you can always add more later.
Zach Plata: That's true. And I think it's important, especially if you're like at a, you know, a smaller company to be able to have that kind of culture that allows for just like, let's just build it today and try it out. And it doesn't have to be perfect. Right. Um, I know that's a little harder and, you know, bigger companies where that all they think about is scalability and, you know, cost and yada, yada, yada.
Not
Cassidy Williams: having to rewrite stuff
Zach Plata: later. Yeah. Um, and it's just important to have those kind of days, whether it's like through hackathons or. every Friday we have like a hack day or something like that. I think. Right. It, it's, it's more fun to, to develop code that way. .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. That's something that has been interesting once again at, at my role at Contenda in that because they're so small, they do that a lot and now that, now that we're building like.
More customer facing things. We're caring a lot more about testing and stuff in general, but Sure, because I've kind of witnessed them from the start growing and changing and pivoting and, and doing all of that. It's kind of funny just seeing how the attitudes of the engineers have changed over time, where at first they were kind of nervous, like, okay, we'll try to build this.
It might not work, and. , after having all these experiments of shipping and certain things failing, certain things succeeding and stuff, now they're like, let's just build it. If it doesn't work, we'll rebuild it later. And everyone is just so much more chill about it. And I feel like it's a really good thing, not only for actually shipping products fast, but just the attitudes in general words.
It's less stressful because you know that. You'll be able to improve it. Yeah. It will get better later. Sometimes you just need to ship the thing that's a little broken so you can have a thing that is mostly working out there in the world. Yeah.
Zach Plata: Engineer later, build first. Love it.
Cassidy Williams: Exactly. Well, that being said, we are out of time.
It has been a delight. Thank you everyone out there so much for tuning into this special holiday episode. End of year, episode of The Dev Morning Show (At Night). Uh, Happy holidays. Happy holidays time, and once again because making podcasts is expensive. This show is brought to you by LaunchDarkly LaunchDarkly, toggles Peaks of 20 trillion feature flags each day, and that number continues to grow, and you should use them.
You can head over to launchdarkly.com and learn about how. Thank you for making this show possible. Launch. I've been Cassidy Williams. You can find me at cassidoo, c a s s i d o o on most things. And I'm CTO over at Contenda. And
Zach Plata: I'm Zach. And I'm DevRel at Rive. And you can find me on Twitter at
Cassidy Williams: zachplata. Thank you for tuning into The Dev Morning Show (At Night).
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