← CoRecursive: Coding Stories
CoRecursive: Coding Stories
Behind the Mic: Adam Gordon Bell on Communication with Software Misadventures Podcast
01:03:40
Today the tables have turned and you're going to hear someone interview me. Ronak and Guang from the Software Misadventures podcast are going to interview me about podcasting. My history as a software developer and I guess this big idea....
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- [00:01]
Adam Gordon Bell
Hello, this is CO Recursive and I'm Adam Gordon Bell. Today the tables have turned and you're going to hear someone interview me. Ronak and Guang from the Software Misadventures podcast are going to interview me about my history as a software developer and I guess this big idea that I don't think I've shared too much about the importance of communication. I don't know why I wanted to be Best engineer, but like, there's all these people that I looked up to in that time, like Joel Polsky, like, I want to be that great. But like, if you think about it, the reason we know about them is because actually they're communicators, right? They're explaining problems to us. Like, I thought this guy has a blog because he's the most amazing engineer, but no, he, he. I know about the things that he's done because he talks about, right? Like all these people I looked up to, what they're actually good at was communicating, right? The person who wrote the book that I wanted to ask questions about how to do functional programming, like, it's not clear they were the best functional programmer in the world. Hopefully they were decent at it. But no, they had written a book, right? They had spent a lot of time communicating. So I think that actually I maybe realized that my goal was misplaced, that there was a larger goal or something that, yeah, I wasn't seeing that all these people who communicate are the people that I look up to. Right? And it's, it can be super impactful if you can take something and explain it in a way that lets it crystallize in people's minds. And I don't know that I'm the best at it, but it feels very valuable and important. So that's going to be this month's episode straight from the feed of the Software Misadventures podcast. I myself have been caught up in job hunting. As I mentioned last time, going through the various interview stages. Take home assignments have been a lot of fun. Coding interviews, I used to be good at those. Super not good at them right now, so that's an issue. But yeah, I've had a couple job places that I thought were really promising that didn't work out and a couple more, you know, that I'm still working through that I am excited about. So hopefully new developer relations engineer type role coming soon. But until then, right? As I'm busy practicing leetcode problems and trying to do well at job interviews and find something that works for me. But while I'm getting that all together. I thought you might all enjoy hearing more about the backstory of of me and of the podcast because I think that Ronak and Gong did a great job of pulling a story out of me about my journey. Right from being a back end software developer to doing this podcast and then learning really about the power of communication and believing in that so much that I shifted my career to go into developer relations where kind of do this as a job and it's a weird job, but super powerful one and hopefully this interview will help others understand that.
- [03:14]
Ronak
Welcome to the Software Misadventures podcast. We are your hosts, Raunak and Gwang. As engineers, we are interested in not just the technologies, but the people and the stories behind them. So on this show we try to scratch our own edge by sitting down with engineers, founders and investors to chat about their path, lessons they've learned, and of course, the misadventures along the way.
- [03:37]
Guang
Awesome to have you here. Adam, you're the host of a co recursive podcast. Before our conversation, you were telling us a little bit about your background. I love sort of the arc that you gave the focus being the value of communication and then how you were able to get there via the different steps in your career. So I thought maybe like, interesting place to start is going back to when you were first getting started as an engineer. Like was there different points where you specifically recognize these, like, ow. Communication is something that's quite powerful, but that's very underleveraged by like your peers.
- [04:16]
Adam Gordon Bell
So I used to work at this place here in Peterborough called operatel. Made a lot of friends there. And I think like, I just really wanted to be really good coder, I guess, you know, and they had like a large complicated code base. People were always adding. It was like enterprise software people are adding features as fast as they could and like nobody could keep track of any of it. And like, I just wanted to get really good at that. Right? Like, oh, you want to be the guy that they go to when something's on fire because you know all the stuff. Right. And there was people who knew all the stuff. And I'm like, I want to be one of those people. So that was very important to me. I don't think I thought communication was important. I just wanted to have this great skill set. Right. And develop it. Yeah. And then I ended up transitioning from there to working someplace remote. So it was actually a weird thing where my boss had left and I liked him and he was interviewing for this other role. But it was in another city. And he's like, yeah, you could do it remote, like from home. And I was like, that sounds awesome. It turned out the company was like, less on point with me being remote than he was. But I did end up taking it, even though it was like, iffy whether I would have to move Kitchener, for instance. But I liked working from home, but I missed some of the stuff from operatel and it wasn't. You said communication. That's a big word. It makes me think of writing up documentation for something, right? But like, what I missed was like, being in the cafeteria. Like, we had this cafeteria and you know, you're like having lunch or waiting for the free microwave or whatever, and you know, somebody's telling some story about the something server was down last night and like. And I got called in and then somebody's like, oh, did you. Did you check? Was it the. You know, was the disc full? And they're like, oh, I thought it was the disc full, but it wasn't the disc full. And like, oh, was it the. Whatever. This was a Windows server. So it was like, was iis, like leaking memory or something. And anyways, people like, go back and forth through it and it's like a fun game and you're like, trying to figure out. And the guy's like, no, no, it turned out it wasn't it at all. Like, somebody had pointed something to the wrong server and blah, blah, blah. There was always these stories, probably because people were moving too fast and things were always blowing up. But, like, a lot of the knowledge about how to solve problems, about how things worked there, right? It was actually transferred just in people, like, you know, like shooting the breeze in this cafeteria setting. And like, I didn't get that right once I started working remote. So that was my first inkling, I think that, like, oh, this is something important, right? Nobody says, like, oh, you know, we would like to give you a raise because people have learned a lot from those crazy stories you tell at lunch. But, like, it turns out that that's very important. And it's like a thing where people get a lot. Like people talk about mentoring. Like, a lot of it is right there in these, like, casual venues. So that was my first inkling that, like, this is something important, interesting, and.
- [07:17]
Guang
Fast forward a little bit. So you mentioned that you then got into management and then later on Devrel, like, how did that sort of experience evolve into something where you're like, okay, there's a strategic point to it rather than just something that's very. Makes the job more fulfilling.
- [07:35]
Adam Gordon Bell
There's like 30 steps. But. But like I said, but like, yeah. So I started working remotely. I worked on this team, really smart people, some of the smartest people I worked with before. And we weren't always actually accomplishing as much as. As I thought we should. It's like, you know, sometimes you wish you're like, man, wouldn't it be great if the whole team was rock stars? Like you imagine there's these 10x developers out there and be so amazing. Or maybe you just imagine like you didn't have that guy who you keep having to walk him through things.
- [08:10]
Guang
That was me.
- [08:11]
Adam Gordon Bell
That was me. That's why sometimes. But like the team was very skilled, but we weren't getting as much done as I thought or like it just didn't seem to be working. And so that was my entry point to becoming an engineering manager because I thought like, the problem here isn't technical skills. Like all of the people on this team are super talented, so something else is the problem, right? So that transitioned me to being an engineering manager and then eight more steps and then I end up in developer relations.
- [08:41]
Ronak
So I wanted to fast forward a little bit and talk a little bit more about podcasting. So before I think you started co recursive, you were a podcast host at SE Radio, Software Engineering Radio. For folks who might not know. I think IEEE actually managed this podcast. But can you share a little more about how you got into podcasting in the first place?
- [09:02]
Adam Gordon Bell
There was, there was this podcast called Software Engineering Daily and Jeff, who was the host, he made an episode for a long time every weekday and that was a lot. So anyways, I was listening to one of his episodes and he said, I need some people to help me do this, right? So I reached out to him and like he said, yeah, like just find somebody and interview them and like send me the WAV file or whatever. Like there. There was very little tutelage involved, so no wetting almost. So that was, that was my entry point. And then like he, after a while, I think he took on a couple of people like this and he was like, this is unwieldy. I'm going to stop doing it. But then he recommended me to the Software Engineering Radio and they, yeah, they're based on the IEEE he had started there. They had more structure and that's how I got into it. But I mean the motivation was like, I was still in that world where I was like, I just want to be the best programmer. Like, I want to know everything and be able to tackle all these problems. And I was at this point, like, I was a Scala developer and I was getting deep into, like, functional programming, and there's like a million things to learn, and it's like. It's just. It seems like, vast. Right? And so it was like an opportunity for me to just, like, talk to these experts and ask them questions. Right? It was like, I have a question about this thing. This guy wrote this book. Like, I can just talk to him and ask him questions. Yeah.
- [10:25]
Ronak
Nice. So, like, at some point you decided to start co recursive. What made you make that jump? Because SE Radio was kind of doing a lot of the hard work that goes into podcasting and has a good name behind it. Then why, why start?
- [10:37]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, so I was doing these episodes for Jeff, so the Software Engineering Daily, and I was reaching out to people to interview them. And I didn't really run it by him. I just started booking more interviews. And some of them I booked far out. And then one time I sent him a thing, like an episode I recorded, and he's like, okay, well, we stopped doing that. Like, right? And I still have more interviews booked. So it's like, I guess I'm starting my own podcast. Like, I already have interviews.
- [11:01]
Ronak
Oh, wow.
- [11:02]
Adam Gordon Bell
And I remember the first interview that I did where I was like, okay, so I said I was interviewing for this podcast. Like, actually, you're being interviewed for an as yet unnamed podcast that I just made up. Uh, yeah. People didn't seem to care. And I remember talking to Jeff.
- [11:20]
Guang
Nice, nice.
- [11:21]
Adam Gordon Bell
When I told him I was doing this, I was like, okay, well, like, I booked these couple first episodes of my podcast saying it was yours because, I mean, accidentally, like, how do I book for other people? And he was like, people like to talk about themselves. I wouldn't worry about it. Like, he's just like, just email people. Right? I'm sure you guys have noticed, like, it's actually not that hard.
- [11:41]
Guang
I've been surprised by just how kind, I guess, like, fancy or like famous people are about their time, because I think that's the thing I worry about the most. Right. It's like they have this busy schedule and all these things. Talking to some random, random dudes from the Internet seems to be low on the priority list. But I think, yeah, if you're pretty clear about the messaging to show that you've done your homework, that definitely helps. I'm curious, like, in those first days, what were for us? I think it was the writing, the emails, I think that was the most painful to actually do so. It's kind of funny to hear that for you is that you already probably have a process at that point, right? If you already booked, you know, quite a few. What was the hardest part about the early days of starting the podcast?
- [12:25]
Adam Gordon Bell
That's a good question. Definitely. Reaching out to people feels fraught, right? Like, you feel like you're putting yourself out there. And I was looking at your episodes. Like, I know that there's people in that list that I have reached out to in the early days who said no, right? And maybe they would say yes now, but I'm never going to reach back out to them. It's like you feel, you feel rejected, you know, like, it's not like rejection I'm sensitive to, right? Like, probably somebody's just like, no, I'm busy, I can't do this. Right? But my perception is like, oh, yeah, they. They looked deep into my soul and said that I'm not worthy, right? It's like.
- [13:06]
Guang
That'S, that's so real. And it's super funny because Ronick and I actually, we had a incident where it's someone that we reached out to, like maybe two years ago, and then they said, no, now is not the good time. But then they actually came on the show because I didn't realize he wrote the email like two years ago. So then I was just like, oh, this person seems pretty cool. Like, let me just write the email. So that was a pretty funny moment.
- [13:32]
Adam Gordon Bell
I remember. So charity majors, I. I was trying to figure out reaching out to people. And so I read some articles about it by some marketers or whatever. I don't know, like, don't look for advice on, like, how to cold outreach to people. Like, it's really scary. Yeah.
- [13:47]
Ronak
Oh, no, it's terrible.
- [13:50]
Adam Gordon Bell
Like, do almost nothing that people say on somebody recommended. Like, oh, there's these things. And they'll like, basically like set up a chain of emails where you reach out to them and then you, you follow up. And then you follow up, right? And so I, I found some tools. It's like, so I wrote the email to Charity and then like three days later, it would send a follow up. She hadn't responded. And there's like three of those. And so I emailed her, like, I set up the thing and I sent it to her and she emailed me like back like 60 seconds later. And she's like, yeah, sure. But like, what's going on with all these emails? And they had all sent at once. So I'd send.
- [14:28]
Ronak
I really want you on the podcast.
- [14:31]
Adam Gordon Bell
Would you like to be on the podcast? And then like, oh, you haven't come back to me. No, you still haven't got back to me. Years. Yeah. Yeah.
- [14:39]
Guang
That'S how fast I iterate on.
- [14:42]
Adam Gordon Bell
The order of second 60 seconds. So maybe that's the, that's the method.
- [14:47]
Ronak
So one question on the follow up. This is something that I struggle with a lot when it comes to writing an email to reach out to a guest. One part is you want to do some research to write a thoughtful email instead of a random cold email, which I think is okay, like there's a way to do that. But then on the follow up at least I feel a lot of friction in doing that follow up. And I have Guang here pinging me almost every three days. Did you follow up yet? And I don't have one of the tools that you mentioned. And when I say there is friction, for me that friction comes from not knowing exactly the language to use to follow up. There are certain templates that I use but then for whatever reason I get bored and I don't like them anymore. And then I'll go to chat GPT and waste 15 minutes just to craft like one line. Follow up. I'm curious, is there language that you figured out that you used in follow up emails that just makes it much easier to do that?
- [15:40]
Adam Gordon Bell
No. I guess the answer is no. Like I. It's funny because Guang, you had to follow up with me for this just because I, I don't know, there's a lot of emails and I forgot. I was like, I'm going to respond to that. And then I didn't. And then yeah, I, I did like.
- [15:56]
Guang
A little retrospective on like just like the power of like following up. I think I really learned it when I was doing like the third Insight bootcamp to like to try to do like a VC funded company. One of the advisors, so Yuri who used to work at I see yc, he was like, yeah, you gotta set it up, you know, six follow ups. I was like, six? Like, are you kidding me? Like I would, like I would definitely report spam. Like so then I think we kind of settle like who on earth anyways? But then that was also kind of drill into my head. But then he was until much later when like I think I saw Jake doing this. So he's the founder of, of Insight. And then he just wrote like very casually say, kind of like, hey, just quick reaping, you know, in case an email got buried. And then he says, but if Now's not the best time. Like, no worries. Like, that line to me was like magic because he just like absolved me from all the. Because I felt so bad for, like, I feel like I'm like begging for, like, oh, can you please, like, you know, do this thing? Can you please, like, take a look? And then that really changed the equation to more like, hey, I'm trying to find, like a match, right, to see if there's like, value that we can provide and if that's something that you're interested. So it's kind of like, okay, it's more like equal instead of like, I'm trying to, you know, get stuff from you. Um, so, yeah, so now I'm not much less scared about doing.
- [17:16]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I have this thing. Okay, one, one second followup, then dot com, all it is, follow up, then dark. A whole bunch of email accounts that you add to your contact list. And so when I message somebody, I'll just, I'll just write them a message and then I'll BCC like two weeks@followupthen.com and it just emails me the email back two weeks later. So it's like that, that's my system now. I don't have any.
- [17:43]
Guang
So you don't. You keep track of it. That way you can do the follow up or if you can check to see if you still want to follow up.
- [17:47]
Adam Gordon Bell
It just puts it back to the top of my email box. And then I'm like, okay, yeah, like, and I agree, like, saying, like, yeah, no worries if it's not a fit or whatever makes it feel, I don't know, less on the line, I guess, right? Like, yeah.
- [18:00]
Ronak
Oh. So I was reviewing Core Recursive's profile on Apple podcasts and there are a bunch of good reviews about your storytelling, where people like, every story feels very unique, it's very engaging and things like that, which is pretty amazing. So I'm curious, like, how did you figure out what sort of storytelling mechanism you want to use in the podcast? And how do you now go about structuring the episode? This is mostly me trying to learn.
- [18:26]
Adam Gordon Bell
So software engineering radio is very technical and like, dry, I would say. And they have like a very strong format. It's like, let's interview somebody about the cap theorem, right? And then it's like you have to have like an outline prepared and you have to show that this person's an expert. And then you can go through like, oh, what are the. The trade offs of this versus that? And it's very dry. You can Learn a lot, I guess. But as I was doing it and then kind of repeating it on my own, talking to people for co recursive, I found the parts that spoke to me were not bad, Right. The parts that stood out to me, talking to people was when people shared things. Right. We go back to what I was saying at the cafeteria at Opertel and you know, they're explaining like, oh, the server was down and how do we look into it? And like that stuff was so much more compelling to me and I just wanted to do more of that. The last interview I did for Software Engineering Radio was Stephen Wolfram. I was talking to him about his, you know, his programming language and all the things he's built. But then I forget what we started talking about, like if he could estimate, you know, something to do with like how much he weighed based on his calories or something. And he's like, you know, coding and his language and trying to figure out how much he weighs. And it was just like us having fun, like using his Wolfram Mathematica and stuff. And. And I was like, this is better, right? It's like just an experience. Rather than him explaining the trade offs of various things, they. They cut it from the episode. Like they got rid of it all. Yeah. Oh, wow. And he was. I forget what we were coming up with, but it was like I was throwing problems at him and he was going to calculate them and I was like, oh, I'm in Peterborough. And he's like, Peterborough, uk? I'm like, no, Peterborough, Canada. And he's like, Mathematica is like his baby. And it's like he was like the Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Like he was like pulling the data from various places and I was like, this is awesome. But yeah, they didn't, they didn't feel that was like educational. But the point is, I was like, this is the good stuff, right? Just like lean into the actual experiences that people have. Yeah. So that I don't, I don't have a quick answer for like how you do that, but like pay attention to what you find interesting. Right. And like double down on that, I think is the key.
- [20:42]
Guang
That was, that must have been super interesting, weird experience, right? Being like, oh, I think I got this really golden nuggets. But having that cut out, like, did you. How do you work with the editor, like in that process, like, do they kind of come up with like, hey, you know the outline that you mentioned, it's like, we need to hit these things. And then do you get much say in Terms of like, social.
- [21:03]
Adam Gordon Bell
Keep this ads suffering radio. They. Robert, who runs it, he has a very in depth process. Like, the manual that he made for it is online. And actually, like, I don't think he's wrong about cutting it because the way that that podcast worked was always like, about the technical details, right? It wasn't like, oh, let's have some fun with Stephen Wolfram, right? It was like, tell me about Mathematica and like, what's the history of it and what, you know, how would you parse it and whatever the details are. But. So their process was you'd come up with an outline in a Google Doc, the editors and the other hosts would review it, offer feedback, and then you record the episode and then you can provide a list of edits. If you're like, oh, you know, we need to cut out this one part, you would just give like timestamps and then they kind of took it from there. And usually they just went with whatever you had. But my interview with Stephen was long because we were just like messing around. And so I guess he wanted to cut some stuff out and he's like, yeah, let's get rid of this, like, playing around, like, what's the fun of that?
- [22:07]
Guang
Along those lines. So, Ron, I mentioned this as well. And you know, you. So you started out co recursive back in 2018 being pretty technical, like you said, coming off like software engineering daily, and now it's, you know, it's very like storytelling driven.
- [22:23]
Adam Gordon Bell
Right.
- [22:23]
Guang
I think you mentioned that the raw interviews can be like up to two hours versus, like the final product.
- [22:28]
Adam Gordon Bell
Right?
- [22:29]
Guang
It's like only maybe like 40, 50 minutes. So there's a ton of like, editing. You know, you're thinking about the story. So it's super different now and then, like, were there any, like, pivotal moments in that journey, in this, like, evolution of the podcast that you like, that comes to mind?
- [22:45]
Adam Gordon Bell
So, yes, but many I. So the other day I get all these emails from people who like, want their CEO of almost always bitcoin startups, but like varying things to be a guest on podcast. Right. Somebody reached out. Wasn't like a blockchain thing, but they're like, oh, you should talk to our CEO, whatever. It was like, sort of interesting. They're like, oh, Ron can talk about our new release and we have a new feature flag on the settings page. I was trying to explain to them, like, no, that's not what I need. Like, does he have an interesting story? And like, oh, he's got tons of stories, right? And so, like, we had some back and forth, but there was, like, a gem of stuff where I was interested. And so we. We got on a zoom call to talk it out, right? And I was telling this person, this is what I learned. And I tried to. I tried to give it to. To them, right? So this is a story. I am here in Peterborough a couple months ago. I'm driving to see my wife at her work. And I'm almost at her work, and I'm at a stoplight, and there's several cars in front of me, and I have to pick her up. Then the light turns green. The car in front of me goes. And then this guy runs out in front of my car, and he's on crutches, and he doesn't look well, but not in the injured way, but in the I've been living a rough life type of way. And he's, like, screaming, right? Just, like, screaming, not at me, but off in some other direction. And then I see what he's screaming about, and there's another guy in a wheelchair that he's screaming at, and they're screaming back and forth. And the guy in the wheelchair, like, first of all, I just want to go. Like, I want to drive. I can see my wife's work because it's, like, on the corner. But, like, this guy is standing in front of me, like, having the scream match in a way. I don't want to catch his attention, right? But, like, I also want to get by him. And then the guy in the wheelchair is, like, wheeling, right? And he, like, builds up speed and he actually smashes into the guy on the crutches, knocks him down. The crutches are on the ground. And, like, I'm still there. Like, I still am. Like, I'm going to be late to pick up Courtney, my wife. I'm probably not that late, but, like, I don't want to anger her. Like, I borrowed her car and blah, blah, blah. And then the guy with the crutches, like, gets up, and I'm like, oh, good, he's gonna get out of the way. But he takes his crutch like a baseball bat, and he goes to the guy in the wheelchair and, like, smashes a. And they're just, like, fighting, like, in the middle of the street, right? And so I say to this lady, like, that is a story, right? Like, I. I'm the protagonist, right? And I'm trying to get to my wife's self worth, right? That's my objective. And then there's obstacles, like, the obstacle of These guys, like a guy in a wheelchair and a guy, they ended up being fine. Like, they both like the. I don't think the wheelchair guy was a paraplegic because he kind of jumped, like, and they were wrestling. So, like, he obviously could use his feet. But. Yeah, but I was like, hate actor. The new settings thing on, on the feature, whatever. It's not a story, right? I need like, the. What. What did Ron do? Like, what were the things that happened? Yeah, so this, this is what I think about, right? It's like you need a story. And like, a story is a very simple thing. It's that, right? You have a protagonist, he has an objective, and then there's obstacles. And that's like. That's like 90% of the thing, right? It's just like, you find somebody who has those ingredients. Sometimes you don't know, right? You just start talking to them and then they're like. They tell the story. But that's what I focus in on.
- [26:24]
Guang
Halfway through the story, I was like, where is Adam going with this? And then I realized, I realized, oh, this is analogy that he's trying to draw for the. For the coding email. And I realized, oh, wow, that's actually very spot on and well played. So well played.
- [26:39]
Ronak
How do you go about finding the right guests who have a good story to tell, by the way? Like, that's hard because you don't know a lot of people and don't know their stories.
- [26:47]
Adam Gordon Bell
Agreed. Yeah, that's the hardest thing, right? Sometimes I'll see something and I'll be like, okay, I gotta talk to this person. Sometimes I will just talk to somebody and like, basically I'll. I'll do a pre interview, I'll just chat with them and see, you know, what's going on, you know, tell me something interesting to happen to you. Kind of explore it. But yeah, I mean, I think that's difficult. And the story doesn't have to be. Like, I did this episode with my friend Don, and he had worked with me at this. This place Albertall I was describing with the cafeteria and the stories and whatever. And like, the story was just about how, like, he started at this place as soon as he finished university. And, you know, he just felt like they never valued him. Like he stayed there for a long time. Like, he never worked anywhere else. He never got the context for. Like, oh, maybe this isn't a great place to work. And like, I guess his story was like, you should value yourself because I went through this thing. Like, I was working so hard for this place. And then I found out, like, I wasn't being paid well and there weren't good working conditions and whatever. So, I mean, there doesn't have to be a guy with a wheelchair and a guy with a crutch. It's more like it's through the eyes of the person you're talking to. Right. I guess is a way to think about it.
- [27:58]
Ronak
You mentioned pre interviews. Like, is this. Do you do that commonly? And if so, then what. What does your pitch look like to the person you're reaching out to?
- [28:05]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I just email them and say, hey, I think you could be an interesting guest for my podcast. Do you want to have a chat about it? And then I send them like the calendly link. And I think sometimes that it can be valuable for them too, because they get to ask me questions. I think they just get to meet me. Right. So it's not like a blind date. It's like, oh, we've, we've chatted before. Yeah, yeah.
- [28:31]
Ronak
Do many people take you up on that or is it only a handful?
- [28:33]
Adam Gordon Bell
I always talk to everybody first before I interview them. Yeah, I didn't always, but yeah, it's super helpful. I took some classes from the Independent association of Radio Journalists, I think it was called, anyways, NPR type folk. And they were super valuable. But like, one thing that proper journalists do is audition people. Like, they'll audition people all the time and something happens. Like, okay, the big security thing that just happened, what was the company again? Crowdstrike. Right. So you're writing an article about CrowdStrike and you need a quote from an expert or whatever. Right. A lot of times journalists will talk to like seven experts, right? Like whoever they can get a hold of quickly. And they're just looking for whoever's the interesting person and like, that will be the quote that they use. Right. So basically they're auditioning people, like, who's going to say something that's poignant and gets my point across. So, yeah, if it's for radio, they would call that like a pre interview. If it's like a TV show. Right. Like, often they have producers who. This is all they do is try to reach out and find, okay, we need somebody to fill in this little segment, right? Like, who do we got? And like, are they interesting?
- [29:47]
Guang
What. What are some traits you look out for during those interviews to like, see if they're. What do you call them? You wouldn't really crazy. You wouldn't believe it story.
- [29:58]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah. So I think there's just two criteria. One is that they have. Yeah. Some sort of story where they have. They had an objective and, like, they're. They're willing to. To share that. So that's like, has a story. And the other one is like, is a talker to. To use just. That's my generic term for somebody who's just like, interesting to hear talk.
- [30:23]
Guang
I see.
- [30:23]
Ronak
Uh, what questions do you ask to get these responses from them? Like, do you have a story? What is. Is that the question? I'm assuming something else.
- [30:32]
Adam Gordon Bell
So the talker thing, I think you'll know. Let's look. I have a. I have a checklist here. Please stand by.
- [30:39]
Guang
I'm a big fan of checklists.
- [30:41]
Ronak
Yes.
- [30:43]
Adam Gordon Bell
So I have. When was a time when you thought things were really bad? Usually there's like something else attached to that. Right. Like when in your experience at LinkedIn were you like, oh, we're screwed now, you know, and we'll say like, oh, you know. Yeah. And like, what was the scariest thing, et cetera. Attach that to something. Right. So it's like, yeah, tell me about your time, about LinkedIn. Like, what was the scariest thing that happened when you were there? You know, what was the time where, you know, you really. Those are the. Those are like the only two questions I have in front of me. But yeah, it's usually like.
- [31:20]
Ronak
And how long do you schedule these chats for?
- [31:23]
Adam Gordon Bell
Like 20 minutes in.
- [31:25]
Ronak
After the chat. Have you. Have you said no to any guests?
- [31:28]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I'm not good at saying no.
- [31:30]
Ronak
Though I would imagine that to be a hard part, because you're reaching, you're inviting someone to say, hey, you could be a good fit. Let's chat more. But then you may not like the stories, or maybe they don't have as many as you might think. Yeah. What have you said no? If you have said no, I would love to know. How did you go about it?
- [31:46]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I think I've just said to people, like, I'm not sure if it's like quite a fit or. But yeah, I don't like to do that, like. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing that I think the journalists are good at that I'm not. Right. It's like they're like, oh, I'm going to talk to six people and only use one of them where I feel like I'm using people's time. So there should be some end result. Yeah.
- [32:07]
Ronak
In this case, when you have this pre chat with them and you invite them back on the podcast, what does your prep typically look like? And do they know that this is the story that you'll focus on.
- [32:17]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I try to let them know what's interesting to me. And then sometimes, though, during the interview, the directions change just because something more interesting comes up. I interviewed before this guy who. He created Google AdWords, I think, or AdSense. We were going to talk about that. So I did the pre interview. We chatted. It sounded pretty interesting. He was like a very early Google employee. But then when we were talking, I was like, well, you know, let's go back further. And like, he had worked at the JPL at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he had like, been this person who had pushed for them to use Lisp and had gotten Lisp, like on this spacecraft and then like, had a problem with it and got like, had to get a repl going into this like, thing that was like a hundred thousand miles away in space, like through satellites. And he's like, I don't know how Lisp repl works, but you know, he's printing out, I assume, a thousand open braces from space. So I was like, I just changed what we talked about, right? Like, we didn't. I mean, we still talked about the AdSense thing, but I guess that's the benefit of being able to talk to somebody for two hours and then cut it down to an hour. Right. Like, once I had that, I was like, okay, maybe this is the story that's really cool. So in other words, you talk to somebody, you look, you know what's an interesting experience. But then when they tell, like, you just pay attention to what's interesting and keep leaning in on it. Right. Maybe once you edit it, it changes as well. Right? You're like, oh, the focus should really be X.
- [33:52]
Ronak
Do you edit the podcast yourself or do you outsource that?
- [33:55]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I edit it. It's a pain.
- [33:58]
Guang
I think it's super cool that you take so much effort into the editing process and Norpkas. For us it's more of a chore, but for you, right, it's like a creative process. Right? Like, that's where you have all the Lego pieces and then you're putting together something, you're creating something. I'm curious, like, what's your favorite part of the process of making a podcast episode? Because for, for us, I feel like there's less choices versus for you, I feel like there's a lot more. Like you're doing a lot more interesting stuff.
- [34:27]
Adam Gordon Bell
The problem is, like, I kept on putting more work into, like, polishing the episode. And so sometimes I feel like it takes me so much time that I'm like, oh, like, what am I doing? But yeah, like, at some point somebody told me, like, oh, you should have music. And then so I did put music in, like, just at the beginning and then at the end, like, I think this person wanted me to, like, like, score it, like Hans Zimmerman or something. I was like, yeah, I don't even know how that worked, but it turns out, like, like, putting the music in is super fun. So that was like, just a fun part I enjoy. Right. I. Once again, I took a little class from some sort of, like, NPR folk. And so instead of just having, like, oh, we're going to play our theme song, right? They would, you know, try to have, like, a song, you know, like, where the kind of, like, beat drops at the right time to, like, cut you into the story and that, like, putting that in. It's kind of a pain. Cause I'm like, oh, I still got to do that. But it's super fun.
- [35:24]
Ronak
You mentioned a class before as well. Can you talk more about that class you took?
- [35:28]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I took this class from Christina Shockley, and I took two classes from her. I forget what they were called, but she works for npr. Does one of their morning programs, I think, but just like the Michigan version of it, I believe. Anyway, she's super talented. Took this class. It was all, like, journalists and radio people in it, except for me, which totally freaked me out. There's a guy from the Economist, and I was like, what am I doing here? I just interview people about whatever.
- [36:02]
Guang
Wait, how did you. How'd you get it?
- [36:04]
Adam Gordon Bell
Or like, it's. So there's this thing called air. It's like an association for independent radio journalists. So you just. You just pay to join, like, and then they have classes, and then I paid for the class. One of the things she had us do in the class was every. So I think we had a class every Sunday for several hours. And we did, like, various things, but she also had us make like a. There was an assignment every week, and it was like making a two to five minute audio, which, if you're listening to the radio, sometimes they'll cut into, oh, here's a. Whatever small story about a man in Newfoundland who's reunited with his dog or whatever. It's like a little thing. But she had us make them about ourselves and reflecting on ourselves. Right. So it was like a audio piece. It's almost like an audio essay, I guess, about yourself, but making it very small and condensed. And then she was giving feedback on It. And, yeah, so I don't know, I forget how long the class went, but it was, like making these every week, and it was pretty fun. It's like writing like a, you know, a reflective little essay, but instead of for your blog, it's like you're. You're speaking. So I learned a lot from that process that, like, you can make something interesting in audio by just, like, reflecting on something that's going on in your life.
- [37:26]
Guang
I'm very curious about, like, the conviction aspect of, like, getting enough, like, conviction that, like, hey, this is something I want to really get good at. Right. Like, I want to invest in learning all these new skills. Right. Skills that are core to, like, producing, like, this great piece. But before that, I'm curious about, like, were there any engineering practices that you thought that were pretty helpful in kind of systematizing this?
- [37:53]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I have checklists for the process of going through an fm, so we've kind of built them up over time. And then I tried to write down things that don't go well, and I keep a list of that. And so it's just like, some process was a pain or I forgot to do this thing. And then I try to go back and try to knock some of the. So that's like my, I guess, like, refinement step. Right. And so if I write them down a couple times on this list, like, oh, this didn't go well. This didn't go well, then I can go back because oftentimes it's like, okay, yeah, it was a pain to do this, but, like, I got to get the episode out. Like, I don't care that it's. That's pain. I need to do it. But then afterwards I'll have it on the list. Like, oh, yeah, that stupid.
- [38:35]
Ronak
What's an example of that?
- [38:37]
Guang
I was hoping.
- [38:38]
Adam Gordon Bell
What's an example? Let me look.
- [38:40]
Guang
I was hoping there's going to be some mention of Fibonacci numbers and story points. According back to our last.
- [38:46]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, so, like, I was getting transcripts done of the podcast, but then I switched to using, I guess the open AI transcribing thing.
- [38:56]
Guang
Whisper.
- [38:56]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, but it's like I ran into all kinds of problems with it, and so I had to feed it a glossary and then had to tweak things on it. So one time I have written down here, I wrote this thing, like, glossary generator, Right. And so it takes the Whisper transcription, feeds it to ChatGPT4, and there's probably some mistakes in it. Can you make a list of the Words that it got wrong, right? And then I feed that back again. Um, so that was, like, just something I added. Cause I was like, okay, this is wrong. And then I'm like, okay, now I have this list, and I'm feeding it back, and then it gets it. Yeah.
- [39:33]
Ronak
Nice. Oh, you mentioned you learned a lot from that class. What are some of the pieces you learned that would involve telling a good story?
- [39:42]
Adam Gordon Bell
The thing I learned from Christina, there's a lot in your. In your voice, like, a lot of emotion and power. And if I am telling a story to my wife or something, even just like, I was. I was reading this book, and it had this crazy story in it. It was like a nonfiction book, and I'm, like, animated and telling her all this, right? But then I would, you know, want to introduce the story for my podcast, and I would be talking just into the void. I'm like, recording the intro, and there's nobody there, and I just don't sound like a person. I just sound so bored. Right? Like, I don't sound excited, relatable. And so, like, that's hard. Like, I still struggle with that. But that was the thing where she was like, yeah, this isn't good. There's all these radio people in the class. And then I remember, because she had me. Like, I was in this room, and we were all in this big zoom meeting, whatever. I have to practice reading. So I'm reading the intro, and she's like, okay, try again. But she's like, leave. Get out of the room. And then I want you to run in as fast as you can and then stop and give your intro. Right? And then I did that. And she's like, see, it's getting better. And it was like. She was like. She made me just, like, physically move a lot. But the idea was to try to get some of that humanness of how I would normally talk. It's like, for whatever reason, a switch would flip in my head, and I'd be like, time to read the introduction to my podcast, you know?
- [41:18]
Ronak
Oh, nice, nice. How did you come across this class, by the way? Like, I. I think I found a link to this. The. It's like, Association. Association of Independent Audio Producers. Is that the.
- [41:32]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, they have class, so Training. Yeah, yeah. So I joined them, and then they send out emails, and they're like, hey, here's a class. And I was like, I should sign up for this. And then I was very nervous about it because don't feel like I should be part of the Independent association of audio producers. But yeah, it was fine.
- [41:53]
Ronak
Oh, nice. So you mentioned you took another class with NPR as well, which was more about like, where can you add certain sound bites? Not sound bites, but rather. What is the right word? Audio pieces to emphasize what the person is saying.
- [42:08]
Adam Gordon Bell
What.
- [42:08]
Ronak
What was that about?
- [42:09]
Adam Gordon Bell
It was about that, like where to add.
- [42:16]
Ronak
What did you learn as part of that class?
- [42:19]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, like, so if you were to listen to, I guess like Serial was like a really big breakthrough podcast back in the day. And like, it, it was like scored. Like it had like music and the music kind of gave it momentum and, you know, kept it moving and made it interesting. And that was created by the people who made this American Life. And if you listen to this American Life, right, it's like a bunch of 15 minute versions of that and they use music. Sometimes it's too much or I don't like it, but sometimes it really adds thought to the episode. And so, yeah, I took a class where they talked about how that's done. You know, there's podcasts that are like full dramas with like people acting out of fiction with sound effects. But I just learned the very basics. And yeah, I found it very powerful. And the thing that I learned was like, if I took like a. So I paid for a non, like a royalty free music service and I found like, if I found like a rock song and I drop out all the instruments except just the bass, and then I can use kind of like a gritty sound bass. And then when you, you know, just like a repetitive bass chord when I'm introducing things, and then I drop out like that and you cut the bass and then the story starts and people are like, you know, it gives them an audio cue that like, oh, something's changed here, right? That was Adam talking. But now like, boom. Now we're in the Pretty cool.
- [43:48]
Ronak
Pretty cool guang. You gotta add more music.
- [43:52]
Guang
No, you. I was gonna say you should be taking notes, not I. How did you get this conviction to, you know, put in all this investment in terms of, like, learning new skills, I imagine. Yeah, it must have been pretty, you know, daunting to be in that room with the, with the people from the Economist.
- [44:11]
Adam Gordon Bell
So I read this book called Ultra Learning and it's by Scott Young, I believe. Super good book. Ultra Learning. Master hard skills. Outsmart the competition. Accelerate your career. It's quite a subtitle. So Scott Young was this guy who, he finished business school and decided, why didn't I go into computer science? I like computers, I like programming. And so he embarked. This was, I don't know, 20 years ago, but it was right when the MIT OpenCourseWare came out. So he embarked on this project. I'm going to do the whole MIT undergrad, but I'm going to hit it like full time as a job and I should be able to do the courses, like do a triple course load and pass through all these classes. And he did do that. I mean, you don't get a degree for just doing all the online MIT things, but he had somebody grade him, like he got tests and whatever and then he, I don't know, he did this a bunch of times. Anyways, he wrote a book about this. He called it like Alter Learning. And I read it around the time that I transitioned to the storytelling stuff. And I guess the point of the book was like, hey, if you really hit something hard in a short period of time, you can make a lot of progress. Right. Other examples in the book included people who develop a level of language proficiency really quickly and how they just invest a lot of effort and surpass somebody who spends 10 years on Duolingo. They get there in three months, but just by like hammering it. So I think that that's true. Right, so what do you want to throw yourself at? Right. So I chose to throw myself at the podcast. There's people now, you know. I mean, you mentioned data science, right. It's like sometimes if you encounter something new and you're excited about it, you can just really invest a lot of time and level up pretty quickly.
- [46:05]
Guang
Nice. Taking a step back, right? Like you were doing this all like while having a full time job. How did you balance this? Like, did you treat this as just like kind of like a hobby that you like do on the side or.
- [46:17]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I mean, so it started off when I wasn't putting much into it. Then it wasn't too hard, like before I really started focusing on, oh, let's make the best episode I can, then it wasn't that challenging because it didn't take up that much time. At some point I started waking up at 5:00 and so I would work for two hours, like from 5:15 to at like 7:15. Then I would get ready for my day and then I would work. I would just do two hours of podcast work before I worked each day. Um, and like sometimes I wasn't super. Probably wasn't my best hours for working, but cumulatively there's actually a lot of hours there, so. So that worked very well. Uh, so it was just like putting in the Time I stopped. I moved the time from 5 to 6 because, like, eventually I did it. Like, I think after like two years of that, like, I was just like, like kind of sleep deprived or I don't know, like, it ended up. I ended up switching it because my wife was just like, why are you an asshole all the time? I didn't actually say that, but it was like I felt like I was. I was wearing a little bit my social niceties. But yeah, so that was a big way. I just, I just spent two hours on it each morning.
- [47:38]
Ronak
That's a big commitment, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, I struggle with this all the time.
- [47:45]
Guang
Is there clear. I mean, you know, you've already talked about sort of the goal is to kind of keep on improving it and then produce the best podcasts that you can. How do you go about, like, goal setting? I guess.
- [47:56]
Adam Gordon Bell
I don't know. Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this thing, like gold drift. Start with a specific goal. You know, doing the podcast because I want to learn about more technical stuff or I want to ask person question who. I read their book and then like, you know, get some attention. Then you're excited about it and then it's like, well, maybe I'm going to be Joe Rogan with hair. Like, I don't know, like that. Maybe that's my next stop. Right. And then, you know, then I get into the storytelling thing. Nice. Nice. What?
- [48:25]
Guang
I guess what's your, like, current goal, if you have one?
- [48:29]
Adam Gordon Bell
So my current goal, it kind of relates to something you were asking, which is, yeah, if somebody has this big crazy story, like that guy who did lisp in space, like, that's amazing. Right? But like, what about, like, people's everyday lives? Like, how can that be interesting and how can people learn from that? Because I think, like, well, first of all, there's a limit of people deploying lisp into space, but also there's so much to learn from just everyday stuff that happens to people. But how do you make that entertaining? So I think that's a big challenge for me. Right. It's like you can write the science fiction book where the world is on the line and if you don't save things, the earth is going to explode. Right. But can you write the, the story where it's like, very compelling, but it's about something much smaller. Right? Like somebody raising their kid or whatever? That's a metaphor. I'm not working on either of those things, but I was talking to somebody recently about something I was working on. At work. And how I was given this ticket to work on this area I wasn't familiar with. And I thought I knew how to solve it and I was working on solving it in turn. It was wrong. I didn't understand what I was doing. But it was three days later when I figured out I didn't. Like, I was doing it wrong. Right. And like, I was new to this, so there was expectation, like I could get feedback and help. But also it had been three days, and so I was like, it's too late to reach out and ask for help because they're going to be like, what the hell have you been doing? Right? And so I was explaining this to somebody and I thought it was like a very much my weird headspace, right? That I was going over this in my head, like, oh my God, it's too late to ask for help. And this person was like, oh, my God. Like, I think about that all the time. Like, it's too late to ask for help. Like, I'm stuck by that. And then that made me think, like, there's all these things, the small things of everyday work world. And like, how do you make those interesting and compelling stories? So that's something I'm thinking about. I don't know that I have an answer. But yeah, I guess the.
- [50:35]
Guang
Obviously, if it's crazy, it has its own appeal. But then, you know, the further away you get from crazy, like, the more normal it is. Like more relatable it is.
- [50:42]
Adam Gordon Bell
Right.
- [50:42]
Guang
So there's much more of an emphasis on how well the storytelling is versus just like sort of you dub the facts in terms of phobia. So it's outlandish.
- [50:51]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, but how do you make it interesting? Right? Because our days can be boring. Right. But where's the pieces where that's not boring? Right. And I think it has a lot to do with vulnerability. Right? Like, if you're able to share the things that you are struggling with, like internally, like, that can be a lot. There can be something interesting there. Like, even though this ticket that was a problem for me was super minor and boring, and if I described it to you, you wouldn't care. But the fact that it got me worked up and I was worried that they're going to think I'm dumb and how did I think that this way would work and I have to hide it, how am I going to catch up so they don't know I went down this. That's where it gets interesting to me.
- [51:35]
Guang
Nice. Nice. So speaking of storytelling. So Devrel. So developers Relations. There's also, I imagine, a ton of storytelling there. Like, how did you first get into it? I guess from the management story. Now fast forward like a little bit.
- [51:54]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I mean, like, I had the podcast, and so somebody reached out to me about a developer relations role, and I was like, yeah, I like communicating to developers. Let's give it a try. And, yeah, I didn't know what I was doing, and the person who hired me had never. They didn't know what developer relations. I mean, I guess we all had ideas, right? But so I started thinking that, like, I would go give a lot of talks at conferences, and then, you know, we tried to do meetups and I wrote, like, tutorials talking about our product. And we didn't see a lot of success. But then we reached out to this guy, Mitch Weiner. He's one of the founders of DigitalOcean. And he said, like, well, you just need to understand the people who might be the customers of your product. Like, these developers, like, what problems they have, and then just solve those problems, like, write down the solutions. And we were like, okay. And then what? And he's like, that's the whole thing. Like, that's like, people didn't know how to install MySQL onto a Linux server. We wrote that down. We put it, like, on the DigitalOcean website. And we didn't say, like, check out DigitalOcean. I mean, maybe, but we just told them how to solve their problem. And it happens to be. Obviously, those people might be interested in getting a virtual private server from DigitalOcean. Right. So that's how I got my start. And we just tried to help people with their problems. Right. One of the big first things I wrote that people really remember me by was this article about JQ JQ parses JSON. Super idiosyncratic tool, I guess. Right. Like, and so I just wrote a tutorial for how it works, because if you understood kind of the logic behind it, like, it made sense. It's like its own little JQ world. You can. It's actually Turing complete. You could build whatever you want inside of it. I think it was on Hacker News recently. Somebody built JQ inside of jq, like, using the Turing Complete.
- [53:58]
Ronak
Oh, wow, that's fancy.
- [54:00]
Adam Gordon Bell
I just spent a lot of time writing down, like, here's how you use it and explaining things to people. And then that did very well. You know, it showed up on Hacker News. People were on our website. They learned about our product. And that was, like, how I started to. Yeah, to learn these skills. So I mean, I guess that's not really storytelling. It's more understanding developers and what problems they have.
- [54:28]
Ronak
So one, follow up on that. Like, when it comes to developer relations, you see many people in this role from different companies and they all do it very differently. Kind of going by what you said earlier, in many cases you see some people building kind of a tutorial, working tutorial of sorts, and they would publish it on GitHub. It's like, here's how you can use tool X to achieve Y, which is basically a way to show how you can use one of their products to solve your problems. In some cases it's tutorials like a blog post. In other cases like a conference talk, for example. What are the parts which are not visible outside to people, which is sometimes talking to customers, for example, to understand what their problems are. So if I just look at the words like developer and relationships, what are the aspects here which are not public facing, which happens behind the scenes.
- [55:20]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, I mean that would be one of them for sure. Like talking to people using the product, seeing what problems they have, maybe paying attention to where people are just talking about your products or competitors or whatever, seeing what issues they have. One of the problems is like developer relations is a weird role. Means a lot of different things to different depending on the organization, right. I mean, I guess that's true of any role. Right. But like some people is communicating feedback that, you know, users of the product are getting to the product team, right? So it can, it can look a little bit like a PM role or something, right. Where you know, developers are using this API, they're having this issue like, how can we prioritize this? So I worked at Earthly, it was like a seed stage startup. And our big problem was we were competing obscurity, right? Like nobody knew we existed. If you worked in developer relations for Amazon on AWS Lambda, like everybody knows it exists, right? So then it's a different type of problem, Right. You don't need to let people know that Lambda is a thing. Yeah, maybe it's much more relevant to provide tutorials that show how to use the latest feature or yeah, that part where you're feeding feedback back to the product team. So it varies a lot. But yeah, I guess I did a lot of like awareness stuff, right. And that's where that digitalocean perspective really made sense. Because if you go like I went to a meetup to talk about Earthly, it was like an online meetup and like there was the guy who hosted it and there was one other person and then I gave some presentation, and then at the end, I was like, any questions? And the. The. The one person who wasn't like the host was like, so this is a command line tool? I was like, yeah, no, it is a command line tool to pay. And then. But the thing is, because who wants a meetup where various dev tool startups come and show what they've built, right? Nobody does. Right. So I think Mitch Weiner's point was, like, what problems actually people have? And you don't need to sell them on your product, just help them, you know, solve their problems. And often it's tangent. Tangentially related. Right. Like, I remember Earthly, for example, really good at doing builds for Monorepos, which can be a challenge. And so we wrote, like, lots of stuff about, like, here's how you can build monorepos, right? Not just, here's how you do it with our tool. Like, here's how you structure it. Here's best practices. Just, like, educating people. Those people, you know, we think they would really benefit from using our product, but just putting that out there. They're aware of us and they know, you know, maybe when they're like, hey, what build tool should I use? They might check it out.
- [58:14]
Ronak
So, in a way, talking about goal drifting, at the beginning of the podcast, like you mentioned, your goal was to be this amazing programmer who knows how to solve all these problems in the code. On the developer relationship side, I would say it's slightly different where it's little more breadth than depth. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, but if that's the case, in a way, that goal has drifted. Considering that, do you want to stay on the dev rel path or would you consider changing it?
- [58:43]
Adam Gordon Bell
Like, you think I've drifted from my technical roots? I guess. Yeah.
- [58:48]
Guang
I'm curious about that as well, because, like, when you said that, right, Like, I was like, ooh, like, kind of being like an engineer's engineer. Right. Being really, like, drilled down. Is that still important to you? Like, do you still want to be that? Or after all this experience, you were kind of like, you know what? Maybe that was kind of a pseudo goal.
- [59:05]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah.
- [59:06]
Guang
Or part of the journey that got.
- [59:07]
Adam Gordon Bell
Me to where I am.
- [59:08]
Guang
Ooh, that sounded pretty good.
- [59:10]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah.
- [59:10]
Guang
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
- [59:11]
Adam Gordon Bell
I don't know why I wanted to be the best engineer like that. I don't. I don't know. Just I wanted to, but, like, there's all these people that I looked up to in that time. Right. I'm trying to think of specific people Like Joel Polsky, I remember he had this blog talking about engineering. Like, back in the day, it was the guy from Steve Yegi or whatever. I don't know, there was all these.
- [59:35]
Ronak
Steve Yegi.
- [59:36]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah, there was all these people. And I was like, you know, I want to know all the things that they know. Like, I want to be that great. But, like, if you think about it, the reason we know about them is because actually they're communicators, right? They're explaining problems to us. Like, I thought this guy has a blog because he's the most amazing engineer, but no, he, he, he's. I know about the things that he's done because he talks about them. Right. Like, what he's actually good at. Like, all these people I looked up to, what they're actually good at was communicating. Right. The person who wrote the book that I wanted to ask questions about how to do, you know, whatever functional programming. Like, it's not clear they were the best functional programmer in the world. Hopefully they were decent at it. But no, they had written a book, Right. They had spent a lot of time communicating. So I think that actually, like, I, I maybe realized that my goal, you know, was misplaced, that there was a larger goal or something that. Yeah, I wasn't seeing that. All these people who communicate are the people that I look up to. Right. And it's, it can be super impactful if you can take something and explain it in a way that lets it crystallize in people's minds. And I don't know that I'm the best at it, but, like, I. It's. It's. It's. It feels very valuable and important. Um. Yeah. And so that's what I'm going for. Right. And like, it's weird because developer relations feels like it's a good rocket because I like communicating to developers. Right. And if I can find a place where they value those skills and it can help impactfully, you know, grow their business or whatever. And also I get to, like, write about why we should stop using YAML, like, for everything or whatever. My perspective is, like, it feels like a super good. It feels like it shouldn't be something that I'm paid for, but it seems like people are willing to pay.
- [61:40]
Ronak
Oh, why we shouldn't use yamls for everything. Well, there's the number Hacker News number on first.
- [61:45]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah.
- [61:46]
Guang
That was like a really nice full circle in some ways that. Yeah. And that's actually quite profound that I need to think more on that.
- [61:56]
Adam Gordon Bell
Yeah. If you, if you think of all the people you look up to, right? Like, I was looking up to them because I thought they were the best, but, like, I would never have known about them if they didn't invest time into communicating. Right? Like, I remember reading all these Carl Sagan books when I was a kid. I loved them, you know, like, oh, Carl Sagan is the most amazing scientist in the world. Although he was amazing science writer, right? Like, I think he was a good scientist, but that's not why I know of him. I know of him because he was a science writer. Communication is everything, right? The people telling stories about the builds breaking at opratel. The person I learned the most from, I think he was just really good at telling these stories. Right. You know, like, somebody would be like, oh, yeah, I got called in on the weekend. Like, turned out the disc was full. But Richard, that's not how he would tell the story, right? Like, he would give you breadcrumbs. It's like, get this call, I'm laying on my couch, I'm watching Lost, and, like, I need to drive in. And, you know, and he would, like, they're like, oh, Richard's got another good one. Oh, was it this? Was it that did the router power out again? Yeah. And it's like, I learned a lot from Richard, but only because he let you kind of live that debugging experience, right? Like, you got the vicarious learning of that battle. That's just because he was a good storyteller. All right, that was the show. You can go to softwaremisadventures.com to find a video version of this. There will be a link in the show notes to that page. And they have many other great interviews with people far more accomplished than myself, so you should check them out. And thank you for letting me share this interview on my feed. Yeah. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.