Surviving This Job Market

Mike opens with a post-apocalyptic “choose your team” trope to frame today’s job market for junior developers: brutal competition, few openings, and the need to stand out with real, survival-level skills. He shares examples like his niece (strong student, no offers) and Acima’s internship receiving 300+ applicants, then asks the group what actually helps new grads stay relevant and get picked.

Will’s core message is: breathe—computers aren’t going away, but the industry is cycling out of a long boom and juniors are getting hit hardest. He tells his own dot-com bust story (gas station job, selling plasma) to emphasize grit and staying in the game. His practical advice is to stop relying on being “in the stack of 300” and instead get known: show your work publicly, connect with people, join communities, and consistently post demos/blogs/tutorials for 3–6 months so hiring becomes about recognition and trust—not resume roulette.

The group zooms in on communication as the multiplier: resumes should be clean and consistent (attention to detail), but networking and clear thinking matter more than keywords. Thomas and Eddy stress becoming more social, asking “dumb” questions, and building presentations around questions to invite engagement—especially remotely. For interviews, Mike and Will flag dishonesty and hand-wavy answers as major red flags; they prefer candidates who can explain their process, own gaps, and reason out loud (even if they need to look things up). They close by pointing to AI as a near-term opportunity: write and build around AI tooling and “vibe coding,” because established companies are hungry for people who can help integrate AI into messy legacy (“brownfield”) codebases—while noting the job crunch isn’t only AI, but also macro factors like post-COVID pullback, rates, and layoffs.

Transcript:

MIKE: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Acima Development Podcast. I'm Mike, and I am hosting again today. With us, we have Eddy, Thomas, Will Archer, Ramses, and Kyle.
 
I'm going to start by...in the pre-call, we were talking about this. I'm going to paint a picture of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and you've probably heard this story before. So, you got your standard post-apocalyptic narrative. Everything's terrible. You're alone, and everybody's dangerous. And you get a chance to take a couple of people with you. And everybody else might not make it, right, or depending on who you pick, you're not going to make it, as you have to cross through the hazards ahead. So, who do you choose? Who do you choose to go with you? And, you know, this is a common theme. It's a trope [chuckles]. It's a trope. You got to choose the right person.
 
And who you're going to choose is probably somebody with a particular set of skills [chuckles], and those particular skills...yeah, and I think that's a direct quote from a movie, but I'm not going to go with those ones specifically. You're going to look for somebody who stands out. So, are you going to look for somebody who's exactly like everybody else? Or are you going to look at the person, like, I know that they are super aware of their surroundings, and when the zombies come in, they'll alert me before they make it here, right? I would definitely pick somebody like that in the zombie post-apocalyptic future.
 
Or maybe you pick the tough person, right? Or you pick the person with deep knowledge of the plants and animals around, you know, who can forage for food. You're going to want to assess somebody who has skills that can help you survive. And there are going to be a lot of people who are going to have average skills, and they're probably fine. But you're going to want that person who actually stands out.
 
So, trope time over. We are in a world today where it is hard...and this is not just in software. We have a situation throughout many industries, actually, but it's especially bad in software, where if you're a new graduate, junior developer, it is...we've talked about this before [inaudible 02:37] crisis.
 
WILL: Apocalytic.
 
MIKE: It's apocalyptic, exactly.
 
WILL: Apocalyptic.
 
MIKE: Exactly. It's apocalyptic. It is.
 
So, I've got a niece who graduated, I can't remember now whether it's one or two years ago, and was, I think, valedictorian at their high school and solid near top of their class, I think, in college, lots of extracurricular activities. Brilliant, personable, kind of everything you'd want, hasn't got a single job offer [chuckles].
 
Another example: last year, we had an internship. We tend to every summer. I believe we had over 300 applicants for that role, and we got to pick, right [chuckles], which was great, and we had some great folks. But, actually, we brought one person from the year before. So, 300 applicants for one job; that's some serious competition.
 
And if you are going to try to get a job in this market, it...well, first of all, I'm sorry. We've talked about this before [chuckles] a few times, you know. It's...I feel for you. It's...this is tough. But also, you're going to...we'd like to talk today about what you can do. So, you're the person in that situation. Now we're talking specifically to these people in that situation, but it applies to everybody, right? We're all permanently in a situation where if you don't stay fresh, you're at risk, you know.
 
We're going to talk today about how you can stay relevant. How can you stand out? How can you be that person who gets picked so you don't get left behind for the, you know, for the apocalypse to claim you? Well, I've got some thoughts. We'll pepper the discussion with them as we go. But, you know, I'm just going to straight up ask at the beginning, you know, what do you all think? Do you have anything specifically in mind you think that somebody should be doing who's in that situation that you've seen work, or that you think would work, or you think doesn't work [chuckles]? What do you got?
 
WILL: So, the first thing I'd say is, like, everybody calm down. Computers are not going away. They're not going away. Nobody's phone is going away. Nobody is, like, nobody's unplugging servers. They're not going dark. None of this is happening. And I think, like, you know, we as an industry have gotten used to boom times for so, so, so, so long that, like, you know, finding out how the other half lives is, you know, an existential crisis for us. But, like, that's not to understate, right? Like, it is really bad out there, especially for junior developers and new grads and stuff like that.
 
I mean, so, from my perspective, you know, Uncle Will's story time. I graduated in 2001, right, which was pretty much the depths of the dot bomb, you know, economic pullback. I graduated with a degree in computer engineering, not computer science, computer engineering, right? So, it was the hardware engineering and stuff like that. I graduated first in my class, not top 10%, like the, you know, the spring semester, not the spring semester, summer semester. Well, anyway, whenever I graduated, like, I was the number one graduate from that thing. But I was like, I graduated from a terrible university, not a terrible university. It was a pretty good, small engineering school, Wright State University, go Raiders, in Dayton, Ohio.
 
I, valuing my life and sanity, wanted to get the absolute hell out of Dayton as fast as I could, which is a decision I have not regretted a single time in my entire life. But, like, I moved to Austin where I didn't know anybody. I had no connections, could not get a job anywhere for anybody, you know. Like, I was working at a gas station to make ends meet, right, because I had to eat still. I was working at a gas station and selling my plasma, right?
 
You guys stay in the game, and it'll be all right. Like, the people who are good are still valued. The people who are good are still needed. The people who are good are still not as common on the ground as you might be led to believe. It's still pretty tough to do this work, and if you're actually in here...so, like, if you've got the knack for it and you have the grit and the drive to continue doing it, you're going to be fine. There's still a seat at the table for you.
 
If you're out there for the bag, you know, maybe not. You're not going to make it, you know. They, like...it happened in 2001. It's happening again in 2008. It's happened over, over, and over, you know. There was a massive hiring boom from COVID. And, you know, like, if you're just in it for the paycheck, this work is just going to chew you up. The businesses, the industry is just not going to...you're not going to be able to keep up because the money is just not enough. And there aren't, like, any variety of worker protections in the business. There's nothing. There's no licensure. There's, you know what I mean, it's just, like, a random, maybe high school dropout in Bangladesh can take your job tomorrow, and that's just what it is. That's the literal long and short of it, you know what I mean?
 
So, it's going to be okay, guys, but, like, yes, there's going to be a cull, and if you lost your fastball or, like, you're just in it for the bag, or you're not really committed to, like, the thing, then, like, sorry.
 
MIKE: And, honestly, if that's where you're headed, you wouldn't be satisfied anyway [laughs].
 
WILL: No, you...yeah, you'd get out after, you know what I mean? Like, you're going to get out now versus getting out in five years, where it's just like, I just can't...I can't do another code review [laughs].
 
MIKE: Yeah. But a lot of us who love it, there's a reward in building things the way we do that, if you've been hooked by it, it's hard to let go of. And if you've got that and you're willing to put in the work, I agree with Will, you'll get there. But it might be a slog. I did not have great times back in that early 2000s era either [laughs].
 
WILL: Yeah, right? Yeah, it was a thing. It was kind of...it was kind of ugly out there.
 
MIKE: Then once you get your foot in the door and you can prove yourself, things tend to get better. But how do you get that foot in the door?
 
WILL: [laughs] It's never really changed. Like, I don't, like, the nature of the work is not...I don't feel like...The work, to me, does not feel any different than it ever was.
 
MIKE: When I say better, having a job, having a paying job is better than not [chuckles], is my point.
 
I tell you, my first full-time dev job, I was paid...I was working with a couple of people, literally still in high school, not high school dropouts, just high schoolers. I think they were making more than I was [chuckles], and I was not in great financial straits, you know, paying my student loans and so on. But it was a lot better than living off a credit card. There's other jobs I could have gotten. I could have gotten...I strongly considered going back and doing construction work full-time, but I was looking for a job and didn't want to get entangled. Eventually, I found one. How did you get in, Will, back in that era?
 
WILL: You know, I had to go and retool. I went to grad school at the University of Utah, and I was...So, I mean, like, there's the, like, I did it, like...I don't want to say, like, less efficient way, but, like, effectively what I did was I was at grad school, right, and then some of my students pitched me as, like, it's like, hey, you should hire this guy. They were working on a startup, right, and so they were, like, "Hey our TA is really good. You should get him." And so, like, you know, I got in, and then I was off to the races.
 
I mean, but, you know, more tactically, more strategically, I guess I'd say, like, what I did was I got in front of people who knew me. Because, I think, like, if we're talking about, like, okay, I'm a junior developer, right, I've graduated, let's say, right? Like, I've graduated. You don't have to wait till you graduate, right?
 
Because I'm saying, like, the grad school part of it was super fun and educational. It made me better, and I would do it again in a second, and I loved it. It was super, super awesome. But what I did, like, what happened there was I just got to know people in the business, and they got to know me, right? And then I got this sort of sketchy lifeline, and I took it. And it turns out, like, yeah, I'm actually good at this, right? Like, I mean, and so that's what I'm saying.
 
I mean, like, I think people might be faced with a crisis of confidence in that they've gone out, and they've worked hard, and they've studied hard. And they've been successful, and they passed all their classes, and they got A's, and they had great projects. Everybody loved them and whenever they got an opportunity to prove that they could really do this thing, they excelled. And then they get into this situation where they're one of 300, you know, you'd have better odds trying to get into Harvard, literally, you know.
 
MIKE: Yeah, literally.
 
WILL: Like, Harvard doesn't have admission rates that low. And then they're just like, oh, well, I suck. I'm no good, you know. And it's like, no, like, it's just...you need to be playing a different game than you're playing right now, and that is going to be...well, that's something you need to work out, you know, you got to work this thing out.
 
And what I did operationally, really functionally is I got in front of people so people could know me, and know my work, and know who I am or what I could do, you know. And if you can get in the room with people, just any people, right? Like, these were my students, these were my interns, you know. They weren't anybody. But, like, you have to put yourself in a situation where somebody could find you, you know.
 
Both Mike and myself, at another time in my life, we were hiring managers. Hiring people is such an enormous pain in the ass. You have no idea how difficult and painstaking and, like, stressful and high risk because you can't screw it up. It is. And, like, and you're going to get buried, absolutely buried in resumes and filtering through that. You know the person you're looking for is in there, but you don't know how to find them. It is a lot of work, and the easier...you just have to make yourself part of the conversation. But it can be done, and you have to do it.
 
But, I mean, I think, for me personally, working at a gas station with a computer engineering degree, it was a shot I took that was, okay, walk it off, buddy [laughs] back in the game, you know. It was a start, and I think a lot of people are probably experiencing that right now.
 
MIKE: Absolutely. So, you say you went to grad school. So, you went and continued to build your skills, and you did it in a way that was public. Both of those, I think, matter.
 
WILL: Right? Well, I mean, so let's take it, you know what I mean, another thing that I could have done at that point in my life, I lacked the confidence to do it, right, like, a lack of confidence. But I could've done the exact same thing in a fraction of the time if I just involved myself in the programming community in my, you know, in my city, Austin, Texas, where they do do programming. But I didn't know anything. I was trying to go in through the front door, you know, at, like, Dell, right? Like, where I was one of 300 because I was doing it the dumb way.
 
And instead, what I could have done is, I could have gone to my roommate who was, to me, to my, like, to me, and my, like, you know, like, hoity-toity computer engineering background, right? He was just a PHP web monkey. And I was just like, look at this dude, you know, which in fairness, you know, I was just...I had a lot to learn, right? And I could have just been like, okay, like, you know what, teach me your ways. Here's a banana. Teach me how you got that CGI script running, you know, which was well within my capacity. And I could have just done that, and I could have been fine, you know.
 
I had people in my network, and I could have expanded people in my network. I could have, you know what I mean, opened myself to the world. And the same thing that got me the job was still operating. I was just too stupid to, like, connect the thing together. There's plenty of people if I could have only reached them, they would've been happy to have me, you know.
 
There's an arc that I've seen, and this is an old arc, right? We may need to evolve this a little bit because, like, jobs the stakes just get higher and higher and higher. But there's an arc that I've seen over and over and over. People who are trying to break into the business. And so, what they'll try and do is they'll sit around, and they'll, like, start doing blogs, and they'll start doing demos. They'll start doing video, you know, tutorials of this thing, and then, hey, I'm building this thing, and look at this thing. And they'll go, and they'll go, and they'll post, and they'll post, and they'll post. And then they'll stop because they have a job now, and they don't have time for that anymore.
 
It usually takes between, like, three and six months of, like, continuous promoting and present...I don't want to even call it promoting, but you're presenting yourself, like, I'm doing this thing. Take a look. Hey, look at this thing I'm doing. Take a look, take a look, take a look. Here's this, here's this, here's this, and then poof, you know. Like, I've never seen anybody do it from calendar year who didn't wind up, like, you know, going from, like, posting every week to, like, posting every, like, couple of months because they have a job now, and they're too busy.
 
MIKE: So, there's the blog route. There is the, I'm going to get involved in an open-source project route.
 
WILL: Also, if you've got a blog though, you can't just do it. I mean, you've got to put it out into the world because [inaudible 16:42] commit messages. You don't do it. I don't do it. Nobody does it. Like, you need to broadcast [chuckles].
 
MIKE: Sure. Well, and I'd say another thing about writing that blog, you're practicing communicating. You're practicing taking an idea, presenting it clearly. And that's going to stick with your career longer than whatever the language you're working in today is. So...Go ahead, please.
 
KYLE: So, I've got a question for you guys that are hiring managers, then. We've kind of spoken about, like, you know, at the point that you get the interview, you can show off your blog. You can show off your open-source project, right? But if you've got a stack of 300 applicants in front of you, I know you're not looking through those and saying, oh yeah, I'm going to interview every single one of these. As somebody that's applying, what are they doing with their resume that's standing out to you as you're weeding through that process?
 
WILL: First up, I'm going to stop you right there. You've lost. You've failed. You've failed. If you're in the 300 stack, you know what I mean, and it's just like, really hope, really hope he makes it down 198, like, deep in this list because, like, because I got a banger for him; I've got a banger, no, no, stop, stop. Fail. You got to have juice.
 
I mean, you could do it the stupid way if you want to, if you hate yourself and your life, you know, and you just really love, like, writing resumes and cover letters, although that doesn't even work anymore because AI ruined it. Like, you got to have juice. You have to know somebody. That's how you do it. That's why you broadcast this stuff, and you talk to people in the business.
 
EDDY: Okay, Will. But, like, I got to believe you read through resumes, right?
 
WILL: No, I mean --
 
EDDY: Like, at some point in your career, at some point, like, to what extent, I don't know, but, like, you've got to at least take a look at your applicant, right?
 
MIKE: You do, but Will is right. You usually look at the resume after there is a connection somewhere, somebody knew somebody, and then you see the resume. The resume is usually number two. And I've seen statistics on this, too. It's like, 80, 90% of the time, that's the case.
 
EDDY: But what are the keywords that stick out to you in the resume?
 
MIKE: It's not the keywords. You don't have spelling errors. If it's hard to read, if it, you know, if there's things that are hard to understand, I'm probably looking at the next resume. Now, that's hard because a lot of people are not native English speakers, right? And that's not entirely fair. There could be...and so I try to suspend some judgment there [chuckles].
 
WILL: I do not. Are we talking in English? Is it part of the job?
 
MIKE: It is.
 
WILL: I'm sorry. No offense. I mean, you know what I mean, if I have to read your English, then it's got to be right. I mean, you could be good at something else and, like, I'll give you a little slack, but, like, no, like, this is an objective. You have to do this, like, because that's how I'm going to work with you [laughs].
 
MIKE: It's true. I've looked through a stack of 10 resumes and said, this person speaks English well. They're all non-native English speakers, right? But I could say, this person cared enough to make a good resume. And that sounds like a little thing, and it's not entirely fair, but it's kind of fair because, again, our job is paying attention to detail. If you can't pay attention to detail there, are you going to pay attention when you are looking at security for a credit card form? And there's some parallels.
 
EDDY: Okay, so grammatical errors is one of them. What else?
 
MIKE: And spelling, capitalization, punctuation, everything that's involved in language and even some design aspects there, right? It doesn't really matter that much what your design is, but it should be consistent, right? It shouldn't be kind of all over the place. It needs to not look slapdash. Again, it's attention to detail.
 
WILL: I mean, I look at relevant experience, you know what I mean, like, where somebody who's, like, hey, I've got some relevant experience, although I expect you to lie like I would, you know. Like, I don't know, I mean, like, call it attention to detail, right, because I'm going to read the ad. And if it's like, yo, it's Spring Boot, right, and I'm like, I've done Spring Boot before, baby, Spring Boot is going in there. And if it's a Ruby on Rails job, you going to hear about Ruby on Rails. Like, I can't...I respect you enough to lie to you [chuckles].
 
EDDY: I think someone told me, and I can't remember who it was, but the...you can't just send out a blanket resume in hopes that it'll blanket the whole freaking industry. No, like, you got to be modifying and tailoring it based off of whatever company that you're applying for. And if you're not doing that, then you're not going to turn out very many results, right?
 
WILL: Yeah. But again, but again, again, again, again, like, I want to, like, you know, like, come down to, like, Old Man Amdahl's Law, right? Like, you need to be coming up with some kind of way to get to the top of the pile, some kind of way to get to the top of that pile. You cannot be, like, two-thirds of the way down the pile expecting a good result. Or more accurately, right, more accurately, I think what you'd say is, like, you're talking about efficiency, right?
 
And you can increase your efficiency tenfold, if not a hundredfold, just, like, just hit somebody up who works at the company who will talk to you, like, maybe it's not Mike, you know, maybe it's Eddy, you know. If somebody's like, "Hey, what's it like working at Acima? You know, I've been doing this, and this, and this, and, like, is it cool, you know?" Because, like, I mean, think about it. I mean, I stress this because, like, I've gone through this and I think these sort of self-limiting beliefs, it was...I was reading something specifically. I was reading something, and they were talking about this barrier like we're talking about, like, you know, like, younger generations are not socializing in person as much because there is a perceived empathy gap, right?
 
And what it is is, like, my view of your empathy towards me, right, is much lower than it actually is. People think that other people would be mean to them or would be, like, annoyed or angry with them at a much higher rate. And if you...I want people who may be junior developers, like, thinking about this stuff and thinking about, like, well, what if somebody, let's say a high school student, who was just barely learning programming hit you up, and they were, you know, nice and respectful and just wanted to talk to you about your work and your experiences because you are at a higher level than somebody, right? Somebody wants to get up to your level and maybe you can help, maybe you can't.
 
But if somebody emailed me and it's like, hey, what about, you know, working for this big telecom company? Tell me about that. And if they were cool and they're like, "Well, you know, there's this job I saw, you know, would you put in a good word for me?" And all somebody would have to do...Eddy, if you send me...if somebody hit you up on LinkedIn and you're like, oh yeah, like, "Hey, Mike, you know, such and such was applying for this job. Take a look at their resume," already, already, 10x, you have 10xed.
 
Even that, like, if somebody emailed me, like, take a look at this, you know what I mean? Your resume will get read. And, like, 299 in a stack of 300, like, I'm not...I won't say Mike didn't read it, you know, but I know he was tired when he did it.
 
MIKE: [laughs]
 
WILL: Anyway. I mean, just dumb stuff like that, you know.
 
THOMAS: Yeah, it really hit home with what you explained about the socializing part because that is a big thing, especially from, like, my generation, right? Not a lot of people socialize too much, and it's hard for, like, a lot of people to kind of just communicate and set up networking, right? And what you were kind of explaining earlier with, like, getting into college and everything, actually, like, that's a huge networking opportunity. But one thing that I learned that helped me so much tremendously was becoming more social.
 
So, when I first started out in the company, I had my headphones on; I'd do my work; I'd go home, right? Learning that wasn't going to help me move up in the company, especially where that promote-from-within aspect is so heavily influential and the culture is just great, right? I realized that I have to be social. I have to talk to people. I have to network. I have to get out. I can't sit here and just stay in my own realm the whole time, you know.
 
And so, I asked, like, my old boss, I was like, "What extra work can I take on," you know? I started taking on that extra work, and it started to get me through all the other floors. And I kind of learned what people...not in a sense of people pleasing, but what they like to hear and what topics interest them, you know, learning about those topics and everything, holding those conversations with people and stuff. And I think it really put me in a good atmosphere to continue to kind of move around and everything, get to know people. People kind of remember interactions that you have with them and everything.
 
That's part of, like, I like to show up in office, you know, every day. And that's one thing I learned that helped me significantly was being able to talk to people, being able to network, recognize people's faces, people recognize my face, you know. So, just food for thought. I feel like that helped me significantly. So, when you pointed it out, Will, I was like, that's exactly what, you know, I think is a big problem is the lack of socialization and networking.
 
EDDY: I spend more time speaking with my peers than I do actually pairing with them. But I think it's a huge critical ability to have, you know, as an individual, right? Especially if you're working remote, I think you got to be able to learn how to communicate and how to connect with individuals, right? Not just people who you work with directly, but, like, there are times where you need to be reaching out and collaborating with other teams that you haven't put a face to yet, but you still need to, like, ask them questions. Blank, blank, blank, like, hey, I am not 100% sure of this implementation. Give me some insight. And you got to feel comfortable with that, right? So, communication 100% is a huge factor.
 
THOMAS: I think another big one, too, for me, was getting over the fact that no question is a dumb question, right? So, you could always ask questions and everything, and if you don't ask it, that's the dumb decision, right? Asking dumb questions --
 
EDDY: I'm pretty sure I've asked dumb questions, too. [laughter] I'm just saying, like, I'm not immune [laughs].
 
MIKE: And the truth is, when somebody hears that dumb question, your thought is not usually, 'What an idiot.' Their thought is, oh, there's some context they're missing. So, I haven't explained this, you know. There's something missing here. Let me answer the question you meant to ask. And I get far more...it's far more problematic in my perception...like, I look at somebody, like, wow, this person's got a problem if they're not asking questions, than if they're asking questions that reveal what they don't know. Because what's the purpose of a question? To reveal that you don't know something.
 
It says, you wouldn't ask the question if you knew the answer, unless you're doing some sort of rhetorical thing, in which case that's something different, right? You are asking a question to say, I don't know this. And if you're trying to hide that there's some other thing that you don't know, well, you're probably going about it the wrong way. Yeah, it's going to be embarrassing. There's some things you don't know. It's uncomfortable.
 
You know what? Every time somebody has been working on something for a week because they didn't get it, and they didn't ask, that is a hundred times worse. That means that somebody has just wasted that time. They've thrown away the time where they could have taken a two-minute conversation and saved themselves a week.
 
EDDY: So, okay. So, I think a big part of that is the fear, right, of sounding stupid, right? But I think it's also intimidation, not necessarily, like, how you sound, but it's just the fact of just initiating that conversation, right? So, what I've started to do is, I do tend to do demos in architecture, our meetings that we do weekly, right? And, at first, it was a little daunting, you know, and then a lot of the times, you kind of just yield to the floor, you know. And you ask for people's feedback, and no one ever talks. And you're like, okay, am I doing this right? I don't know.
 
What I've started to do is I started to write some sort of semblance, you know, of, like, how I'm going to talk, how I'm going to do the presentation, so a little bit of prep work. But I built in pauses to ask questions anytime I'm going to context switch into something else. And when I do that, you know, I actually...you got to get past the awkward pause, right, and give people enough time, you know, to build up the courage to raise their hand and ask questions. But when you do have the first person to raise their hand and ask, it usually entices other people to give their opinion as well.
 
And a lot of the times, the reasons why there isn't any interaction is because a lot of times people don't build in into their curriculum, in their presentation, to ask for people in the middle of their presentation. I don't know if it's just by design or, like, people just forget, you know. But before you move along...or you may have had a question, but you moved way too far along now that it's kind of awkward to retroactively go back and just be like, hey, I had a question, like, 20 minutes ago about something you were talking about. Now I don't think it's relevant anymore, et cetera, right?
 
So, if you build in, you know, your presentation with the idea of asking point-blank questions before you context switch, I think is a huge, huge thing.
 
MIKE: I had a wise trainer once tell me about teaching a lesson. He said a good lesson is three good questions. So, I've thought about that for years, and it doesn't necessarily apply in every situation, but it might actually, because if you're teaching something, nobody wants a lecture. Nobody wants to be told this, and then this, and then this, and this. But if you're having...if you're engaging with the people you're interacting with, if you are inviting them into the conversation by saying, lead out with the question, right, you know, set up the context, ask the question, well, now they're invested. They're part of the discussion. You've invited them in the discussion. You've broken down those walls, right?
 
You've made yourself open, maybe a little vulnerable, right, so they can interact with you. But you've also left open a standing nudge to say, no, please say something. It's your job to be saying something. It flips the script, and it fundamentally changes the way that that discussion goes. Now, if you're doing a demo, you're going to think, well, no, my job is to present here. My job isn't to ask questions. But I don't think that that's necessarily true. If you go in and you say, you know, "I'm going to be showing you this. What do you all know about the purpose of this feature?" And you're going to get some answers, and you're going to wait, like you say, awkward pause. You might wait 20 seconds till people start saying something like, "I really don't know." 
 
Well, now you have the opportunity to give the feedback. Now it's a conversation, right? It's a back-and-forth. That matters. Then you get a little further in [chuckles], you know, we talked about the context. We talked about why this is needed. And you say, "I made this choice, and this is something I had some questions about. Would you have made this choice?" You have the opportunity to ask these questions. And once you've thought about that where your preparation is not about what you're going to say, but what you're going to ask, I think it's a real shift in mindset, and it's a very valuable one.
 
I don't know if anybody else has had an experience like that. It's a little bit afield, but we're talking here about presenting yourself. And I'm saying asking questions actually is this critical skill. Critical skill. And it's part of making those presentations that Will was talking about is being willing to ask because now it is. It's a conversation. It's not me pestering you about something. It's a...it's back and forth.
 
KYLE: Because it's also one of those things, too, where I'm sitting here thinking, if somebody isn't asking questions, I can...it's one of those tools that I use to kind of evaluate how much progress they've made. Like, I don't care how junior they are, theoretically. If I can see how much progress they're making, I prefer that over the silent type that I can't quite analyze that [inaudible 34:16]
 
And then I'm also thinking here as you guys are talking about the teaching scenario, too, and it kind of seems more and more relevant in today's world because you have to engage your audience. You have to ask these questions, like you're saying, because, otherwise, you don't know what the person on the other end of the Zoom call is doing because they could be completely tuning out. And doing that forces them to be engaged in the conversation, forces them to be present for what you're presenting. And then they know maybe what you are missing or what gaps in your training that you need to help you progress. So, it's just beneficial all around.
 
EDDY: Yeah, I think communication is key. So, I wanted to ask you, Mike and Will, specifically, since I know you both have done your share of interviews, what are one of the things that you would consider a red flag during an interview that you kind of just pick from the crop and you're like, eh, there it is. Yeah, eh, doesn't...eh, right? Because communication is key to staying relevant, sure. But I think interviewing is also its own craft, right? And I'm sure you've had your fair share of people that you've filtered. And I think that's...
 
MIKE: I did an interview today [chuckles]. And it's interesting, I did not notice any red flags in that particular interview. And I thought about it afterwards, are there red flags here? There are some things that definitely cause some concern. It's okay to say you have experience with something if you tried it out once. That's not lying, right? That's honest. But if somebody asks you about it [chuckles]...Will's giving a thumbs up.
 
If somebody's asking you about it, you can tell pretty quickly, with the right set of questions, how deeply they know. It's perfectly fine to have a, you know, just a little bit of experience. You can be honest with that and say, "I haven't had a lot of experience. I worked on this project. These are concerns I had. This is what I learned from it." That's perfectly honest, and that's clear, and you're sharing information.
 
If instead you're actively hiding information, if you kind of mumble or, you know, sidetrack, try to change the conversation and don't really answer the question to obscure that, you notice. The interviewer is going to notice. And it's a huge red flag because we talked about how important communication is. I think it was maybe Will who said, I don't care how junior you are...maybe it was somebody else. I don't care how junior you are. A lot of times, that's the case, right? I care that you're going in the right direction. And if somebody, you know, reveals, okay, these are where my gaps are, then that's fine. They're communicating well about that. But somebody who's hiding, bluffing, clearly doing so or being just clearly dishonest...
 
I asked somebody once to write some code for me. They got quiet. They came back with some code that was kind of weird. Like, that's kind of weird. It's fine. It does the job, but it didn't quite meet the requirements. There's, like, these other requirements they placed in here. I Googled it. I found the code that they copied off the internet in, like, 30 seconds. They hadn't written it. They just copied it from somewhere. And it was clear they didn't really know what they were talking about.
 
Like, they could have written it. They could have even made some mistakes, right? Live coding, of course, you're going to make mistakes, but they didn't explain that. And they probably got dropped by their contract shop is what happened because we talked to whoever sent them to us. And they're like, "Oh, we're so sorry," kind of thing where, you know, if they'd just been open, it would've done something. So, that's my number one red flag. I could say some others, but I'm going to turn it over to Will and see what his number one, maybe number two are.
 
WILL: Oh, I mean, I think that's...I just want to pile on because, like, what Mike said. I mean, and, really, when you go back down to, like, sort of, like, you're, like, doing the job, right, it's like, we are all going to find ourselves in a meeting where, like, I don't know, like, what happened? I don't know. I don't know. Like, it happened to me today. If it didn't happen to you today, you had a good day because probably you didn't have a lot of meetings today.
 
But, like, I get [inaudible 38:45] all the time and, like, and I go and figure it out. I take accountability for, like, oh, I screwed up. Oh, I made a mistake. Oh, I did this thing in the MR, and I accidentally committed a file that was one of my, like, sort of, like, working scratch files, and I'm like, oh my God, oh, I screwed it. How could I have included that file in the commit? That wasn't supposed to go there. And somebody's like, what the hell is this? And I'm like, oh no, I'm sorry. That was my bad.
 
How are we going to deal with these inevitable screw-ups? This is...it's going to happen. It's inevitable. Everybody does it all the time. And am I going to have, like, a...am I going to be, like, knocking heads with you every meeting where it's just like, hey, this thing went wrong? It's like, well, it's this other team, and it's like...you know what I mean? Or are we going to just be able to, like, oh, that screwed up, oh, oh my goodness. Yeah, that was my fault. I'll fix it, right?
 
And I have the same...and I say I have the same heuristic that I think Mike uses, and it's a really good one. And I don't want to say I've never gotten beaten, you know, like, using this rhetorical lever. But, like, all I'm going to do is I'm going to get in the weeds. I'm going to get in the weeds. And it even works when I don't know a framework particularly well, because I'll just be like, teach me about it. Teach me all about it, you know. It's like, oh, Haskell, oh, oh yeah, I did this, and I [inaudible 40:03]. But teach me about it. And I'm going to get into the details, and I'm going to sort of, like, laser beam in on stuff. And I'm like, oh yeah, what do you like about that? What do you like about that?
 
And if you sort of hem and haw, you know what I mean, and, like, kind of get vague and hand wavy and, like, very fluid and stuff like that, like, you know, like, I'll try and rein you in to a degree, right, and try and narrow your answers to a certain extent, you know. But after a while, after I do that two or three times, I'm going to be like, oh, this guy's just a bullshitter, and he's bullshitting me. He's wasting my time, you know.
 
MIKE: Absolutely. And I do exactly...in fact, my interview today was with a framework I'm not that familiar with, but I knew enough to just ask some questions. Tell me about, you know, compare this with other frameworks, you know. Give me some details. And then listen to them talk. Do they go into specific details, right? Do they know enough to have an opinion?
 
I was with another experienced interviewer today, did the exact same thing. I was asking about unit tests, didn't even care what the answer was. He just wanted them to have an opinion because that shows that you've thought about it, that you can speak to those technical details.
 
KYLE: The interviews that I've been part of that's kind of along those lines, I've asked questions either that, you know, I'm stumped on or that I've, you know, recently gone through myself maybe. And it's not that I'm looking for the right answer. I'm looking to see if the person knows how to communicate their thinking process about how they would, like, go about solving it. And I feel like to say a red flag, that's kind of the red flag I try and elevate is, if you can't tell me how you're going to solve something, or you can't elaborate how you're thinking through a problem and troubleshooting, like, you're kind of done in my book.
 
MIKE: Sure.
 
EDDY: I've been asked questions about something that I know for a fact I've done before. And I've been like, I know I've done this before. I don't remember. Give me a sec. I can look it up if you're willing to have the patience. I can't just pick it out of my brain and be like, oh yeah, this is the right syntax to do something. I'm like, no, but I've done something similar to that effect that does this and this. So, is that a proper response? Like, is that an appropriate response for you guys? Like, if --
 
WILL: Absolutely, I mean, for me at least. I mean, like, an analogy that I would use, right, like, there's this guy...and I was just reading an article on this guy, and he was talking about he trained service dogs, right, like, search and rescue and, like, you know, bomb sniffing dogs, and drug dogs and stuff like that, right, for the, you know, military or law enforcement or whoever, right? And he's like, picking puppies, right? I'm going to take these puppies, and I'm going to train them. And I want to, like, find the puppies that I think have a good shot at working out to being, like, a really good, like, you know, search and rescue dog or drug sniffing dog, you know what I mean?
 
He was talking about these tests that he had, right, where he's like, does he have a favorite ball? I'm going to take the ball, and I'm going to hide it, and I'm looking for the dogs that just, like, want to find that ball. They're just obsessed. They're driven to search out this ball, and this answer, and, like, this thing, and I'm going to figure it out.
 
And especially, especially, especially for, like, a junior developer, I'm looking for that drive in them, right? Like, how do you think about a problem? How do you break down a problem? Like, how are you driven to, like, do the thing? And, I mean, like, that's just me. I only have one interview question. I don't have two, you know. And it's the same as ever. It's just like, show me something cool you built, and let's talk about it.
 
I don't really care what you built. You could build, like, I don't know. I mean, like, I guess it ought to be software. Like, it probably should be software for a software job. But if you're just really into, like, I don't know, like, woodworking or something like that, like, you know what I mean, and you had some software skills, like, I probably...I don't know. Anyway.
 
I mean, so that's...it's just a question of, like, you want to get a feel for that drive, for breaking down problems and solving problems and, like, really driven to, like, really explore the answer and, like, you know, just really vague, especially if you're a junior developer, right, because junior developer, you're looking for potential, right? You're looking for a high ceiling, not necessarily everybody who knows everything under the sun.
 
MIKE: One thing I've done before that I thought has worked really well is, I'll take a piece of code, say, "Look at this code." They've never seen it before, so it puts [inaudible 44:51] on an equal footing, right? Talk to me about it. And now they have to read code, which we all have to do every single day [chuckles]. And more than we're writing code, probably we're reading code. You're reading code. Tell me about it. And that's a fantastic exercise.
 
Again, I don't expect you to know everything, but I expect to see your process and how you think about it. And I expect you to be asking questions. And if somebody can say, "Oh, wow, I haven't used this language before, but I think that this is doing this. Can you explain to me this syntax? This looks like a library I haven't seen before. Can you tell me about that library?" well, that's great. Those are the right kinds of questions because it means that they're able be to understand the context and drill down to the important questions. Fantastic. It's not that you knew how to do it, knew this code, because, of course, you haven't seen it before. But that's the whole point, is that you know how to approach a problem and talk about it, communicate about it, show some problem-solving.
 
THOMAS: I think asking questions, too, indicates a good sign of passion and interest as well. If someone is, you know, going through and listening to your lecture and they're not asking questions, whether if they know or not, you know, even if it's something that they're asking a question that you might have not even gone over that particular material, but I think that really indicates, yeah, a lot of passion, interest in the subject. And, you know, a person that's wanting to continue to improve themselves, so that they continue to feel their passion and everything and almost update their internal dictionary to make sure that they're kind of abiding by all rules of that subject matter.
 
MIKE: So, we've talked a lot about interview skills. We've talked a lot about networking, mentioned open-source project; that's a great way to start it. I think Will mentioned get involved in community. There are user groups, Java user group, Ruby user group. Name your programming language, right? I'm sure there's AI get togethers, build an app in 24-hour competitions, right? There are things like that that you can stay involved in.
 
WILL: Yeah. I mean, I'll be honest with you, like, I think, you know, like, there's a...there's a question around...there's a question around, like, sort of, like, whether documentation, right, like, documentation was always, like, that was always the, like, that was the old school, like, way, like, write some docs, you know, write some tutorials. Write some how-tos. So, many of those tutorials that we read every day and we use, like me, super, super duper senior engineering, I'm pulling tutorials all the time, and I do read them. I don't just, like, copy and paste them, you know. But, like, I'll read them, and I'll, you know, I'll take a lot of it. A lot of those are written by just somebody who's trying to break into the industry, you know.
 
And so, there's an argument around, like, sort of, like, you know, generative AI sort of sucking the life out of that niche in our industry, right? Like, Stack Overflow's in dire straits because nobody...Tailwind CSS is in dire straits because people aren't reading the documentation, and they were relying on that communication channel, you know, for their business.
 
But, like, man, you want to write some AI tutorials? Write some vibe coding tutorials, right? Write some, like, hey, this is how I vibed up, you know, this development server, right?  Make yourself a development server and vibe it up. Like, just throw that thing in there. You'll get clicks. And I bet some of those clicks will be, like, man, we have been trying to get, you know, our AI coding stuff going at this company for a long time. And you seem like you're pretty good at setting up, you know, these AI tools so that they could work and, like, look at you, look at you and your job.
 
I...man, I'm telling you right now, like, there is a...there's a massive hunger from old-school established development shops that are trying to get AI tooling to improve developer productivity right here, right now, today. They are trying to get it set up because they got this big, funky codebase that they could really use some artificial intelligence in, and these people are desperate for help. And if you're a young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, you know, 21st-century developer who's AI fluent and you want to help your boomer boss get their stuff together, I'm telling you right now, there's a seat at the table for you. They will make some headcount for you.
 
And if you start going out and putting some stuff together, right, woo, you're going to get some love. I'm telling you, like, I guarantee it. I'm in the meetings. There is a passionate hunger for people who could take these tools and take them to translate them to, you know, brownfield development, productivity.
 
MIKE: [laughs]
 
WILL: Brownfield's so sad, but, like, it is brown, you know what I mean, it ought to be...they ought to call it greenfield because the reason that field is brown is because, like, full of money. It's full of dirty dollar bills [laughter].
 
MIKE: It's been trampled by people with holes in their pockets.
 
WILL: Yeah, yeah [laughs].
 
MIKE: I am fully in line with you there, Will. Go out and build something, write about it, and use the tools that are there. AI tools are taking over. Don't give up. Use the AI tools and show people how to do it.
 
WILL: Yeah. I, for one, welcome my new robot overlords.
 
MIKE: And here's how to put them in place.
 
WILL: Exactly. Exactly. And here's how to best, like, abase yourself to our new AI masters.
 
MIKE: [laughs] Absolutely.
 
WILL: I'm just saying, like, there is, you know, it's like, oh, making web apps is done, is over. That's old and busted. Making AI apps is the new hotness, and I'm like, let's go.
 
[laughter]
 
MIKE: And, honestly, I think that's probably a pretty good stopping point.
 
WILL: [laughs]
 
MIKE: We had it here on AI. It's the new thing. It's part, not all. A lot of this has to do with COVID investment and then that left, you know, interest rates, big tech companies laying people off, like, don't think it's all AI because it's not.
 
Until next time on the Acima Development Podcast.