1 00:00:01,365 --> 00:00:04,127 Well hello treehouse festival. 2 00:00:04,127 --> 00:00:08,870 I'm Dr. Tony de Santo and director of learning here at treehouse, and 3 00:00:08,870 --> 00:00:11,884 I'll be your cohost actually for this week. 4 00:00:11,884 --> 00:00:15,333 It is my pleasure to introduce our next guest. 5 00:00:15,333 --> 00:00:21,780 He is a young, junior engineer at a company here in Atlanta Georgia. 6 00:00:21,780 --> 00:00:27,474 In his role he is responsible for enhancing user payment experience, 7 00:00:27,474 --> 00:00:33,178 squashing bugs, [INAUDIBLE] please welcome Myles Young to the stage. 8 00:00:33,178 --> 00:00:34,157 >> My name is Myles Young. 9 00:00:34,157 --> 00:00:37,033 I'm a full stack developer over in Atlanta, Georgia. 10 00:00:37,033 --> 00:00:39,321 I've been doing this for about a year now. 11 00:00:39,321 --> 00:00:42,348 And it's been a great experience so far. 12 00:00:42,348 --> 00:00:44,977 I'm just tell you a little bit of information about me. 13 00:00:44,977 --> 00:00:49,071 I'm a son of a friend, so many boyfriend a brother. 14 00:00:49,071 --> 00:00:50,942 I'm a bit younger than most people. 15 00:00:50,942 --> 00:00:55,512 I'm 21 years old, so my favorite TV shows are Drake and Josh and Spongebob. 16 00:00:55,512 --> 00:00:58,496 [LAUGH] Yeah, I'm always trying to learn something new, 17 00:00:58,496 --> 00:01:00,307 just to be better than yesterday. 18 00:01:00,307 --> 00:01:03,942 I'm constantly focused on that end-goal. 19 00:01:03,942 --> 00:01:08,500 So, you can call me weird, but that's just how I do things. 20 00:01:08,500 --> 00:01:13,484 [LAUGH] So, Just a little background about how I actually began coding. 21 00:01:13,484 --> 00:01:18,442 I used to be a full time student taking 12 credit hours like in college. 22 00:01:18,442 --> 00:01:22,042 I was a part time manager at a fortune 500 company and 23 00:01:22,042 --> 00:01:26,673 I take it on treehouse as an extra initiative to try and better myself. 24 00:01:26,673 --> 00:01:32,956 So if you wanna talk about no time to breathe, I'm the right guy to talk to. 25 00:01:32,956 --> 00:01:38,012 So when I went through the tech degree program with treehouse, it took a lot 26 00:01:38,012 --> 00:01:43,164 of studying and consistency just to be able to make it through that program. 27 00:01:43,164 --> 00:01:47,775 Because for a person like me who barely has time for much, 28 00:01:47,775 --> 00:01:52,963 I had to make sure that I was getting in these hours of studying and 29 00:01:52,963 --> 00:01:55,383 working and asking for help. 30 00:01:55,383 --> 00:01:59,751 And the value that I got out of that, was very critical in remaining 31 00:01:59,751 --> 00:02:04,197 consistent with asking for help and also providing help to others. 32 00:02:04,197 --> 00:02:08,540 Cuz if you can explain something to someone else it helps to 33 00:02:08,540 --> 00:02:12,095 solidify that understanding in your own mind. 34 00:02:12,095 --> 00:02:16,856 So, as far as working goes, I was working very constantly 35 00:02:16,856 --> 00:02:20,754 just like your air conditioning in the summer. 36 00:02:20,754 --> 00:02:24,283 [LAUGH] So, what is a full stack engineer? 37 00:02:24,283 --> 00:02:30,132 That is someone who performs back end and front end related code. 38 00:02:30,132 --> 00:02:34,243 And the difference between the two is front end is what the user is 39 00:02:34,243 --> 00:02:39,059 going to see, like if I apply animation on the page like that's front end. 40 00:02:39,059 --> 00:02:43,891 Back end is how I could get some specific user data from our database 41 00:02:43,891 --> 00:02:48,647 to show up on the screen, is that communication between the two. 42 00:02:48,647 --> 00:02:53,237 I've been doing this for about a year now and it's been a great experience. 43 00:02:53,237 --> 00:02:54,980 Really, really great experience. 44 00:02:54,980 --> 00:02:57,695 I do all types of things nowadays, 45 00:02:57,695 --> 00:03:02,296 like I perform experiments to just test out new features. 46 00:03:02,296 --> 00:03:06,865 Like let's see how users respond to something in particular. 47 00:03:06,865 --> 00:03:09,208 I'll do some bug fixes. 48 00:03:09,208 --> 00:03:15,520 Currently for the company I work for I'm in the payments, section, payments team. 49 00:03:15,520 --> 00:03:20,281 And there's a lot of high intensity work over there, trust me. 50 00:03:20,281 --> 00:03:24,633 And also just working collaboratively with my team to 51 00:03:24,633 --> 00:03:29,572 help deliver solutions for the complex business problems. 52 00:03:29,572 --> 00:03:33,697 So, what's dev life actually like, though? 53 00:03:33,697 --> 00:03:39,383 That's simple, you just stare at code all day, end of story. 54 00:03:39,383 --> 00:03:46,937 [LAUGH] I'm joking, I do a lot of cool things besides just coding, sometimes. 55 00:03:46,937 --> 00:03:48,512 When you're a developer, 56 00:03:48,512 --> 00:03:52,559 sometimes you can be placed in that kind of a high stress environment. 57 00:03:52,559 --> 00:03:57,500 So, to be able to unwind, you just go have some fun like go go ride a bike, 58 00:03:57,500 --> 00:04:00,907 go play some pool with somebody or like ping pong. 59 00:04:00,907 --> 00:04:03,802 Just go hang out with your friends like during break. 60 00:04:03,802 --> 00:04:08,248 And these things are really beneficial to helping, 61 00:04:08,248 --> 00:04:11,187 like keep you focused on the goal. 62 00:04:11,187 --> 00:04:16,591 But when I'm not having fun, I do have some day to day activities though. 63 00:04:16,591 --> 00:04:18,876 So, I work on a scrum team. 64 00:04:18,876 --> 00:04:24,637 Where we have an agile methodology for just completing a decent, 65 00:04:24,637 --> 00:04:28,211 planned amount of work and a quick time. 66 00:04:28,211 --> 00:04:30,713 So the sprint would be like two weeks, okay? 67 00:04:30,713 --> 00:04:32,563 And we have standup meetings, 68 00:04:32,563 --> 00:04:37,482 which is just a daily update about your progress like, what did you do yesterday? 69 00:04:37,482 --> 00:04:41,773 What did you do today and do you have any blockers? 70 00:04:41,773 --> 00:04:44,205 Is there a way that we can help you? 71 00:04:44,205 --> 00:04:45,698 And we're having meetings constantly. 72 00:04:45,698 --> 00:04:50,349 And these meetings could be on how do we implement a solution for 73 00:04:50,349 --> 00:04:56,078 this user facing problem or what type of features are we trying to implement? 74 00:04:56,078 --> 00:04:58,401 And things of that nature. 75 00:04:58,401 --> 00:05:01,668 And if anybody's ever used GitHub before, 76 00:05:01,668 --> 00:05:06,981 then you may be familiar with PR reviews, also known as pull requests. 77 00:05:06,981 --> 00:05:11,626 And this is just you paying attention to what your peers are coding, 78 00:05:11,626 --> 00:05:15,229 what they're trying to implement in the code base. 79 00:05:15,229 --> 00:05:18,106 And you're gonna take a look at what they have and 80 00:05:18,106 --> 00:05:22,957 make sure that we could safely merge that into the code base without any problems. 81 00:05:22,957 --> 00:05:27,287 So this is one of the main things I do every day, it's PR reviews. 82 00:05:27,287 --> 00:05:32,590 And it's very valuable because it helps you to understand other people's code and 83 00:05:32,590 --> 00:05:36,012 other areas of code that you may not have seen before. 84 00:05:36,012 --> 00:05:39,713 And it's so critical that you ask questions. 85 00:05:39,713 --> 00:05:44,212 Ask questions a lot, collaborate with your peers, they have a wealth of 86 00:05:44,212 --> 00:05:48,809 knowledge in their head, and they will share it with you gladly, right? 87 00:05:48,809 --> 00:05:52,507 And just another thing that I do on a daily basis is we're 88 00:05:52,507 --> 00:05:54,406 working to solve problems. 89 00:05:54,406 --> 00:06:00,156 You should think of coding almost as like solving puzzles. 90 00:06:00,156 --> 00:06:04,498 Most of the time, there's something that will be presented to you and 91 00:06:04,498 --> 00:06:06,423 you'll have to figure it out. 92 00:06:06,423 --> 00:06:11,300 And, it's great when you could collaborate with your team just to 93 00:06:11,300 --> 00:06:13,914 understand the puzzle as a whole and 94 00:06:13,914 --> 00:06:18,720 then figure out the individual pieces on how to form it together. 95 00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:24,492 And just a quick overview about what Scrum Agile is, 96 00:06:24,492 --> 00:06:31,060 because most of you when you get to a software tech company. 97 00:06:31,060 --> 00:06:34,081 They'll probably be using Scrum and Agile methods. 98 00:06:34,081 --> 00:06:38,551 And Scrum is just a framework for having meetings with your team, 99 00:06:38,551 --> 00:06:43,195 you'll have something like a project manager, product manager. 100 00:06:43,195 --> 00:06:47,935 You'll have your engineers and people who actually run the meetings. 101 00:06:47,935 --> 00:06:53,273 And all of us work together to describe what is the problem. 102 00:06:53,273 --> 00:06:55,216 What are we trying to do? 103 00:06:55,216 --> 00:06:57,050 How will we do it? 104 00:06:57,050 --> 00:06:58,390 When will it be done? 105 00:06:58,390 --> 00:07:00,875 And things of that nature. 106 00:07:00,875 --> 00:07:05,726 And Agile is just a method of getting things done. 107 00:07:07,319 --> 00:07:12,955 And we wanna be fast, that's why it's called agile. 108 00:07:12,955 --> 00:07:18,045 So, there are also challenges that you face as a developer. 109 00:07:18,045 --> 00:07:19,788 There're also solutions. 110 00:07:19,788 --> 00:07:24,930 So, one thing that you could be commonly faced with are deadlines. 111 00:07:24,930 --> 00:07:28,965 We may have this marketing deadline that we've promised to people. 112 00:07:28,965 --> 00:07:32,810 We wanna make sure that we meet that so sometimes, 113 00:07:32,810 --> 00:07:35,657 you could feel a bit of a time crunch. 114 00:07:35,657 --> 00:07:39,963 So, prioritization of work becomes very crucial in that moment. 115 00:07:39,963 --> 00:07:44,471 Because you don't wanna spend too much time doing one thing where you could be 116 00:07:44,471 --> 00:07:47,116 focusing your attention on something else. 117 00:07:47,116 --> 00:07:50,310 So you wanna make sure you're divvying up your time fairly well, 118 00:07:50,310 --> 00:07:53,520 to make sure that you could get the things done that you need to do. 119 00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:59,182 And communication is so critical in the workplace when you work with the team. 120 00:07:59,182 --> 00:08:04,140 Everybody should be in the loop about what's going on, you shouldn't 121 00:08:04,140 --> 00:08:09,359 just be out here just slapping code out in the app and nobody knows about it. 122 00:08:09,359 --> 00:08:14,780 So, making sure that you can effectively communicate what you're 123 00:08:14,780 --> 00:08:21,264 doing to your team is not only just appreciated, but it's more than necessary. 124 00:08:21,264 --> 00:08:25,552 And, I'm sure all of us have felt like this before, but 125 00:08:25,552 --> 00:08:28,119 how in the world do I even do this? 126 00:08:28,119 --> 00:08:34,565 You've given me some tasks I've never even seen this before, how do I do it? 127 00:08:34,565 --> 00:08:38,284 You should take on the mindset of, okay, 128 00:08:38,284 --> 00:08:44,574 I've never done this before, but I can do it, I definitely can do it. 129 00:08:44,574 --> 00:08:48,208 It's gonna take me analyzing the situation, 130 00:08:48,208 --> 00:08:52,875 trying to run through the code to see if I can understand it. 131 00:08:52,875 --> 00:08:56,379 Speaking to people if I do not understand it. 132 00:08:56,379 --> 00:09:02,468 And then at some point, after you've combined these methods together. 133 00:09:02,468 --> 00:09:06,067 You could end up coming up with the solution a lot faster than you normally 134 00:09:06,067 --> 00:09:07,724 would just working by yourself. 135 00:09:07,724 --> 00:09:10,832 So, if you don't know how to do something, it's totally fine. 136 00:09:10,832 --> 00:09:12,349 It's always like, 137 00:09:12,349 --> 00:09:18,162 not too hard to figure out once you've just put in some thought process to it. 138 00:09:18,162 --> 00:09:20,434 And write, write your stuff down, 139 00:09:20,434 --> 00:09:23,856 it helps out a lot to put your thoughts in front of you. 140 00:09:23,856 --> 00:09:26,373 So how do you actually stay relevant? 141 00:09:26,373 --> 00:09:29,034 You got the job down, but how do you stay relevant? 142 00:09:29,034 --> 00:09:31,340 How do you keep growing? 143 00:09:31,340 --> 00:09:39,320 As a software engineer, I think all of us would agree that to be in this profession, 144 00:09:39,320 --> 00:09:43,773 you should always seek to continue learning. 145 00:09:43,773 --> 00:09:48,144 Learning is inevitable in this profession. 146 00:09:48,144 --> 00:09:52,296 And you just have to get used to not knowing everything, but 147 00:09:52,296 --> 00:09:57,129 seeking to know the things that you don't, I hope that makes sense. 148 00:09:57,129 --> 00:10:01,120 Stay motivated, stay motivated. 149 00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:04,731 Sometimes I may feel down in the dumps, but 150 00:10:04,731 --> 00:10:09,343 I could look to some of the senior engineers on my team or 151 00:10:09,343 --> 00:10:13,679 just the people who I helped to take care of my life. 152 00:10:13,679 --> 00:10:14,926 I could look to them and 153 00:10:14,926 --> 00:10:18,153 I could stay motivated just to continue pushing forward. 154 00:10:18,153 --> 00:10:22,893 And it helps out a lot to have motivation, because if you don't have a why, 155 00:10:22,893 --> 00:10:26,522 behind something, like what's the point, all right? 156 00:10:26,522 --> 00:10:32,690 So you should always understand the why behind anything that you do. 157 00:10:33,795 --> 00:10:39,088 Asking questions, this is a no brainer, you, if you think you know everything 158 00:10:39,088 --> 00:10:43,996 you don't, you should ask questions to figure out what you don't know. 159 00:10:43,996 --> 00:10:47,856 It'll be so beneficial to you, I promise. 160 00:10:47,856 --> 00:10:54,135 I don't really teach people how to code but I can if they ask me questions. 161 00:10:54,135 --> 00:10:57,356 And that's the same thing when I asked other people, I ask them questions so 162 00:10:57,356 --> 00:10:58,528 they could teach me stuff. 163 00:10:58,528 --> 00:11:03,081 So it's always a constant exchange of knowledge as it is really beautiful. 164 00:11:03,081 --> 00:11:10,134 And look for opportunities to be lazy like dude, what are you talking about? 165 00:11:10,134 --> 00:11:13,811 You just told us you work hard, you ask a lot of questions, 166 00:11:13,811 --> 00:11:17,281 this that the third, what are you talking about lazy? 167 00:11:17,281 --> 00:11:23,467 This is what I mean, if there's something that's already been implemented before. 168 00:11:23,467 --> 00:11:25,348 You'd be better off just using that and 169 00:11:25,348 --> 00:11:27,742 maybe making like a couple tweaks here and there. 170 00:11:27,742 --> 00:11:31,349 But you want to be as efficient as possible by just taking 171 00:11:31,349 --> 00:11:34,745 what already exists and just re-implementing it. 172 00:11:34,745 --> 00:11:38,780 And if you have to reinvent the wheel, then you do so, 173 00:11:38,780 --> 00:11:40,946 in a dynamic type of manner. 174 00:11:40,946 --> 00:11:47,532 So quick example, if I had a function, it adds two numbers together. 175 00:11:47,532 --> 00:11:53,914 One way that isn't as very efficient, I could just do function add. 176 00:11:53,914 --> 00:11:56,596 And then it'll just take numbers one plus two equals and 177 00:11:56,596 --> 00:11:58,321 they'll return the result three. 178 00:11:58,321 --> 00:12:00,293 It'll do that every time. 179 00:12:00,293 --> 00:12:05,094 But if you want to be more efficient and have it reusable over time, 180 00:12:05,094 --> 00:12:08,539 then you put some parameters in that function. 181 00:12:08,539 --> 00:12:14,561 So it's like, we're gonna return the sum of number one parameter one and 182 00:12:14,561 --> 00:12:17,881 number two, that you can add anything. 183 00:12:17,881 --> 00:12:24,928 You've put up the work beforehand, so you don't really have to do it later. 184 00:12:26,766 --> 00:12:32,921 That's the gist of lazy coding, that's the gist of it, in time. 185 00:12:32,921 --> 00:12:39,193 You just wanna make sure that you spend your time to really make sure 186 00:12:39,193 --> 00:12:45,369 that you're spending it the way that will help you in the future. 187 00:12:45,369 --> 00:12:51,147 You are what you do in your spare time, that's the bottom of the line. 188 00:12:51,147 --> 00:12:57,035 So just make sure that you really take your time seriously, 189 00:12:57,035 --> 00:13:02,113 it's one of the most important resources we have. 190 00:13:02,113 --> 00:13:05,349 And I saw a question from someone earlier that said, 191 00:13:05,349 --> 00:13:09,261 did you ever think about tech as a career when you were younger? 192 00:13:09,261 --> 00:13:12,367 It's funny that you mentioned that. 193 00:13:12,367 --> 00:13:14,893 I actually used to think I was gonna be a doctor, 194 00:13:14,893 --> 00:13:16,921 I was gonna be an anaesthesiologist. 195 00:13:16,921 --> 00:13:19,968 [LAUGH] And I get into school I didn't even like that, 196 00:13:19,968 --> 00:13:22,611 I didn't even like that type of curriculum. 197 00:13:22,611 --> 00:13:25,580 I knew that wasn't gonna be the life for me. 198 00:13:25,580 --> 00:13:31,025 So, you can always change, but I feel like coding was definitely 199 00:13:31,025 --> 00:13:36,474 a great opportunity for me after I started really diving into it. 200 00:13:36,474 --> 00:13:39,560 Shout out to treehouse for that too. 201 00:13:39,560 --> 00:13:41,864 I got another question. 202 00:13:41,864 --> 00:13:46,359 Are most dev jobs strict in time utilization, 203 00:13:46,359 --> 00:13:50,631 like taking breaks, time tracking, etc. 204 00:13:52,527 --> 00:13:57,344 I can't speak for every organization, but I know that where I am, 205 00:13:57,344 --> 00:13:59,504 things are a bit less strict. 206 00:13:59,504 --> 00:14:03,476 And some of my colleagues, they work in places like Microsoft, and 207 00:14:03,476 --> 00:14:06,274 they're not super strict on time or anything. 208 00:14:06,274 --> 00:14:08,829 It's more of can you do work? 209 00:14:08,829 --> 00:14:14,923 Can you get it done in a reasonable amount of time. 210 00:14:14,923 --> 00:14:19,212 And, if you can do that, you go do whatever you want, it's not a big deal. 211 00:14:19,212 --> 00:14:23,542 Just make sure you're around to be spoken to. 212 00:14:23,542 --> 00:14:26,007 But wow, I just wanna say I feel so 213 00:14:26,007 --> 00:14:29,276 blessed to be able to speak to you all today. 214 00:14:29,276 --> 00:14:35,100 I hope what I've said that hopefully just stick with you in the future. 215 00:14:35,100 --> 00:14:37,341 I'm about to log off right now, but 216 00:14:37,341 --> 00:14:40,346 much love to you all I appreciate you very much. 217 00:14:40,346 --> 00:14:41,321 Thank you for listening.