S1 E41: An unpopular view on impostor syndrome (Curtis / @curtiseinsmann)

Eddie: 00:00:19

Welcome to day two of season one finale week.

Eddie: 00:00:23

It's episode 41 of the web joy podcast.

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I'm your host Eddie.

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And in this podcast, we interview guests about their origin story.

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And what makes them excited and joyful to be part of the tech community.

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I hope you enjoy today's episode an unpopular view on imposter

Eddie: 00:00:41

syndrome with Curtis items.

Eddie: 00:00:47

Welcome to another episode of Web Joy.

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I'm excited to have Curtis today here with us.

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Curtis, say hi to everyone listening.

Curtis: 00:00:55

Hey, how's it going?

Curtis: 00:00:56

It's a pleasure to be on the podcast, Eddie.

Curtis: 00:00:57

Thanks a lot for having me.

Eddie: 00:00:59

My pleasure.

Eddie: 00:01:00

So everyone can kind of get to know you.

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Let's start off and just say, Hey, who are you?

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What do you do?

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Where do you work?

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Just kind of a, a brief intro of who you

Curtis: 00:01:08

are.

Curtis: 00:01:09

Sure.

Curtis: 00:01:09

Yeah.

Curtis: 00:01:09

So I'm Curtis.

Curtis: 00:01:11

I'm a software engineer.

Curtis: 00:01:13

Near Washington DC in the United States, and I am a freelancer.

Curtis: 00:01:18

Prior to freelancing, I started at Amazon Web Services, so I worked on a

Curtis: 00:01:23

variety of services and products at a w s, both internal as well as external.

Curtis: 00:01:30

And recently left my full-time commitment there, uh, to do freelancing.

Curtis: 00:01:34

And this gave me a little bit more control over my time.

Curtis: 00:01:37

As well as my project choices.

Curtis: 00:01:39

So I've been working with Gum Road a little bit asynchronously.

Curtis: 00:01:42

I hope we're good to talk about that later.

Curtis: 00:01:44

And I also launched my first video course earlier this year,

Curtis: 00:01:48

which I'm pretty excited about.

Curtis: 00:01:49

Um, it's called Master the Code Review.

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And you know, in this, in this spirit of like building in public and transparency,

Curtis: 00:01:54

I like to share some numbers around it.

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Over like 900 students have decided to take the course, and like 30 organizations

Curtis: 00:02:00

have purchased the team license, and a few companies have actually added

Curtis: 00:02:04

it to their new hire, like internal training, which I'm pretty pleased about.

Curtis: 00:02:08

Um, it, it went better than I could have imagined.

Curtis: 00:02:10

I'm currently writing a book on the same subject of code reviews as well.

Eddie: 00:02:14

It's cool to be able to sell something to individuals, but when

Eddie: 00:02:17

you were able to sell something to a team, right, to a company like

Eddie: 00:02:21

that really must feel, feel good.

Eddie: 00:02:24

You know what I mean?

Eddie: 00:02:24

Like you kind of just nailed

Curtis: 00:02:25

it.

Curtis: 00:02:26

Yeah, absolutely.

Curtis: 00:02:26

Yeah.

Curtis: 00:02:27

When I was building, cause I was talking about it a lot on my social

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medias when I was building it and I had some people reach out to me and

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say, Hey, I might wanna purchase this for my organization or for my team.

Curtis: 00:02:36

So I decided to make a, a team package option as well.

Curtis: 00:02:39

Yeah, it's been good and I'm, that's why I'm excited to really get into this

Curtis: 00:02:42

book and start writing it as, I love

Eddie: 00:02:44

that different people have different ways of learning, so having

Eddie: 00:02:47

different modes of communicating those same truths is, is really exciting.

Curtis: 00:02:52

Yes, absolutely.

Curtis: 00:02:53

Yep.

Curtis: 00:02:54

How

Eddie: 00:02:54

did you kind of get into this, right?

Eddie: 00:02:56

Like what.

Eddie: 00:02:58

Kind of prompted you to say, Hey, I want to get into tech, I

Eddie: 00:03:01

want a program start at Amazon.

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So like how did, yeah.

Eddie: 00:03:05

That all kind of get started

Curtis: 00:03:07

for you.

Curtis: 00:03:08

So as far as my journey into Tech Goes journey into software engineering, it's

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pretty, it was kind of straightforward.

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Wasn't really a career changer or anything like that.

Curtis: 00:03:15

I studied computer engineering back in high school.

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I actually took some coding courses.

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We had some courses in.

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Had a really good teacher that taught it really well in high school.

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And when I got to university, I studied computer engineering.

Curtis: 00:03:29

And so computer engineering is a little bit different from computer science

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in the sense that it focuses on the integration of hardware and software

Curtis: 00:03:37

rather than strictly large scale software development or computer science.

Curtis: 00:03:41

So I worked a lot with, um, hardware description languages, like fair log,

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uh, some embedded systems work as well.

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So writing code that would.

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Used on physical devices in the physical world, and it taught me a lot.

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But in the end, I ended up getting an internship with

Curtis: 00:03:57

Amazon as a software engineer.

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And then after the internship I was hired full-time at Amazon as

Curtis: 00:04:04

a software development engineer.

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So I stopped doing the hardware stuff and just completely shifted

Curtis: 00:04:08

O over to the software side.

Curtis: 00:04:10

Yeah, so that's my story.

Eddie: 00:04:11

Nice.

Eddie: 00:04:12

Well, I've been following you on Twitter for a little while now, and I, I read

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an blog post that you talked about how like started at Amazon, but you

Eddie: 00:04:21

really should have never gotten that job, and that's so intriguing to me.

Eddie: 00:04:25

So I thought, you know, let's unpack that a little bit.

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How did that go about?

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How did you get that job?

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Why did you feel like you shouldn't have gotten that job?

Eddie: 00:04:33

What did that all kind of look.

Eddie: 00:04:36

Yeah,

Curtis: 00:04:36

so you're referring to an article I wrote on My Medium, which

Curtis: 00:04:40

was about two years ago, and it was recently discovered probably a month ago.

Curtis: 00:04:45

It was discovered by a business insider, and so I worked with Business Insider to

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get that republished on their platform to reach a wider variety of readers.

Curtis: 00:04:54

And yeah, the title is, it was a very eye-catching, it was my first ever

Curtis: 00:04:58

article actually, so like nice, very.

Curtis: 00:05:01

Click baby, like over the top like headline because I didn't, I had no idea

Curtis: 00:05:05

if anybody was gonna read this article, so it was like Amazon shouldn't have hired.

Curtis: 00:05:10

Like, and I had like in my medium article I had in the quiet place, there's like a,

Curtis: 00:05:16

an infamous scene where he's like, puts his finger over his mouth like, shh, like

Curtis: 00:05:19

it's a secret or something, because I had no idea if anybody was gonna read this.

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And ended up like, I think over a hundred thousand people have

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like read it at the time, which was way more than I ever imagined.

Curtis: 00:05:29

So I learned a little bit about marketing that day.

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, but . But yeah, so that art, in that article, I kind of describe how.

Curtis: 00:05:36

My perspective around that, like why I shouldn't have gotten the job at Amazon.

Curtis: 00:05:39

So any software engineer who's prepared for a FANG interview,

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including Amazon, knows that you have to study lead code questions, right?

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You have to go out, basically go on lead code, and for months and months

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you have to practice those coding challenges, those coding problems.

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And you need to study like da, the, the complex data structures, the heaps

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and the tries and the, and the graphs.

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And you have to be able to know and analyze some algorithms

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in time and space complexity.

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Now, a lot of these core concepts of data structures and algorithms, they're

Curtis: 00:06:08

taught in computer science curriculums.

Curtis: 00:06:10

And as I explained before, my background was in computer engineering.

Curtis: 00:06:14

It was a very good curriculum and it taught me to think like an engineer.

Curtis: 00:06:17

It taught me to solve ambiguous problems, but it didn't have those core

Curtis: 00:06:22

classes just because it wasn't part of the computer engineering curriculum.

Curtis: 00:06:26

So I kind of went into the interview for the internship.

Curtis: 00:06:29

Um, this was back in 2014, went into the interview and they

Curtis: 00:06:33

were doing on-campus interviews.

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I'm not sure if they do that now, but I.

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I got a couple of technical questions, which weren't typical of what you

Curtis: 00:06:41

would see nowadays on an S D E intern or s d one interview, and I

Curtis: 00:06:46

got one on like bit manipulation.

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I told them my background, so they gave me some bit manipulation question.

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They asked me a couple of questions on hash maps.

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And then the rest of it was like leadership skills, leadership,

Curtis: 00:06:56

leadership, leadership.

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And I did have some of those solid leadership skills and the technical

Curtis: 00:07:00

questions I was able to answer as well.

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So I landed the internship and then over the course of the internship I

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was developing a Rub on Rails project.

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And then I did well on the project and I was able to earn

Curtis: 00:07:10

an s d e one full-time offer.

Curtis: 00:07:12

Now, I did earn the offer through the internship.

Curtis: 00:07:14

I did do well.

Curtis: 00:07:15

I mean, once you have the job, once you're in the door, it's.

Curtis: 00:07:19

More so within your control in terms of, okay, I can put in more hours, or I can

Curtis: 00:07:23

take the extra time to learn something.

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I basically worked my ass off during that internship and got the full-time offer.

Curtis: 00:07:29

The reason why I say Amazon shouldn't have hired me is because objectively, if I were

Curtis: 00:07:34

to take the SD one interview, like while I was trying out for that internship, or

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even after the internship, even after I graduated, if I had taken the SD one, I.

Curtis: 00:07:44

There's no chance I would've passed that thing objectively.

Curtis: 00:07:47

There's no, there's no way.

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And this is confirmed by my experience as an interviewer.

Curtis: 00:07:52

I spent six years at Amazon.

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I interviewed many candidates, um, just having a deep understanding

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of the interview process as well.

Curtis: 00:07:58

I definitely would not have passed that interview and gotten into Amazon, so

Curtis: 00:08:01

that's why it says Amazon shouldn't have hired me at the beginning.

Curtis: 00:08:04

I love that

Eddie: 00:08:04

because I think there's something to be learned there, right?

Eddie: 00:08:06

Which is oftentimes it's easier to move upward in an organization than

Eddie: 00:08:11

to go out and get an organization to hire you from scratch, right?

Eddie: 00:08:15

Because you had gotten in the door as an intern that allowed you to show.

Eddie: 00:08:21

What you were doing as proof that you could be a software engineer at Amazon.

Eddie: 00:08:27

Whereas if you hadn't done that internship and you just finished school and then

Eddie: 00:08:31

been like, all right, I'm gonna get my first job, time to go for Amazon,

Eddie: 00:08:34

you would've had harder questions cuz they would've expected you as an

Eddie: 00:08:39

external hire to be at a higher level.

Eddie: 00:08:41

Like they, so I think that's an awesome thing for people to keep in mind when

Eddie: 00:08:45

they're thinking about how they want to go about their career and knowing like,

Eddie: 00:08:48

hey, if you can get in the door some.

Eddie: 00:08:50

Through an easier doorway and then show proof, like on the job you can

Eddie: 00:08:55

move up where you might not have gotten in the door just trying to

Eddie: 00:08:59

go for that higher level position.

Curtis: 00:09:01

Yes, I think there's something to be said there.

Curtis: 00:09:04

Definitely.

Curtis: 00:09:04

I would like to emphasize, you know, that internship was

Curtis: 00:09:07

definitely not like an easy thing.

Curtis: 00:09:10

I would say it's different kind of skillset.

Curtis: 00:09:12

Some people are really good at lead code questions, but, but you know,

Curtis: 00:09:15

they're not very good at some of the soft skills and leadership skills

Curtis: 00:09:18

that it takes to succeed on the job.

Curtis: 00:09:20

It's kind of a trade off, right?

Curtis: 00:09:21

So in my case, wasn't very good at lead code, but was very good on on other,

Curtis: 00:09:25

on-the-job skills and other people's case.

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Maybe they're good at lead code, but they're not good

Curtis: 00:09:29

at those on-the-job skills.

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So that internship was actually very challenging and over the

Curtis: 00:09:33

years I've mentored several.

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Engineering interns as well, so I know how about the structure and how challenging

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it can be, and so not everybody makes it out of that internship with a

Curtis: 00:09:44

full-time offer, as you can imagine.

Curtis: 00:09:46

I'm not sure what the percentage is.

Curtis: 00:09:47

I, I'm not gonna throw out a number because it's probably

Curtis: 00:09:49

changing all the time.

Curtis: 00:09:50

I was talking about the differences between interviewing in tech as

Curtis: 00:09:55

well as on the job skills, and I think my case brings up a broader

Curtis: 00:10:00

discussion about interviewing.

Curtis: 00:10:03

The tech industry as a whole has this whole lead code process, and they

Curtis: 00:10:07

measure these specific skills in a live coding interview kind of way.

Curtis: 00:10:11

Like many companies do this.

Curtis: 00:10:13

It's not just Amazon, you know, it's Google, it's meta, it's all

Curtis: 00:10:17

kinds of different companies.

Curtis: 00:10:18

Right?

Curtis: 00:10:18

And I think it brings up a broader discussion of, is that the right

Curtis: 00:10:21

way to be interviewing people?

Curtis: 00:10:24

I have some personal opinions about like what we could do, but everybody does.

Curtis: 00:10:29

I think everybody at some level has an opinion on how we should be

Curtis: 00:10:32

measuring candidates for these roles.

Curtis: 00:10:35

There's been some changes, like I think there have been.

Curtis: 00:10:37

Different companies that are starting a trend of like avoiding

Curtis: 00:10:40

those kinds of interviews.

Curtis: 00:10:42

Maybe going away from the whiteboard interviews, maybe going

Curtis: 00:10:45

into like poll request type of interviewing, behavioral type of

Curtis: 00:10:48

interviewing, those kinds of things.

Curtis: 00:10:49

It's a good,

Eddie: 00:10:50

a good point, right?

Eddie: 00:10:51

And it kind of creates two call outs.

Eddie: 00:10:52

Like one, if you're out there and you're interviewing and you feel like you're

Eddie: 00:10:56

not passing interviews like that doesn't.

Eddie: 00:10:59

You would be bad at the job.

Eddie: 00:11:00

That just means you're having challenges with the interview process.

Eddie: 00:11:03

So like don't be discouraged by that.

Eddie: 00:11:05

You may just need to hone up some of the interviewing skills or look for

Eddie: 00:11:09

companies that have different interview processes that are more of what you

Eddie: 00:11:14

would do in your day job as companies.

Eddie: 00:11:17

I totally agree with you.

Eddie: 00:11:17

I think we need to do better.

Eddie: 00:11:19

There's different levels of like leak code where it's like a lot of what you

Eddie: 00:11:22

do doesn't actually happen in your day.

Eddie: 00:11:25

and then you've got, I would put like Glassdoor in this category, which is like,

Eddie: 00:11:28

okay, you still do live coding, but it's more what you would do in the day job.

Eddie: 00:11:32

And so like for example, as a front end engineer, you're gonna mess with like

Eddie: 00:11:36

grabbing data from APIs and displaying it on screen during a 45 minute session.

Eddie: 00:11:43

And it's like, well, you still have to code in front of someone,

Eddie: 00:11:44

but you're doing stuff that you would normally do in the day job.

Eddie: 00:11:48

It's, it's not something you have to specially study for.

Eddie: 00:11:50

And then, yeah, I think different types of things.

Eddie: 00:11:53

Pull requests and like how do people work in teams?

Eddie: 00:11:56

Like finding ways to dig into that stuff.

Eddie: 00:11:58

So vital to how we work.

Eddie: 00:12:00

I I love that.

Eddie: 00:12:01

Yes, absolutely.

Eddie: 00:12:02

Well, cool.

Eddie: 00:12:03

Um,

Eddie: 00:12:03

you know, you were at Amazon and I know we deal with imposter syndrome a lot

Eddie: 00:12:09

in kind of the tech industry, right?

Eddie: 00:12:11

Did you encounter that there?

Eddie: 00:12:13

, how did that feel working kind of among Amazon?

Curtis: 00:12:16

Yeah, definitely.

Curtis: 00:12:17

I think, um, in my case, and I kind of talk about this a little bit into

Curtis: 00:12:22

piece as well, in my case, I have kind of an unpopular opinion when

Curtis: 00:12:25

it comes to like imposter syndrome,

Curtis: 00:12:28

So I, I typically like to drop the, the syndrome part of it, right?

Curtis: 00:12:31

I like to look at it as, okay, maybe like I'm an actual imposter and in,

Curtis: 00:12:35

like in my case, I was objectively coming into Amazon without some skills.

Curtis: 00:12:42

Every SD one gets hired having, right.

Curtis: 00:12:44

So I'm like, oh, I'm the only one that doesn't have these skills.

Curtis: 00:12:47

So when I, Dr.

Curtis: 00:12:48

And for me, when I was able to drop the syndrome part out of it, to

Curtis: 00:12:51

say, okay, maybe I really don't have these skills, like I have to kind

Curtis: 00:12:56

of objectively look at myself and reflect and say, okay, I am where I am.

Curtis: 00:13:00

I have the skills that I have, I have the background that I have.

Curtis: 00:13:03

Maybe I'm at some kind of.

Curtis: 00:13:04

Disadvantages relative to my other peers, but I can take where I am

Curtis: 00:13:09

and then recognize what I have to do to acquire those skills.

Curtis: 00:13:13

And really, I think that's what it's all about.

Curtis: 00:13:14

Just having the self-awareness to say, Hey, I don't know this right now,

Curtis: 00:13:17

but I'm gonna go out and learn that.

Curtis: 00:13:18

Or, I am performing this way right now, but I'm gonna take the feedback

Curtis: 00:13:22

from my peers and my managers and, and that sort of thing.

Curtis: 00:13:26

And, um, take that feedback in stride and improve any way that

Curtis: 00:13:29

I can because I wanna stay.

Curtis: 00:13:31

Right.

Curtis: 00:13:31

And I wanna ex and I want to excel here.

Curtis: 00:13:34

Um, so that's kind of the attitude I took in that situation.

Eddie: 00:13:37

So you worked at Amazon for six years, then you moved on to freelancing.

Eddie: 00:13:42

Obviously you're enjoying being a software engineer.

Eddie: 00:13:45

Kind of what is it that keeps you excited and interested working in

Curtis: 00:13:48

this field?

Curtis: 00:13:49

Yeah, it's a good question.

Curtis: 00:13:51

Software engineering, back when I was in high school and going up

Curtis: 00:13:54

through college, I really liked the problem solving aspect of it and the

Curtis: 00:14:00

creative problem solving aspect of it.

Curtis: 00:14:02

So no one developer or no two developers come to the same solution, right?

Curtis: 00:14:08

Everyone has their own unique way to solve a problem and just.

Curtis: 00:14:13

Looking at the creative process, the logically creative process

Curtis: 00:14:16

that each developer goes through, and solving these different

Curtis: 00:14:19

problems is very interesting to me.

Curtis: 00:14:21

And the problems get even more and more interesting as you get better, right?

Curtis: 00:14:24

You have, at first, you're thinking about edge cases and corner

Curtis: 00:14:28

cases and those kinds of things.

Curtis: 00:14:29

And then as you level up in tech, you start thinking about more of

Curtis: 00:14:32

the business side of things, right?

Curtis: 00:14:34

Um, you.

Curtis: 00:14:36

Noticing gaps in like a business, instant business requirements or maybe

Curtis: 00:14:39

something that they say they want, like maybe the customer says they want

Curtis: 00:14:44

one thing, and then you have to kind of fill in the gap for them saying,

Curtis: 00:14:46

Hey, but what about this situation?

Curtis: 00:14:48

And those problems become much more collaborative, collaborative between all

Curtis: 00:14:52

kinds of different people, like engineers, product managers, UX designers, and it

Curtis: 00:14:57

becomes, you know, the, the problems get even more and more interesting.

Curtis: 00:15:01

And I like collaborating with humans as well.

Curtis: 00:15:03

Like, uh, I think in the early stages of software engineering, you're pretty much

Curtis: 00:15:08

always coding, but in the latest stages, you're al you're always collaborating

Curtis: 00:15:11

with other people and it's more about precise communication, whether that's

Curtis: 00:15:15

verbal, uh, non-verbal or written.

Curtis: 00:15:18

No,

Eddie: 00:15:18

that's, that's fun.

Eddie: 00:15:19

Like you said, as as the journey goes on, you get to do different

Eddie: 00:15:23

things and you get these different experiences and it is great working,

Eddie: 00:15:27

working with people as well as code.

Eddie: 00:15:30

One of the things that we like to talk about in this podcast

Eddie: 00:15:33

is things that bring us joy and.

Eddie: 00:15:35

I just wanna say, hey, what's something that brings you joy?

Eddie: 00:15:38

Maybe something you've been doing or a way you've been working

Curtis: 00:15:42

for you?

Curtis: 00:15:42

So when I became a freelancer, one of my main clients has been Gum Road.

Curtis: 00:15:47

Um, and so Gum Road is put simply, it's a website, gum road.com,

Curtis: 00:15:52

where you as a creator can.

Curtis: 00:15:54

Log on and upload files and sell them as a product.

Curtis: 00:15:57

And that's kind of a simplistic definition.

Curtis: 00:15:59

You can sell digital files like eBooks or videos, or you can sell physical

Curtis: 00:16:04

items as well if you have, have your own way to ship customers items.

Curtis: 00:16:08

But very simple website.

Curtis: 00:16:09

I say that in a good way.

Curtis: 00:16:10

I think simplicity is beautiful, especially when it comes to

Curtis: 00:16:13

products and engineering.

Curtis: 00:16:15

But what's interesting about Gum Road and working with them is

Curtis: 00:16:18

it's completely asynchronous.

Curtis: 00:16:20

So, I think in the past year that I've been working with them, I've

Curtis: 00:16:24

only had four meetings the whole time, which is pretty unheard of.

Curtis: 00:16:29

Yeah.

Curtis: 00:16:30

. Yeah.

Curtis: 00:16:30

So it's, it very much resembles working on an open, kind of

Curtis: 00:16:34

like an open source project.

Curtis: 00:16:36

We have like three modes of communication.

Curtis: 00:16:38

There's like notion, GitHub, and um, slack, and that's pretty much it.

Curtis: 00:16:44

Um, if you're a designer, you have Figma as.

Curtis: 00:16:46

So it's the, the whole thing is completely asynchronous.

Curtis: 00:16:48

You know, you dive into the notion and you figure out, okay, what's

Curtis: 00:16:51

the highest priority task or project that needs to be worked on?

Curtis: 00:16:54

And you kind of like, as an engineer, I have to be able to like scope

Curtis: 00:16:58

it out, break down the tasks of what we need to do, and then.

Curtis: 00:17:01

Involve whoever I need to evolve.

Curtis: 00:17:04

Maybe I have to reach out to a product manager to clarify something, or maybe

Curtis: 00:17:08

I have to reach out to a designer to get something designed, and then I'm diving

Curtis: 00:17:11

into the code and pretty much shipping, authoring, and reviewing GitHub poll

Curtis: 00:17:15

request to, to ship to this, this product.

Curtis: 00:17:17

So it's, it's very interesting.

Curtis: 00:17:19

Very interesting work life, uh, situation I have.

Curtis: 00:17:22

Nice,

Eddie: 00:17:23

I think.

Eddie: 00:17:24

What do you find challenging about that?

Eddie: 00:17:28

Right.

Eddie: 00:17:28

Obviously there's a lot of upsides for asynchronous, right?

Eddie: 00:17:30

You get to work on your own schedule and you know, get to zoom in, but yeah.

Eddie: 00:17:35

What kind of challenges have you run into?

Curtis: 00:17:37

A lot of times verbally, conversations can

Curtis: 00:17:39

be hashed out a lot quickly.

Curtis: 00:17:41

More quickly, and it's tougher to ha to like write things down

Curtis: 00:17:45

sometimes, like if you have a.

Curtis: 00:17:47

And sometimes the pro, the problems that you're solving can get very complex,

Curtis: 00:17:51

especially in software engineering, and the communication has to be very precise.

Curtis: 00:17:55

So sometimes writing out maybe on a poll request, giving enough context or maybe

Curtis: 00:18:01

you're having a slack discussion about some something that needs to be debugged

Curtis: 00:18:06

and you have to have very precise.

Curtis: 00:18:07

Communication around everything, and that's difficult.

Curtis: 00:18:11

I got into writing, especially writing on the internet probably a couple years

Curtis: 00:18:14

ago, and that kind of opened my eyes to just how difficult writing can be.

Curtis: 00:18:18

Most of the time when you write something, the first pass through,

Curtis: 00:18:21

it's not going to be correct or precise or you're gonna have to make edits.

Curtis: 00:18:25

And so if you're, if all of your communication is writing, you

Curtis: 00:18:27

have to write and then you have to go back and revise and revise

Curtis: 00:18:30

and revise and then finally send.

Curtis: 00:18:33

So I'd say that's been challenging, but it's.

Curtis: 00:18:36

Influenced a little bit of my growth as well.

Curtis: 00:18:37

I think I've become a better writer because of this, this process.

Eddie: 00:18:41

Yeah, that's awesome because like you said, while it is challenging,

Eddie: 00:18:45

I think it also helps shed light when you're having to analyze it, right?

Eddie: 00:18:49

And yes, oftentimes when we're in a meeting, we can kind of spit things out

Eddie: 00:18:53

that we only half know or half understand.

Eddie: 00:18:56

And it's like when you're writing and you're making sure it's

Eddie: 00:18:58

right and clear, it makes you question your own assumptions.

Eddie: 00:19:02

So that definitely seems like something that.

Eddie: 00:19:04

Really help you understand things and, and if someone is like, wait, what did we say?

Eddie: 00:19:09

Like, it's not lost in a meeting somewhere.

Eddie: 00:19:11

Like it's actually written down and they can

Curtis: 00:19:12

go back and read it.

Curtis: 00:19:14

Yes, absolutely.

Curtis: 00:19:15

I, and this also reminds me when I was at Amazon, Amazon has a

Curtis: 00:19:18

very strong writing culture.

Curtis: 00:19:20

So they have like a no PowerPoint rule.

Curtis: 00:19:22

Like if you have an idea or something that you're proposing to a group of people,

Curtis: 00:19:27

you're not allowed to use PowerPoint.

Curtis: 00:19:29

You have to write a document.

Curtis: 00:19:30

It has to be a one pager or a six page.

Curtis: 00:19:33

Because writing forces cla that clarity of thought.

Curtis: 00:19:35

You know, you cannot BS your way through a written documents, but you

Curtis: 00:19:40

can BS your way through a PowerPoint presentation or something like that.

Curtis: 00:19:43

. Yeah,

Eddie: 00:19:44

absolutely.

Eddie: 00:19:45

Great.

Eddie: 00:19:45

As we, you know, wrap up here, one of the things we always like to do is just

Eddie: 00:19:50

as a community, we love to support each other and just wanted to know, is there

Eddie: 00:19:53

anything that you're involved in or anything you've worked on that you'd like?

Eddie: 00:19:57

Share with the community that they, they might find helpful and want to check out.

Curtis: 00:20:01

I mentioned earlier this year, I launched my first video course.

Curtis: 00:20:04

It's called Master the Code Review.

Curtis: 00:20:06

I think code review is a critical, important subject for software

Curtis: 00:20:11

engineers, software developers.

Curtis: 00:20:12

Almost every software developer does this on a daily basis that very

Curtis: 00:20:16

few people are talking about it.

Curtis: 00:20:18

And so that's what motivated me to make this course.

Curtis: 00:20:20

Um, that, and, you know, my particular struggles with code

Curtis: 00:20:24

reviews early on in my career.

Curtis: 00:20:25

, you know, I'd, I'd open up a poll request and I'd get like 50 comments on it or

Curtis: 00:20:30

like, you know, I would, I'd submit another revision of that poll request,

Curtis: 00:20:33

get another 30 comments on it, and then when I would look at code that people

Curtis: 00:20:37

sent me to review, I didn't know what to look for or how to give good feedback.

Curtis: 00:20:41

And over the years, especially at Amazon, I learned a lot about

Curtis: 00:20:46

the ins and outs of code review.

Curtis: 00:20:48

Whether that is the process that the code reviewed process, that the team

Curtis: 00:20:51

is following the code that an engineer is reviewing, or the code that an

Curtis: 00:20:55

engineer is writing and how to address such, um, code review comments and

Curtis: 00:20:59

feedback and those kinds of things.

Curtis: 00:21:01

So I cover all this.

Curtis: 00:21:02

It's like, it's a video course, it's about four hours worth of video

Curtis: 00:21:06

content and it's on Gum road of course.

Curtis: 00:21:08

So very easy to, to find that and check that out.

Curtis: 00:21:11

Awesome.

Eddie: 00:21:12

Well, we'll include a link in the show.

Eddie: 00:21:14

I know there isn't much content.

Eddie: 00:21:16

I mean, there's blog posts here and there, right about pull requests and

Eddie: 00:21:19

code reviews and things like that.

Eddie: 00:21:21

But yeah, I don't feel like I've seen much actual, like really

Eddie: 00:21:24

in-depth content like this.

Eddie: 00:21:25

So I think that's, that's great.

Eddie: 00:21:27

And anyone, if you feel like you need to step up your code review game,

Eddie: 00:21:32

if you feel unsure or just like.

Eddie: 00:21:34

Maybe you've only done open source projects and like you've never been

Eddie: 00:21:37

in a company that's done those, you've always worked on your own or something.

Eddie: 00:21:40

Like, there's a great chance to to learn how to collaborate with others.

Eddie: 00:21:44

So definitely, uh, encourage everyone to check that out and, uh, yeah.

Eddie: 00:21:49

Curtis, thank you so much for joining us today.

Eddie: 00:21:51

It's been a pleasure.

Eddie: 00:21:52

Just chatting, getting to know you, your journey, uh, hearing

Eddie: 00:21:55

about working asynchronously.

Eddie: 00:21:57

I think that is such a huge thing.

Eddie: 00:22:00

In remote work, this ability for companies to start shifting, to work in that way.

Eddie: 00:22:04

And it's great to actually hear someone who is actually doing

Eddie: 00:22:07

that and it's working well for

Curtis: 00:22:10

Thanks a lot Eddie.

Curtis: 00:22:10

I really appreciate you having me on the podcast.

Curtis: 00:22:13

I think we covered a lot of ground today and I really hope

Curtis: 00:22:16

to, to listen to this Will Joy.

Eddie: 00:22:18

Thank you for joining us for episode 41.

Eddie: 00:22:21

An unpopular view on imposter syndrome with Curtis You can find

Eddie: 00:22:26

links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as a link

Eddie: 00:22:29

to Curtis's website and social media accounts in the show notes.

Eddie: 00:22:33

If you enjoyed this episode, help others discover it as well.

Eddie: 00:22:37

Why don't you give us a shout out on your favorite social media platform

Eddie: 00:22:40

and tag a friend or coworker that you think would enjoy this episode?

Eddie: 00:22:44

Don't forget to follow us wherever you hang out online, or you can subscribe

Eddie: 00:22:48

to our newsletter to stay up to date.

Eddie: 00:22:51

Thank you for joining us for season one.

Eddie: 00:22:54

If you have three minutes, please take our short listener survey.

Eddie: 00:22:57

You can find the link in the show notes and it will be invaluable

Eddie: 00:23:01

while we plan out season two.

Eddie: 00:23:03

Thank you for listening.