In today's episode, I interview Laurence Bradford. Laurence is the creator of Learn Code With Me. For the majority of this interview, we discuss the ambiguity and difficulty of the job market, and finding your way. Today's episode is sponsored by Dolby. One of the most important things you can do for your application is ensure that the quality of your audio is strong. You already know Dolby and sound quality go hand-in-hand. Check out how Dolby can help you at https://spec.fm/dolby
In today's episode, I interview Laurence Bradford. Laurence is the creator of Learn Code With Me. For the majority of this interview, we discuss the ambiguity and difficulty of the job market, and finding your way.
Today's episode is sponsored by Dolby. One of the most important things you can do for your application is ensure that the quality of your audio is strong. You already know Dolby and sound quality go hand-in-hand. Check out how Dolby can help you at spec.fm/dolby.
Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea, my name is Jonathan Cutrell and in today's episode I'm interviewing Laurence Bradford. Laurence is the creator of Learn to Code with me. That's Learn to Code with.ME if you want to go and visit the website. She has a blog, she has a lot of awesome guides, introductions to things like what is the internet if you've ever wanted to explain that to someone who is a non-developer friend of yours. It's a really great guide. It's actually pretty good primer for those of us who are already in the know, supposedly in the know. There's some new stuff to be learned across Laurence's material. Laurence is also the host of a top 20 tech podcast by the same name, Learn to Code with me. She talks with other developers about how learning to code has created mobility in their careers and has given them the opportunity to be entrepreneurial and do new and exciting things that they couldn't do before they learned how to code. So we're going to talk about some of that stuff today. We're going to talk about Laurence's personal brand, her perspective on branding. Laurence also is a contributor to Forbes. We're going to talk about what it means to be a contributor to a site like Forbes and how we as other developers may go about doing something kind of like that. So I'm really excited to have Laurence's on the show. Let's get straight to the interview with Laurence Bradford. Laurence's welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to have you on the show. I think a lot of people probably already know about you because the people who are listening to this show are frequenting iTunes. They're looking at podcasts for developers and technology section. You know iTunes, by the way, they removed the subcategories, but even still in the technology section, your podcast has been consistently near the top for quite a while now. Well, thank you. I mean, that means so much. And for everyone listening and how, yeah, I've just blown away. And I've heard of your show as well. No, it's a say to come on. Yeah, it's really, really exciting because the whole point of your show is to talk about learning how to code. And that's, you know, this such an important thing that we talk about on this show. And we talked not just about learning how to code, but learning in general, right? And this constant, this constant idea that learning is important for our entire lives. Like we don't need to just start learning, you know, and then stop whenever we finished whatever the thing is that we want to learn. We need to have this, and this continuous learning mindset. Now, actually, when we were talking over email, you mentioned that you are picking up a course in the evenings. Is that correct? Yep. Yep. I just started the course last week. And it's eight weeks long and it means twice a week. So Tuesday and Thursday is from 6.30 to nine after work. That's really cool. I think a lot of people will be able to identify with that 6.30 to nine learning schedule that they have as a result of also having a job and being an adult. It's a really interesting thing that happens when you become an adult, right? Yes. Oh my goodness. It's gosh. I keep, I was actually saying to someone before because I had my own, another podcast interview before for my own show. And I was like, yeah, I kind of feel like, like a crazy person or something, just because I have the, you know, I have a full time job. I have the podcast. I have a blog still, you know, all these other things. And then I decide to take a course twice a week. You know, it's only for, you know, from 6.30 to nine p.m. at night. But when all these other things going on in your life, it's always, it's hard to make time. But I am really happy that I decide to take it because it's been a bit since I've been in like a classroom environment learning with other people around me. It is a really unique environment to be in. I think a lot of people actually who are in a learning stage of life, in particular, if you are college age or especially if you're like a high schooler that's graduating and trying to decide if you want to go into, you know, formalize learning environment or not. A lot of people look over the value of that face-to-face communication and the time that you get to spend with other students. I do think it has a pretty significant amount of value. It's not the only way to learn. Certainly there are brand new ways to learn popping up all around us as technology progresses in the learning space. But there is a value to being in person and learning in person that can't quite be 100% emulated in an online classroom. Yeah, 100%. And again, I'm only two classes in, so I don't want to like jinx myself, forget a little too ahead of myself. I have to see how the next seven weeks play out. But so far, probably like my favorite thing about the course is the people that are in it. So it is, you know, a part-time course. It's 6,39 pm at night. And everyone there is like a professional, right? And they're all in tech and they're all looking to sort of, you know, level up their career. So it's kind of like mindset of the student that I really enjoy and everyone so far I've definitely gone along with. And I also really like the instructor. The instructor has lots of experience in the field. She's really, you know, she's fun. She's entertaining. She teaches well. So yeah, we'll see how things continue to go. But it's great to be around people like learning in that way. Sure. So what is the actual, what is the course actually titled if you don't want to ask? So it's product management. I think it may be something like intro to product management or maybe even just product management. And it's interesting because there's not a lot of product management courses out there. There's a few that are like tied to certifications and they kind of seem a little old school like the websites at least. And then, yeah, there's, and then there's some programs like I, there's like, for instance, like an MBA product management program, I believe at like NYU or something, which is obviously a huge commitment. There was another one that looked interesting. It was in, it was in Silicon Valley. It was at UC Berkeley, I believe. And it was like a really, it was like an intensive like weeklong thing, but it was very expensive. And then here, and I'm based in New York, there were two pretty solid options, one at General Assembly, product management course. And then another at a, I guess it's kind of like a coding bootcamp, but it's called product schools, just for product management. So I decided to go with that one after some research. And yeah, it's been, yeah, it's been fun. That's awesome. So I do want to back up because I think I got ahead of myself and and and jump to and and and talked about this, this ongoing learning, but I want to back up and and get a little bit of your story kind of where you came from, what your initial interests were. I know, for example, that you were you were in Asia for a little while and you have this kind of deep love for Asia. Can you explain kind of how you ended up getting interested in in tech and interested in learning how to code and where that led you? What what path you went down to get there? Yeah, definitely. So after college, I thought I wanted to do economic development and specifically in Southeast Asia. So during college, I had studied abroad in China and then I was able to go back after that, Southeast Asia. And it's like the easiest way to get to Southeast Asia, especially as someone who's just leaving college is to teach English there. So I sure yeah, yeah, like English as a second language or yeah. So I actually ended up teaching really young children that were between the ages. It's kind of ridiculous between the ages of like two and seven. So it was like a private preschool slash like elementary school. And I was a big big Adrian. Yeah, I would go from class to class. I was kind of like the traveling teacher. I would go. Yeah. And the youngest kids, I was with for 20 minutes every morning, I mean, you know, two year old. You can't really do sing songs and you know, do animals. Pointed things and name them. Yeah, exact same with the $0.00 of course in the US, too. I know you can't you can't really have a really long intense class with a group of two. Yeah. And that was, I mean, it's a really great experience. But I definitely knew teaching was not for me after that. And especially younger kids. Well, I love to be around like younger kids. And in some ways, I feel like I was very fortunate because I had a lot of friends that were also teaching English there that were around high school students that would have more behavior issues. And the thing that I liked the most about these younger children were that even when they acted out in class, like you could never, ever, ever take it personally because you know, there's like, they're four years old. It was still. Sure. Yeah. And they're still like cute at the end of the day. And it wasn't, um, it wasn't as stressful I think in that way. But in any case, so when I was done teaching, I ended up getting like, um, this job at a think tank in Bangkok. And it specifically an economic development and their economic development floor. So at the time, this was sort of my dream job, if you will. And I was only there for about a month when I realized it was nothing like I thought it would be. It was nothing for me. And that was really hard because I had been studying for like the GRE. I thought I was going to go to grad school to study economic development. Now in hindsight, it was like a bullet dodge because I would have probably spent, you know, upwards of a hundred thousand dollars on grad school and not to mention two years out of my professional life, um, you know, back at school. So I am happy that this all, you know, happened at the end. But nonetheless, so I was, you know, in Thailand, this wasn't for me. And I decided to start teaching myself how to code and just to build websites, uh, initially, there were a few other factors going on at the time like I had started a travel blog, for instance, on WordPress. So I wanted to do things to like customize it. So I already had a bit of interest from there. And, uh, well, that was actually really the main thing kind of pushing me is, and then also not having any other career options at the time. And I was very fortunate. This is not something I realized until later that when I was in Bangkok, um, working at the sink tank, I lived alone. And at this point in time, all of my friends, uh, had met through teaching either left or they were like further away from Bangkok teaching. So I didn't really have like any friends or family, which gave me a lot of free time to learn how to cope. So sort of like a, um, I mean, the sounds kind of pressing, I know friends or family, but it, gave me tons of time to be able to learn how to code. And that's sort of what kick started it. I ended up moving back to the United States, uh, taking like different kinds of courses online and in person here. And then about a year later, I started learning to co with me the blog and things sort of took off after that. That's really a really cool story. There's some aspects of that that I like to kind of focus on for a second. Um, one, I think you mentioned something that's, uh, that sounds a little bit like it's kind of funny at, in hindsight, but could very well have been, like one of the really big factors, uh, for your success. And that was that you kind of had this space to focus, right? Like you didn't have a lot going on around you. You didn't have many people questioning whether or not you were, you were going to be able to do it. You just had these resources and you had time. And, uh, and I think that's a really powerful combination, right? Um, would you agree that that, you know, that, that focus level that you had as a result of being in this, in a different country and with none of your friends, know your family around really just with, with time and resources. Yeah. I was definitely, I mean, I'm, I'm not saying maybe I wouldn't have learned at all otherwise, but it was definitely a great way to start learning because I was still in Thailand for two months before I came back to the United States. And I was, you know, I did have this other job, but keep in mind the Thai work schedule is very different from the US. It was like, the average work hours were like 10 to 4 every day in my office. Oh wow. Yeah. So it's, I mean, Thailand's an amazing country for anyone like who's been there thinking of going. I mean, the people are amazing, but it's definitely a more like relaxed, I'd say at least, at least, um, the office that I was in, uh, nah, not the long hours that some of us put in our jobs here in the US. So that, so, but yeah, I think it's your question. It was definitely very helpful at the time. And also, I didn't have really anything else to do. I mean, I didn't have any other options like what I thought I wanted to do wasn't. So I knew I had to find something else and I was sort of taking, I guess, like a risk, but it, I mean, not not really. I was only really wasting time at this point because I didn't spend money much on courses early on. So it was just the time of learning it. And that was another huge realization for me. I was spending before that so much time studying for the GRE. And I remember one day in, for anyone's off familiar, the GRE is kind of the SATs, but to get into grad school, it's like a, I think there's like the get the essay and the verbal and the math, but really has no like practical use in the real world. So I was just like, why am I spending hours every weekend studying for the GRE when these skills like won't really help me make money ever? They're not like career skills. I could be spending that time doing something else. And, you know, of course, that was like learning how to build websites. Yeah, it's, it is a very powerful thing because anyone who is thinking about going to grad school, you probably have saying like GRE prep courses and tons of it. I went to grad school actually. And doing the GRE prep was like it did feel like kind of a huge waste of time. Because even on the other end of it, it's kind of like, okay, well, this isn't even the most important thing to your acceptance criteria. Like you really what you need to do is get a relationship built up with the people at the school and the GRE ends up being significantly less important than you are led to belief it will be. Yeah, I mean, I think I, I'm not a fan of the whole standardized test thing. So, and again, I just, it's just to me, it's like it just doesn't have any real world. Because you can write an essay in 25 minutes or whatever it is and it has to be, you know, the five paragraph structure. It's just not, yes, just not like the real world to me. So, Lawrence, you are everything you say and everything that you've created up until this point, looking at it as a developer, kind of analyzing what you're doing with, with this information that you're learning and the trajectory of your career and all that stuff. You are kind of the picture of the new developer. I'm going to coin a term capital and new developer. And it's the kind of person who isn't necessarily gunning after an engineering career like for now to retirement. We're talking right before the show and you mentioned, you know, I'm not really doing a lot of coding right this second. I'm interested in other things, musing code to inform me, but not necessarily is that like the end goal in mind. I think a lot of students, a lot of people who are learning how to code, they're doing it as kind of a means to an end. Would you agree that there is kind of this new type of developer that is emerging as a result of this? Really, it's a technological wave, right? There's so much influence that technology has over every sphere of what we do. Yeah, I really like that term new developer. Yes, definitely. It's funny because when I started the site, when I started learning code with me, in mind you, I had been learning for about a year before this, a bit on and off early on. And even like six months or maybe more than after starting the blog, my plan was to become like a junior developer. That was sort of my end goal, you know, and then progress from there, of course, but that was like my immediate goal. It took me a bit to realize that and I was doing these projects. So I was doing like freelance work and sometimes it was maybe for even like 30 hours a week. So it was a maybe a bit closer to a full-time job where I was like assisting more senior developers. So it was kind of like a junior developer in a sense. And I realized I didn't like coding all day. So I was like, oh my goodness, I've just, you know, like I just have all these other interests. So I love to write, you know, now at the podcast, you know, I love to like go out and meet people and not to say that if you're developing, you're never going to get to do these things. But most developers jobs, it's like maybe 80% you know, writing code or doing something pertaining to like touching the code base. And I was like, okay, you know, that is fun. I do like certain aspects of it, but I don't want it to play that big of a part in my day to day. And still and you know, then and still I'm very passionate about encouraging others to gain technical skills because I do think it's super valuable and could be helpful in a range of careers. But it just after a bit became clear it wasn't for me. So that was definitely kind of like an evolution. I still feel the same way that it's not for me. You know, and I've known this now maybe for like two years or something. But yeah, no, I love that term. And I do think that even you know, you so many people and I misbelieved this early on, I thought like if I learned how to code like I had to become like a software engineer, like there was no, you know, no other options. Like that was the only thing like I'm learning to code. I'm going to do it full time this and that. But that's so far from the reality because like coding and just or just text skills in general to pay what you're doing has so many real world applications, right? So you think of like marketing, like digital marketing or growth hacking, wherever you want to call it. There's so there's such a need to know just for that, whether you're like building landing pages, you know, doing a B test, doing, you know, like running SQL queries or doing other stuff with like data analysis, like coding can come into play. And that's just one job, right? Because there's you, there's user experience. There's different kinds of design roles, even like customer care. And this is something or customer support we call customer care in my company. You know, there are people on the team who because they're troubleshooting helping users. So knowing how to code helps them help users, right? So anyway, yeah, we're on a little bit of a tangent. But yeah, learning text skills has so much like real world value. It's insane. Today's episode of Developer Tea is sponsored by Dolby. Dolby wants you to know that you can make your iOS applications better with a few simple clicks. How does that happen? Well, effectively, what you're probably missing out on is user research that says audio is much more important than you thought it was. If you didn't know this, 90% of users say that audio is important across their ecosystem. 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And there's a lot of developers who are listening to this right now and you feel guilty or perhaps you feel a sense of shame that you don't enjoy all of the deep engineering problems that your coworkers do. And then there's another group of you who absolutely enjoy it. But this first group who you feel like you want to use code in really distant ways or maybe even in like kind of hacky ways, that doesn't disclude you from this group of people that are really, it's more about like digital literacy, right? Like we have some level of understanding technical literacy with some level of understanding of how things work at their at their technical level more than the average person perhaps, right? And that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, your entire career has to be wrapped up in you utilizing that particular section of knowledge. In the same way that if I study English or if I study another language, I don't necessarily have to study that in order to become, you know, a career whatever that like, I don't have to go and teach that language just because I know it, right? There's so much more that I can use that language for. I don't have to just use the language directly, but rather I can use it as a tool. And this is really what a lot of people in our kind of our, the younger generation now growing up and getting into the workforce, what we kind of misread as signals from the industry, which is, you know, learn to code because there are coding jobs. And that's really the wrong signal, I think. And the question of whether or not designers should learn to code, I think, you know, that's that first of all it's an old question. We don't need to rehash it five more times, but, but really adding more context to that, I don't think that the the real debate is should designers learn to code. It's what kind of value does learning to code add because very few of us, long term, and I'm going to hand the mic over to you in a second. This I'm really passionate about the subject. Very few of us long term will actually be doing what we're doing today. Like almost none of us are going to be doing the practical work that we are doing today as developers. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think, yeah, I like to tell you position that with like the value that learning to code can bring you as a designer or, you know, something else in your, in your career. And as you said, using programming as a tool, instead of like you have to learn the language, you have to use it all the time and so forth. But just to circle back real quick to, when you're you mentioned guilt and shame a bit ago, when I first sort of had this realization that I wanted to switch gears and not become like a full time, you know, full stack developer or whatever, I think those were like my initial initial plans early on. I felt very guilt. Like, I felt tons of guilt and shame and I had only been learning for like a year and a half maybe at that point. So I wasn't even, I wasn't like, I had like tons of like, you know, skin in the game or something. But the reason for me, I was big reason for me was because I had been telling my friends and my family and I had this blog all about it. And I was like, Oh man, like now I realized this isn't something I totally want to do. I am passionate about helping others gain text skills. So I do believe it's going to make a huge difference in people's careers and just lives overall. I mean, it certainly has for me. And at first, it was kind of like kept it a secret for a few months. And then eventually maybe began like telling more people and then, you know, now I'm definitely like someone asked me, I'm like, Oh, no, no, no, you know, like, you know, I'm taking a product management course now. Like right? Like I'm interested in much more interesting, like user experience design. Yeah, like usability and things like that. I still love to write and write all the time. So I'm just yeah, I'm very fortunate that my current situation, my current full time job and then the things I have on the side allow me to flex all these different skills and I get to do all these things that I enjoy. Yeah, again, I see this as kind of in many ways, a picture of the future workforce. A lot of what you have outlined as, you know, things that you value and the multi disciplinary career, this is something that I've been doing some thinking over the weekend. Along the lines of guilt and shame, you know, there's a ton of these articles about the millennial generation. And I don't like to focus on this discussion because there's so many opinions and a lot of them are, you know, based on a particular set of research and then it can almost get political in terms of how heated the discussion gets. But I've done a little bit of research on this on this topic and the the future of our career careers rather, the future of the workforce for millennials. Part of the reason it's so uncertain is because, you know, just 20 years ago, the number of job titles that you could hold was exponentially smaller, right? Like we have such a wide open field of possibility that never even existed even in our childhood. That's short ago. Some of these titles didn't even exist. There's brand new titles and they're actually being recycled and removed and replaced. Each and every day we're seeing, you know, brand new titles get added to the job sphere. And when I say titles, I don't mean actual literal titles, but I mean, vocations like full-on career paths that are brand new that haven't even existed for longer than a few years. People are building their entire careers around these brand new job paths. So as a result of that, we're inundated with choice, right? And we have all of these things laid out in front of us. And it's very difficult to choose something with that many possibilities. We have a major fear that we're going to choose the wrong thing. We have a major fear that we're going to have that we're going to miss out in some way. And so Laurel, I feel like you are a good word for it would be brave, right? Because you're willing to accept the fact that learning to code doesn't necessarily hold you in in your career that your career is going to be varied. There's going to be a lot of variety in the careers of our future. Oh, well, thank you so much for saying that. But yeah, no, I completely agree that. So you're saying with, there's new types of jobs emerging every single day. And it's, you know, it's always evolving. And now people are switching jobs more than they ever have before. I know like when I just, you know, I, from out, when I meet someone and I hear that they've been at their job for like over three years, even like unless it's their own company or something that's a bit different. But if they've been working for a company for over three years or four years, I'm like, whoa, you've been there for so long. And maybe it is like a generational thing or I don't know, but also things are just, just the landscape is constantly changing. And, um, and just the rise and fall of these are different companies and just wanting, you know, I don't think it's a bad thing to move from jobs at all. I think if you're moving in the right direction, um, and when I meet what I mean by that is like for you. So like the career path that you want to take, if you're, if you're that next job, it is the right thing. I mean, you know, why not move? I don't, I don't feel like you should feel like you should stay at the same thing for, you know, a few years or more, just just so it looks good on your resume or what have you. Sure. Yeah. And on the flip side. So I'm kind of the flip side of the story when I got out of my master. And even before I finished my master's degree, I've been working for, for the same company for going on seven years here very soon. Oh wow. It's quite a long time, right? But, um, the reality for me is that the flexibility of my position and the flexibility that I've, of the work that I've done at this company, um, the mobility that I want to have in my career, I actually can, can have that without moving, right? So like, for some people, uh, the, the goal should be to find that mobility, um, regardless of if that means literally going to a new company, it doesn't really nest, that's not like a, for sure thing, right? It's very possible that you could go from one company to five new jobs in the next year and never quite find, um, your place, if you want to call it that, but never really get that type of agility, mobility that you're looking for just because you're moving doesn't necessarily mean it's, you know, it's accomplishing that goal. And I think you just have to look at your options and really say, Hey, like, what are my motivations for staying versus what are my motivations for leaving? Yeah, definitely, you know, and before this, I never had, um, like a quote unquote real full-time job. And I actually thought, if you would have told me around this time, maybe a little over a year ago last year that I would be, you know, living in New York, I would have a full-time job. I'd, you know, all that I would probably think you were lying because I had been like consulting and freelancing and running my own, you know, site and the podcast and things overall were going very well, but I just got to a point, especially in, I think it was maybe like April 2016, where I just wanted to change a pace like I never had a real full, real full-time job, at least in the US. And I just wanted that experience. I wanted to be around people, like in an office. And I sort of went about it and got this job in New York and was able to move and it's been awesome. But yeah, so I don't, again, I don't have a ton of like full-time experience to compare it all to, at least as far switching jobs go. But I think it's a very, yeah, personal thing. And when you mention like mobility and like how, if you, of course, if you're happy at your job, you know, you shouldn't, you shouldn't leave it. If you feel like you're progressing and moving in the direction you want to, it definitely makes sense to stay. Yeah, I think so this, the studies that I've mentioned, they talk about this, like what makes a millennial happy, for example, and a lot of them end up talking about purpose, our driver purpose. And we are, as a generation, millennials specifically are are known for seeking purpose in their work. And they want to find purpose in their work. And a lot of times what ends up practically happening is we haven't really defined what that means exactly. Like it's kind of a nebulous, mysterious thing that we're seeking after almost as like a meta purpose. Like our purpose is to seek purpose. And that can lead us down like this never ending path where every day our job feels more okay than it feels good, right? And we're discontent based on a value set rather than discontent based on some objective thing that's happening at your job. And so I think the challenge is, you know, from Laurence's perspective, you're actually going in and trying these things out and you're realizing, hey, this isn't what I expected it would be. Let me try this other thing. Versus, you know, going in and trying something out that you're not really objectively identifying why you don't like it, right? I think that's a really important thing because on the show, I talk about, you know, what it means to be loyal in in a workspace that so often people are always taking the next opportunity. And very much so for developers, maybe more than other careers, I'm not really certain about that. But we take opportunities that are upgrades and pay faster than we take opportunities that are achieving that underlying goal of purpose possibly. And I think that's something to look at and try to decide, hey, how do I fit this in? How do I fit my values in in an industry that is really tumultuous? And tomorrow I could get an offer that doubles my salary all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, it's difficult. I definitely think you're right. I'm not a nashore with the numbers on it, but how people in tech, especially software engineers and other people with like, lucrative data or lucrative tech skills, well, like data or data analysis. The opportunity to move around more is it's definitely more prevalent. And as you said, taking upgrades and pay instead of really thinking about it's like the companies right, fit for you or maybe the job overall or whatever it is before. Or when I was searching for jobs, I thought a lot about the company and that being good fit for me and like what the environment could be like, probably more than first time job seekers do because that was really my first time ever really like seriously thinking of first time jobs. But the way I sort of thought of it was like I'm interviewing them just as much maybe even more than they're interviewing me. And I say maybe even more because in my situation, I was very particular about like where I want to work like the kinds of companies. So I only want to work at something with like that relate to like ed tech or online education. So I've always been very interested in that and through like the learn to help me blog, became more so interested in that. In any case, so everywhere I was looking, I would have to move to a new city, which I was completely fine with doing. But it's like if I'm going to pick up my life and ask my boyfriend's life as well. And you know, we're going to move in the cats and everything right. It has to be. It definitely has to be a good fit. And I think I mean, I know because I talk to people all the time looking for jobs in tech that they don't think at all about or many people don't think about the company and the culture being right fit for them. And it goes beyond it. It really depends on what you value right because for some people, they may value, you know, working from home or certain kinds of flexible schedules while other people may value getting along with their co not getting along but almost like friendships outside of work. And then other people I know maybe they kind of don't want those friendships outside of the work. They just want to be strictly professional, you know, go home, have their own life outside. So I think it just depends on what you value. Yeah, 100%. I mean, if you're if you're only looking for a job for like the professional specifics, like the numbers, then you're probably going to miss out on a major piece of what you should be evaluating. And I see, so I see the wrong way of doing this far too often. I see people's, you know, their location on LinkedIn change every three months almost. And that's, you know, it's it is not something for me to judge from the outside looking in. But I also think that it's important that if you are going to make a decision for your career, you know, that you're thinking about it enough so that you're willing to try, right? And that's such a net. Again, we're going to use the word nebulous again. That's a nebulous concept. What does it mean to try? And I think it has something to do with with just this this frequency of becoming discontented, right? And how often do we become so discontented that we pick up and and you know, jump into something new because we think it's going to fix the discontent? And I would challenge that people listen to show that you that you work inside of that pain sometimes the pain of discontent and try to identify what the source is of your discontentment because so many times we don't really recognize what that source is. And instead we have kind of this this perception that the grass is always greener and we see something that we like somewhere else and it's so easy to pick up and go. But again, with that said, you know, we have this really unique balance on today's episode of of Lawrence and myself. Having two completely different career paths, you know, Lawrence didn't go to onto her graduate school, but now is taking night classes, whereas I did go onto my graduate school and I don't take night classes currently. You know, and we have different career choices, both leading us down down unique paths. And everybody's going to have their unique path. It's kind of the point that I'm very long windedly making. And look, we both have tech podcast though. Yeah, we have some kind of intersection there. It's kind of cool. Yeah, and I was because when you were mentioning, um, it was just overall like job satisfaction and salaries and whatnot. And I've heard this and you may be heard this study as well. But I think it's something like once a person is earning over $80,000, there's, there's no real change in like your overall happiness. Like it's kind of like that point of what you're making a certain amount of money. Like even if you made double that, it's not going to really impact your happiness. Sure. Yeah. And money does increase happiness up to a certain point. And then it becomes more arbitrary and and score keeping than it does like tangible change in your outlook. Yeah, exactly. And I do think that could vary depending on where you live. Because of course, standard of living can be different, whether in the US or outside, but yeah, the point is New York versus Chattanooga, for example. Right. I mean, I'm yeah, no, that's a great example. Same with, I mean, San Francisco was even more than New York. So yeah, but again, once you're making us turn threshold, it really doesn't, it doesn't impact then your overall. Yeah, your overall happiness and what you are just finding meaning in your job and all that stuff. And you said to do exactly what I think people should do, which is take some time and like really ponder, you know, this should be, I say should. In my opinion, your work is so important. It's such a big part of your life. It takes up so much of your time, which is one of life's only like completely flatlined resources. We can't renew our time. And if you're going to spend, you know, eight or 10 hours of your day doing something, then probably think about it, right? Like think a little bit about where you're going to be doing that, that thing a little bit before you jump, jump in ahead first based off of, you know, a salary number, for example. Yes, definitely. I mean, when you think of like the waking hours that you spend, especially if you're working like in an office, yeah, eight to 10 hours a day, that's most of your waking hours, you know, five days a week, it's like where you're spending most of your life. But I mean, that could be scary on one hand, if you really don't like your job and you dread going to, you know, to the office every day. But on the other hand, if you really enjoy your job and find a fulfilling and you find, you know, you're learning more from your coworkers and the other projects you're going to work on, it could be an awesome way to spend, you know, eight to 10 hours, maybe even want to spend more than that a day. So yeah, it's definitely a big decision once making. Thank you again for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you to Laurence for joining me on today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe if you don't want to miss out on the second part of my interview with Laurence Bradford. Thank you again to today's sponsor Dolby. If you are creating an iOS app and you haven't considered for longer than a minute, what audio codec you're going to be using, you should absolutely consider Dolby's brand new tools for bringing the Dolby technology that you've come to know as theater quality audio. Bring that into your iOS app. Your users will absolutely appreciate that extra bit of work you did to make the audio that much better. Thank you again for listening to today's episode. If you're enjoying Developer Tea, make sure you go and leave us a review on iTunes. This is the best way to help other developers just like you find the show as they are browsing around for brand new podcasts. Don't forget to subscribe to Laurencez's show. Learn to code with me. You can find that pretty much anywhere you find podcasts, particularly at the top of the technology section. She sits right up there at the top. So go and check out that show. Make sure you subscribe. Of course, all the links and the show notes for today's episode can be found at SPECT.FM. Thank you so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.