In this episode, we download the best tips on DevRel and content from Cassidy Williams. We talk TikTok and being just in time all the time.
https://twitter.com/cassidoo
Episode 91 of this developing story.
I first got into developer relations. There were a few folks who transcended the entire category, uh, from their talks, their, their podcasts, their interactions. A lot of times, like I try to emulate their experiences and their, their content, uh, because of that. And I think a lot of us do the same. And one of the folks who are transcending the entire ecosystem, uh, is Cassidy Williams.
And I finally reached out and said, Hey, we should chat. Because like, we literally are on the same talking circuit. We've worked at the same companies. Uh, so finally. I have the opportunity to chapel terror should share that conversation with you. If you enjoy it. I do hope that you reach out to her and tell you like the episode, if not, uh, keep that to yourself.
All right. Let's jump right in. Hello, everybody. I'm uh, Cassidy and I am. Currently I'm based in Chicago and I am a dev advocate, developer experience, engineer, software engineer, all these different titles and stuff. And so I first started coding when I was. Uh, teenager and, uh, was really, it was the Neo pets thing and everything.
And then, um, ended up majoring in computer science and have mostly done a bunch of startup hopping and stuff since then. And so I was working at Venmo when I first started my career in and Venmo was bought by PayPal. You know, and big companies jump in, they do kind of change things. And so I went to another startup called clarify, which is an AI startup, um, which was very fun to work for.
But I was kind of done with being based in New York. And remote work was not nearly as popular as it is today at that point. And so I moved out to Seattle and joined a creative agency called L four L four does not exist anymore. It was bought by a large company based in Argentina. Globally. Um, and so after being there for a while, I ended up going to Amazon, which was where, um, my sister worked, where, uh, my husband worked, various people worked in, in Seattle.
You kind of do your time at Amazon. I was there for about seven months and that was probably six months too long. I, I did not enjoy it there and ended up leaving to go to the complete opposite type of company code pen, which was eight people as opposed to 500,000 people. Um, and it was my first remote role.
And so I worked at code pen for awhile. Uh, Straight up software engineering and working on the product. And after all, I kind of missed doing more dev advocacy style work, because that is what I mostly did before with the exception of L floor. Um, and so, yeah, I w I wanted to go back into interacting with developers more, and I worked for react training after that.
Hey, Catherine, I'm seeing so many fun names. Um, and so, uh, I went to react training after that and was teaching react workshops full-time um, and unfortunately when you teach in travel for a living that doesn't go super far in a pandemic, and we had to lay off all staff, um, at the beginning of the pandemic.
And so I joined Netlify after that, and I was at Netlify until. Last week, two weeks ago, time isn't real. And I was, uh, doing developer experience engineering, Mo focusing mostly on react. Um, and now I am floating in between roles until I start sometime. Okay. Cool. So you have a role lined up. I'm working on that.
I want to get back into the education space and I'm kind of figuring what all that looks like. And so, um, talking with places and, and have some light plans that we'll, we'll see how fast those guys, you don't have to divulge your, uh, your, your plans, especially if you're enjoying like Tara or whatever else you're watching on Reddit.
Oh, well, you know, contract center, I'm doing another wash through, so good. Okay. Yeah, you got to get in, get in when you fit in. Um, so I didn't realize you worked at code pin, uh, or you spent some time there. Um, so I believe C code pin is Chris Corea and my am I mixing properties? Yeah. Chris quirks there. Um, there's there's uh, Rachel Smith and, uh, Marie and Claire and Alex.
There's some great people there. Um, Stephen Shaw is there. You might know his streaming show. The key phrase. Um, there's some great people that could pen. Okay. Excellent. And then, um, yeah, so I'd also your whole story. I didn't actually, I wasn't aware of you until you started working at react training. Uh, cause I know Michael Jackson and Ryan Florence, uh, back in the day and uh, but yeah, that's, that's cool that you're able to connect with them.
I imagine one of them was living in Seattle at that time. Is that how you made that? I actually, so yes, Ryan was living in the Seattle area, but I've met Michael in Chicago at a conference because it just kind of worked out that way where, um, I had, I had been chatting with her and talking with the, both of them a little bit talking about what if I did, um, some tech workshops with them while working at code pen and doing kind of like co workshops together.
And then the more I talked with them, the more I was like, what if I just joined you all? Full-time cause this sounds fun. Okay. Cool. Yeah. And then, uh, like we, we can, we can fast forward, past your background, but you, you eventually started working on Netlify and my question, I asked to everybody at Netlify is, did you see any of my commits when you were touching any of the code base, did they still exist?
They do still exist, actually. Yes. Yes. You, you still have a presence there. I saw some of your old slack messages too. I think. Yeah. Honestly, I, at the time when I worked at Netlify, there was like less than 10 of us. So. It was probably mostly me talking to myself saying, cause I worked there and I got netlify.com.
So the dashboard, but that was the only one that wanted the right JavaScript at the time. Uh, so I converted the angular app to react, but I had nobody that reviewed my code except the C. Yeah, he's the only one that would review my code. Cause he was the only one I cared enough about JavaScript and had opinions.
Yeah. So a lot of that code was just like basically cowboy coded no one, no, no one reviewed it, but, uh, which is why I'm curious if my commits still existed, I'm hoping people will rewrite that stuff and make. We actually did a rotation on the product team. And a big part of my job was converting the app site to use the latest version of react router and who there some old code in there.
So I saw some of your old cold. I saw some of CEO Matt's old code there. There was some. There were some things that I saw were kind of visualized the Shrek music where it's like data, data that like I was walking in an old forest. Um, that's what it was like navigating that code base. It was, it was magical.
It was rough. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I only could imagine it was rough because there was no, I mean, there's conventions now for react, but back in those days, it was a sort of, you'd read a blog post and then implement it like the next. Just live in production. So that's, that's pretty much how that works. Yeah, no, some of the stuff that was made to make Redux work, I looked at it.
I was just like, you know, at the time this was genius, but now, oh, I, it, it gives me a little headache. Yeah. It was the only app I could ever get Redux to work in was Netlify. And I had tried a couple of years before that or a year before that. Cause it wasn't even around. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, but the app is still going strong.
I see, I see. Jonathan is here. There's there's there's still good engineers on that team. It's not all bad. Oh, Hey, Dennis is here too. Um, but yeah, no, uh, I, your code still exists. Your legacy lives on, I don't know how long it will last because there's a lot of innovations happening there, but. Yeah. Yeah. I, I I'd hope that it, uh, eventually gets, uh, removed with something better in some updates.
It's been a while, but, uh, we don't have to spend more time about my code. I'd actually like to learn about, uh, what you're sort of working with. It's interesting because you're in between roles at the moment. So like, what you're working on now is a question. I asked to all the people who I have on this, uh, the space, uh, you can fill in the gaps if like what you've been working on the last six months.
And, um, I'm curious not to, you're also doing like you did dev REL dev experience at Netlify. What are some things that really work during your time? Uh, Yeah. And so, so I, I really like the developer experience-based developer advocacy space and everything. I think what's exciting is it's, it's kind of.
It's a known career. Now, when I was first doing it, when I first started doing this kind of work seven years ago, or so, a little more than seven years ago. And, um, people had no idea what I was doing, but it was, it was something where, where at Venmo, I was showing people how to use the Venmo API. I was building demos with it.
I was saying, Hey, if you want to integrate these kinds of payments into your apps, you can. And I was, I was going to hackathons and stuff all the time. But because people didn't fully understand the job. I was also doing product engineering at the exact same time and it was, it was chaotic. I burnt out so much cause it was like a nine to five.
In addition to speaking at events and hackathons and stuff every weekend, it was kind of chaotic. And so at Netlify it's great because when I joined Sarah Drasner was running the team. I remember joining and being like, oh my gosh, someone designed this team who actually knows what Debra is, where we didn't have any set traveling requirements.
Granted it was a pandemic. So, you know, um, but, but. The way we strategized about content and the way we set up our goals was was it just made sense where, uh, I could focus on the react community and I did a lot with next JS as well, and be able to just kind of pump out content and show people what to do without people questioning should my role exist.
And, and that was, that was quite a game changer. And it's something that I think a lot of companies need to work on, but it's, it's definitely. Making a lot of changes here and that's something that I see Kurt is on here. I know that he's trying to teach that to a lot of, and I know Angie's been making a lot of, uh, strides in this space as well.
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because I, similar, I made the switch in the dev route. Well, it's weird. Cause I did, I did the product engineering role and then did Debra Netlify, um, as like a hobby the entire time I was there. Uh, I didn't move full-time until right before I left, actually right before Sarah joined, uh, Um, and six months prior, I was doing it full time.
Um, but I, I bring that up because I avoided Deborah as a position or an archetype for my career, because I always felt like engineering would always sort of fall away as a skillset if I went to only content creation. Uh, so I do, I have like tons of respect for, for folks like Kurt and Sarah and even Jason, who's now leading the helm, uh, for keeping like that rotation.
In the mix. Uh, so that way folks can still like, feel like they have authenticity to talk about what they're talking about. That makes sense. Right. Well, and, and the like, w like you said, being able to rotate onto product, and also just being able to say, I want to keep working on technical projects. If, if your company makes space for that, I think that's so important because so, so many companies you end up basically just being.
Someone who talks about the technical stuff, but doesn't actually get to build it and, and more power to you if that's what you want to do. But if that's not what you want to do, uh, being heard when you're vocal about it is, is really important. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. And, uh, I feel like the, like having that sort of path to work on side projects, you get to create.
I guess, I dunno, these platforms or content streams, I guess, is what I'm trying to segue into, um, which you stream on Twitch. I don't know if you have, honestly, I've never actually figured out if you had a regular schedule or not. Uh okay. Do on Thursdays. So I I've been thinking about adding more days, but for now I stream Thursday.
Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. And, um, how has that been? Cause I think that you start that during the pandemic or were you doing that? And done it on and off. Where, where, for example, when I did work at Amazon, my sister worked at, at the same time and we started a Twitch stream where we are showing people how to build skills for.
The Amazon echo devices. I don't want to say her name too loudly in case I activate someone's device. Um, we, we would make, we, we had, uh, a regular stream where we would work on that. And then I occasionally would do just random streams where I would build keyboards or Legos or something like that. But then it was.
Uh, was that, Netlify where I started consistently streaming, um, or I was like, okay, I'm going to have a, an actual, regular cadence where, when I'm streaming yeah. Every week and have a schedule for what I want to talk about and what I want to show people know. Do you find it rewarding to the stream or to be online?
Yeah, I definitely don't think of it as an audience. Like, Hey, look at me. I, I think there's definitely a difference between an audience and a community. And I like to lean towards the community side of things where I try to. Ask questions first, before I start saying like, Hey, check out what I'm doing. Um, because I think, especially in endemic times, people don't often get to say what they're working on or talk about things, unless they're just, um, on social media or talking with, with friends and.
Um, and I'm not trying to say all this to be like amazing, but to say, uh, with my stream, I try to start with like, what are you working on? How has your week been going and, and hear what people are doing and then respond with what, what I'm doing. And then. Kind of lead with that because if it's the viewers first, if it's, if it's the community first, then people feel a little bit more welcome into the space and feel like they have, have a place to show off their work and, and brag about what they're doing, or even just share their woes about something that they might be stuck on.
Yeah. And it's something that I've been, so I've, I've done a lot of work, uh, for the Debra outside on. And we've identified like quite a few. I used the word influencer. I don't know how people feel about that term. Um, but developer and powers, I guess, I don't know. Or get hub stars. Um, I is a better term, I guess.
Yeah. Is it like people who are just doing content and like have a community and like, I like the way you explained it, like, it makes a lot of sense. Like you have a community, you provide a place for people to kind of share their wins and I find. The people that are commenting and the like your community or adjacent community, or like always the up and coming folks and what my tactic has been when people are like, Hey Brian, you should work at this company.
And like, oh no, I don't want to work there. But there's some people I talk to. And I con I constantly like grays. I got to always talk and everybody's coming to me. He's like in years I sit pretty much silently. Um, except at the beginning, sometimes I throw out, I don't know if you've ever seen my handle on.
Um, I try to throw some quippy stuff to like either make you laugh or other people laugh while being respectful, to be very clear, um, for anybody who's listening, what to emulate, that respect is key. Um, but I always, I take note of, who's also my commenting and constantly helpful because those are like the way I sneakily grabbed folks to become future.
Get upstairs. To go speak at a future conference or partner content in the future. So, uh, I, I like being very real. Yeah. I don't think people realize how often we see the individuals and how much they're contributing to communities, where they're, there've been times where people will message me saying, Hey, just, uh, my name is this, and I've been on your stream a few times.
Um, I, I don't, you know who I am, but I'd like to show you this. And I'm like, of course I know who you are. You're chatting every week. It's amazing. Hello. It's so good to meet you individually. And, and, uh, those relations. They, they exist, but it's kind of a, but you're exactly right in that. If someone is saying, Hey, do you know anybody that I could hire?
Or do you know who anybody who I could tell X role? I think about those spaces first, where people who are active on Twitch chat, people who respond to my newsletter, people who are active on, on the Twitter mentions talking about, uh, oh, here's, here's a company. I know who's hiring or Hey, I could help with mock interviews or something like that.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's a very, yeah. It's I don't know. I, I think about, uh, like where I've made it in my life. Cause I'm, I'm a career switcher. I don't have a CS degree or anything like that. Did a bootcamp, got someone at a startup, took a chance on me and then now I might get hub. Like that's, that's my cliff notes.
Um, so like where I'm at, I'm always looking for people to pull up in like answer questions to promote and like retweet. Um, and I think that people who get it get it. So I constantly, I love operating the back room, uh, and like the DMS and having conversations with people, uh, and pointing people to these folks, uh, for that reason, because I know I could like defer all that attention to people who really need attention.
And rather than like, ah, cool. I've now upped my stream concurrence to 10 instead of. Yeah, well, and I've man helping people get jobs is my favorite thing. Like I love seeing people take something that you teach them or opportunity and they take it and run with it and make it their own. And they're able to do such amazing things.
It's, it's, it's truly my favorite thing to do. And, and that's, that's what I want to keep doing. And being able to be involved in various communities is, is such a fun way to do that because you can develop really real friendships. Well, being able to help people out and see people helping other people and foster that kind of space and environment.
Cool. And I'm glad you mentioned your favorite thing to do, cause I want to actually ask you about Tik TOK since I had, um, so also I took notice of your tech talk in the last couple of years and, um, I don't want to out myself at my age, but I'm older than you, but all your, uh, you'd mentioned Neopets and some other stuff.
And your tech talks like they're all relevant to my upbringing. Uh, so I find them hilarious. Um, I think the. I first found was like, you had the brand new salt. I'm sorry, the Cinderella Cinderella I might add, but I'm glad you finished that thought. Cause I was not. I said the Brandy saga, I didn't really say the stat, but, um, anyway, that, that took talk was like, um, 100% amazing.
Uh, and I'd probably say to you as the reason for me having a tick sock, um, because like the, your approach, uh, Well, one, it was approachable and you're able to sort of slip in dev memes, uh, where you could. Um, so I'm curious, like, is there a strategy there? Like what do you just have, like a fever dream? And you're like, Hey, I need to hit record on this thing real quick.
Um, it is definitely the latter. I would love to say that I'm an excellent social media strategist and really post things with like very specific agendas. I don't, some of my favorite tic-tacs are ones where there. Specific references to like musicals or something where I'm just like, you know, nobody's going to get this, but I will.
Um, one of my favorite tic-tacs that I've made and I think truly like five people understood the reference was referencing the musical Dreamgirls, which was one of my favorite musicals. And. There's a character for those who don't know, there's a character named Effie and the musical, and she's played by Jennifer Hudson in the movie.
If you've ever seen the movie. And there's a song that she sings, where it's, she sings, I am changing and it starts with her singing. Look at me, look at me. I am changing. And I'm like, Hey, if, if you think about this in a react context, there's the. React to hook use effect. What if you renamed it to use Effie and then it's, it's look at me.
Look at me. I'm changing. Cause that's what you use effect does. Anyway. It's a very, very obscured nice joke, but it was my favorite one, but that takeoff on it did not, I don't think anybody understood. Excellent. Yes. And so that's, that is, that's where I'm, I'm, I'm here for that. And also I've never seen that musical.
I appreciate you taking us down the path and educating us on this. You should definitely watch it because it's excellent. And honestly, you had an agenda frauds. Um, so gosh, I've definitely I'll catch up. Yeah. Uh, but that one, that's one of those musicals where like I've I had the CD when it first came out and that CD has been loved to death.
Oh, so good. Um, this is very, this is a tangent off of technical talk. Yeah. Tick talks are cool. Um, and I like making tech jokes. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it talks that they don't need to have a marketing angle. Uh, cause I know some Deborah folks are now like watching their tech talks and they're now have a whole strategy and everything like that.
And it's working for them. Um, Mike, my whole thing is, and I don't think anybody from my team is here, but, um, because half of them on our Australia and still sleeping. Uh, but my whole thing is like build your personal brand on what you care about. Uh, so I tend to like after eight o'clock that's when I started doing the whole like nineties hip hop references or.
Some very specific to like the verses that's happening or the Kanye, the Kanye opening up for Kanye concert. That was last week. Like I'll do one-off Quip tweets about that? Um, usually after eight o'clock, uh, because most of my audience that people will follow me. Um, yeah, there's not really up to speed.
And I honestly, I don't want to say that a lot of people are up to speed. Let's be a little too on the nose. Like the iffy thing. He had mentioned that it's. It's hilarious, but I think what's going to happen now is now everybody that that's now been exposed to that sort of back history of about this Tik TOK, gonna watch a Tik TOK and hopefully.
There's going to be a spike in downloads are Amazon prime watches for, um, the musical. Yeah. I'm going to, single-handedly raised Jennifer Hudson's income this month. She could use it. Um, but yeah, the influencer that's, that's what we do. That's what this is all about. Um, but, uh, what, what were you talking about?
Oh yeah. So I think it's, like you said about personal branding, like with a lot of social media things, you, you do want to be yourself. Uh, and granted, there are certain things where I'm just like, you know, you could put this on an Alta count. You don't need to, uh, cause too much chaos and, and pick fights or anything.
But I think with regards to personal branding, it's just as important to know what you want to do as it is, what you don't want to do and what you like, what you don't like, what you're good at, what you're not good at, because I think. A lot of people think they're just like, oh, I want to do this thing because it'll look good on my resume.
And that's the only reasoning behind it. Or they're just like, because I want to increase this number of followers. If you can tell when you're not being genuine or where you're, when you're just trying to be. Oh, w controversial. Um, and, and so being yourself means like, understanding what you want to put out there and, and what, what you want to do.
Because for example, I, I manually wrote down a list of things that I like, things that I don't like and stuff there was definitely a time where I was thinking, you know what, I'm going to just say yes to all the things, because I want it to look great on my resume. And I burnt out a ton and I was doing a lot of things that I didn't actually care about, but.
I thought that it would look good and some did, and some did not, and it was just not worth it in the end. But now for example, I refuse to work with C plus, plus this is just a very specific language example. I'd never want to touch that language again. That language gives me nightmares and you can't make, there've been so many times.
Almost gone for a roll or something because I'm like, oh, this company is cool. I can, I can tough it out just to, to be at a company like us. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that to myself. And so it, it can really help the jobs that you go for and, and the content you put out there and the things that you do.
And, and yeah, once again, I think it's, it's good to know that about yourself and if you want to. Build content strategies and stuff in that regard. Sure. But it really, I think comes out naturally once you're self-aware, uh, in that type of thing. So I had a follow up question to that. Like there's a lot of people listening right now and probably will, like, this is actually being recorded.
I don't think I actually told you that. So apologies. Um, yeah. So for the, uh, the next 30 days, you can actually click on the suite and listen to the recording. So if anybody listens to after the fact, this is for you as well, but, uh, what, what makes developer advocate like you, you know, you, you can write code, you kinda like doing the content, like how do you.
Like you spend some time, I guess, doing directorship at a, an LFI. I'm not sure if you got chance to hire folks before you left. Um, but you probably signed an interview panel, so like what's, what's some good characteristics and to, to look for, for people, uh, if they're considering making the jump. Also one of the people we hired is on this call.
Hey Natalie. Um, so, uh, I I've, I've hired and, and been on both sides of the interviewing table at multiple companies and multiple types of roles. I've, I've done engineering management for just straight up engineering teams and I've, I've led devout advocacy teams before. And so I've seen all of that. And I think if you.
If you want to be a dev advocate. I think most people can. And a lot of people think they're just like, oh, well I have to be famous on Twitter first. Or I have to have a lot of conference talks under my belt. A lot of the best dev advocates I've seen don't have any of that. They just care about developers and granted it helps to be.
Comfortable speaking on a Twitter space like this, it helps it helps to have, have solid communication skills because you want to care about developers when you do make content for them. But so some developer advocates they're very much behind the scenes and they just care about developers. No, what they're looking for and have that, that level of experience where they say, okay, I might not be the best public speaker, but you know what?
I know that developers specifically want these kinds of tools. So I'm going to contribute to open source and build certain tool set that might be useful for developers, or they might say, you know, I don't like writing blog posts, but I really like writing documentation. How about all right. The docs for this, or for that?
I do think that. People think that you have to be some sort of dev influencer celebrity type to be a dev advocate, but you don't a lot of the best ones. Aren't actually, it's people who truly just care about developers and want to build resources so that developers can be the best that they can be. Yeah.
Th something that we are not, I don't say we were struggling with that. I'd get hub, but like we were identifying folks that we potentially want to interview and reach out to you and have worked at, get hub, uh, specifically on my team. And we went through this whole list of trying to find if there's like established folks are not doing dev REL that would potentially like consider a role, like get hub and some things that I found out while going through this process and like doing the research, it's like, A lot of like famous people in the developer space.
Um, but not a lot of people who'd be okay with like doing the day-to-day dev REL stuff. So like, I honestly, I, I shy away from folks with like large followings, uh, on a specific platform are just one platform. And not because I I'm, I'm shy that, uh, they're going to take over. I don't know the message for the team or whatever.
It's, it's more of a, I don't want to ruin that for them. Like if I, if I say, Hey, get hub pages is now getting. I need you to start talking about this, um, which I don't think I've ever, that's not going to happen, but I'm using that as an example, um, that I don't want to make it feel like they have to now become, to get hub pages person.
Like I'd rather find someone who already actively like, loves some feature at GitHub or loves some language or framework. And doesn't mind talking about it, um, in the way of like GitHub doing some stuff. Right. That was something that I really appreciated about Sarah Drasner when she was hiring me. And when, when she's hired other people on the team as well, was she specifically said in the interview process, we're not hiring you for your Twitter following, and we don't expect you to ever tweet on behalf of the company unless you want.
We're not going to ask you to use that because someday when you leave this account will still be yours. And so, uh, if you leave, you don't want it to be like a part of your identity. That's now gone. And, and I think that's, that's so, so important for us to remember because there there's so many companies that I've even talked to recently where they basically say, okay, well, yeah, we basically want you to be a content creator and we'll expect you to tweet this much and do this kind of thing.
And, and. Yeah, my, my social presence isn't for sale. It's just kind of an added bonus. If you want me to troll the company that I work for, um, or however someone might be using their, their social media presence. And so I, I totally get what you mean by kind of figuring out how people use social media. Oh, how people approach that sort of thing when hiring.
All right. Folks, that was Cassidy Williams. I do encourage you if I'd be surprised if you're not already following her on Twitter, but is Cassidy do on Twitter and on Tik TOK? Um, I, one of my inspiration for tick-tock did come from, from Cassidy's earliest tic talks and the ones that really took off and, uh, just her, her ability to take it developer.
Comedy or developer related comedy and then provide that to a platform that really didn't have a lot of it, uh, earlier this year. Um, so with that, I do encourage you to definitely follow her accounts are reach out to her, follow her newsletter. Um, actually you should definitely check out cassidy.com. Uh, there's a subscription for a newsletter, uh, cause she has like some really good intuition around the industry as well as, uh, Technical interview questions as well.
So check it out. Also, if you want to be a part of the story, definitely hit me up in a Twitter, DM, twitter.com/b Doug EO. Uh, we host these on Twitter spaces, live interacting with you. So if you want to ask questions, you want to participate or if you want to be a guest, uh, find me on Twitter. All right.
Y'all I'll see in the next one. .