Ep. 7 - Shaving the Yak with Chris Riley | Devs:After Dark

I think it started with the Commodore. I had a Commodore 64. That was the first device I ever programmed, hooked up to a TV, an actual TV.

That's all. Excellent.

All right, let's get started then.

All right. Hello and welcome to episode 7 of Developers After Dark. If you're watching this, that means we survived 2024 and we didn't get canned for 2025. So that's always a positive note, always a positive note. And you'll notice we're down, uh, we're down an individual today. Uh, AJ's not going to be with us today. So that just means that, you know, as a team, when we're down one, that just means Dennis picks up twice as much slack.

Nick, Nick, you, you just said we didn't get canned and that we're missing a person.

He means, he means as in the podcast, right?

As in the podcast. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no, because we're still here.

Uh, AJ's not gonna be with us today, but that just means Dennis picks up twice as much of the work, which is fine. That's, that's how teamwork works in this scenario. So that's how— that's always good. And we have a very special guest as well. Um, I don't have to worry because he's not my manager. So I, I, Dennis is the one that's going to be on the spot. I mean, he's got to perform. He's got to perform well. Uh, so, you know, I'll try not to, um, try not to embarrass you too much, Dennis.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever done a podcast where I've interviewed a manager. Oh, sorry, man.

Yeah, well, I'm stepping up. I feel like I'm, you know, I'm leaping over you right now, Chris. I'm going far beyond.

Or I just did this on purpose. Yeah, it could be that number, but 7 is my favorite number, so this will work out well.

Perfect.

All right.

Absolutely perfect. Well, without further ado, Chris, why don't you introduce yourself and tell everybody who you are and what you do?

Uh, well, I'm, I'm sure a lot of the details will come out, but my name is Chris Riley. I am one of the senior managers in DevRel at HubSpot, leading our wonderful developer advocates, and they all are truly wonderful. All 8 of them are my favorite, some of my favorite humans, and I just love my job. That's what I do. I do a lot of talking on Zoom and that's about it. I don't actually know what I do on a day-to-day basis, but it all seems to come together pretty well.

Why do you think we started this? That's exactly the same premise. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know anything. I just, I just figured like this was the best bet to keep me relevant. That's why I kind of, you know, and then like I said, Dennis kind of pops up everything. He has all the passwords, he knows all the stuff. So that just, it kind of works out really, really well. What I wanted to ask you first off was how did you— did you start off in marketing first or was it more of like on the engineering side for coding?

Engineering side. Yeah. The marketing part kind of came naturally, which was a bit surprising to me, I think. I mean, advocacy is a funky role because it's like, you're a little bit of support, you're a little bit of marketing, you're a little bit of sales, you're a lot of tech, all kind of rolled into one. And that's what I always loved about it. But when I started my career, there was no DevRel, there was no tech evangelism. Like, it just wasn't even on the scene And I started out as a heads-down coder. I had a startup for a while, so that forced me to get into sales and marketing, which was very uncomfortable. But then I found out I was kind of good at it at a certain point. And so I just dabbled in a whole bunch of areas while still not being the greatest developer. Like, I'm a pretty good developer, Not the best. I can prototype like nobody's business, but if you want code that's going to be bug-free, that's not me.

What year was it? You're a startup. When did it—

No, do I really have to answer that question?

Yeah, because I need to— I'm thinking about like dev advocacy and things like Microsoft, for example. Was that— was it— did it exist at all?

It didn't exist. I could give you the whole history of where dev advocacy came from. It really was a The foundation was Guy Kawasaki's book, Art of the Start, which I don't know the exact year that that was published. And then the venture capitalists went haywire with that and started giving it to all their portfolio companies or tech evangelism, because Guy Kawasaki was considered the original tech evangelist. I actually had to look it up last night because there was an article in the Denver Business Journal and I was talking about it for some reason not related specifically to this podcast. And the article was published in 2003. And that was right when I was getting rid of this business. I actually sold it, but air quotes sold. It was an acquihire. Like I didn't get rich.

Was there a moment that you knew, because you started off, if you started off as a coder and then you started to, like you said, you kind of moved into the market. Was there a moment Where you knew like, okay, this, there's to, for me, for my career, there's gonna be more than just coding, like this marketing aspect. This is gonna be something, even if there wasn't a DevRel at that time, did you, was there a moment where you knew like, this is gonna be bigger than just me heads down coding?

Yes and no. I actually think I was, there was a moment where I was terrified because I wasn't the best coder. I was kind of leaned on as the person who, like, if you needed a prototype, something that did something cool very quickly, you would come to me. But if you needed something that was like fully polished, you don't come to me. So I became concerned at one point when I'm like, well, my career as a developer is probably gonna cap out at like sales engineer level. Honestly, because that's what I was really good at. Like somebody wanted to see a specific example of a thing, I could make that happen. Then I would get pulled into like reading marketing copy and reviewing copy that was technical for developers and the marketing team didn't know really what to say. Then sometimes I would be, be brought into support calls and I was worried that I wasn't like skilled enough in one area that I wasn't gonna be able to grow my career in any area.

Yeah.

And I felt very fortunate that tech evangelism came to be because I honestly don't know where I would be if, if that didn't happen. Um, and I've met Guy Kawasaki 3 times. I have a, I have a photo with him. Um, and yeah, I'm just, I think it was very fortunate. Like it almost felt like this role was made for me because otherwise I was gonna be in trouble. And I guess there was probably a lot of other folks that were feeling that way where You know, advocates tend to go where the problems are, problem solvers. And so I would just do a lot of that and just really enjoy kind of being a part of all aspects of getting technical, soft, technic— technology out. Wait, software out to technical audiences. Yeah. Because when I first started, that's when we shipped CDs to people and dongles.

Yeah. Yeah. Almost. Yeah.

Yeah, it will. Okay.

So, so could you like, I guess, start with like what you think the definition of advocacy is like as our standards right now? And I, and, and the follow-up to that is I'm curious to know the evolution from when you started to where it is now. Has it changed? Has that definition even changed?

Dramatically. Yeah. Um, yeah, it was, I think it was just talking about this yesterday actually. So, uh, where I'll start there with the role, because the role of advocacy has changed a lot. Um, in the heydays of advocacy, it was all a popularity contest, which actually, now that I think about it, really stressful.

Yeah.

Because I think you, you were always measured by the number of people that showed up. Whether you were speaking, whatever it was, you had an event, you were measured by the number of people that showed up. Now, I think the essence of advocacy has always been there, which is very simple. It's content and engagement. And the purpose of the content is for engagement. Like, it's all about engaging in a very genuine way.

Mm-hmm.

Um, that's the beautiful thing about developer advocates. They don't know how to be anything other than themselves, really. And it's, It becomes a very unique role for that reason. Uh, and what, in the early days of advocacy for me, I was traveling every week, maybe going to locations twice a week. Like I was traveling at least 70% of the time, about 80% of the time. Um, I, I'm gonna bring up SharePoint, so maybe some of you will cringe when I say this. So around the time I ended my like as a full-time advocate. No, that's not true. It was more in the DevOps area. But anyways, I was very heavily in the SharePoint world. Microsoft TSP, which I don't even know if they have those anymore. Virtual Technical Sales Professionals, whatever they are. I didn't work for Microsoft, but I was like representing them in some cases.

Interesting.

I would do SharePoint Saturdays and it was almost every single Saturday and they were awesome. There were like 100, 50 to 100 person events. There was a splinter off of SQL Saturdays, which I did a bunch of those as well. And I was just constantly on the road and the job was basically a dream job. If you like to travel and you like to talk to people about computers, that's all I did. I just traveled and talked. It's not like that anymore. And it's good that it's not like that. I think there's a lot of folks that have been opposing the evolution or like trying to resist the change in advocacy, but post-COVID advocacy changed a lot. I think in the DevRel world, we were all very afraid during COVID because our primary vehicle for engaging went away, which was trade shows. Travel diminished. And so we did virtual events. And in my last year, kind of being a full-on advocate, I did 68 virtual events or something like, it was a ton.

Wow.

And I think I'm really excited about where we're going, where it's much more mature now. I think there is direct consideration of how is the engagement that we're doing impacting like the lives of our customers and the value of the product and how people use it and make their lives better and less about popularity contests. Because, you know, I, I won't name names, but I can like think back to the, the most popular advocates at the time when I was doing it, and I wasn't a drop in the bucket compared to them. And so it's, it's just very different how it is now. You don't have to talk about how many Twitter followers you have. You have to talk about content that is actually engaging with people and delivering value. So I think that's a good thing.

Mm-hmm.

And I should say that, where did DevRel come from? Advocacy was set, has been always multiple multidisciplinary, and those additional components became too big to be a single role. But tech evangelism and advocacy was really kind of the genesis of DevRel, which has been a term for about, what, 5 years now?

Fantastic. That's awesome. Yeah, I, I find it Amazing, just because of the fact, like, the way now that we communicate, especially with developers, and how the— I think for me, the thing that drew me to, you know, I'm, you know, being in ecosystem quality, still being as part of the, you know, the DevRel department, like, being able to be yourself. That part about it, like, when even when I'm talking with developers now, I don't, I don't feel like Because before, you know, working real estate, not really that comparable, but the, the kind of persona you had to like take on when you were like dealing with other, you know, you know, other people or other companies or other developers at other places when you had to collaborate, there really wasn't that sort of that be yourself type of feel to it at all.

Yeah.

And like, this was always Coming here to HubSpot, that was always the thing that kind of blew my mind and kind of like, because really it, in the real estate world, there is no like developer relations. There is no, you know what I mean? There is no advocacy. It's really just like, it's like a small skeleton crew of, you know, engineers or programmers that are just trying to solve every problem thrown at them in every different direction. There really is no like content that's, you know, catered towards particular problem solving. There's none of that existed. But when I came here, that literally kind of Almost like it was like almost like a sheltered life. Like, it blew my mind just the kind of the way that this, the whole thing functions and the way that kind of like, you know, and we talk about like the, the circles and the butterfly, you know, it's just that, that whole concept of like that continuous loop.

Yeah, I think.

And it's just, it's amazing just in the short amount of time just how much that's progressed. I, I just, I can never get over that really.

At the end of the day, I think it, it still perplexes a lot of folks and it, and it, it seems it's hard to quantify authenticity and being genuine, but I can tell you what happens when it doesn't play out that way in advocacy roles. And it's amazing how much better people will respond to you if they don't think that you got something Like in your sleeve. And the beautiful thing about developer advocates, I mean, I'll tell you, like for the most part, developer advocates are kind of some of the most difficult humans on, on earth.

Dennis definitely is. Dennis.

Um, but also they're always the most authentic. Like, I don't think I was even born with the, like, let's just, let's separate this from masking because that's a whole other thing, but I don't think I was really born with the ability to like pretend to be something else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, I mean like, and that hurt me in my career at some point. Me too, me too.

Honestly, like it was just not something I could genuinely do. I, and I was not good at the whole like trying to pretend to be something else. I always had to have my personality and be me. And you know, I always kind of went into a direction sometimes. To, you know, positive results, oftentimes to, what do you— what the hell are you doing, kid? You need to start, you know, acting like a company man here.

Right.

And this advocacy seems like a— it's a wonderful fit. And I'm still waiting for the day that I wake up and make it not, you know, the other foot to drop type thing.

No, I mean, the role— like, the role has been around for For quite a while. And there's another tangential role that kind of came up right around the same time, which is product management. So you would have, well, I'm sorry, product management and product marketing. Those roles existed, but they also were forming around that time as like a select discipline. And I would say that advocacy has been a bit more nebulous. Not in my mind, but in other folks' mind. But you, you know what happens when it's not there because, you know, when you're— development can be very stressful sometimes.

Mm-hmm.

And when you're in the thick of it and you need to problem solve, like that also is very stressful, but you want to engage with your peers. And I don't think that that's any different than Other jobs as well. Some of the examples I've given, like, would you want me to go to a doctor's convention and talk about heart surgery? Probably not. Like, I'm probably not the best person, even though like I, I would challenge—

I'd watch.

I wanna see this.

I, I think I could probably take any topic at least for 15 minutes and, and hold credibility, and then it would just go downhill from that. Um, so I think folks really want to engage with others that understand what they're going through, not just what they're doing on the keyboard, like They understand what they're going through. Uh, they understand the pressure that's being put on them by other people. They understand the lifecycle of the work that they're doing. Like it, it ekes in in little tiny ways. It could be as simple as email copy that is not fluffy and trying to pull one over on you. And that is so important and it builds, um, relationships.

Mm-hmm.

And we buy emotionally. Everybody buys emotionally, whether you have like a standard process for buying or not, you buy emotionally. And this is just part of building that credibility and being confident that when you come to this company, that there's gonna be somebody there who understands you. And it's, that's it.

So we're not gonna be building an AI agent to take Dennis's spot just yet, is basically—

I've been working on it for the last 6 months and it just hasn't turned out all that well.

I've been shopping at freelance, see if I can get somebody, but I just, you know, just to try to like, you know, who knows, maybe.

Well, like, actually speaking of AI, how do you think the audience is going to change in the future for Dev Advocates? Because I mean, we do have an audience now, but I feel like in the next couple years there's going to be a lot— it's gonna grow a lot to a lot of people who don't know anything about development, and you kind of have to deal with that somehow.

Yeah, it, it will. Um, to me, if you remember the days of big data and the big data like hype curve, It's very similar. Um, instead of prompt engineers, it was data scientists. Data scientists were kind of technical, but not technical all at the same time. And they were kind of rolled into the umbrella of advocacy. I don't think, I don't think it's gonna be a radical shift. Like I, I know Dennis, like we talk about this a lot. What we do on a day-to-day doesn't really change. The, the themes of what we do change dramatically.

Yeah.

And I think it's kind of a theme shift. For me, it's interesting because my focus in college was AI. I'm very sensitive to the term AI, as most advocates tend to be. And so where we are in the world of AI is weird to me. I, when I ended my heads-down development career, when I sold my business, It was an OCR engine and you use neural nets to build OCR engines. That was the foundation of the OCR engine that I had built that was acquired. And that was AI from like the simplest definition of AI. And now we're just talking about it in a different context with a lot more data. And what I hope happens, cuz this is what seems to happen with all technologies as they mature. Is that it truly becomes mainstream when you don't name the technology anymore. Like how often when you take a picture now with your Android or iPhone, that was a jab at Dennis, inside joke. I'm an Apple fanboy. Um, and it, and you could like select the text in the image. Do you go, oh, that is using OCR?

No, you don't. Yeah.

Yeah. Like it just is there. And so we're still in the very early stages of something that will eventually just be there and doing magical stuff for us in the background and our CRM without really having to think about it. And there'll be developers who are bringing that technology in and integrating it. I'm excited about it. I know there's going to be a lot of chaos and confusion for a bit, and that's just kind of the norm for any of these hype cycles. That happened.

Yeah, totally agree.

Yeah, because I was just talking with a friend of mine and we were bringing up, um, he was asking me something about like what I do at work, which is always an interesting way to have a conversation.

Yeah, I'm still trying to teach my kids what I do.

Right, exactly. Yeah, but my son just knows that he— Dad plays on the computer next to me when I'm on my computer. Yeah, right. But, uh, you know, we were talking about like, I was mentioning some stuff about AI because that's obviously, that's That's one of the big focuses just for everybody at this point. And him not being— he's tech savvy, but not to the extent of someone that would either work at a SaaS company or somebody that works that in-depth in it every day. And to him, he was like, oh yeah, I get it. And you said you brought up Apple, was the Apple commercial where the email, the dropdown is to change the tone of the email and it just changes everything. He goes, oh, AI like that.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's, yeah. So to a lot of people, like the definition isn't even like some of the stuff that we're even talking about internally. That's not the way.

I mean, I could geek out on the definition of AI all day long if you want to, because the Turing test, if you're all familiar with the Turing test, has already been beat several times. So it's not even like a valid test of AI. But my definition would be—

A good movie with Benedict Cumberbatch. Very good movie though.

My definition of AI is that it's about the systems that create the systems. So it can't be human created to be truly AI.

That's fair.

Because if you can reverse engineer the core logic, then it's not artificial intelligence. So like if ChatGPT created ChatGPT, then maybe.

Right.

But the other thing that when we think about technology, glasses, like, um, optical glasses, like these, they've always served to augment humans. They're very disruptive, but yeah, I, I, there's a philosophical debate in there and I, I could do it for hours. So don't let me do it. That and black holes. Let's not go down that path.

All right. Let me steer you this direction. But let me— I wanted to ask you, because like you had mentioned, like starting off, like having your own business and everything like that. When did you first get into like— because one of the questions we always ask everybody, regardless of the episode or who they are, is like how they broke into the bit, like tech, how they broke it. And again, like tech is one of those things that it can be broadly described. Like, you know, it can be coding, it can be like, I, you know, people started out by like tinkering with computers. I always tell the story where I broke my first Uh, what was it? Oh God, the, the cow who makes the, uh, Gateway.

Gateway. Yeah, Gateway.

Like, I remember like the first computer my dad ever bought, like way back. Like, I tore it apart and started—

That was your first computer?

Like a long time ago. Yeah.

Oh, that's so long ago.

Yeah, well, I mean, for me, yeah, yeah. But like, it was like, you know, tearing that apart, that was my first like dive into tech, you know, in tech, like Where did you first get started? Like, where did that itch first start?

Yeah.

Uh, I think it's interesting because like it wasn't planned, just like was something that I was very into. I think it started with the Commodore. I had a Commodore 64. That was the first device I ever programmed hooked up to a TV, an actual TV.

That's awesome.

But it has to have like the kind of aging brown color.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm going to paint it. I'm going to paint it. There you go.

So, um, Commodore 64 hooked up to a TV, programmed, I guess, which was basically Centipede on there. Uh, and then my dad isn't all that technical, but I was fortunate that he, for whatever reason, wanted to be, uh, on top of technology adoption and buying a desktop at that time was really expensive. So, um, the Mac 2, the 2E, I believe. I forget which one it was, but we're like, we got a Mac really early on. And when that thing showed up in my house, I never left it. Like I, I was all, and I'm not even joking. Like I was briefly diagnosed agoraphobic as a kid. Like I would not venture out into the world. I was terrified. Um, and I had that computer. I had my own bulletin board system. It was a 10-node bulletin board system that had a role-playing, a text-based role-playing Game. Got really weird when I had like 30-somethings calling my house when the bulletin board system wasn't up. Um, I had my Commodore, obviously once the calculators came out, I had my TI-92 that I was doing all sorts of crazy stuff. So I was really just fully engrossed in technology. And when I started the business, it also, it just wasn't a very like, I'm gonna start a business right now.

Sure.

It was like I went and helped somebody with their computer and then I got paid for it. Then I did it a lot more and then I had to hire people to do the same thing. There was a lot of computer helping going on. And then I was really passionate about AI and genetic algorithms and I started developing more robust applications at that time and looking at OCR in a very unique way. Optical character recognition, if I didn't say that earlier. Um, and yeah, so it's probably like the best way to get into a job is it was purely a passion and I was always opportunistic, always trying to find a way to make money from what I was doing. And, and it worked out. I could not have predicted, however, the career path at all. Like if I was thought about it, my only option would've been a developer. And then I was fortunate that it wasn't that, but also kind of very disappointed and terrified at times.

Now I'm gonna throw this up here real quickly from a, a young David Adams. TRS-80 color computer.

There you go.

From the old Papa Bear.

Nice, I like that. Uh, let me ask you, because, um, you know, you mentioned like getting really into, like fully like immersing yourself into it. Are there times where— because I, I want to, like in my heart, I want to try to keep that the same, like, like, you know, I had similar kind of like jumping into things. And like, I remember my dad used to work for the county here in Chicago. And but he was a, he was a programmer, but we're talking like DOS, we're talking like, but it were things where it's like, we had never seen that before, you know, me and my brother, you know, like, it was, these were all like newer concepts. And like, and it was so amazing to see, but kind of, you know, got us on that path of just being like addicted, right? Like being highly addicted to the newest technologies and being up to date and things. Do you ever find yourself—

Totally.

Because I do this now, like wanting to just shut things off because I know the question we always ask and I would love to know, Chris, what do you think? Like if you could pick something as like a career going forward and granted every career, there's always a footnote. You never get away from technology. But if you could pick something where it would take you away from it as much as humanly possible, What would you see yourself doing?

I'm very interested in this question.

I'm happy I have a response to this question. Uh, it is a very fascinating question though, because I, there was a time in my career where I was like appalled by people who were not on the current, like chips that were coming out by Intel and like their processing speed and like the current, um, video card coming out from NVIDIA. And they didn't have the like specs memorized like I did. Like it was offensive to me. I'm like, how could you not know that? We have some folks in our community today who are in that same spot. And it like, when I watch them, like, how on earth do you keep up on this stuff? And then I think back to myself, I was like, oh wait, I did the same thing. Now I'm kind of like, I just don't even pay attention anymore.

Yeah.

And it feels weird. You know, I still am an avid collector of technologies. I have a very large Apple collection, but I am not— I like, I used to have every single new iPhone up until the X and I don't anymore. I'm like actually practical about it. I'm like, yeah, my phone's still working fine. I think I can hold onto it for a little bit longer. Where would I go? Well, I think all of my kind of addictions related to tech are fascinations with complex systems and pattern recognition. And the most complex system I know is humans and the human mind. I absolutely would end up going into therapy and psychology. I think I'm very passionate about how humans do what they do and what makes 'em efficient, what makes 'em not efficient. And, you know, some of the wacky things that, well, I want to blame society for a lot of the wacky things that humans do, but some of the wacky things that we do. And so I think I definitely would go in that direction, and I kind of already am in a little way. I'm actually working on a new website that was supposed to be launched before the end of the year that is really tailored around emotional health. And that's where I'm That's where my passion is today. And I think I, well, you didn't realize how deep this question was, but I'll tell you that there was an existential crisis that happened when I went from, I will be a techie to I will be a manager. And I struggled with that hard for a good 8 months where I'm like, I don't know. Like, I like to be the person who has the answer to the questions, not helping the people that have the answer to the questions. But then I Realized like, I actually, I love tech, but I love, um, working with people way more.

Was there anything in particular that got you over that hurdle as far as that fear, or was it just kind of like a, did you come to like a self-realization?

I actually, there is actually, there, there was, which was like my team at the time, which wasn't at HubSpot, um, executing on I didn't— executing on tasks where I didn't do the work and it being tremendously successful. And I, I would, I had so much pride in their success. I mean, it, it's, it is such a bizarre evolution. Like what I told you when it was the popularity contest days, I was paranoid about my Twitter followers, the number of Twitter followers I had on a daily basis. Like I would have a panic when I would lose a follower. Like, what did I do? Am I not posting enough on LinkedIn? I would freak out. Now, like any of you have known me for a bit, like getting me to show up on things now is like pulling teeth. Like that is a really weird transition. And it really, it followed that course of like, oh, now I know that if I help people who are smarter than me get stuff done, that's even better. And I will be able to accomplish more. That way than if I'm doing it myself.

Were you forced down this path or was it a natural evolution?

Um, I wasn't, a little bit of both, I would say. I wasn't, I wasn't forced, but had I not gone down this path, I was actually thinking that I probably would need to go into sales engineering, which I like sales engineering. I just don't like commission and living that Like having compensation structured that way. Um, I was a good sales engineer, but I also didn't like how good I was at it. Um, because that is a role where you are masking.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You are pretending to be a thing and I didn't love it.

During that 8-month period of stress, you know, there's this transition. Were you aware that you were going through this transition or was it something you discovered? Oh, wow. This happened to me.

I think some folks, it surprises them that being a manager is not an extension of your previous job. That's what a lot of folks say. So I knew that. I knew that it was a brand new job. It's not just like an extension. Having that knowledge is important, but it's not an extension. So I knew, I didn't realize how bad it was gonna be though, and it was intense. I'm glad that I did it and I'm glad that like you, you kind of struggle through that and, and make some hard decisions. Like saying no and giving up on stuff that you're actually good at is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Like closing down a business that is operable and doing fine.

Yeah.

Is another thing that I had to do that was really hard because sometimes you have to stop doing things that are doing okay. And that feels so weird. Like, why would I stop doing that? It's cuz you have limited time and resources.

Is that, that's it right there? Just limited time, resources. You can just make that realization and yeah, pull the bandaid, huh? Yeah.

I mean, the way, um, I tend, I tend to think in terms of opportunity costs.

Mm-hmm.

Like if I do this thing, what am I giving up? And I, it's not just my work life. I optimize my entire life. around opportunity costs. And we live in a world of overstimulation.

For sure.

Like to the nth degree, we're all overstimulated. Like you don't have to be diagnosed with autism. Like I am diagnosed with autism to claim that, like we're all overstimulated, it's all too much. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about like, What are the things I want to prioritize and what is the empty space I want to create for myself so that I can be good at all of these things and decompress from the overstimulated world? Because if I don't, things fall apart. And so that, again, it's really hard to give up on stuff, but it also feels really good to Um, optimize those things that are like really meaningful to you. And I've, I've focused on the stuff that brings purpose.

Hmm.

If you, if you, if you had to give one— oh, sorry, go ahead, Dennis.

No, I was gonna ask, do you have any tips of like going through that transition? Because I mean, it's gotta be freaking hard, you know? How can you do it in the best way possible?

One, you can't do it by yourself. You have to talk. Like the, one of the best things that, um, I know, at least for me, is hearing myself talk, like hearing myself back. Um, I don't like to watch video recordings of myself. Oh, I'll watch this. I'll watch it. Um, but I will listen to audio recordings for myself for some reason. Uh, and so hearing myself give an explanation of something and hearing it back is like always been what's best. And sometimes. When you think about coaching, therapy, whatever, it's just really like hearing yourself back.

Hmm.

And, and getting a better understanding of how you understand the world because you have your operating self and your thinking self. And in an overstimulated world, your operating self is driving everything and you're almost never thinking. And that's what I found. And so to bring that back, I would like have recordings of myself and hear myself. I would suggest like therapy. The therapy is just the standard part of being healthy. You don't have to do it when something's wrong.

Agree.

Just communicate through things. It's very, very helpful. We have a cool program at HubSpot where they have Modern Health for us, which is a service that we can go for coaching and therapy, and it's amazing. And I think that that is just a big Big part of it. But, you know, the humans that I've noticed that can like go through these hard periods are just the ones that have a tiny bit of self-awareness. It's amazing how few people out there have self-awareness. Like just a tiny, tiny bit is all you need.

Right.

And you can accomplish a lot. But the other thing is like, if you think it's going to be easy, that's no, it's not. And like, If, if you think about like, sometimes if you have a wound, like it hurts.

Mm-hmm.

You have to hurt it worse to heal it. And like, so there's, you have to lean into that pain sometimes, which people do not like to do. And I don't know what it is about my brain, but I tend to go into the most difficult areas, or I used to headfirst for some, some damn reason. I don't know why.

Yeah. But I do.

No, that's fair. That's fair. I was gonna ask you too, like, with just kind of like as far as like processing information, because I know you talked about, uh, with autism and stuff like that, um, neurodiversity, right? One of the kind of like one of the things that like is a— I don't want to say like a passion, but like it's something that you especially with like—

Oh, it is a passion.

Yeah, for sure. Especially with like being able to take care of yourself and be like and have like because I I can't agree more about the doing something better for yourself not just when something's wrong but as almost kind of like upkeep for yourself you know I think about it like you dust out your computer you do that like to me that's how my brain always kind of attaches it to that like I'm maintaining something is there any type of like I don't want to say like tips or tricks but like Because I know personally, uh, like with my daughter, she, um, she has like, I didn't even realize there was 3 forms of dyslexia. Like she has, you know, and like the way her brain works.

Yeah, there is.

It's amazing.

Like I never—

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, cause when they said that, I was like—

I could talk about dyslexia is a processing, like society is really messed up with the definition of dyslexia. And it drives me up the wall because it's not, we associate it with reading.

Right.

It's a processing disorder and it is, it like, it's not uncommon to be a part of ASD. I'm dyslexic as well. Um, it causes me a lot of issues at work, but I have ways of overcoming those. But yeah, it is not just you flip letters because they used to like pre-flip letters for kids and like, no, it's the order of information that comes in your brain. And how you process that information is out of, it's asynchronous if you want to use, um, or actually closer, if you want to use a technical term, it's eventual consistency. So like sometimes things are filled in later and you don't know and you can't really predict it.

So yeah. Yeah. And she's such a visual learner too. And that's how she processes things is like more through the visual than it's like, than just explaining it. And it's just, I always found that because the one thing I always wondered about too is like, as she gets older and she She wants to do it. And like, it would be great. I would love for her to get into tech and get into— and she likes computers and technology and that's great. But like, my fear for her was always, you know, with the way, you know, and this can be with anybody, but with the way that you process information, because it's so different, it's like, God, how does one then adapt? Do you know what I mean? Because like, if you look at just from like, just from me going from like one different type of company to HubSpot, Mm-hmm. Overwhelming, right? We always say, what, drink from a fire hose? True. Truer— no, no truer statement has ever been said. I always wondered for her, like, how is— how am I going to help her overcome some of those things knowing that she has a completely different way she processes information? And look at how fast it comes to, you know, somebody who doesn't have 3 forms of dyslexia. How am I going to— like, that was always a big fear of mine. And it's just like, it's really great to see that. Not that I didn't think it was possible, but like, it is, it is possible because you get that fear, right? You get that overwhelming fear.

Oh, not only is it possible, it's like preferred in some, some ways. I mean, the amount of, like, you hear about people who are blind and they have, they figure out echolocation, right? Um, with folks with dyslexia, they tend to have to get answers in different ways. So they can become very good at micro body language. And other ways of receiving information that are not, I'll say language-based. Like I think conceptually and then it becomes language and there's always like a distortion at that level. Like everything I think is conceptual. And so when it comes to like pattern recognition and understanding how things work, like it's a tremendous Skill. It's hard. I first have to say we live in a world that is way better than when I grew up because all of this stuff, I was put in the special class. They take you out of your class, middle of the class, and they take you into the special class and it's social suicide. And then you get bullied like really, really bad. And I don't think we live in that world anymore. And because we don't, I think for parents, and I have another friend who As a son who's autistic, that I've talked to him about it a lot, and he would constantly bring up to me his temper tantrums. And I would explain to him what's actually going on with the temper tantrums. And a lot of it is like, one, being very encouraging that, and in my, your mind, like they will be successful. Like if they have the path, they're going to be successful.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but also when like frustration and tantrums and things like that come up, like they're tapped out. It's like your, your computer has gone to a, uh, you know, blue, blue screen of death. Like they're tapped out. Like they've been overstimulated. It's been too much. Their brain is telling them, I can't do it anymore. Like your brain is a muscle.

Hmm.

It eventually gets overworked. This is why, um, you know, in like our personal lives, having arguments in evenings is dangerous because you're worn out. You're at work, you're worn out. Well, for folks who have to add an additional processing layer on everything they do, their brains are gonna get worn out faster. And so a lot of times we'll tend to focus on the, the outlash or the, the, the reaction to the, the overload. Versus like, how can we help them not get to that point? Um, because once they get to that point, you just have to let it be.

Mm-hmm.

Like it, it has to let it be. How do you not let them get to that point? Like the way I was telling my friend who's also, his name is Chris, um, is that like, what is, for, for his son in particular, what is something that he just loves doing? And like double down on that. There was something with, Putting pipes together, like double down on that. Like go buy as many pipes as you can and like just double down or something that feels very comfortable. Um, sometimes I will tell my team, like, if you're feeling like you, you're just tapped out, then you're tapped out and you need to honor your brain and go, I'm tapped out right now. And just have confidence that you're gonna come back and you're gonna do good work, but right now you're tapped out. That's very important.

I mean, yeah, most, yeah, that could be said for just about, I mean, most people should try.

It's everything.

Yeah. Should, should adopt That as well, you know, it's—

yeah.

And people will— well, I mean, in Western society, we want to believe that like, no, we have to do more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like if you're tapped out, but the thing is you're less efficient. I mean, there's all sorts of crazy analogies I can give you, but you will be less efficient if you keep on like trying to extend that versus like just letting yourself be tapped out for a bit, not feeling guilty about it. Let your brain come and gather everything together and then you come back to it and you'll be way better. And I think it's Like, you know, with kids, um, and I have some hypothesis about, you know, one of my kids as well, is really leaning into the things that they, they like. And then also making sure that the environment that they're surrounded with— your environment is so important. I mean, I'm very particular about my environment, like very, very particular. I get very uncomfortable in certain environments. So, um, but Everybody's environment is really important. So make sure they have an environment which includes people around them who do not ridicule, do not. And then when I say ridicule, it doesn't have to be a direct ridicule. Like, you know, doing selling words and be like, "You can do it. Just do it." Like stuff like that. Like sometimes it's it's gonna feel like three steps backwards, but it will always pay off because yes, adaptation happens. Like We shouldn't be forced to adapt to the world, but we have to because deciders are built around the norm, right? Which is 50% like of the population or more. So if you're, if you're different than the norm, like you do. And, but the adaptations that folks create is amazing, I think, in all forms of disabilities, like absolutely amazing what they can do. And it can be very unique. And the thing that gets in the way is confidence.

Yeah.

Or being told, no, you have to fit the mold. And that's why I hate things like IQ tests. Like the IQ test is literally created to measure how normal you are, like how much you fit the mold. That's what the IQ test is. And there's all sorts of biases introduced into that. And so allow 'em to be a misfit and help 'em be better at being a misfit. And that's where like, The amazing things will come.

Now, do these concepts and like, for example, like the confidence and things, has this— and I think I kind of know the answer, but how much of an impact do you think that's helped you as far as being a manager? Because you have to— because there is some sort of translation there as well where it's like trying to instill confidence, not just in children alone, but in teams and things of that nature. How much of that do you think Well, yeah, Dennis, cuz I mean, Dennis needs constant reassurance that he's doing a good job.

Very, very low self-esteem, Dennis. Yes.

How, how much of that, how much of that have you been able to pull in and use as a manager?

I think that's probably why eventually I became more passionate about people management and working with people than technology at this point. Because yeah, all of it. I like it. I think a lot of the struggles that I've gone through in my life, divorce, getting, you know, diagnosed with autism, like dyslexia, like prior to all of that, it started at the age of 17. Um, I told you when I was a kid, like they said I was agoraphobic, uh, and I got, you know, everything from OCD to bipolar to like all of this stuff, like all the diagnoses you can get. Because the mental health industry has been also been evolving rapidly, and it's also been really bad. There's a lot of bad therapists out there and doctors, but it allows me to have a lot of I think empathy for that and just really enjoying seeing the evolution in others, including myself. I think like. coworkers from when I first started at HubSpot probably, and I've already had several come to me and say like, you are a different person than when you first started at HubSpot. I'm like, I, yeah, I am. And I know the ways that I am, but for others to see that and for me to see that in others is like the most rewarding thing, as long as it's in a positive direction, obviously.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I think all of it. And, and I think that that's why I've become so, um, passionate about that because Again, being really fascinated with systems and complex systems, I like to focus on the system that produces the work versus the end work itself. Because if you optimize the system that produces the work, this is true with AI as well. I know it sounds like I'm being very kind of like objectifying like human behavior, but like AI is true. Like if you optimize any program, if you optimize the system, then the output is better. And that's what I focus on is optimizing the system. And that's what I've always loved is complex systems and how to make them more efficient and better. So I get to bring that personal element to it.

Last, uh, our last Lost episode, uh, one of the things people said, uh, was a highlight of 2024 was actually, uh, the A better developer experience, generally speaking. And this goes with what you're talking about right now. Would you agree that things are evolving in the right direction for the developer experience?

In the entire world or HubSpot?

That's a great question. Start HubSpot and then extend.

We'll go small.

Yeah, well, I guess, I mean, the elephant in the room always is like, is AI going to replace developers kind of stuff? And I'm like, I, no, I don't think so. I think that my hope is that we get to become more systems thinkers and more architectural versus, yeah, dare I say like heads down coding might change, but like what I think is really exciting about building applications is the architecture. So if we have greater efficiency in building applications, Then we can focus more on what are those things that allow us to optimize either the user experience or like end processing time for the application. And are things getting better? Oh yeah. Like rapid pace. You know, 2 jobs back, my focus was in the area of DevOps, and that was still a very new thing about optimizing the development lifecycle. And I think I'm happy to say that like, we are, uh, I could be wrong, but we've moved a little bit away from the world where everybody just wants a new programming language, cuz obviously it's better than the previous programming language. And like, there was like new programming languages coming out like every other week.

Mm-hmm.

Like, we're like, okay, you know, this React thing, or like, heaven forbid, JavaScript has been around for a bit. Like, it's really good. Now, what are the ways that we can optimize how we use this? And build great solutions for folks that are more robust. And, um, I'm not going to lean heavily on AI. I think that's a factor, but I'm really excited about like, especially the development lifecycle and how developers will allow— developers are very creative, like bring more creativity into it versus troubleshooting. And like getting the core foundation laid out, um, and spending a lot of time on that. The, the old term for that used to be shaving the yak. I don't think anybody uses that term anymore. It's like, cuz it's such a useless thing to do anyways. Um, yes, it's improving, Dennis.

Okay.

Thank you. Shaving the yak's why I came out with that.

I think we have the title for this episode.

Shaving the yak.

I love it.

Absolutely love it. No, I, I think, um, I, I think, uh, you could make an, you know, an AI agent that could, you know, review things in the marketplace, but they wouldn't have the same mohawk and they wouldn't have the same— I mean, the mohawk is a protected class.

It's—

yeah, it's a protected class.

For me, like, you're not gonna trust anything that comes from me if it doesn't have a typo. So, you know, you can't just like That's fair.

No, that's fair. Yeah. No, that's— I, you know, I'm excited about— I'm excited to see what we can do. It's just— but yeah, I also agree too that I don't think— I mean, and I get it, like the fear of, oh, well, that's going to take— as soon as the— you know what I mean? Like as soon as cyber— what is it from Terminator? I'm thinking cyber— it's not Cyberdyne. What is it? Is it Cyberdyne?

No.

I can't remember the name of the company. But, you know, as soon as the robots take over, I'm going to— this job is going to be gone. This job is going to be gone. This job is going And I get the fear. I really do. Because like some of the people that I talk to too are in the, you know, they're in the trades or they're carpenters or they're— and like they know that that particular thing isn't going to— like you're not going to get an AI agent or a bot or however they want to classify it, you know, depending on the verbiage. It's not going to take that job. But like they do see the fear is that like a lot of things like will be replaced by it. I just don't see it. There's that quality aspect. Of things that, because even like with reviewing things in the marketplace, right, there's certain things you can programmatically check for. And then there's other things that just need to be looked at that just needs to be—

Context.

Yeah.

Situational awareness and context is something that AI or generative AI specifically is not good at. And that matters a lot. Like there's, you have a pulse on what's happening in the world with humans right now, which actually does influence everything that that we do and might influence some of the sneaky things that we try to do that no AI would catch. I think if all of those who are listening, there's a term called knowledge work, and I've always been a knowledge worker. It means that your product, what you sell, what you deliver is your brainpower. And I don't think knowledge work, like, I want to believe that what AI's going to do is like front load the stuff that, and even some of it pretty advanced that like, I don't have to think about so that my knowledge work can be applied to that like 5% where I can like make a huge difference. And you're right, like we shouldn't ignore the fact that there are areas where they will be replaced, like the things that are very discrete systems that you can create a knowledge tree to execute through. Yeah. Um, I, I hope for the world that folks embrace AI and other technologies and help themselves become knowledge workers in those fields. So yeah.

10-hour work week. That's all I'm looking for. Automate most of it. I work for 10 hours.

Oh, you, oh, you work more than 10 hours? Ah, sorry.

I didn't know that. We're learning something new today, folks. That's awesome. Well, I mean, we can already replace Dennis in the episodes with like an, you know, an AI-generated character, right? That, you know, that's, you know, got a little bit more personality, you know, a little bit more.

Come on, let's all beat up on Dennis.

That was—

that doesn't leave us getting defensive. I'm going to jump through the screen and beat you up.

That doesn't leave— that doesn't leave last episode on a thumb drive somewhere sitting around.

I've done way worse.

I've got to say though, props to Dennis for the intro for the last episode because like when you showed me that, I wasn't even exaggerating. I was like, this is— I was almost— I was like Academy Award. I was like, tell us who you'd like to thank. Like it was just, it was cool. It was just really cool. And I know a couple other people had mentioned that too in some of the comments on LinkedIn, but it was just like what an awesome way to like It was just beautiful. I just, I don't know how else to say it. It was just, it was a beautiful thing. It was a very beautiful thing. So I appreciate it.

I appreciate that.

So, but, um, I know we're up against a hard stop for you, Chris, and, um, I don't want to keep you—

Actually, I actually still have some time, but it seems like we're— you're getting tired of me.

No, no, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Um, let's talk about then, um, just kind of where do you think, um, for the, like, for your future? Like, what do you want to see for yourself, like, going forward? And it doesn't have to be, like, work-related, but, like, as somebody who— and, you know, and I really admire, like, the honesty and the openness. It's not easy. Like, like I said, like, with my daughter and stuff like that, it's not very easy to be, like, open and honest about yourself. Like, I've mentioned on here a couple times, like, being a diabetic and, you know, having— There's Not nearly as many, you know, complications with that, you know, as opposed to other things. But like for yourself, for the future, what do you want to do for yourself to make things— to like elevate yourself to— because everybody has that next level. And it could be like, like for me it was just like, yeah, one of these days I want to open up a coffee shop. Like for me, that's the elevation to the next level for me, like to do something like that that I haven't done before. For you, what do you see yourself as For like your next elevation?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I guess I probably should answer kind of the career side. Um, for me, it's more of the same. Like, I, my team is amazing. I love my team. I love that they're all smarter than me and like get a lot of stuff done without being told. I'm not just being— Even Dennis?

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Our YouTube, are you kidding me? When we turned that system on, like we had a plan, we turned it on. And it worked. And that's the best thing from my perspective, because when it comes down to being an executor, I'm not a great executor. Like, I'm just not, but I'm really good at strategy and I'm really good at knowing what is going to deliver a result. Oops, sorry. And so I want to do more of that, more of the same. Want to grow the team. I want to give my team a chance to grow as well because that means a lot to me. I mean, I'm big, I don't think it's really an appropriate term, but it's still kind of the term that's used for servant leadership. Like I'm really big in that and mentorship just in general. I do a lot of mentorship for CU Boulder here. I do a lot of mentorship inside of HubSpot for disability and I do mentorship. So I will continue to do more of that. On the more personal front and like hobbyist kind of front, I am like exploring areas of offering my own type of coaching for folks in tech and also do like extending that mentorship paradigm a bit further. And then like my personal life, I just want to vanish from the world. Honestly, like I'm trying to become as invisible as I possibly can and reduce as many variables that are influencing my life as there are and just simplify, simplify, simplify. Because vast majority of my life I just sought out complexity and now I've realized that I can do more by not seeking out complexity and like optimizing what I have. And so I have a lot of odd hobbies like Lego, which you don't, See any, they're all around me, but you don't see them right here. I play the piano, like leaning into that stuff a lot more. I did add a quote once on my LinkedIn, like I make myself vulnerable so that it makes it okay for others to do it. It was kind of like what you're saying. Dennis at one point published my Epic Week talk on neurodiversity and some other stuff that was in there. And I wanna keep on doing that because I'll tell you that we live in a very emotionally sick society. Like really, really sick society. We talk about physical ailments and we talk about diseases and stuff like that, but we don't often talk about like how emotionally sick society is. I know at one point, uh, one of the government agencies for health stuff published The Loneliness Epidemic. Document. And when I first read it, I'm like, this is weird. But whether there's an epidemic for loneliness or not, I will tell you that I feel like our society is really struggling emotionally. I think we're very sick. And my hope is that in Micro, I can help folks make it okay to address that because we are propagating a lot of really bad behaviors that Our society encourages, like codependency and stuff like that. Like our society actually values these things and it's not great. And so I think it's gonna be a really interesting time over the next 10 years to see what changes. And I'm happy to say that the mental health industry has improved dramatically, whereas before it was all about addressing the symptoms and not the cause. And it was the worst in the '70s, but like, it's still pretty bad. And I think now people are more digging in and going like, what is the root of why I feel the way I feel? I'm very passionate about, um, something called inner child reparenting. And I think that, that I actually have, that's what my tattoo is. Um, I think that that's like the primary thing our society needs to work on is reparenting their inner child to address this stuff. So I just hope that I can tiny help that in the personal life. Um, because I do think it's just such a serious thing right now.

That's awesome. I'm glad you're doing that. I really am. 'Cause like, I, and honestly, like personally, I think social media, like especially with the loneliness thing, I like, I like, 'cause I remember Dennis, I can't remember what episode we talked about this in, but it was like that fake grass is greener on the other side philosophy.

Exactly. Like people are, and movies, and I love movies. I love movies, but movies are guilty of propagating this and it's awful. And then you get depressed when you find out the grass wasn't actually greener on the other side. Like there's something to be said about optimizing what you have and making what you have better and not throwing in the towel. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it's absolutely insane. Yeah. Just the kind of way that it can distort kind of just the way you see things and then like. And it also then changes like your perspective on just the way you see— it's not— it doesn't only change the perspective on the way you see yourself where you're like, oh my God, all these other people— like LinkedIn, I think, is like kind of like the worst as far as like career where it's like, oh my God, all these people are so successful, this and then that. And then like you start to see, like you start to like judge other people based on those, like that criteria, right? Because like, look at the way we introduce, uh, like, like, like when you're at a party, and you're with a friend, and the way you introduce people to other people— oh, this is so-and-so, they work at that. The career is the thing, like, you know what I mean? Like, that's these— it's not like, hey, this is my buddy, he's, he's a really good guy, and, you know, he— it's just, it's always like, oh yeah, he works over at so-and-so, or he works like that. That's how people like introduce themselves, you know, in a lot of situations. So I really—

I didn't, I didn't see that until I moved to the East Coast, by the way. Like, when I was in a small town in Kansas, no one talked about it.

That's interesting.

Chicago all day long. Yeah.

Well, yeah, like I think more urban areas is like, there's so much competition. Also, I feel like these days we focus more on the moments, you know, those little grass greener moments rather than the longevity, the entire span of like, you know, yourself.

Right.

And I think part of that goes to what I said before. Like, it is really scary to face some of this stuff. It is hurtful. Like, there are certain things, like there was a period where You know, when I was doing— there's a lot of ways to do inner child reparenting. All of it is extremely painful. All of it. And like good period of like 4 months where I'm like just bawling to myself every night, extremely hard. But that's scary. And you wanna, and we wanna see that as a weakness, but no, you're actually weak if you don't do it. Like, if you know that there's something to be addressed with inside of yourself and you turn away, that's weak.

Yeah.

No.

And that's what a lot of folks do by masking and deflecting and blaming others, projection. And then as soon as you start projection, then you just passed it to somebody else. Like, nope, your problem now, not my emotional problem, your problem.

Yeah.

I was gonna ask you about the, the, the, the The blaming thing, the blaming part of it. Did you ever find it— and I personally found this hard for myself as, and again, like as a younger person in tech and then kind of like growing up and like changing, you know, small real estate place to big, you know, tech company, the admission of not knowing or doing something wrong. Did you ever find— because I mean, the 3 of us, we know each other to a good extent and we're not the type of of people that will see it as a weakness to not know something. But at a certain point, and I think a lot of people, and I don't want to speak for everyone in the world, but I think a lot of people, when you're first starting out, whether that's first starting out at your career or when you first start a job, it feels like it's portrayed as like such a weakness. It's like, well, I don't know, I don't know that. And it's like, that's okay. It's that you don't—

Yeah.

In certain respects, that's okay. I mean, if that's your job and you've been doing it for 10 years and you turn around and say you don't know it, maybe there might be something wrong there. But like, I've always— I always found that to be weird. I always found that to be something that— and then at a certain point, some people don't address that in themselves, where they're still like, they'll cling to that like hard exterior shell of like, well, no, it's not wrong, it's this, this, and this. Or, oh no, it's not that I don't know, it's this, this. And it's just like—

and I feel bad because it's like When I was in sales, I used to do that heavily. And I'll be honest, it made me really good at sales. But yeah, it's a bad, it's a self-feeding thing and it's not good. And I, let me, I'll see if I can correlate this back. One of the things that like people forget, first of all, I'm not implying we all have multiple personality disorders. That's not what I'm implying here, but we all have different sides of ourselves. And one is like the toddler version of yourself. And there's the grownup version of yourself and there's the operating self and there's the thinking self. And then there's like the social person and then the introvert person. Like ideally you want to be a good blend of all of them, but there is in your operating self, there is a part of you where you're saying these things. You're like, no, I'm not wrong here. Let me like skirt around it a bit.

Right.

That you're telling your inner self that you don't have confidence in them. And like, just as you would not want that, somebody to do that to somebody else, don't do it to yourself. I think that's the biggest thing is that like, um, it's very simple, but like with kids, if somebody is like, let's say they don't like giving hugs and, you know, uh, aunt comes over and insists on giving your kid a hug. I'm like, you just do that because it's your aunt, but it makes them uncomfortable. What that kid is telling themselves is it is less important what they're feeling about being uncomfortable than it is pleasing this person. We've all become people pleasers. And so you reinforce that. And so like, if you think of yourself as like 2 individuals and one that is operating, you're communicating indirectly, you're communicating stuff to your inner self, and it might not be very nice. And it might not be stuff that you would want others to do. And so it's really important to first figure out how you can respect yourself and be like, I don't like that, so I'm not going to do it. And that is fine because I just don't like it. Then you're building confidence in yourself. Once you build confidence in yourself, then it's easy to say, yeah, I don't know the answer because all you have to do is prove to yourself.

That's it.

Right. I always used to think there needed to be this brick wall between like, like, especially if it was like Like at-home Nick versus work Nick. Like, to a certain extent, there— yeah, yeah, there are some social norms where you should be like, you know what I mean? Like, you can't spend all day talking about the 49ers and how horrible they are this year. But like, there— I always used to think like you couldn't— you had to draw this like concrete, you know, this line in the sand, this concrete thing where it's like the work person and the real self, if you want to call it that.

Yeah.

Had to be 2 different people, almost like you had to pretend when you're at work because you had to be. And I think—

Masking is a thing. Sometimes you have to mask. I'm like, I'm not going to deny that. But when masking becomes so prevalent that you don't even know you're doing it, right, it's really bad.

Right. And I love DevRel for the, for the fact that we can be like, you know, again, like we can be authentic and we can be like some of that us personal self can be kind of ingrained into our work self. And I think that's fantastic because I never, like I said, I never experienced that before. But coming here, it was kind of an eye-opener. And not just that, but on top of the fact that the people that we interact with welcomed us, like welcomed that, like the developers, community.

Yeah.

They, they like embraced that because that's always the thing too. Like, you, you know, you may give a speech or you may do something where you're like, well, this is— I'm just being, you know, genuine. And then you get this kind of like weird reaction to it and it kind of like, okay, I guess I just won't do that. But it was—

So you have to take the good with the bad. I think like a lot of folks are like, we all want everybody to be like, frankly, if I need somebody who's perfectly polished, I'm, I'm concerned. I'm like, I know there's something wrong there and I'll usually try to figure out what it is. Um, if I have the time, but like letting humans be humans and kind of weird sometimes is also important and you need to do that for yourself. Sorry, I'm like gonna choke.

It's okay. We accept you.

I'm back.

And all your flaws.

Not, oh, I don't know. You've called out a few. Only, only that I don't respond on Slack. I mean, come on.

Hey, hey, hey, you wanna get into it?

I—

that's weird. He responded.

Getting better. I, I'm getting better. I think there is a system. There is a system to my responses, but yeah, I'm getting better.

I think it's just Dennis because Chris responded to me just fine.

I did subscribe to Speechify, which is helping, and I'm doing more audio messages, which is helping. I truly do get overwhelmed. Speechify, it reads back to you the messages. Like I, at a certain amount of words, I will just, my brain goes, nope. And then I'm out. Like there's no, and it's like, I laugh about it because it's funny, but not funny. Um, but Speechify, yeah, it'll read back to you.

And you said you find that helps, right? Oh, you hear me?

Yeah. Your messages you send, your voice message, I always read the transcript. I actually don't listen to them. It's kind of weird, right?

All right.

I know some people do that. Yeah. Yeah. I think you do lose context. Like a lot of folks don't realize how much we communicate in body language and like tonage and so, so forth. But still, like, again, it goes back to leaning into the things that work and being creative, and you don't have to have all the answers for yourself. Like you can find, and, and we don't need to be apologetic either, but like doing your best to do your best is— I, I just, I think it's kind of fun sometimes. You can gamify optimizing your workflows. You can gamify like being more efficient at things and not treating it as so much as a weakness. Um, as we've all kind of come to see it. Yeah. Society has classically come to see it.

Yep, totally agree.

Absolutely.

Nick, I'm feeling it. You ready to wrap this up?

Yeah, no, we're good. And yeah, I just want to thank you, Chris. Like, I— these— I love these type of conversations. These are like the pinnacle of what we want to do with the podcast, you know, is just like— and, and also like a big thank you for just being, you know, it's hard for people to be open and honest. Like you said, like we talked about, like there's these, you know, walls that we build And these kind of geofencing, if you will, so I can sound like I know what I'm talking about and be techie.

This makes me think of Foursquare, like when that first geofencing APIs came out. Yeah.

But yeah, it takes, I mean, it takes something. It does to be able to do that and to be able to talk about it and talk about it with confidence. And then I think the things you're doing are actually fantastic as well. You know what I mean? Some of the initiatives that you talked about that you're taking. On. And I think it, I think it's fantastic because I, I know just, you know, from, from personal experience, like, you know, trying to understand like the way, uh, you know, over time, like with my daughter, like I understand her language. Do you know what I mean? Like she'll say something where everybody else would be like, what did she just— and I'm like, I get it, babe. You're good. And it's just like, you know what I mean? But it's like—

Beautiful.

That processing to me, like, was That was such an eye-opener, you know, and kind of like introduced into a world where it was just like, like I said, I didn't know there were multiple dyslexias. I didn't know, like, all of that kind of blew the doors off of everything, right? And like, it made me think and be a little— and I mean, and the empathy aspect as well, right? And, and I just want to say thank you because like, it's, um, yeah, it's not easy, right? HubSpot makes it easy, like, with, with all their initiatives and like their, their focus on health and things of that nature make it so much more easier than a lot of places that I hear other people work at. So I mean, there's, there's something to be said about that as well. But again, just thank you because it's, um, yeah, it's not— most people wouldn't be able to do that. I, I struggle with that sometimes, being my— like, I, I put on sort of a persona at times and struggle to be like my true, like, a real self versus like that other person, right? So, um, so yeah, but I just want to thank you because that's, uh—

Yeah, thanks for having me. These are fun, by the way. I mean, I think Dennis has heard me, like, this is one of my favorite things to do. It's just Just show up and talk about shit. But, um, yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. It seems to be light out right now, so I don't know about the after dark part, but yeah, it's, there's a lot of snow somewhere. It's, it's a weird time of year.

Where can, uh, where can people find you if they wanna follow in some of the LinkedIn?

Probably. I, I mean, I don't like, I love talking to people, by the way. And if anybody does wanna reach out to me to discuss anything that we discussed, I'm like happy to do it. Like, also don't feel bad. Keep on bugging me. LinkedIn is probably the best. Keep on bugging him.

Bug him.

I have no problem.

Come to me and I'll help you bug him.

Right. Um, there will be a way to triangulate me at some point somewhere. I mean, I, part of my like hiding from the world has gotten pretty good, but, uh, I, I do love having these conversations and it's one of the things that I'm the most passionate about. And once my website's Finally launched, then it'll be—I don't know if it'll be DevRel Dad or not—but it'll be something in that category. Mix of personal and work, and that'll also be a place to engage. So hopefully, if you follow me on LinkedIn, then you'll know if it's coming out, and then that'll be the place.

Let us know the URL too when you get it all set up, so we can put it in the show notes and put it on the site.

Yeah, working with one of the HubSpot partners built on HubSpot all day long. I have a chat. ChatGPT, CustomGPT. There's, well, 2 of them that are going to be integrated into it.

Dennis, we got to step up our game here. We don't have any of that. You have a podcast.

I mean, I've blown through like 3 podcasts so far in my career. So this is good.

I, well, the year is early. Let's, the year is early.

We still got some time to do some things. Number 7, lucky number 7.

Yeah, we might.

Hey Nick, I want to plug real quickly. Uh, on the 30th of this month, we're having an Accessibility Developer Hug event.

That's awesome.

John McLaren, Tanya Scales, both like just accessibility masters. So please come to that. And, uh, in mid-February we're doing an SEO and technical performance developer hug event, which is also gonna be pretty amazing. And, um, one question for you, Nick, is we're doing this live presently. Is this going to be an ongoing thing? Are we going live? Is that, is that how it's working these days?

Oh, we're live.

Yeah, I like it. I mean, I'm a fan.

Couldn't you have told me that before I joined?

Nah, nah.

I thought we did.

Or maybe I just switched the link out and didn't mention anything. Oh, well, it's possible. That's— that sounds like a me thing to do. But yeah, no, I would— I'd like to do this if people like— like this format that I think it'd be fantastic. I also try and subscribe, folks.

Please hit that like button.

Absolutely smash the like button. Subscribe. You know, tell all your friends about me. Right. I have a shot. I can send to all of your agents.

Please help Dennis.

Please, please.

I feel bad for him. I really do. But, um, no, yeah, I'd like to— uh, this is something we're kind of hoping we can do a little bit more frequently as well. I would like to do that. I know there's a lot of work that goes into it on Dennis's end for sure, so I don't want to overwhelm him with stuff. I just get to sit here and sound like an idiot all day, so that's easy for me, and it's actually, you know, kind of right down my alley. So, uh, but yeah, no, it's, uh, if people like the live format and stuff, and, and I'd Thank you to everybody. David, Brooke, Hannah, everybody in the chat. Thank you for participating. Fantastic. So yeah, no, I, I'm okay with doing all of them. Everybody else is good. So love it.

Absolutely. Thank you. Have a great weekend. Later on.

Take it easy.