Advice from a Hiring Manager w/Eng Manager Dan Digangi

This is great. I've never done— you're also just awesome for like wanting to even do this.

We haven't been on in a while.

This is great. Yeah, no, I haven't been on in a while, so this is good. This is good. Um, good morning everybody. Um, this is not Demetrius Clark, so this is Dan DeGangi. Dan, how are you, buddy?

I'm good, man. It's been, uh, it's been a long couple weeks, but I'm doing good, staying busy. I, uh, actually, uh, I just bought a house.

No way!

Yeah, yeah. So I'm closing in a couple weeks. So between like work, you know, family stuff, doing a house, but super excited. Nice to finally have like a dedicated cool office with a background that's cool like yours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it, I love it, I love it. Uh, uh, that's awesome, man. Shout out to you. That's cool. Um, well, for those of you tuning in, um, welcome. Uh, I had to do a quick— it's just the power. This is the power of community. Right. So Demetrius Clark, I have no idea what happened with the invites. He never got the invite, um, and so he could not make it. So this is why I absolutely love Dan and just Power Community. So Dan's in our Discord, um, and basically I literally just messaged Dan and I was like, yo, uh, we should— you should just come on, come live with me. He was like, yeah, bro, let's just do it. So here we are, we're gonna, we're gonna hang out. This is totally unscripted. Totally unscripted. So, Dan, well, first off, before we dive in, y'all say hey. We'd love to hear from you. I'm actually gonna go into the chat now and say that we're live. All right, cool. Yeah. Did Jason forget? No, Jason did not forget to send the invite. This was not a Jason thing. This is a savvy cow. dropping the ball here, but that's okay. Um, but for those of you tuning in, good morning, welcome. This is gonna be a great live. Uh, if you have not checked out my live yesterday, so I did like a 4 PM yesterday with Dee Murthy. Dee has a massive podcast, he's out of LA. Had a great conversation around networking, just the importance of being in the room. Um, Dee like knows a ton of famous people in LA and, um, he's He was a little adjacent to what we do. He's not engineering, but it was a great conversation. So I would highly recommend checking out that episode yesterday at 4:00 PM. Today, I have no idea what we're gonna talk about, but it's gonna be great. So before we dive in, obviously a few announcements. I wanna give a shout out to Appwrite, right? I am probably the only non-hero, non-technical hero on probably like any tech platform. So shout out Appwrite. They're great. Also, join our Discord, join our community. Dan's a part of it. Dan hopped in. Dan's actively involved. It's great. I think it's a fun little group. So love to have you. We do a lot of live streams, do a lot of networking. So love to have you there. Also, if you want to know when I go live with these guests, shoot me a text, text live. This is actually my number. It's like my second number, I guess you could say. This actually goes to me. I just text out the group every day when I go live so you don't miss it. But again, say hey, connect with Connect with people, network with people. That's why I do this thing, just as a way to kind of facilitate, uh, some conversation. I kind of view this as like a, like a tiny meetup, right? Come out, comment, drop your comments in the chat, engage with people. It's great. Um, but Ricardo, it's good to see you. Emmett, Chris, uh, Angelo, it's great to see you. Uh, Dan again. Yes, Dan again. Uh, Devon, it's good to see you, man. 2 days in a row of this guy. Were you just live somewhere else with it, with somebody?

I did a resume roast for a Torque LinkedIn. Yes, you didn't see it?

All the airtime. Yeah, I didn't realize that. That's how much stuff is going on in the Discord. I have no idea what's going on half the time, which may not be the best thing to say as somebody who, uh, heads up the community. Jalen, it's good to see you. Sebastian, it seems like déjà vu. I love it. Uh, let's see here. Good morning from Blacksburg. What's up, Brian? Brian's a, uh, Brian's a director of engineering, former guest of the show. Highly recommend connecting with Brian. He's a wealth of knowledge. Uh, let's see here. Uh, yeah, Dan. Dan is in the floating space again. Yeah, Dan's like in the abyss.

Dan, so, you know, if you get— I don't know if you're all on Mac, so at the top there's a little green icon with the camera. So at work I set it to the black background and the black and white version, so people know me for 3 things at work: my pug, my Pikachu avatar, and my black and white video. I love it.

That's fantastic. What, what great things to be known as. Um, uh, all right, the text, the text alerts are great. I appreciate that, Roxy. All right, so Dan, let's give the people what they want real quick, man. Who are you? What do you do? And then obviously we'll figure out what we're gonna talk about together.

Sure. So my name's Dan Deganji. I am an engineering manager. I work at ActiveCampaign right now. I've been managing for the past year the Postmark products, transactional email and email delivery. Super cool business, super successful, really fun. I've been— God, when was the last time we talked? I've been in the industry like 20-some years, way less gray hair when I first started. But I started as a designer way back in the day, but my past 20 years has been heavy engineering. Super into JavaScript, React, even though I don't manage frontend teams much anymore. Yeah. But super passionate about mentoring, coaching, leadership. But you obviously know too, job hunting, helping people be successful. Yeah. And those things are something I just have always enjoyed. It's a lot of, it's a lot of broken and growth opportunities in the hiring and, you know, job hunt industry.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think one thing I appreciate about your friendship is, and just who you are, Uh, Jason, this guy again. Uh, can we address them? We already did, Jason. You're late, you're late. We already addressed it, we already addressed it. Um, I think one thing I appreciate about you is, is I feel like you're just very authentic, right? And you just tell it how it is, which I appreciate. Um, and so, uh, again, appreciate you. And literally, for those of you who are just now tuning in like Jason, um, Dan— I literally just called Dan up. I texted him 2 minutes before he's supposed to go live, and Dan's like, yeah, sure, why not? So again, power of the Torque community, power of community. It's great. So Dan, obviously, um, so I, I, I mean I'm kind of interested, is there any hot topics that maybe are on your brain right now that you want to talk about just in regards to what you're seeing in the market? Maybe, you know, obviously you're hiring right now. Anything where people are missing the market? Just is there any topics that you've kind of been, man, I wish people didn't do this, or man, I wish people did more of this, that you kind of think about? Now's the time to get it out.

You know, I was actually kind of curious since kind of we did this last minute, was I was also kind of curious to ask you the same question, which is like, What your take has been on the market, 'cause I forgot someone asked me recently and I'm trying to remember, was it Angie or someone? And so I just started, I just opened a role and we do have some at ActiveCampaign and it's, I don't know, it feels like it's a weird time right now. Like I see things like nothing is ever gonna go back to the hot peak period that we had, of course, but I've seen it like—

Get that outta your brain.

Like just get that outta your brain. Yeah, I guess what's like weird is I'm having like this crisis of like, So we know the market's like super saturated, highly competitive. And, you know, like when layoffs happen, it only makes it harder for everyone. But like you see more jobs starting to slowly open up. So it's like, what's the disconnect of why those bridges aren't lining up? And it makes you wonder, is it just like, you know, is it because it's an employer's market and we're just being more picky because we have to be very strategic about who we hire?

Yeah.

So I'm still kind of like, I'm not exactly— it's almost like it's just like weird purgatory transition phase. And I don't know where it's going to go, but I kind of see the signs.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think at least what I've been seeing, and I spoke with somebody about this on the pod recently too, it's a lot of start and stop. I don't know if you've had issues with this, just with hiring. Like, it's like, we need a role. Then it's like, well, we don't need a role, but then we do need the role, but we need the role yesterday, but then we don't need the role. Like, I feel like, and I mean, it's even happened to my team. Like, we were going to hire a position for the Torque community. I got the go ahead. And then like I sent over to finance and finance was like, haha, psych.

Right. I mean, it happens.

Yeah, I feel like it's a lot of that. I also think too, I still think we underestimate the amount of talent that got flooded into the market when the layoffs happened in 2022, 2023. I feel like we still don't— it was so much. It was An ungodly amount of tech talent that got flooded into the market. I think we are continually seeing a lot of people. I know a lot of people. I know 2 people in my network specifically that were both developers that are no longer developers anymore because of the market.

And what's interesting is, so I've had more of that come up too. So one of my best friends, Sam Cicero, he was at DocuSign for about 6, 7 years and he actually left recently and I was you know, giving him some tips because he hasn't been in the market in a long time. And you've actually sent me a, uh, uh, uh, oh man, I forgot how terrible LeetCode is. And I was like, oh yeah, I know. Um, but what's interesting is, so Sam's, Sam's been managing just a little bit less than me. I think he's like 5 years, I'm like 7 or 8 in. And I could not see myself ever going back to coding or being an IC. But what I thought was interesting is, as good a manager as Sam is, he's very much so looking at IC roles. And I'm like, really? Like, why'd you get there? And he's like, I don't know if leadership's for me, and I kind of miss being out there and putting hands on the code and being focused and not all the, you know, the BS that managers deal with. So it's interesting to see that people are leaving the industry or like dramatically taking a 180 on what they're doing, or even like, you know, lateral moves have become more commonplace, which I think is interesting because, you know, there's, there's value in lateral moves, but it also can put, you know, time in between your next step because you're kind of starting in it not at zero, but, you know, you're not moving upwards.

So I personally think it's a great topic. Let's park it on this topic. Andy heads up all of the direct hire perm business at Ronstadt in the US. So Andy, appreciate you chiming in, buddy. Purgatory phase is— by the way, if you do a video call with me and Andy, we look like brothers. Like literally, it's the craziest thing. Purgatory phase is the right description. Business needs plus business steering aren't aligned 100%. Obviously, Andy, Andy, if you're watching this, please rebook me to come on the pod. Would love to have you to talk about this. This would be great. Jordan, I'm so triggered right now. Yeah, Jordan also is a fellow Ronstadt coworker as well. She also just dropped a podcast, so check that out today. So I think this is a great conversation to park on. I think like any time of stress, I think you have to learn how to pivot. And I think what happened is I think there was a lot of entitlement that has occurred over the last few years, especially in the engineering space of, I can spell React. I deserve a job.

I love that.

By the way, I said that joke at Epic Web Conference with Kent C. Dodds and everybody left. So, like, for me, it's like you used to be able to spell frameworks and get jobs. That is not the case anymore. We are back to where we were beforehand. I think people— I think we as human beings have short-term memory. And so, we don't realize what it was before that. Like, you actually have to grind to find a job right now. And I think people have lost that grind mentality.

You know, I don't, I don't know if like I kind of, but kind of not in my opinion.

Like just in my opinion, it's like, yeah, I, I, I, I love a little discourse.

I think there's 2 ways I think about when I hear that is one is there is probably, yes, the side of you do like, there's no doubt you have to grind harder right now. But I also kind of wonder, as you said, right? Like, oh, I could spell React or I have a framework is just like, What if the flip side of it is not that we have to grind more, is that we didn't grind before because it was so easy?

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Because I want to be very, very cognizant of that for sure. So I think that's a better way to say it. So thank you for saying that. I like what Jordan said, normalize being okay with moving from leadership to IC roles. What are your thoughts on this? Like, I feel like there is a stigma and I feel like right now, like your friend from DocuSign is like, Bro, like, I'm ready to go back.

And I mean, for me personally, like, you're not gonna see me ever personally go back to doing coding, like, as a day-to-day.

Like, you know what you want, which is, which is great.

But that goes back to exactly this, is like, what is the best place for you, for, you know, the type of work you do, the skills you have, what you want for your life, what kind of balance, you know? Like, I found that I was pretty good at coding, but never like the crazy, crazy like AAA++ that I wanted to be. But when I got into like leadership and like, or leadership opportunities pre-management, like it worked really well for like the type of person I am, my skill set, like rallying people and stuff. And that's where I'm planning to stick. Do I miss coding though? I won't lie, yes, there is times, but I do find it hard to go. I'm getting— you get rusty after a long time. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with going sideways or up or down or— and down's not even the right word, right? It's not down to go to IC, it's lateral in a sense, right? Like, there's a reason why when you get to senior, that's usually where the manager conversation comes up, right? So it's not I'm moving up or down, it's I'm deciding which side I want to go to and then I'm going to go forward. So there's nothing wrong with going to a different role. And, you know, you do have to be careful with one thing, which is if you do, right, maybe you go back to IC, it is to a degree can be a reset at some level. And, you know, you just got to understand the time component, but there's nothing wrong with switching. And I, I try to do it as I stick with what I'm good at, which I love leadership. I do try to find opportunities for IC things when I can come up, but I do tend to keep myself out of the critical path for obvious reasons.

What— so, so I think there's 2 stigmas that have gone— that are not gone away but lessened. I think breaks in employment and layoffs. I think those stigmas have come down. I mean, when I started recruiting 10 years ago, if you had any break, we wouldn't look at you. Like, I remember recruiting, and if it was over 3 months, I wouldn't look at you.

That's the thing that's always weird to me. You obviously know I've done an extensive amount of hiring over the years, and I have looked at that, but for some reason, like, that— it gets— it doesn't deter me as much as I've heard from others that have worked in, like, hiring roles and stuff. Like, I do look at it and I care about it, but it's like, if I step back, it's like, I would almost love to see someone be like, you know, I've been a dev for 10 years, I took a year off to spend time with my family, realign my life, you know? Like, that, that to me is actually, like, a great green flag. Like, you know, like—

Very fair.

Yeah, maybe break some rust off, but like there's nothing wrong. I will, I will say I'll give, uh, something would go with that. So, um, my girlfriend is actually— actually really random is, by the way, so with the, um, the, the application for the mortgage, one of the things I had to do was a letter for a job or a gap explanation for when I got laid off. So I had to actually write like I was laid off from company downsizing. So they actually like hard required it, which I thought was kind of funny.

Um, mortgage companies, if you're listening, relax.

So I found this interesting. I was talking to my girlfriend. So she's still trying to get her first job. She's on the UI design side, and you guys know, or everyone knows, it's very difficult right now. And we were talking about breaks and stuff, and I forgot what it was exactly she was talking about as a break. She's like, well, I wanna like get a year in and then I might need to do this for a period. If you're newer to your career, I would be very careful with taking breaks, like intentional ones. Not that I don't say you should, it's just—

Right.

When you're newer, that can have a more negative impact or perspective created for someone, even if it's not legit. It just— you gotta remember, is regardless— the thing is interesting, regardless of context and all the things that make up why a situation is the way it is, people still bring a framing and perspective and apply it regardless of that context. And it's something you always got to remember.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I also think— I also think like being laid off Is like no longer the stigma that it used to be.

Not as much, no. But it might be— that's what's crazy, though, is it's like, is it because it's normalized? But that's the thing, you don't want that either. Like, I don't want the layoffs taking place to be something that becomes normalized. But maybe again, layoffs have been happening for hundreds and hundreds of however many years. It's not a new thing. We just might be, because we're in tech and we're experiencing a new, a new wave and high, you know, a lot of it To us, it's very disconcerting, right? Because it's new to us in this industry.

You talked about something I want to highlight, and I want to continue to reiterate this, and I try to continue to reiterate this, is there is a narrative that is formed in the minds of the person reading the resume that you can't control, but you need to be aware of.

I, um, I brought that up yesterday when Jason and I were doing the resume review. So we were, we were looking at, um, somebody's in the Torque Discord. It was Luke. And when we got to one of the sections, Jason asked me a question. It was basically we were looking at that little bio you can do on LinkedIn. And I tell people this all the time. It's the same when I write any type of communication is don't think about you when you write that. Is when— what is the per— the people that you're trying to get to come there, what is it that you're getting them to think about? What's the story you're trying to tell?

Yeah.

It's not about you in the sense of you're talking about you, but it's for them. And that's really important when communication in general, and especially when you're trying to produce content that's related to getting a job. Very important.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And again, I mean, I would— I, you know, so one of the things back when I was managing a recruiting team at Vaco was we, we, we would all kind of joke, and, and I know this probably isn't kosher, but I'm gonna say it anyways. Whenever, whenever I saw a developer that said freelance, we would always say not working.

Freelancers, freelancers, I'm here for you. Taylor's all over you. I'm here for you.

I got you. Yeah, I know. But the reason why I wanna say that joke is because it's the narrative that we consistently saw. We consistently saw from people who freelance did not have the requirements in the resume to justify what they were actually doing. They did not write their projects the same way as they wrote their real jobs.

That's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They would highly summarize it. They would be very vague. Like, I want to encourage you all, if you, even if you are actively freelancing, like that's what you do, you need to write each project, each client like it's an actual job.

Yeah, I mean, they literally are jobs. That's super weird to me to hear that they would be treated differently.

It was like, we would always be like, all right, you're freelancing, what were you doing? And then they would like say all their— it's like, why wasn't that on your resume? I think there's a disconnect.

Interesting.

I'll tell you this too. I talked with another guy, he was a 2-year developer. I'll never forget this. I've literally told the story so many times. He's a 2-year developer, he's a React guy. It was a few years back. And I looked at his resume, I was like, man, like your resume's fantastic. It was written so well. And I was like, so how much? So I was like, so what are you looking for compensation? What were you getting paid? And he goes, I wasn't getting paid. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like, I've literally taken on a project 10 hours a week for the last 2 years to help my resume. And when I read his resume, it, I mean, it looked the way he wrote it was a 40-hour week, full-time job.

And so I paid—

Yeah, he wasn't getting paid. So like, what, what he was working like, obviously like some other like, like, um, just non-tech industry jobs at the time too. But I would just encourage you all, even if you're junior, you need to write your resume or your LinkedIn the same way you would write your resume LinkedIn as a full-time job. Any, any thoughts on that, Dan?

I mean, I feel like it's kind of straightforward. I mean, it's kind of like a no-brainer to me. You would think, you know, like regardless of pay, if you're doing work, it is actual work experience. Like write it in that format. Like some of the things, like I know there's always context and like flavor and however you wanna do it, but some of these are like kind of a little more binary to me. That's very binary. Like there's not a lot of debate to be had, but of course I'm always open to debate if someone disagrees.

Yeah, yeah. And Jason goes, honestly, didn't we see that yesterday with Noah's resume where there wasn't a ton of detail in his freelance section, but I bet he could have talked about it for an hour? See, this is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about.

And I mean, like, um, so I think, yeah, it was in Noah's, he had freelance and it wasn't bad or anything. It was just, it didn't actually say anything about the actual pieces of work that were done, um, let alone like actually describing what the important parts of it were. And so everyone knows, like, I also started in freelance way back in the day and that was actually one of the reasons when I was newer to the industry, I was able to get people to talk to me and take me a bit more seriously. So not every standard path of work is the only path to show experience and ability. So like freelance is a potentially great way for people to build experience and show.

Oh yeah.

So, you know, don't, don't discount it for yourselves, y'all, if you've done it or you're considering freelance and you might make some extra scratch, you know, like there's nothing wrong with making a little extra money.

100%. Yeah, I'm a big fan of freelance. Um, actually, I just need you to write your resume properly. I think that's the big thing. Um, I, you know, I just thought of something. I don't know if this is— I don't know if this is a good thing to use AI for, to write your resume. I think Jason, Jason just, just triggered this in my mind. We're, we're so much more comfortable talking about what we do and not writing what we do. Is there a tool where you could like just like talk about what you do and then tell ChatGPT to turn it into a resume based off what you said? Is that possible?

I'm sure that exists, but I was going to say we all have that tool. It's literally the thing that the skin carcass that we're sitting inside of. So I do, I do something with the way that I write mine. So I told Jason yesterday when we were doing the stream was, so I have my working copy of my resume and I have my production copy. My working copy is all of the possible content, different variations, like all the pieces. And I iterate in there and get all this, you know, again, different variations. And then I move that in my production copy, which is that final version. So like sometimes I'm pulling new content in or writing it in a different way. Um, the reason I say this to what you said though is I am— there's something to be said of like, I don't know, this is gonna sound really lame and I don't do this often, but I have done it, is there's times where I will take something I write and print it and read it to myself out loud or sometimes in my head.

Yes.

But when you put those mediums and channels, like say out loud what you're, what you're reading or literally go to, um, so let's say you're in Word, um, or Doc, Google Doc, whatever.

Yeah.

Go put it onto a Drive doc or into LinkedIn as like a temporary, like Reading things in different places and saying them out loud, that helps you see the value and quality of the content and if it actually flows or is right. Like, that is a super helpful tool.

Yeah, I do that with reading, uh, my email newsletter I sent out. I actually, like, I have like this editing process I do, but like the final, the final version is me actually reading my email out loud. Because when you read stuff out loud, you catch a lot of issues. We catch— you catch a lot of issues. Yeah, Jason goes, wait, you have a printer? Yeah, yeah.

That's— I couldn't get it to work. But I do, for the record, I do leverage AI stuff for a variety of things across my job and life now. So like, if anyone's ever like, that's cheating or whatever, like, it has been the best productivity boost of anything that I've had in the past few years.

Sidebar question, because we're technically almost at time already.

Oh yeah.

What's— what's— what are some AI tools you're using that you're a really big fan of right now that helps just with anything?

So me personally, I have Claude. I bought like the subscription and I ended up buying a year of it. And I mean, if I, If I show you the history, it's everything. And then so you can see stuff from me trying to buy my house. There's code stuff. There's— I sometimes literally just ask it like what it thinks about something just to see. Or I'll give you like a non-work example.

Yeah.

My dad has a lot of chronic pain issues and he came in and found this article in AARP about this thing called nerve decompression. So I went and I had it summarize this article for him. But then when it brought out and said certain things, I just started kind of poking at those pieces of things that it said and it started taking me down more paths. It got my brain thinking, it brought more information. So like, there is— I really highly suggest if y'all have not tried these tools, don't use it to short-circuit your work or cheat. Use it as a productivity and a learning tool. It is so worth it. So worth it.

Yeah. One of the things, um, that I've actually started— I don't use it a ton, but one of the things I've started to do is, um, when I interview guests on topics that I don't really know, um, uh, I, I— so prime example with Dee yesterday, um, he's a little outside my space, so I want to get read up on kind of his background a little bit more. So I was just like, I just, I went into Grok and I was like, hey, like, what, like, I'm interviewing Dee Murthy, can you give me 10 questions to ask him based off his background? And I mean, it helped me tremendously.

I can give you something specific for, um, for those that are like seeking jobs and doing research is literally go in and talk to one of the bots, like, and ask it about the company you're working in, the space they're working in, like Who are their competitors? What are some XYZ about it? But this, or like, like that stuff, that's a great research tool if you're trying to learn about companies. And again, you can apply this in so many lenses, but like these, take advantage of the tools that are coming out. Like I thought it was gimmicky at first, but now that I use it, like it is a core part of my workflow across my life easily. I love it.

Yeah, Sebastian, I'm using AI right now to better understand data validation. Yeah, I don't know.

I do that one.

That sounds great.

Write formulas in Google Spreadsheets because I'm terrible at formulas.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know any of that stuff. Um, no, I think that's great. I think it's great. One thing is so funny because I always post about trying new stuff. I'm back to Superlist, by the way, for to-do lists. I think Superlist is a great combination of Apple Notes and Apple Reminders in one app. Um, so highly recommend Superlist for tasks. I was on Things, and Things just— it was too— I needed a place to do tasks and notes together, and Things is just purely tasks. So Highly recommend Superlist. That's not AI, but I just recommend it for to-dos. Cool. All right, man. Let me kind of give you kind of the rapid fire and then we'll end it here. So first off, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it, buddy. You're the best, for real. This was a great— like, you're one of the guys that's just, it's like you and Jason, we just hop on and just get after it. First question is, and you've been on but haven't been on in a bit, so this question still is true. If I told you tomorrow that when you wake up, you couldn't do anything in tech, What hobby would you pursue for a living?

I mean, it's always— I think same answer I gave you last time. Snowboarding. I'm obsessed with snowboarding. I love it. I would love to take a year off and just be a mountain bum.

Yep. I love that so much. Second question is, what's like one person in the community that you think is doing cool stuff? Just anybody you're watching or any content you've read lately or any podcasts you've listened to, just anybody in the tech engineering community you want to give a shout out to?

Oh, man. I don't know if I know his actual last name. Henry Helvetica. I stumbled across his blog a few months ago and some of the contributors, the articles in there, like performance stuff too. I really liked it. It was really, really good.

Yeah. I liked it.

It was cool. There's one other one and I'm totally whiffing on their name. So I'll stick with Henry for now. But I'm reengaging now that my kind of stabilizing and in a good path. So that's why I've been enjoying— I mean, that's why I'm in Torque. Like, I like, I like being in the Torque community. It's nice to help there. And obviously I always love you and Jason. Connecting with you guys has been great.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Um, all right, last question because I got a one-on-one here in one minute. Um, uh, if it would be one piece of career advice you would tell young Dan, um, Put the time in, meaning like don't do the surface level stuff.

Like pick something or a few things over time, you know, week to week, whatever, and put super— like go deep and go to the ones and zeros. I don't mean just code. Like I sometimes was very like surface level or I didn't go as deep and it made me like jack of all trades, master of none earlier in my career. So like really drill into things. Like it makes a big difference. I wish I knew that when I was younger.

Yep, I agree. I agree. Cool. All right, y'all. Dan, stay on. Second, say bye to you backstage. But y'all have a great one. That's it for the week, and we'll see y'all in the Torque Discord. Peace.