building the brand: golfing 36 holes, learning php, and building community | ep. 20

That was that was also. That was also not it.

It's a good day for a good day. Sending big love in a big way. Yeah, it's a good day for a motherfucking good day. Okay, a little bit of time.

Not the best start to this trip. My coveted DJI Osmo has died on me. So had this whole like beginning frame shot set up for like. I got a new camera at the Nashville airport and it doesn't even turn on. It's like completely bricked up. So I'm gonna go to a Best Buy probably today. I'm going golfing with my dear friend Colin, so I'll bring you along a little bit for that. But, uh, we're in Denver for Laracon, so, uh, we're gonna use this thing for my video camera until I can get some— get a DJI. So let's have a little fun. Let's play a little good game of golf.

Got what we want, but we still want more, you know.

Beautiful day on the golf course. Um, your boy is Uh, maybe breaking 100, maybe. We'll see. But man, look at this. It's been a great day, great day of golf. A little warm-up for the golf tournament tomorrow. Colin, you got any wise words of wisdom? Don't suck. You're gonna get super tight and nervous, or just hit it down the middle. That's fine too. That might be your best drive of the day.

Beautiful.

Well, that's golf for you. Perfect 3 shots and fell apart. Didn't even finish the hole. 4 over. I hate golf sometimes. Alrighty, just got back to my hotel room from just an amazing afternoon golfing with Collin and doing dinner with Sarah and Collin and their kids. Quick backstory, my wife and I used to work out with Sarah in Nashville. And then we met her husband. Actually, we hung out with them the night we found out we were pregnant with Ari. So they've been dear friends of ours ever since. So great first day traveling. Super excited to bring you along tomorrow for what truly is day 1 of Laracon with the speaker sponsor golf scramble and then the mostly technical happy hour tomorrow night. It's gonna be amazing. Otherwise, I'm tired. It's time to get some sleep.

See you tomorrow.

See you in the morning.

Peace.

Alrighty folks, we did it. We got the DJI. We got a new one. I don't know what happened. I would say after after a few years, it is officially kaput after all the drops from the vlog. So we got the DJI this morning. It's day two, day one truly of Laricon. I'm gonna take you along waiting on Jason right now to get here. We're gonna walk to breakfast. It's gonna be a great, great morning. Pump for this DJI.

Hey. Homie hanging on my neck, the bracelet matches the set. My brother name is Tina Dollaz, I put her back and forth over the net. My mama wish I would've went corporate, she wish I would've went exec. I still turn to a CEO, so the lifestyle she respect. Hey, 2 sprinters to Quebec.

Jason, you getting the camera ready? I got my camera ready, you get your camera ready. Jesse, do you have a camera?

You know I gotta bring the Jeep.

If people think if you're the first to apply, you have the best chance, but it actually depends on how the recruiter sources the role internally. So prime example, and I'll just use me for example. So when I worked at Vayco and I was like actually like sourcing, we would, when I would post a job, I'd get, this was pre all this stuff, so I'd probably get 100 to 200 applicants, right? Which is not near as much as it is now.

Right.

So the way my system aggregated resumes was The first people to apply were actually at the bottom. The way the system— the way, in my view— There's a technical term for that. Yeah. So, and then, so if you were the last, you'd actually be at the top.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of companies now starting that are like, that are using AI to like figure out and aggregate this better. But yeah, I mean, like, like, and I've talked— I have a group chat of like 15 engineering managers or so on like a Signal group chat, and I just kind of pinged them various questions. And I asked them, I said, hey, when you guys post jobs right now, where do you post right now? Almost all of them said we pretty much only post on our careers page now. So the career page allows less riffraff to get through, and every single engineering manager was like, I immediately go to my network. I mean, we even have—

Yeah.

We have a Laid Off Lounge series where we bring in like a guest speaker just to Talk about, you know, and I try to get hiring managers in. We had a guy named— a guy named Guy. He was a design director at Thomson Reuters. What's his last name? Uh, Ch-something. Cherkovsky, Church, or something. Kelly Vaughn introduced me to him, but he said that he, when he needs to hire a designer or something, he goes into like a Discord or Slack that he's in and posts it, which is Why we're so big. I mean, even in our Torque Discord, we post jobs that we're not even recruiting on that we see so you can reach out to that person directly. Because in my opinion, like, if you're applying, you basically just have to throw that resume in the trash.

Yeah.

I don't care what Laravel does. I'm not a developer, but I love Hank. I met Taylor Otwell. I'm, you know, Chris Sieb. And so I am I'm here because of those guys. I'm not here because of Laravel. And it's the same thing, like, I think companies need to apply that really at the end of the day. Like, why do you think D2C brands hire these influencers?

Yeah.

It's the same thing, but the problem is, is that it's hard now that I'm on the other end of it with like budgets, I mean, in like leadership meetings, it's hard to say, hey, we're gonna put a lot of support around Jason. People know who Torque is because Jason's yapping in the Discord 24/7 or posting online. So like, and, and again, that's what I'm thinking about in 2026 is like putting more support around us because at the end of the day, since we're in community, people want to resonate with people. People don't want to resonate with companies. Absolutely great little coffee meetup to start the networking engines with James and the Makeshift crew. Um, so James, thank you so much. Back to the hotel for a little bit and then, uh, off to get the clubs ready, play a little golf.

Bring them girls to the stage 'cause somebody's getting paid and free big slime out the cage and shorty tried to play it cool but now she wish she wouldn't.

All right, Jason.

Hey, buddy.

So what we about to do? Oh, why am I Patrick? That's what Patrick— that's what— that's a Patrick on me. That's, that's what Pat— he goes, all right, what are we doing? Well, no, we need to flip camp. Well, are we? Hey, Jason, what are we doing? What's up, Taylor? Hey, we're about to go golfing. We're gonna go golfing. Hit the Larabelle Golf Tournament. I really hope we're on the same team because that would be incredible. You excited? I am excited. Um, it's not a standard golf format. I think that'll be fun. We're gonna try to livestream. Yeah, it's also gonna be fun. You're incredibly stressful. You're stressed. Okay. I love when there's like really Really great shots of those stupid bridge fence. What? Now is it? Now it's recording. Is it go time? It's go time. It's go time. Oh, you ready? Signups, baby.

All right.

Hopefully we're on the same team. Oh my God. Same team. I'm gonna cry if we're not.

So many cameras.

Look who it is. Look who it is. The man of the week. I'm gonna take some notes. Good to see you.

What's going on?

Are you on my team?

Are we friends? I don't know.

I mean, I have I have, uh, Tayson Jores and I, uh, are on the same team, or at least the same—

I'm green.

Clearly I'm not. Y'all are red.

Lame. It's okay.

But yeah, Jason, he played great.

He played—

I mean, so far I think I feel good. We're playing 9 holes. Yeah, and it sounds like they're not like real golf rules, so I feel like that actually could be fun. It sounds like we're just playing tag for 9 holes, like actual tag. I would argue that putting you and I on a golf cart together may be like the worst thing possible. Was not the best. It's like, it's like blind leading the blind. All right, so hole 1 that we're starting at is the hardest hole on the entire golf course, and we're playing from the tips. Hey, that was okay. Perfect.

Perfect.

All right, so I've hit twice and I've lost 2 balls, so we are absolutely not off to a great start. I played some of the best golf I've ever played yesterday, and then today I've literally lost 2 balls on 2 hits. That was, that was also, that was also so bad. I think I pulled something. So just to be clear, 1,000% just nailed that putt. There it is, man. That would have been great to capture that. That would have been— I almost wish we had a guy that knew how to work video. All right, great day. Well, we could have played better golf, but it was still a great day at the Laricon Golf Scramble. Headed to Mostly Technical Podcast meetup. So Aaron Francis and his podcast, they're throwing a little rooftop meetup. So we're gonna go out there. There's so many people who wanted to get into that, that there's an after— there's a party for all the waitlist people. And guess who's sponsoring?

Torque.

So we're sponsoring the waitlist party. For the Mostly Technical podcast. So Jason's gonna head that up. I'm headed to Mostly Technical, then probably will stop by at the end of the night across the street. So bring you along, be a fun time.

What I see the most of on social media is your ambassadors program, because what happens is like, you two are great. I love you. Y'all put a lot of content.

He said you two, not just you, by the way.

Y'all, y'all put out a lot of content, but there's only so much of you.

Sure.

And when— and I think there's a lot of people looking for jobs that might not relate to you.

Yeah.

What I'm saying is that you're— what y'all are trying to do is you're trying to expand your community in a genuine way, and you can't quantify those results. It's a feeling. It's got to be like qualitative.

But you're saying we're the Nike of the job search?

You have to be the Nike of the job search. Yeah, it's about brand. It's about brand. It's not about how many people you It's not about how much revenue you got. It's about how does the community feel about Torque, you know?

Good morning. Day 2 of Laracon. New swag, new swag alert. So torque.dev in the front. I'll show you the back later. It's this circular for devs, by devs. I'm pretty, pretty pumped about this, this t-shirt that we'll have in the, we'll have in the store here soon. Anyways, cloudy day here in Denver, which is kind of nice. It's been brutal last 2 days. I have my friend Colin who let me borrow his golf clubs coming to pick me up here soon for breakfast. We're gonna grab some breakfast real quick and then headed to the conference for the full day. You know, last night was really cool between like the speaker sponsored dinner. You know, I was at the table and they're like, who do you work for? And I was like, Torque.dev. And they're like, oh, I've heard of you guys. Like, Six months ago, nobody said that, right? So that was pretty tremendous. Let's go get some coffee. I was a little stuffy from last night talking.

Rest in peace, thoughts.

Make today a good one.

Pigeonhole, I'm a night out. It's a different mode.

Heading to Laravel, Laracon, Laravel's conference at the Mission Ballroom.

No, I would have you courtside, not the middle row. All good love in a minute though. I can't stress about no because I'm a timid soul.

Plus, oh hey man! Oh hey! Oh speaking of Xbox. Hey, what's up dude?

Listen everybody, my name is Dave. I'm here with Mugs and we're talking pancakes.

There you go. Hey, I'm in for pancakes today.

For real?

From eight to ten pancake booth.

Come by.

Flapjacks. Get Dave's flapjacks. That would be awesome. All right, so great first. Morning at Laracon. I'll tell you what, that is a heck of an event. One thing that's really cool is, again, so spoke in Barcelona, the Java conference. One of my first projects was a Java project for a client. I remember recruiting Laravel back in like 2014, 2015, and to now like know a lot of the Laravel staff, you know, hung out briefly with Taylor Otwell last night and at the conference today. You know, just being able— it's just, it's just again just a pinch-me moment seeing where my career has gone from not knowing anybody at any of these companies to then, you know, sometimes speaking or just being entrenched with the company like we are with Laravel. Just a really, really cool experience.

Really cool.

Day one after party for day one. Torque boys are gonna show up. Vibes are immaculate. Probably gonna stay for a little bit because I'm tired. Then we're gonna do it all over tomorrow. Water. Just because they're turquoise, stay hydrated. All right, day 2 in the books, uh, with Laracon. I'm tired. Incredible night tonight networking. Um, got to catch up with the founder of Tailwind. That was crazy. Didn't expect that. Um, so Adam, thanks for hanging out. Good conversation. Um, got to catch up with my guy Michael Chan. Chantastic. Conversations like tonight, it just really fuel me up to, um, just continue to keep doing what we're doing here at Torque. So heck of a night. I'm going to bed. See y'all tomorrow. Alrighty, we are off. Day 3 of Laracon. Last day, best day. Off to Huckleberry Coffee, uh, for the Dads in Tech meetup. So super pumped about that. Um, so let's go.

I need some coffee.

I'm tired. Oh, this networking food's awesome. All right, so back near the hotel. I'm actually at, uh, the other Huckleberry, uh, coffee shop near my hotel. So, uh, shout out Huckleberry for your amazing cold brew. Um, honestly, some people would think, hey, the Dads in Tech meetup today was a flop, only had Trey show up. Trey, I appreciate you being big guy. Um, listen, this is what I talk about all the time. Sometimes you throw meetups, sometimes people show up, sometimes people don't show up. We had about 5 or 6 dads confirm they couldn't get here for one reason or the other. Totally fine. Still had an amazing hour session with Trey, getting to know him. Um, and Trey does a lot with the Dads in Tech meetup in Denver. So Trey, I appreciate you. Thank you for showing up. Um, also just had a call with a founder who is about to raise a $22 million Series A investment, wanting to hire engineers in Mexico City. Talked about our community-first model, talked about how we do assessments for developers, talked about how we have a technical matching team. He really loved our process. So hopefully we'll be able to work together, TBD on that. But it was a great conversation. And then now I'm crushing some work right now. And then we'll head over to Laracon this afternoon. But I really got to be heads down to work right now. But man, look at this. It like, well, you can't really, I mean, you can't feel the weather, but it's 70 degrees right Right now, and no humidity. So your boy is taking advantage of working outside. I love you, Will. All right, final day of Laricon in the books. We are done. Unbelievable events. Just finished watching. Watching my dear friend Will King speak and then watching Hank and Samantha from the Laravel team talk about community updates. I even got some ideas and some inspiration from Hank and Samantha for like all of like the 10 minutes they spoke. So just amazing people, literally cannot say enough. I think this is really like my first company conference I've been to. Like I haven't been to Vercel Shift. I haven't been to obviously React Miami's GTI, but the G2i folks. So, so I guess the second company-led conference, um, and man, I think it's just such an amazing marketing tool for companies to be able to showcase not only their internal talent but the community that they've built. So Torque put us on notice, we gotta do something like this. Let's head to the leadership dinner we are now throwing for Torque with a bunch of founders and C-suites. It's gonna be an amazing time.

Run around, run around, gotta let loose, and I still got the crown like a bad toothpaste.

First off, introduce yourself to the camera. It's your first cameo on the vlog. This is interesting. All right, so first name, last name? Tony Dodds. What do you do at Torque? I'm a client partner with Torque. Nice, awesome. All right, so how'd you think tonight went? I think it went really well. Yeah, it was great food, great drinks, great people. So making some new connections, and I definitely see there's some interest going Torque's way coming soon here. So I love it. some excited Cubs. That's awesome, that's awesome. Hey, how'd you think the site went? I think it was awesome. Yeah, I mean, it was small, it was intimate, but I feel like it was better that way because we all got to like interact doing the like musical chairs where everybody kind of got to talk to all the little subsections. And I think some people that live here made some new friends. Yeah, and yeah, that's kind of what it's about. Well, it was really cool too because someone with VP of Product, uh, Brynn, Bren was like, "Hey, my company has an engineering manager role posted for Walter, who was looking." Yes. So I mean, like, Lily, that's huge. Now, Grant, I mean, that's power of community. Hey, power of community. Say that again. Power of community. Don't do that. Cut that.

All right.

All right. It's time to go to bed. I'm tired.

Press, press, squeaky clean, wide awake. What a dream. Hey there.

Hi.

Hello.

What's the word, baby? Tell me you know, because I know.