Finding a Job Through Community w/Appwrites Nishant Jain

Okay, it's live now, I suppose.

Yeah, it is. Twitter— I think Twitter may be down potentially. Good morning, everybody. Yeah, I think, uh, I think Twitter may be down because, yeah, mine and yours are not going live. That's weird. Good morning, everybody. Uh, it's all right, we'll just hang out on LinkedIn today. Um, please say hey, would love to hear from you. Um, I'm gonna keep trying to go live right now, but anyways, good morning, happy Monday everybody! We are live. Hopefully y'all had a great weekend. Um, for those of you in the US, hopefully you are surviving, uh, the, the daylight savings. Um, because, uh, I will tell you this much, when I woke up this morning I was like What is happening? It is still dark outside. So hopefully, you know, I saw a joke on LinkedIn. They're like, or Instagram, it's like, did we do it? Did we save daylight? Which I thought was funny. So excited. So hopefully you guys are doing well. Hope you guys aren't dragging too much. I know I was dragging this morning, but I feel good now. Hanging out with my guy, Nishant, this morning. Excited to talk about some Appwrite, talk about some community, talk about some job search tips. Um, so again, as always, if you are watching, please say hey. Would love to hear from you. Uh, I did finally get enough notifications that, uh, Twitter is down for some reason, so that's great. Um, but again, if you are watching on LinkedIn, on YouTube, please say hey. Would love to hear from you. We are 30 minutes early this morning because I have a meeting I have to get to, um, at 9:30 Central, so I don't want to do too much yapping this morning. Um, I do want to make some announcements. First and foremost, Want to give a shout out to Appwrite. I'm an Appwrite hero. Deshaun's an Appwrite hero. Jason Torres on my team's an Appwrite hero. So, um, uh, great product, great service. Please go check them out. Um, and we're going to talk about them a little bit, um, as we dive in here this morning. Um, but again, shout out Appwrite, uh, for the sponsorship. Um, also, uh, if you have not checked out all the things the Torque community is doing, please go to torque.community. Um, it is our community webpage. We have all of our live streams there, a calendar. We have some job search resources. We are live still taking ambassadors for Torque. So if you, if you like to write, if you like to create video content, if you just like to be an ambassador for somebody, we would love to take you. So please go sign up. That is on the torque.community page. Also, listen, if you want to be kept up to date when I go live with amazing guests like Deshawn, Um, please text me. This is actually my number, 615-235-5650. Um, uh, I just text live every time I go, who I'm hanging out with, so you can decide to join or not. Um, but again, uh, please text live, um, and, uh, and text me. And again, this is actually my number. Uh, we got a few people tuning in this morning. Roxy, it's good to see you. Mark, yeah, we are so dragging. Coffee number 2. Basu, good morning. Taya, it's good to see you. Ricardo. Jason is here in the house. The Appwrite community is so helpful and nice. We love it. Good morning. Chris, good morning. Colin, it's good to see you. And it's great to see some of the Torque community out here this morning. Again, if y'all continue to tune in, please say hey, right? One of the most important things about this show is I want others to network off the back of this show. message people that are in the comments, message Nishant, he'll talk to you as well. Um, and, uh, again, this whole thing is just to develop this little ecosystem where we can all hang out together and network together so we don't have to go through our career alone. So enough with me, um, uh, talking. Nishant, wanna pass it over to you. Who are you? What do you do? And we will dive in.

Morning, morning. Uh, how's it going over there? How's the weather first?

Well, it's great. Well, you know what? It's beautiful. It's warm. I actually went golfing yesterday, which was great. So, uh, uh, it's fantastic. Awesome.

Awesome. So by the way, for the folks who don't know me, I'm Nishant, as Taylor introduced, and I have been working as an integrations engineer at Appwrite for a while now. And I have been part of the Appwrite community for like 3 years. I have been a community enthusiast for a while. where, you know, I have seen how dev communities can open doors and create amazing opportunities. From just being, you know, a community member to now at— now an, you know, integrations engineer at Appwrite, it's been a wild ride. And by the way, for the folks who don't know, Appwrite is an open-source backend-as-a-service platform, or should I say cloud platform? Well, you know, I should not give a lot of hints, for that, by the way. Yeah, so my work at Appwrite mostly, you know, revolves around different tech stack, and it's amazing how much I get to learn from Appwrite, and, you know, how the community is very supportive. It's been amazing so far. And to all folks who have tuned in, thank you for joining in, and I hope you enjoy the stream.

I love it, I love it. You're a pro, man. I can tell you've done this before. You kind of got your thing down too, so I love it, I love it. 2 streamers. I love it. All right, so let's talk about Appwrite. What's some cool stuff going on? What's some cool stuff you can talk about? How can people use Appwrite more? Let's obviously plug it a little bit. I love the crew over there. I already love you and I've known you for like 17 minutes. But yeah, talk about what's going on in the Appwrite ecosystem real quick.

Yeah, sure. So Appwrite offers a lot of functionalities and features such as storage, databases, messaging functions, and even a lot more. And I'm pretty sure like there's a big feature that is coming very soon that is going to, you know, take places and it's going to, you know, transition Appwrite to a whole different place and it's going to be amazing. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell, you know, what it's about. Yeah, but like, you know, it's going to be like really huge and I'm really excited for that.

That's awesome, man. That's awesome. All right, so let's kind of get started in your journey, right? I mean, so we were chatting backstage, you've been kind of community first for 4 years now. Um, you know, I had Leon Noel on the show talking about community. I've had a lot of people talk about community, and like, I don't kind of plan this, right? This podcast is for the job search, but community always comes to the forefront. Can you talk about— just let's talk about pre-community Nishant. What, what did you see? What prompted you to get involved in community? So let's talk about before the 4 years of Community First Mindset.

Uh, that's, that's really a great question. So, you know, for me, uh, specifically before community, I was no one. I did not have a public presence. I didn't know, you know, how to interact with folks. I didn't know, you know, how to, uh, socially get well with people, how to grow in career. There are— there were a lot of aspects that I was not aware about. Community itself has brought me a lot of, in general, guidance, I would say. When I was starting out in my college, I didn't know how to really get a job or let's say how to contribute to a product itself, whether it be open source or something else. Community itself played a huge part within getting me the very first job. Uh, so how I started is a whole different journey where, you know, I just collaborated with a few folks, uh, from my college itself where we went to a hackathon. We were just, you know, 3 folks, uh, who were, you know, really having fun from the ideation phase to, you know, winning the hackathon itself. It was my very first hackathon. And after that, you know, a lot of folks started, you know, showing interest. Uh, so from the 4 folks, we, we became 8 and then 12, and the number went to like 50 to 100. And then we actually decided, you know, to, uh, you know, to have our own community, uh, which we named as Hackors, uh, which is, you know, a funny name for hackers. Uh, so yeah, we transitioned it and, you know, from like, you know, 100 members to now it stands over like, you know, 2,000, 3,000 members.

Oh, for real?

Over different socials. Yeah.

And so you started this in college?

Yeah, right.

And, and it was mainly just you getting some friends together Just to go to a hackathon?

Yeah, that was it.

So, so you went to the hackathon and you were like, hey, this is fun, we should keep this going. And so then you and your friends just start, and then you got like— so, so what, what have you learned kind of being around people all the time like this? Like, like, what have you learned about your career, about yourself? Being in community with others?

Yeah, that's a great question again. So I think, yeah, I'll, uh, you know, a perfect aspect for it to be is, you know, how it transitioned me from, you know, uh, being, uh, like not aware about a lot of things that is going within the market. So communities are, you know, you can also think of it as the updates that are, you know, uh, going, uh, within the tech field itself. So for me, uh, I got to know that, you know, there is this whole different domains that you can, you know, explore, whether it be front end backend technical, uh, you know, technical field or non-technical field, there are a lot of things that you can explore in general. And, you know, having folks who are very like-minded in terms of, you know, who have, uh, good knowledge of tech space. So you can also meet, you know, senior folks around the community as well as junior folks. So what you can do is always learn from the senior folks and pass it to the junior folks itself. So that helps a lot, uh, and that also helped me when I was junior. Yeah.

I really like that because you're like Yeah, like, I, I just know what's out there, you know. It's interesting, I, I've been a part of some conversations online, but it's like you don't know what you don't know.

Yeah.

And I think coming out of college, like, I didn't know what a recruiter was. I didn't know anything about the tech industry. Like, part of me wonders if, like, I mean, I'm exactly where I need to be, don't get me wrong, but part of me wonders what if I had exposure to a whole nother field, right? Could I have been a doctor? Probably not. Could I have been something other in tech? Probably not. But like, just even the exposure is so underrated. Any more thoughts on that?

Yeah, yeah, actually you're very correct at this point, you know. So I, when I was in the college, I was not aware of, you know, the folks and, you know, how big the communities are. Yeah, so I didn't know who, uh, who, you know, Eddie had a different open source community which is like quite huge, 100 devs. Let it be, you know, different communities, uh, which I was not aware of about, right?

Yeah.

So the very first community I think was, uh, like, you know, the Eddie's community, Eddie Hub. Uh, so I joined and then I got to know that, you know, uh, there are folks who are hiring in the market, uh, you know, who are looking for, uh, you know, like-minded individuals to participate in the hackathons and Uh, there are folks who are, you know, very open to, you know, speak about their personal growth, career growth. Uh, so that is something that, you know, I really looked forward to because the very first conversation I had was a lot of mentorship that I got from a senior engineer, and that, you know, uh, changed my path, uh, moving forward.

So, so, so you're— so what I'm hearing you say is as somebody in college, you got partnered up and got to talk with senior people and that transformed your career.

Yeah, very correct.

Huge. How did you get your first job in tech? Let's talk about that. How did you get your first job in tech?

Very interesting question again. The thing is that there's a huge quote that goes around the community in general that is learn in public and build in public. That's a huge motto. Uh, so, you know, I have been sharing blogs and videos on my social media, and the very first job that I got was, you know, I, I made a video for Appwrite itself. It was about a login form, and that caught a— that caught an eye from a founder, uh, who was— it's a startup from India, and they approached me after seeing that video, you know, why don't you join us and, you know, create something similar, uh, work around contributing the product that you have been doing to, you know, different products as well. So they offered me and, you know, like that was an instant hiring. So they, they messaged me in the evening and by the night I was sent an offer letter and I was basically hired. Yeah.

All, all because one video?

Yeah, one video. And, you know, my work around the communities and the contributions that I have been, you know, making.

What was, what was, what was the video about? Do you remember like the technical subject?

Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a technical video. It was around, you know, how you can quickly create a login form within 5 minutes. So yeah, it's really short. Yeah, I love it.

They just saw the video and they're like, hey.

Yeah, I think they also, you know, did a background check with on my GitHub and the contributions that I've made around the open source, uh, uh, products. So I think they really liked that as well, and they were also, you know, keenly interested, uh, you know, seeing me active over the public, uh, or social medias. So yeah.

Yep, I love it, I love it. Uh, and then my dear friend is in the chat this morning. Um, he is fantastic. Please go reach out to him. Um, I want to go to hackathons real quick. I mean, it's something that we're talking about with Jason at Torque as well. Um, can you talk about the importance of hackathons specifically? I know we talk about community a lot. Can you talk about why hackathons are so good?

Yeah, so hackathons in general are, you know, so, you know, imagine working in a professional environment, uh, but you can do it in 2 days. You can deliver something that, you know, you are supposed to deliver within a month. You just supposed to, you know, work around and, you know, you can deliver it within 2 days.

Wow.

So you get to, you know, work in a very fast-paced environment where you basically, yeah, basically, you know, that there's this rush that you have to deliver, but at the same time you have to deliver something great that would make an impact. So I think hackathons in general, you know, create a lot of sensibleness in terms of engineering and, you know, contributing because you know that there's this whole team that you're gonna work with. And this is the same environment that you will, you know, come across when you're working in an office, or let's say in a remote job, or when you are collaborating with the people. So hackathon is like, you know, the way to go if you are, you know, really seeking, uh, to collaborate with, you know, your, your folks around you. Like, you know, let's say a team of 4, and you deliver something, uh, you know, amazing at the end of it.

Do you, do you feel like, uh, when you do a hackathon, do you feel like you almost bond with people faster because you have to work with them so intensely?

Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I— yeah.

So it's like getting thrown to the wolves or thrown in the fire. Like, you kind of have to just go.

Yeah, right. So, uh, yeah, I believe yes. Uh, you know, the bonds become great because, you know, the— from the ideation phase itself, uh, so you get to decide, you know, what you are gonna work on, and then everyone, you know, comes around and thinks, okay, this is something that sounds right and that this is something that we can deliver. So, you know, that all-inclusiveness of delivering or, you know, thinking about an idea itself, you know, just starts this spark to contribute till the end. So I think, yeah, you definitely get in a, you know, good go-to bond and that really helps in a long-term connection as well.

I love that. Brian, it's good to see you, brother. Brian comes in here. Feels like there's so much pressure around hackathons. How can you encourage more people to contribute? What are your thoughts on this, Dushant?

Yeah, good point. So I think the, the reason specifically behind, you know, so the term pressure coming around the hackathons is because, you know, uh, hackathon sounds so complex. So for the folks who haven't, you know, participated—

Yeah, like it sounds, it sounds complex to me, to be honest with you.

Yeah, yeah, it does. Uh, and I think that's why, you know, folks feel like, you know, it is something really huge. It's just like a, uh, global competing event that, you know, you can't really win, and it's just really complex. But it is not like that. You know, for every hackathon there's a beginner-friendly theme, and I'm pretty sure like a lot of MLH hackathons in general support a lot of, you know, there's a different track prize for the beginners project as well. So everyone can contribute irrespective of their tech stack. Let's say if someone is good at writing, so they can, you know, possibly possibly write the contents of the websites and the headings, and you know they can collect the images throughout the you know Google and provide it to the team so that. they can use it in the website. So I think like, you know, it's all beginner-friendly and it doesn't have to be too complex.

Do you, do you think the complexity comes in with how the company is maybe positioning the hackathon, not necessarily the hackathon itself? Do you think it's probably more of like the company's branding and messaging around it potentially?

Yeah, that, that could be like, that is true in fact, because yeah, I believe that a lot of, uh, a big companies, you know, uh, you know, brand it as, uh, competitive events. Yeah, but that is not— yeah, yeah, but that is completely not it.

Do you think, like, I mean, I guess, like, then, I mean, I, I know we're kind of going off the, the rails here, but this is, this is why I like doing this and taking people from the audience, is that, like, do you feel like hackathons, even a hackathon could be super simple too? Like, could it be like, hey, we're trying to work on this project, we just need like 5 people for— I mean, could, could, could a hackathon even be super small and still be effective? Do you, do you think that's possible?

Yeah, I have a very great example for that.

Yeah, please go ahead.

Yeah, so I created a website in a hackathon where it was, you know, so the website wasn't like super— like there were not, not a lot of features in the website. It was just a simple landing page. But the idea behind the hackathon was to, you know, make impact for the environment where we were gonna use old clothes, or let's say, you know, used clothes and donate it to the folks. And, you know, and once you donate your old clothes, or, you know, just the idea was to rebrand clothes so that we can provide it to the fashion industries. And I think that idea was impactful itself. So we were awarded, like, you know, we won the overall hackathon just for the idea.

Really?

And, you know, the passion behind it. Yeah, the passion behind it. So yeah, we did put a lot of efforts as a beginner and they did see it. So yeah, we were awarded, uh, so I think, yeah, I love it. It does make impact.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Um, all right, so I— we have 10 minutes left, so I definitely want to get to, you know, you and I were chatting backstage. You, you said you have a pretty, uh, you know, really a pretty good story, um, uh, in your career going from, um, what would you say, going from 5th try to Green Rider. Is that correct? So The position before Appwrite, you said you had a really good job search story. Do you wanna talk about that story and how you got the job at Greenrider?

Yeah, I think, uh, I think there might be some confusion, confusion, but it was like mostly related to Fifth Try itself.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Go ahead. Fifth Try.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, yeah, you know, I already talked about it, but I'll just, you know, come again. So the motive, uh, behind, you know, the communities is to share your work, uh, with the folks around the community and outside the community, right? So, uh, you can go— so my very first LinkedIn post was me making a simple, uh, HTML landing page, which was like really bad.

Okay.

And I also did— yeah, I knew it was bad, but I still shared it because I knew that, you know, uh, it's good to build in public. Uh, there might be some people who don't even know this and they might be looking forward to learn that. Um, so yeah, sharing this on the social media, you know, creating content and blogs and videos. I think that caught the eye, that caught the eye of the founder from the Fitra. And then, then, you know, I got the job for that. As I told, you know, learn in public, build in public. The video was catchy. They got me on their team and it was amazing because I, I also grew their community from like, you know, from few hundred members to thousands. So yeah, it was amazing.

Okay, so your first job in tech was because you posted something, and then the opportunity you got at 5th try was because you posted something.

Yeah, posts. So the thing is that, you know, it's, it's all together. So the contribution, the public, you know, all the content that I shared, it all, you know, brought everything together to, you know, making a good presence and the good profile that, you know, caught the eye of the founder.

Man, that's crazy. That's so awesome. That's so awesome. So talk about, um, uh, talk about kind of your journey to Appwrite. Um, obviously I think it's incredibly important to have an ambassador program, Heroes Program, uh, as Appwrite calls it, because you have been in the program now for how long before you started working there?

Uh, I think I have been here for like 1 year, but before that, you know, in general with the Appwrite community, I have been, uh, contributing like, you know, it's been 3 years.

That's awesome.

And even—

that's awesome.

Yeah.

So, so, uh, talk, talk about why companies like, like an Appwrite, like a Torque should have an ambassador or a hero program. Talk about the importance of that as somebody who was in it and then got a job because of it. Talk about the importance of having a hero program.

So yeah, you know, so, uh, so back When I started in the community, I was just a member. Then I got upgraded to being a Discord/community moderator. Then I came into the program. Where as a hero or as a developer ambassador, I have created content, I have hosted events and sessions around the community. The contributions within the developer ambassador programs means that it really shows how well you are connected and how you are seemingly, uh, or, you know, deeply, uh, there with the product itself in terms of let it be contribution or, uh, the communication or, you know, the bond with the team itself. It shows it all because that's how you interact, uh, with the folks in the community and outside the community, uh, uh, and you in general also, you know. I have done a lot of, uh, growth, uh, things to, you know, drive people to the product itself because I love the product.

Yeah. Like it's genuinely amazing. Yeah.

Uh, the very first instance why I joined the Appwrite community is because, uh, how their engineers, you know, when I was in the hackathon, the very first hackathon I was talking about, I was facing some errors in the Appwrite when I was integrating Appwrite because it was the first time integrating backend as a service platform. And they helped and they came together helping me out, uh, you know. And since this is, this is the thing about the community folks in general, they always want to contribute back. So I, I choose the same. I, I promised their engineer that, you know, I'm gonna make blogs and videos around it.

Yeah.

And yeah, and I'm gonna contribute back in the community, and I did so. And it's been 3 years and I finally transitioned into a job.

That's so awesome. I love that. I love that so much. Um, uh, talk about, talk about, I, I mean, I don't know if you've done this, but talk about the importance of just actually having one-on-one conversations, right? I mean, you're in just networking, right? I mean, we've talked about hackathons, We've talked about building public, you know, we've talked about ambassador programs. Have you taken on networking like one-on-one conversations? I mean, have you really done that throughout your career?

Yeah, a lot of them, I would say.

Really?

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Talk about the importance of that.

Yeah, I think it's really important to, you know, so there are a lot of folks in general in the community that you are probably talking on the, let's say, Discord server. It could be a public discussion. Where, you know, 4 to 5 folks are in general, you know, contributing to it, to the conversation itself. But, you know, so if you think that, you know, there's this person who can help you out, you know, in terms of, let's say, guidance or mentoring regarding your career or related to your, you know, personal growth. So I think you should— so I have been doing this stuff. So if you see anyone who is, you know, more experienced or in general, even if it's not experience, but there's something that you can learn from them. just, uh, hit a DM and, you know, just ask them, let's, let's get on a call, let's do one-on-one and let's discuss things, let's, you know, talk about this stuff, that stuff. And I'm pretty sure, uh, you know, they would like it. Does— I'm pretty sure like it's, it's, it's going to be, uh, really positive.

People— I, I— and correct me if I'm wrong— I feel like people genuinely want to help.

Yeah, I agree.

Like, and, and, and I feel like if there's enough And this is why I'm so big on people commenting on this live show and like obviously the Torque Discord. And like Jason's working on a directory for us so people can reach out more intentionally. But I really feel like if you have something in common, I really feel like people are like want to help you and want to have a conversation with you, right? So that's why I encourage people to reach out because I really think people will have more conversations with you than you think. Thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think, you know, folks really want to help. Even I myself, you know, if I have a DM, uh, from someone who is seeking, you know, personal guidance or, you know, just, you know, want to ask something related to career, I'll never deny. Yeah, you know, this is, this is the best part of being a, you know, community guy. So you know that, you know, you have been there, like you have been at that place where you were seeking the same mentorship from someone. So yeah, uh, so I, I'm always open to that. I'm pretty sure like a lot of folks are open to that. So, so never be shy or afraid to, you know, uh, send a DM or asking about Dragon.

Yeah, I love it. All right, so we're gonna wrap up here in 3 minutes. I got a question from SO on TikTok. I have a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from Purdue, graduating 2023. Any tips in Nashville? Send me an email and I'll get you some tips, SO. So taylor@torque.dev, you can find it in my profile. Taylor@torque.dev. Shoot me an email, SO, and I'll give you some advice for the Nashville market specifically. All right, so last few questions. First off, if I told you tomorrow that when you woke up you could not do anything in tech, what hobby would you pursue for a living?

I think, yeah, great question. I would do HR for sure.

HR? Just HR?

Yeah, I think, and that too, a non-tech one for sure. Like, you know, I— yeah, because, you know, I love in general, you know, having a conversation with folks and knowing more about them, you know, how they are, how they think of this thing, how they are going to perform there, how they are going to, you know, shape things up. So yeah, I would definitely, you know, pick something up that would make me, you know, have conversations with different folks from different regions. For different roles.

I love that. That's awesome. Second question, what do you like to do outside of work?

I love playing ping pong a lot.

Really?

So, okay. Yeah, so I have been, you know, I played, uh, some good levels, uh, you know, I've been to state and district levels.

Wait, for real?

Yeah, yeah. So I have played. Yeah, yeah. So I do love ping pong. I— that's my thing. And yeah, the games, of course. Yeah. Hit me up if you are playing something and I'll be there online in a while.

I love it. I love it. If we're ever in person, I'll play ping pong and just get waxed by you. Third question. I want to give somebody a shout out in the community. Who do you think is doing a good job in the community right now you want to give a shout out to?

I would give a huge shout out to Jason. Jason has been a part of communities for a long, long time. He has been doing great. I have seen him putting a lot of efforts, being consistent. Uh, that is something that, you know, everyone can learn from Jason, that, you know, how to be consistent. You know, that, uh, he, he takes everything, you know, uh, very like work-related in general. And, you know, he thinks of, uh, making sure that, you know, he's providing valuable content and making sure that, you know, he's been, uh, uh, nicely, uh, he's been in touch with everyone for a long, long time. So yeah, uh, Jason has been doing amazing.

I love it. Final question, and I gotta bounce for this meeting. What's your biggest piece of career advice you would tell yourself, tell young Nishant as he's getting started? What's your biggest piece of career advice?

Talk to people, join communities, learn in public, build in public.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, y'all, thank you again for today. Nishant, you're the man. It's so nice to meet you and hang out with you. Guys, tomorrow, Shaundai Pearson on the show. Shaundai, Uh, she's wonderful. She's at Netflix. Um, so getting her back on the show. So tomorrow morning, 9:30 AM Central, Shondae Pearson on the show. It's gonna be great. And then Wednesday, my dear friend Aaron Harmon, who's an incredible recruiter, is gonna be on the show. So y'all have a good one. Deshawn, thank you, my friend. I appreciate you. Stay on so I can say bye to you backstage real fast. Y'all have a great Monday, and we'll see y'all tomorrow.

Peace.