Julian Sequeira - Pybites, Australia, Mindset, and Teaching New Programmers
Julian, good to see you.
Julian:Yeah. You too, Brian.
Brian:You've got a guitar back there. Do you play? I
Julian:do. I do. Doesn't mean I'm very good, but I play. I started learning in 2010, I think it was, or, yeah, 2010 about that. But then I had a baby in 2012.
Julian:Well, I didn't have the baby. My wife had the baby. And, yeah, then things sort of went downhill after that. I I used to have this this cool vision of, like, I'm gonna sit there and play for the kids. It's gonna be, you know, that traditional romanticized version of playing the guitar for your family and your kids.
Julian:It lasted maybe, I think, a week or so when he started walking. So before that, it was it was fun. It was all fun and games. But then when he started walking, he walked right up and grabbed the strings and cut his fingers on the, the high e. And I was I mean, it wasn't funny at the time.
Julian:I felt terrible, but then the guitar got put away. And, never played it again. No. So it's it's something I've I've I've picked up recently over the past year or so, just to get back into it.
Brian:Okay. It's cool. So you've been playing for, like, over 10 years, but
Julian:Over 10 years. Over 10 years.
Brian:But but I could probably catch up with you if I work hard.
Julian:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Brian:Yeah. I I I feel slightly bad that I'm a gray hair bearded, long haired dude picking up guitar in his fifties. It's so cliche.
Julian:That's the perfect time to do it, I think.
Brian:I mean, I guess it's either that. It's that. I have to do that because I can't afford to buy us the a red sports car.
Julian:Yes. Exactly. Get a nice shiny red guitar instead.
Brian:I I
Julian:have a a nice Lego Fender that I'm in the middle of building.
Brian:Oh, cool.
Julian:You could play that. You could try playing that.
Brian:I wanna get the typewriter, the the Lego typewriter school.
Julian:I saw that. I saw it on the shelf, and we just got back from a trip to Canada. And I saw it there, and it it looked pretty cool.
Brian:So tell me about Canada. Was that a vacation for you?
Julian:It was at first, I I said this on on our podcast for a little bit, but, it was my first holiday vacation in 10 years since 2013. So k. Yeah. It was a long time. But, yeah, it was the it was the best.
Julian:We had such a nice time. It was it was really fun.
Brian:So which half of Canada did you go to?
Julian:So we went to the better half.
Brian:The Vancouver?
Julian:Okay. I'll let people decide. No. We we were on the Ontario side, so we're on the what's that? The east it's closer to the Easter coast.
Julian:Yeah. So
Brian:I've not been over there. I've just been over to, like, Vancouver and Victoria. But You
Julian:see, I I've never I've only flown through Vancouver, and it looks beautiful from the airport. So as you're flying in, you see the mountain peaks out the window. But now we're in we're in the other side. We went to Ottawa and, because my my wife's family's from there. So we went to Ottawa.
Julian:We went to Toronto, Niagara Falls, you know, went to a wedding at somewhere named Brentford, I think it was. Yeah. It was good. A lot of fun. Lots of family time and a hectic schedule.
Julian:Hectic schedule.
Brian:What? Hectic? It's supposed to be a vacation.
Julian:I know. I know. We we we as we were reflecting on the way back, we thought, okay. Next time, let's plan less things. So we we had something on the agenda every day to go see people, do things, hang out with friends.
Julian:You know? It was wild.
Brian:So the first time, my wife and I did an international thing, we was a work trip, but she was my her and the kids were able to go. We went to, stayed in Munich for 10 weeks. But I was working during the week, but it was kinda cool because we just had to figure out how to live life in Munich, shopping and cook stuff. Yeah. But we had the weekends to go play around, and we really had a lot of fun just really getting to know stuff.
Brian:So, and then, I don't know. A few years ago, we my wife and I went to went to Paris, and we were out with a tour, like a group of people. But they still they kept, some half days. Like, we'd have something planned in the morning sometimes, but nothing in the afternoon or or vice versa. And I loved that, like, just the free time to be able to just look around.
Julian:And Yeah.
Brian:So but, anyway
Julian:Yeah. That
Brian:so you are
Julian:That's my, I'm gonna cut you off. That's my favorite kind of exploring. I really love that, being dumped in the middle of a city that you've never been to, and then what do we do? And just walking around to find a city.
Brian:Well, that that was some of our favorite times of just, like, looking at a map and saying, we haven't seen these this part of town. Let's just walk around there.
Julian:Yeah. Exactly. It's it's amazing.
Brian:And, like, Munich's small enough. One one time I was there, I was at, I rented a bicycle. And, you can, like in a couple hours, you can bike around the whole thing. Wow. There's a circle.
Brian:So, maybe it was longer than that. But, anyway, it's possible in a day, at least
Julian:That's fine.
Brian:To ride around. The inner circle. But, Julian Sequeira. Sequeira? How do you pronounce your last name?
Julian:So Sequeira for for my friends, but for you no. I'm kidding. So, Sequera, for almost everyone that I talk to. But, for if you have any Spanish, Portuguese listeners, or anyone watching this, it'd be cicada because it is a it's a Portuguese surname.
Brian:Okay. Cicera.
Julian:Yep.
Brian:Okay.
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:I like it. Portuguese. And, so what are you where's your where's your family from then that where this comes from? Is it from Portugal? Or
Julian:No. No. So it's it's a funny story, but, look, it's not that long, but my parents, somewhere back along the line from my dad's side of the family, they came from Goa in India. And Goa is was, settled or invaded, I actually don't know the history, by the Portuguese at one point. So there's a big Portuguese history influence down there with, a lot of people there have, Portuguese surnames.
Julian:And, that's where ours came from, and it's just traveled around the world.
Brian:Nice. Well, I've got a shorter a shorter, story for Aachen. I I was I was adopted, and it's just my family's name.
Julian:It's a great story, though. Thanks, Ben. Thanks. Share that with me.
Brian:So, you're actively building up the Py Bytes empire with Bob Pheldavos. Right? Exactly. It's so Bob is full time now. Are you full time?
Brian:Are you No. Okay.
Julian:No. No. No. So, years ago, this is this is kind of funny, when the business started growing to a point where we were like, wow. We need to be on this full time.
Julian:We didn't expect it because, I mean, most people may know by now that we didn't expect PieBytes to become a business. Right? It was a it was a blog, and that was it. And then as it grew and we realized, oh, people actually need us, want us to do stuff. We should go full time on this.
Julian:We had to make a choice which one of us goes full time and which one of us quits the the day job and and goes full time on Pie Bites. And while you would think that that would lead to, like, arguments and fights and all that stuff, It was like a 2 second decision because, that Bob goes on it full time. Because we had a baby on the way. There's there's some everything comes back to having a baby with me, I think. And my wife was pregnant, and I went, yeah, dude.
Julian:That's not happening. You go. You you have fun with that. So, yeah, hit and also, you know, relatively speaking, living in Spain, things are a bit cheaper, than here in Sydney, so in Australia. So it was just a no brainer.
Julian:So he went full time, and and, it's been great. So as the business has grown, so has inflation and so has, so is the general cost of living. So I'm not out yet, but, to work on the business full time. But it's something that's, that's gonna happen shortly. Oh, really?
Julian:Okay. Well, in fact, I will say that we were at a point where I could have done it maybe 6 to 8 months ago, And then all the prices went up, and my mortgage almost doubled. And, I was like, maybe maybe not yet, Bob. Let's just stay. Give me another year, man.
Julian:Just hang tight. Hang tight. So
Brian:Your mortgage is doubled. Is that because you bought a new house?
Julian:No. Well, we bought a house last year, but, over here in Australia and this is, kind of funny. I've had a few American or North American mates go, like, what are you talking about? How can you interest how can your interest payments go up on your mortgage? We pretty much only do variable interest rates on your, on our houses.
Julian:You can fix them, but you'll be hard pressed to find, fixed rates that go for more than 1 to, at max, I reckon, 5 years. And I think you'd struggle to find 5 years. So when my mates told me in the states, oh, yeah. We we fixed our mortgage at, like, 1.7% for, like, 30 years. I'm like, I hate you.
Julian:I hate you so much.
Brian:Yes. I probably shouldn't ask you this, but I'm dying to know. How do you figure out how much money y'all make if if it's peaceful time in your part time?
Julian:Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we we, without giving away too much of the the inside scoop, it's pretty it's pretty funny, and I'll and I'll actually, I'll share this story. When we started making over, you know, $500, I think, a month, like, the business started bringing in. And as as anyone who starts their own business will know, that's huge.
Julian:You know, your first couple of dollars, your first hundred, your first 500. You just think, wow. That's incredible. And Bob and I, we both decided, We said, hey. We're we're best mates here.
Julian:Let's let's never let money get in the way of anything. Right? Or the success or anything that might come from this. And we never anticipated we'd even grow to the point that we have today. Right?
Julian:Where, you know, there's there's Bob and myself as the the primary people, but we have a team of, like, 12 or 13 contractors working with us. So people who bill yeah. And and most of them are coaches for the the program and but we have support staff and things like that. Right? And we never thought we'd get to this point.
Julian:But, anyway, I I digress back back to that $500 thing we both said, how are we gonna make sure that we always keep this top of mind? And, so we actually Docu signed a document together that said, if we ever stress or worry about money or it ever gets to a point where we're thinking adversely about cash or it's impacting our friendship, we come back to the stock and remember that we we signed that our friendship comes first. Okay. Above anything else. And so we actually have never even had to do that.
Julian:Money's never been an issue. Bob was the full timer. Right? So it makes complete sense that he, draws a a full time salary from working on Piepites. Right?
Brian:Yeah.
Julian:And me being just a few hours every day, after hours, we just do it on a sliding scale like that, and it really doesn't bother either of us. You know? Yeah.
Brian:Hope you don't mind me asking about that. I was just curious.
Julian:No. Not at all. I think I think we've spoken about it once before, about that document that we signed. See, I I'm
Brian:not surprised that you've gotten huge because you guys are both awesome. And the the, community aspect has been front and center from the beginning of you trying to include and be, I guess, just cool with everybody that you're working with. And but it does it's a lot different from going from 2 people work together to you your bosses now. Right? Yeah.
Brian:People that work for you. That's, weird, isn't it?
Julian:Yeah. It's really weird. We talked about it a couple of months ago. We're like, wow, man. We got we got a team.
Julian:So, you know, we had, I remember the the pride. I think I don't know when it was just a couple of months back. I got a screenshot of it. We had our very first team, all team meeting, and almost the entire team made it. And just to see all those people brought together for the first time meeting each other, because they're all across the world.
Julian:Right? We got people in so many different countries. It was really nice bringing everyone together.
Brian:Was it the the physical meetup? Or
Julian:No. No. No. We don't make how How much money do you think we make? Oh, geez.
Brian:Over $900. It was over $500 off-site.
Julian:Yeah. No. It was, it was, what was it? Zoom. Zoom.
Julian:And it was, you know, the the typical thing, but, man, the energy, you know, Bob and I were both quite emotional. Both, like, I almost teared up. I was like, wow. Seeing everyone here talking and sharing just as the the people realized they had similar interest to other people, over the call as they were introducing themselves. And, yeah, it's been nice, but I gotta admit that the hardest thing is, remembering that we have such a widely dispersed and varied team and that we should we should continue engaging them.
Julian:Right? Just like you expect at the standard corporate workspace. Why aren't we doing anything for the team? Where's my, Friday afternoon drinks? You know?
Julian:So, we gotta we we need to constantly figure out how we do that. So just, just recently, we we bought them all Pie Bite swag and stuff to,
Brian:That's great.
Julian:Yeah. They all have shirts like this now, and, actually, they got more stuff than me. So I'm like, how how does that look? I haven't got one of those. We didn't buy ourselves any swag.
Brian:We should totally do, Michael and I should totally do Python Bytes swag.
Julian:Oh, you should. It's it's so much,
Brian:I want a t shirt.
Julian:It's so much fun Oh, I've
Brian:I've wanted to make, like, testing code t shirts for a long time because I've got a whole bunch of sayings already that I wanna put on there. Like, I like to break thing. That's a good one. Anyway.
Julian:You should.
Brian:I'll tell
Julian:you what, I'll help you with it offline. Okay.
Brian:That'd be that'd be awesome. Nice. But the the swag is important. We're noticing that even at my corporate job of People like their job, and it's good that they like it. And it's cool if they want if they wanna wear some some, like, company swag, get it for them.
Brian:That's great. Because then they're walking around and people go, what's that? Oh, that's where I work. We're awesome, and we do all this cool stuff.
Julian:Yeah. And and that that's not to say that the swag is there to to solve every problem. Right? I mean, if people are interested, by all means, and that's actually what a lot of people were saying. Yeah.
Julian:Hey. We're coaching people. It'd be cool to have a pie white shirt to coach people in. You know? So we're like, oh, yeah.
Julian:And that's what triggered the idea. But, you know, we're we're hoping yeah. If we think big and Bob and I are constantly, like, visualizing 5 years into the future and thinking so gargantuan. It's, it's it's in the realms of insanity for right now. But we would love to be able to, like, treat everyone to, like, hey.
Julian:Let's all go and meet for a week in Berlin. Right? Or choose one of the team and say, we're somewhere in your home country that we could meet. So at least I get out of their hometown or or, you know, somewhere in Europe or North America or something would be nice. You know?
Julian:But, actually, I would I would love to do something in, like, Japan or that would be mad. But they're so expensive as well. But, you know, they
Brian:Come to Portland, and then we could all, like, you know, we could we could be there too.
Julian:It'd be cool. I I wonder why you'd say that. I wonder.
Brian:You know, you could get you could just get, you send them a stack of PieBytes stickers, and they could just they could advertise on any shirt they're wearing, apparently.
Julian:We'll get some, sew on or iron on
Brian:Yeah.
Julian:Iron on stickers.
Brian:Because because pie bites flannel would be great. In the Midwest, maybe Iowa or something. If you got anybody I would love
Julian:to see that. I'd love to see it. Nice. Yeah. Anyway.
Brian:So you guys have recently switched to coaching and done a lot of coaching, right?
Julian:Yep.
Brian:I guess it's not really recent. It's been what,
Julian:2 years? Yeah. It's been, probably 2023. So, yeah, it's been 3 years. Roughly 3, maybe 3 and a half.
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:So you start did you start it before the pandemic then? Oh, man. That's what I'm doing before.
Julian:We started. I'm pretty sure we sent the email saying, hey. We're you know, how can we help you with the Python problems you're having? That's how we kicked off coaching. I think we sent that email, like, 2 weeks before lockdown kicked in worldwide.
Julian:So I think we sent it in February 2020 and maybe January, actually. Maybe January. But, yeah, we kicked it off right as COVID was starting. It was it was a great time to start a to start a business. Just
Brian:not a non brick and mortar business. I think you're right. I think it probably was a good time. People especially, virtual coaching sort of a thing.
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:So
Julian:It it worked out well. I mean, people it didn't at that point in time, COVID wasn't so huge that people were, you know, burnt out from it and stuff. It was, you there was a lot of fear. A lot of the the statistics were coming out and stuff. But and I think, you know, this helped, people a lot of the people who came through the program at the time, for them, it was actually a nice, for lack of a better word, distraction.
Julian:You know? Yeah. They were focusing on something positive like their growth, and we were doing a lot of mindset calls. And, actually, how the program worked back then is very different to how it work now. So, you know, we were doing a lot more one on ones with people, just myself and Bob, because we didn't have a team.
Julian:And yeah. But, yeah, I think it worked out well for a lot of people. It was helpful for their mindset. It was helpful for, giving them something to focus on during, a pretty difficult time. Right?
Brian:Yeah. That's pretty great. I like it.
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:You and Bob are are different personalities. Mhmm. And, Bob's pretty happy, but I have to say you're, like, even a brighter spark than Bob. Take that go to both. Take that.
Julian:Thank you.
Brian:Or or maybe just more open about it. I I guess I want I'm curious. Is this I mean, clearly you have hardships stuff. Is it purse is it conscious that you try to present a positive persona, or you're just generally a pretty happy guy?
Julian:I think, I think it's a bit of it's a bit of both. I definitely have the things that that stress me out. And in the moment, to be honest, most of it's to do with the kids. Right? Because it's like the one part of my life that I want to have a little more control over, but you kind of have zero control when it comes to the kids.
Julian:And I'm talking about things like bullying and and so on because the my my older 2 boys are in school, and, there are things that, you know, that go on at school that you just never be able to control. Who their friends are, how they react to situations. Like, if someone says something mean to them, you know, you wanna jump in and and, you know Yeah. Step in. Right?
Julian:But you can't. And, you know, that that's illegal, I'm pretty sure. So we so those things, they they do tend to weigh in you. But, you know, I think, as Bob and I always talk as I still obviously, I mentioned Bob a lot. That's because he's my best friend.
Julian:Right? And we talk every single day for at least an hour. Right? And then there's at least 10 to 15 minutes of audio messages on on WhatsApp that we're sending back and forth throughout the day. And we we would talk about it that we essentially train on mindset a lot, stoicism and, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, all that sort of stuff.
Julian:Right? We've just talked about it so much through Pie Bites. We've practiced it so much in, what we do every day because to run a business as you know, Brian, you know, there are ups and downs. You've just launched a bunch of cool stuff, and, you know, it's it takes a lot of mindset to be able to push through those days when you're like, the last thing I wanted to to do is sit here and write this damn book. You know, but you you just push through and do it.
Julian:Other days, you got all the energy in the world. Right? But yeah. So with all that sort of I'll I'll use the word training that we've been doing for ourselves on this these topics over the years, it just filters through to the everyday. So, yeah, look, I I do have the things that go on, like, of course, the stresses, the mortgage increase.
Julian:We just had a water pipe burst in one of our internal walls of the house, which is yeah. But, you know, there's that essence of you just and in the moment, I might I might get frustrated. I might be like, oh, come on. This is the last thing we needed. But at the end of the day, you just 5 minutes later, you're gonna go, well, am I gonna sit here and sulk about it, or am I going to focus on what I can control and let that be the thing that makes me happy.
Julian:Right? So getting on top of it, getting the plumber out to fix it, and all that sort of stuff, I'm like, okay. You know? And in I think an hour from now, an an assessor from the insurance company is coming out to have a look at it. And I'm just like, yeah.
Julian:Done. Don't need to worry about it. You know?
Brian:That's great. So it's a you clearly, I think, have a a tendency towards looking at the bright side, then, but it's not free. You actually still have to keep working at it.
Julian:Yeah. It's it's not easy, and there are the tough days, but I think a lot of people, don't pay enough attention to themselves and how they work and the triggers that set them off, the triggers that stress them out. You know, like meetings, for example, could be something that raise anxiety levels in people. And if you don't pay attention to what it is that sets you off and then what it is that recharges you, then you don't have that balance Because sometimes you're just gonna have to do the things that raise your anxiety levels and and stress you out and stuff. It's just part of life.
Julian:But then how are you gonna recharge after that? You know? Are you taking that self care that you need to get back to centering yourself and not enough people do it. And that's I think a lot of people are stressed.
Brian:One of the things I'm trying to do, so this thanks for the therapy's lesson right now.
Julian:Send the pill.
Brian:So I'm listening to a book. I almost finished listening to a book called, the happiness advantage by Sean Achor, I think. It's written in 2010. It's an excellent book, and it's not that long to listen to. But I I'm really enjoying it.
Brian:But one of the things is that he talks about is the effect of just being, you know, being happy and nice to people on the rest of the people you work with. It's there's a whole bunch more, but that's the part we're focusing on right now because there are some topics in meetings that do trigger me, and I can tend to end up being a little surly. So
Julian:I can't even picture it.
Brian:Yeah. So so what I'm trying to do is, make sure that, that I don't end the meeting. It's kinda like one of those things of you, like, never as a as a married couple, you never end end a day in a fight or something. Mhmm. I wanna do that with meetings.
Brian:I never wanna end a meeting with somebody thinking that I'm upset them. So I'm try I'm trying to be conscious of the the the mood of the meeting and if it got dark in any way because of me, to try to try to lift that back up and make sure everybody knows that I appreciate them before before I end the meeting because I really don't wanna be the kind of that guy that brings everybody down for the rest. That's just the problem. So I
Julian:like that. That's it. That's a good one.
Brian:And I I do think that you I imagine that you already do that natural.
Julian:I just well, the thing for me is I just don't have meetings. No. I'm kidding. I just don't go to them. No.
Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you with you on that. Yeah.
Brian:So you, you've had have you you, have you had pretty good luck with your coaches? Any bad bad people that you brought on and went, oh, this person's just kind of not a good coach?
Julian:No. No. All the coaches themselves have been incredible. And, so I don't know if everyone knows this, but the the Python coaching that we do, the coaches, I think all but one of them and and actually aside from 2 of our new specialist coaches, but, all of them have been through the program. They were all our clients at one point.
Julian:So we coach them through building their Python applications, learning those software development skills and best practices and mindset and all that stuff that we do in the coaching. And then they got to the end and they said, we don't want to leave this environment. You know? They're the common sentiment across them all was that we wanna stay involved. We love what you guys are doing.
Julian:We'd love to help you grow. How can we help you with this? And when we got to a point of scaling and needing that sort of support, we're like, would would you come on as a coach? And they're like,
Brian:really?
Julian:You know? And, so, yeah, we we brought them on, and they've all they all it's funny. They, as with building your own team at, what you'd call a traditional job, that as we built this team out, we realized just how, how different each one of them was, how different their styles were. And so it's allowed us to do things like pair them up with, like minded people or people who have similar interests in, that we know that if they this client went with this coach, their experience is gonna be 10 times better than if they went with another coach because of the demeanor and, the tech stack that they wanna use and things like that. So, yeah.
Julian:No. So far, only because this is recorded, so far, everyone's been fantastic.
Brian:Yeah. I hope I hope
Julian:they are listening to this, you know, talk about you. Yeah. No. It's it's great. We we actually don't have any issues with the team, knock on wood.
Julian:We haven't had to have any awkward discussions. Like, hey. Yeah. You're not, it's not working out with you, buddy. Still trying to figure out how to say that to Bob.
Brian:You need to fire Bob. Here's the thing, Bob. He's you to work harder.
Julian:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That man works like 10 hour days.
Julian:Oh, jeez.
Brian:Gonna need you to do 3 YouTube videos a day.
Julian:You did that once. Yeah.
Brian:Well, you you're you're, like, probably this the only one of 2 people I know that live in Australia. Mhmm. Anthony Shaw as well. Right?
Julian:Yeah. And he lives down the road or I live down the road from him, whichever way you want to put it.
Brian:So from the stuff he posts on on social media, and also just my understanding of Australia. Australia seems like it's just full of animals that are trying to kill you. You're just gonna answer with mhmm.
Julian:Mhmm. Well, no. Because if I say anything, they'll get me. They're they're waiting outside the door with a baseball bat Cricket bat. Okay.
Julian:No. It's, it's true. It's a 100% true. There's, it's it's not as scary, but, yeah, it's when I think about it, it's constantly at the back of my head that there is some that you gotta check. You know, you gotta you gotta walk into a room check.
Julian:And, you know, there are people here who just aren't phased by it, like Anthony. Right? It doesn't phase him. He's not worried about spiders and stuff. But me, if I see a spider on and burn the house down, right, I I'm not a spider person.
Julian:But I'm also I'm fine with snakes. So, you know, if we see a snake in the backyard or something, I'll just as long as it's staying where it should be staying, like in the bush or something, I'm like, yeah. Whatever. But you know?
Brian:Well, are there snakes that can hurt you?
Julian:I mean Yeah. Okay. Well, you Oh, yeah.
Brian:In in, in the northwest, there's rattlesnakes, but they don't. They're usually in the drier areas. So Okay.
Julian:We don't
Brian:get rattlesnaked in in, like, in the suburbs. Not that I at least not in mine that I know of. And if you know different, don't don't tell me. I'm talking to everybody listening. Yeah.
Brian:But, like, I lived in Colorado for 4 years before I learned that we had both tarantulas and scorpions that were just in my neighborhood. Oh. And I didn't like that.
Julian:Wow. When I I remember our old house before we moved up the coast here and and bought this place. The neighborhood was relatively new. It was only like 10 years old or something, and it was built with a sort of national or regional park around it. Lots of bushland, very dry.
Julian:We had kangaroos in the front yard every day, during the summer. It was it was, you know, it was a nice place. And during those bushfires a couple of years ago, it was a it was a scary place. But, yeah, we would have, so there's a Facebook group for the local community. And every couple of days, especially in the summer, there was a, oh, yeah.
Julian:There's a red belly black snake on this street. Just make sure you stick on the the other foot. We cross over to the other footpath. And and those are those are super dangerous. And I'm like, really?
Julian:And you'd go you'd go for a drive down the street. There it is just sitting there on the pavement, just warming up in the the morning sun, you know, and you'd be like, okay. Just gonna stay in the car. Yeah. So I've had people with snakes crawling up into the wheel well of their car and then disappearing, and so they had to leave their car at work.
Julian:So a snake catcher could come out and remove it from their car. Oh, jeez. Like, oh, we'd come tomorrow. So he's at a taxi at home. So, yeah, it it happens.
Brian:So is are kangaroos in the front yard a problem?
Julian:They were because they would leave their their droppings.
Brian:That's a
Julian:really nice word. All over my front yard and I hated it. I'm like, oh man. But it was it was kinda nice. Like, you'd get a those days I was, you know, getting up early to go to to work.
Julian:And when I pop out the front door, you'd see them scatter like teenagers getting busted with graffiti. They just look up and then they just 3 of them would just run off in different directions. You know?
Brian:When when we're in Colorado, I'd have we'd have, rabbits and wild rabbits in the front yard Mhmm. Which are pretty, but the you know, rabbit droppings all over the books.
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:And then, but occasionally bear and deer in the backyard. Mhmm. And so we couldn't grow anything because they would just eat it. But, also, cleaning up after a bear is not,
Julian:like, as in it's Yeah. Drumming?
Brian:Yeah. You need a shovel for that. Not not a good thing. Anyway, It's
Julian:a great topic, by the way.
Brian:Yeah. Animal poop. Finally, an episode my daughter will listen to.
Julian:It's about time.
Brian:So, one of the things that you mentioned was, teaching Python to nontechnical people or at least teaching coding to non tech people.
Julian:Do you
Brian:other than like your pie bites thing? Or is that what you're talking about?
Julian:Or it is through pie bites. Yeah.
Brian:Okay. So really, you've, do you, how do newbies come to Python Bites or Pie Bites?
Julian:Yeah. So it's it's something we kicked off sort of randomly, serendipitously because we with the coaching that we do, it's generally for people who already have a knowledge of the foundations of Python. Right? We don't wanna be teaching people at that point. We're like, okay.
Julian:Well, know the foundations, know how to write a function. It doesn't have to be perfect. Know, you know, how a four loop works and so on. Right? But we kept getting people who knew very little to nothing wanting to be coached.
Julian:Right? And we didn't have anything for them, and we felt really bad that we kept sort of turning them away. And, so we built another program, and that's the PyBites developer initialization program. So in it, we we started calling it PDI, PyBites developer in it because of the, you know, in it levels for servers and, you know, computers and stuff. But no one no one sort of got it, and we're like, okay.
Julian:We gotta get rid of that that joke, or that reference. But anyway, so we, we take people who know Xero and they're traditionally from the non tech roles. Like, you think about roles like recruiters and, salespeople, marketing, EAs, you name it. Right? They're generally roles that require using computers, but very little to, well, no programming.
Julian:Right? It's not part of their, skill set for doing those jobs, even program managers, project managers, that sort of thing. And so we're taking people who don't even know what the command line is. They don't have any CLI, on their computers other than the basic say, CMD for Windows. And we're teaching them to code in 6 weeks.
Julian:And so it's been a different experience, but, oh, man, has it been fulfilling. It's been so much fun seeing these people who just never thought that they could ever learn to code, that it was for the realm of the nerd, you know, people like me who live and breathe text since they were kids. Right? They they thought it's not possible. And then within 6 weeks, they're coding in GitHub.
Julian:They're using branches. They're making pull requests, going through code reviews. They're understanding, Python as they read it read through their own application. They're talking about feature requests and just, you know, it's one of them. Yeah, one of them talking about, oh, this is a decorator I've got on this, this function here.
Julian:And I'm like, wait. Wait. You're talking decorators now? Who are you? You know?
Julian:And, it's just it's really fulfilling to see people showing proving to themselves, through the coaching that they can actually code and then taking it back to their day jobs. Right? And making those changes. So
Brian:Well, I imagine it it varies, but why are people doing this? Is it is it so they can communicate with other people that do program or to actually because they want to write stuff themselves?
Julian:A lot of them, it was because they wanted, to skill up. They wanted to stay relevant. They've paid attention. They're seeing that, coding is becoming more and more prevalent, chat GPT, you know, that the technical aspect of computing is starting to become more and more prevalent in their day to day. And they want that leg up.
Julian:Right? They they want to make sure that with all the things happening in the job market that they stay relevant. And so they're using it as a supplemental skill for their jobs, like, to automate certain things they do. Some of them are looking to move into development or development adjacent, roles, you know, like go into DevOps, go into, any sort of systems engineering, any, support roles where they might be able to use some of their technical skills. Right?
Julian:And just, yeah, that's the motivation, honestly, so far has been people just wanting to prove to themselves that they can do it. And then, actually, an unexpected benefit as well is it can also show people that they don't wanna code without making them invest 5 years in a computer science degree. They go, they can come to the program, learn it, and go, yeah. You know what? This isn't for me.
Julian:And then drop it and walk away. You know? So, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's very it's to me, it's very satisfying because it's one thing to coach people who already know how to code and this is something they've lived and breathe. They love tech, all that sort of stuff.
Julian:But to coach people who don't believe that they can even do it and then show them they can, that's something different. You know, that's something special. So that that to me is really nice.
Brian:Do you think there's a place left still for people that are going off and getting a 4 or 5 year CS degree?
Julian:What do you mean a place for them?
Brian:Well, like, do do does anybody need to do that anymore, or should they just do 6 weeks and go from there?
Julian:We're going to open that box. Hey. Look, I see why people say that you need to. Right? And and there are very specialist positions, I think, out there that require that level of in-depth knowledge, right, of computer science and algorithms and all that sort of stuff.
Julian:I disagree that everyone needs to do it to get into the industry. I'm very strong that, I have a very strong opinion and belief that if you can do the work and work your butt off and network and code and build and just build your portfolio, build your presence, and just show that you are passionate, that you can learn, that you can grow, that you love this stuff, that you have just as much chance of getting these jobs as someone who's just spent 4 years, 5 years, whatever it is, getting a comp sci degree. In fact, I think we should be putting our money where our mouths are. Right? Like, if you want a software job, there's so, I mean, there's many there's lots of jobs out there.
Julian:Right? But with the amount of demand, the amount of people going for these roles, you kinda wanna see that they can do what they can do and, that they say that they can do. And I think a coding interview is the worst possible thing to be people to do. I think it's backwards. I think it's just a disgusting practice.
Julian:Oh, I'm going to get that far.
Brian:What do you mean by that? Like, the the whiteboard sort of a thing? Or
Julian:The the ones that put people through stress. Right? If you're going to ask people to live code in front of you
Brian:Oh, yeah.
Julian:You know, I think that's really mean, you know, to to I think it's really mean. I think you're not gonna get the best out of people, and that's not how we code. You know? Yeah. We could with resources and with time.
Julian:And so, okay, if you're gonna ask people to do something at home, okay, if you're gonna ask people to demonstrate their code by, hey. Show us something you've built, and then let's talk about it. Like that, that's really special, I think, because then they can talk about their own project. They can talk about their motivations. They can talk about the coding.
Julian:You'll see the excitement in their eyes as they relive that code base and talk about, oh, yeah. I remember I got stuck on this function because this is what got me. You know?
Brian:See, I and I think we're actually gonna probably gonna see a resurgence of, coding interviews. See, I I I haven't tried to hire anybody since the, since chat gpt came around. Mhmm. So pre chat gpt, one of the things I liked to do was to send people a code example or a problem, like just a toy problem or something or through 2 or 3 and say, here, write up 1. Write this, you know, come up with a coding solution for this.
Brian:And then, also write tests for it. Because Oh,
Julian:yeah. Nice.
Brian:Because I'd like to see mostly, I'd like to see what test cases they think are important, for making sure something's working. And the and they're all pretty easy stuff, but I I'd like to have something to be so we can talk about during an interview. Yeah. But now, if I did that, I would just assume somebody just throw it into chat GPT and let them do it. And they it and it would even write the test for them.
Brian:And as long as they understood the answer, they could just turn that in. I don't know if that's useful or not.
Julian:Well, you know, and that's the change, you know, Bob and I talk about a lot is that, yeah, it's going to be in there being used by people for for exactly those scenarios. Right? But the thing that everyone needs to really get their head around is the code that chat GPT spits out, is it safe? Is it accurate? Is it actually gonna work?
Julian:Is it gonna break your system? So if you don't understand what it's spitting out, then there's no point even asking it. You know?
Brian:Yeah. But and I think I think, like, why would I have a problem with that actually if if I hired somebody that could, like, just figure out how to do everything quickly?
Julian:Exactly.
Brian:Why why is that bad? I'm not I don't know.
Julian:That's exactly right. Yeah. And that's that's where we where I kind of see the evolution of this is that you use it as your pair programmer, as your coding assistant. It's like, hey. You know what?
Julian:I need a a function that does this. Can you quickly write that in Python and accept these inputs? Right? And then it spits it out, and you're like, alright. Perfect.
Julian:That's a great framework. I'm gonna edit it now for my use case. And I
Brian:guess, like, part of it's a fairness thing of, like, if I've got some you know, if if I'm spending 8 hours a day working on stuff and somebody else can get that much done in 2 hours because they're using an AI
Julian:Mhmm.
Brian:Is is that fair? You know, I don't know.
Julian:Well, maybe it comes back to the days of do I use the Internet or go through that 20 volume of Encyclopedia Britannica on my shelf?
Brian:Well, yeah. Also hey. The one one of the things I wanted to make sure to to, let you know is since I talked with Bob, one of the things I've done is launched the, the pipe test course. And
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:The some of the people on some of the coaches on PyBites have access to it, and they've gotten I've gotten some good feedback
Julian:from Nice.
Brian:Not not just, hey. It's nice, but also some actual changes that needed to be made. So Nice. I appreciate the feedback from our team.
Julian:No. I love that. Did you pay them for it? No. I'm kidding, Dan.
Brian:Well, yeah. I gave them free access to the course. Yeah.
Julian:And by the way, congrats on the course. I I saw that. I was like, man, this is awesome. Just putting out stuff. I mean, you only just launched the version 2 of the book when last year, was it?
Brian:Yeah. Like, but, you know, a year it's been almost a year, and that's forever in, in Internet time.
Julian:Tech tips. It's It's ancient.
Brian:But but it's a it's a thing that, like, the reason one of the reasons why I wrote the second one is to try to have a nice ramp up for people, and I always knew I wanted to write a a course to go with it. And so finally getting around to actually doing it, it's it's good to do that. So
Julian:or gonna feel good.
Brian:Yeah. It's and I and I imagine, like, somebody sitting right next to me. That's what I want the whole course to it's like it's like we're just sitting next to each other, and I'm telling them about stuff. It's less of a lecture format. So anyway Yeah.
Julian:What was the I was gonna say, what was the biggest challenge with, with, launching this course?
Brian:You know, stupid things. Like Yeah. Like, like, how much editing should I do before? Stupid things like pricing, how much to price it for? What's too much?
Brian:What's too little? But there's there's, like, real I'm I'm I'm going through, like, Michael Kennedy, like, wrote his whole back end for his course. I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. So I'm going through, like, a third party course system.
Brian:I'm using teachable. And but then there's costs associated with that. And so I need to make sure that, like, the the fees are such that, you know, that it works. And there's annoying things too about it. I mean, I love the platform, but there's there's there's always annoying things.
Brian:Like
Julian:Yeah.
Brian:In order to hook in PayPal, I have to give up a couple more percent to for even all the sales that are not PayPal. Like
Julian:Oh, wow. Okay.
Brian:Weird things like that. It's like, that doesn't make sense, but Yeah. Whatever.
Julian:It's funny. All the stuff you have to factor in that actually has nothing to do with the course.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah.
Julian:Yeah. Totally get it.
Brian:And like, how big should the font be, when you're recording?
Julian:Oh, that beat me in the butt back in the day. I remember that. Yeah.
Brian:Well, I I personally so I learned this from from Michael's doing large fonts. And and so I'm doing so much recording now that I just leave the the same large font on all the time. We've got a big monitor. Right? It's fine.
Brian:Yeah. Right. But but it turns me nuts when I'm watching somebody else's tutorial, and I often I watch tutorials on my phone a lot. And the the I can't see a damn thing that, like, little tiny they're, like, they're not even using all of that. It's all it's all crammed up into the upper left hand corner, and they're talking about it.
Brian:What let me zoom in on that.
Julian:Yeah. Mike taught us the same thing back in the day as well with the 100 days courses. He's like, it makes you increase your font, change your resolution of your monitor, and all that stuff. I'm like, oh, jeez. Okay.
Julian:Alright.
Brian:Well, I was kinda used to it anyway because when I was writing the book, I needed to make sure that all of the code examples fit in a reasonably short, I mean, small window and everything. Mhmm. But I don't know if I'm and I'm working on a new book too, so we'll see. But, you know, that, that's probably, like probably be worth it's one of those, like, I'm writing a book, and it'll be 10 years later before it's actually comes out. But
Julian:Tell me it's a romance novel.
Brian:Romance, though. Although, I am, like so 50 how old am I? 53 now?
Julian:I
Brian:think when I turn 60, all tech people have to start writing sci fi novels.
Julian:Yes. Yes. Be the next, Brian Herbert or, Kevin j Anderson or something, please.
Brian:But my goal is to, have a couple more tech book and then, write a sci fi novel in my early sixties, have them not work, not have them not sell very well. So then I have to start a cult.
Julian:I like how much thought you've put into this. This is a great road map. I don't know. Can I subscribe to the cult? Do I have to give anything?
Brian:You seem to already have one. You've got you've got a, like, a business model that people pay you to interview for 6 months, and then you offer them a job.
Julian:Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that that way. It's a great recruitment model.
Brian:It's nice. I should try this.
Julian:We're geniuses, Bob and I. Evil evil geniuses. Yeah.
Brian:Well, I guess the last question I had, it was just circling back to Kit. How old are your kids?
Julian:So I have 3. I've got an 11 year old, an 8 year old, and an almost 3 year old. Yeah. But they're they're awesome. We you know, we're living the good life up here.
Julian:The kids are, the kids are happy. They're enjoying school, that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it's it's good. And the 3 the almost 3 year old rules the house. That was our daughter.
Julian:We went for the 3rd and thought, let's, let's try for a girl. And we got lucky. Got a girl, and now she, owns us all. So I'm surprised she hasn't come hammering on the door yet because she's probably awake. Stomping around the house.
Brian:Well, I'll I'll probably let you go. I've got 2 girls, and I love it. My my youngest says, dad, did you wish for a boy? Like, no, I did not wish for a boy. I wanted another girl.
Brian:And she's like, oh, why? I said, because we had all these clothes, and I could save some money by recycling the clothes.
Julian:You should that's when you should have said because we failed with you 2, so we wanna try again with you.
Brian:No. But no. I love being a I love being a dad. So
Julian:Yeah. It's a lot of fun.
Brian:You're gonna teach your kids to code?
Julian:I've tried. So you know what? I look at you mentioned you mentioned Anthony Shaw. I look at him, and he's, like, teaching his kids code. He's sitting at computers with them.
Julian:You know, he puts the screenshots on Twitter and all that stuff. And I'm like, I hate you, man. My kids we we so I should message him. We haven't we went out for beers just before, my trip to Canada, and I haven't seen him since I got back. But he my kids won't even look at code.
Julian:I think I've talked to Python and stuff for so long that they hate the idea of coding. Like, they they're like I'm like, do you do you boys wanna learn how to code? I'll teach you. Do you wanna try this? And they're like, no.
Julian:Thanks. And then I'll be like, you know, you play Roblox. I can it's not even Python. You can learn to code with Roblox and, you know, you can do make your own maps and things like that. Yeah.
Julian:Okay. We'll give it a try. Lasted 2 days. No. Thanks.
Julian:So
Brian:Well, they're still young.
Julian:Yeah. You know? They get you know, I've I've given up on the boys now, and I'm focusing everything on the my daughter. So, got no one of those kids coding books. It's like, here's how what an algorithm is.
Julian:You know? So,
Brian:so she's 3, so she'll never know a world without AI. Though. That's true. Weird.
Julian:Yep. Grew up during COVID. All the things that she'll, grow up as in thinking this is just how it is. You know?
Brian:She'll she'll have, like, a phone, and she'll say, like, Siri, make me a sass app.
Julian:Siri, get get me a job. No. No worries.
Brian:I loved, catching up with you. We should talk more often. Yeah. So, Julian, thanks for coming on the show.
Julian:No worries. Thanks for having me, Brian. Thanks everyone for listening. And, yeah, Brian, you take care. Really enjoyed it.
