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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to the eighth episode of the front end happier podcast. For this episode, we have an interesting topic. Today we'll be discussing the topic of living and working in Silicon Valley. Today is also kind of a special episode. We almost have all the panels here. Brian Bolts is the only one that did. Let's go around the table and give brief introductions. Ryan, you on set us off? Sure.

Ryan Anklam
I'm Ryan Anklam. I'm a UI engineer at

Jem Young
Netflix. I'm Jem Young. I'm also you aren't here Netflix.

Sarah Federman
Hi, I'm Sarah Federman. I'm a UI engineer at LinkedIn,

Derrick Showers
and Vegas this year, and I'm a front end engineer at Evernote. I'm Derrick Showers, UI engineer at LinkedIn.

Ryan Burgess
And I'm Ryan Burgess, a UI engineering manager at Netflix. So before we dive into the topic, if you haven't listened to any of our previous episodes, we like to pick a keyword for each episode. And when we mentioned that keyword, we take a drink. So since today's topic is Silicon Valley, what have you decided the keyword will be this week? Hey area, awesome. So anytime we say bear area, we will take a drink. Before we get into today's topic. I also wanted to give our listeners some context to highlight what Silicon Valley actually is. Silicon Valley is a nickname that was given to the area in Northern California. Basically, that area is Santa Clara Valley, and the southern half of the peninsula to San Francisco. And I think some portions of the East Bay is so considered Silicon Valley. The word Valley actually refers to Santa Clara Valley, and the word silicon came originated from the large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers in the region. That's actually where Silicon Valley comes from.

Sarah Federman
Fun Facts. Not Silicone Valley.

Ryan Burgess
It is not Silicon Valley. If anyone has watched Chelsea Handler, its peak on Silicon Valley Soliris episode. She mistakenly does that. And then Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix actually has to explain it to her what it is like not every now. And actually the other night, I was out for dinner with a graffiti artist by the name of Scam he was visiting from Toronto, and he'd never been to San Francisco before. And he actually asked me he's like, why are there so many startups here? I didn't really have a good answer. Like I felt, I don't know. Does anyone have an answer for that? Like, why do all startups basically resonate in Silicon Valley?

Sarah Federman
Is somebody started it

Jem Young
started with like, Intel sunray. They were they were originally in silicon? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
it was a lot of them. And I think, from what I've read and understood to is a big part of it is all the VC money that's up here. What do they call the Sandhill Road is a girl he sees are so if you have a startup, you typically need funding. And that's where the funding is. So I don't know if that's why I don't know if there's any other reasons why.

Jem Young
It is really gives that later. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Well, before we get too far into a TA, how long has everyone lived in? In the battle?

Ryan Anklam
Yeah, I've been here two and a half years. And you're from Wisconsin in 2013.

Jem Young
Nice premiere months came here from New York.

Sarah Federman
I've been here since January, and I lived here last summer. Came from upstate New York, which is not this close. No.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I've been here around like two years to me. I was born in Cali. But yeah, more and more. But were you born. I was born in Santa Barbara Fremont played with the Santa Ana. So more more North than Yeah, I don't really see any of the LA stuff there.

Ryan Burgess
So more north in the Bay Area.

Derrick Showers
Yeah. I was actually just gonna say I've been here in the Bay Area for two from Philadelphia, so east coast as well.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. Um, I've actually just making it over three years here. What is the biggest difference that you guys found, um, Silicon Valley into where you were before moving out here?

Jem Young
The weather, the weather? I mean, I'll say this. I like seasons, because I grew up in California, actually, from all over Southern California and telling us what is one summer and slightly less. But here, it's fantastic. It's like the weather's great all the time. Grant. I made a whole year but I like consistency.

Ryan Anklam
Yeah. I've noticed from from Wisconsin out here. I've noticed there's a lot more specialists. So on a roomful of front end engineers here, right. And back in Wisconsin, most people were full stack developers did kind of a little bit of JavaScript, a lot of dotnet. And there's a lot more people specializing in different technologies. He's in different parts of the stack out here.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I've heard a designer that I used to work with that moved back to Colorado was saying the same thing on for their stuff. It's like they expect designers in, you know, other parts of the country, other parts of the world to like do everything from visual design all the way through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript says like they want. Same type thing.

Sarah Federman
They also be a function of just they hire more people here.

Ryan Burgess
True. And so you're getting more specialist people and out there too, you're probably expected to be like unicorn. The end is like paid at one salary, you're doing like five jobs, but you should be paid five salaries. One thing I found, too, is like coming from Toronto. There's a lot of agencies there. So I did a lot of agency we're big part of you know, here that I really like is that been working for an actual company and you're constantly like trying to make your product better. And you're focused on that when in an agency, you're kind of in and out, you might have like a month or two on a project, and then you're done. So I like the fact that like being working for a company that you're constantly making things better and improving along the way,

Sarah Federman
is totally agree. I also came from an agency and I just, I feel like I learn things way more deeply. Now. They're just like learning Best Practices rather than getting code out the doors.

Ryan Burgess
You don't have that? Well, we have deadlines, but not that like, Oh, my God, the client needs this tomorrow. And then you're done.

Sarah Federman
And sometimes it's like the deadline comes and you're like, we're not ready. They're like, okay, we can push back the deadline should not work.

Ryan Anklam
Like it's not we're shipping some shitty, broken experience for your customers. Customer experience is important. But I think in this room, too, we're follow stable, big companies that are kind of established, is that different in the startup scene? I mean, other I think it's a little bit more hectic. Sure. Yeah. It's a little small spot up there just trying to get that product out there.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, Augustus and I both worked at Evernote. I feel like I mean, they're still in startup. I mean, they're like six years old or something. So it's a little bit older of a startup, but still had that mentality of having to get certain things out the door really quickly. And I think there were harder deadlines for that.

Jem Young
I think one of the biggest differences of being here in the Bay Area. It's just the influence of tech has here. So tech is like, tech workers are maybe 70% of the city, maybe. But like the influence is huge. Everybody talks about very polarizing shuttles, people hate that tech workers wrapping up the rents. But it's so funny because New York has a high tech scene too. But you don't get to talk about tech as much. There's also finance and sales and advertising. But Silicon Valley are not Silicon Valley area. This is Tech has so much influence here. It's crazy, because we're less than 10% of population values influence a lot of what's happening.

Ryan Anklam
To my mind was the first time I drove up from San Jose to San Francisco. When you just do like the lower part of the city. There's this big sign by Twilio and it says, Ask your engineer you know, it's like they have a billboard. Yeah, people ask our engineers like that never you wouldn't see that in Wisconsin ever.

Ryan Burgess
When I was seeing this it's really funny because even go to LA all you see is like movie billboards. That's the big thing there become a here is Twilio, it's Braintree. What else is there? Apple MailChimp. There's all these different things that are totally geared at tech people. And that's the billboards you see like across the entire Bay Area.

Derrick Showers
Actually, like just calculating here I got like an ad for with like a lawyer, right. Did you get like, that's always interesting. Other interesting thing you brought up a user invited me up with Caltrain is there's not is what's also very unique about here is you sit on public transit and everyone around you is talking about code. Oh, yeah. Sometimes it gets exhausting, quite honestly. But um, you know, definitely when I first was here, and even now kind of time like but when I was writing Caltrain every day, like I just want to

Sarah Federman
play the game where you like sorta listening? Yeah.

Derrick Showers
Game what language they're taught, so does that mean it also like looking at that person's screen and seeing exactly what you're doing?

Sarah Federman
Like it's also weird like coming in different neighborhoods, like going into a barn so much like everybody's talking about the stuff of where I live. It's like, it's a bunch of like, finance people in suits and stuff. pletely different. It just there's so many different sections, the Bay Area

Ryan Burgess
so sometimes we talked about hearing about tech we can see in the different billboards and you know, everywhere you go, you're kind of surrounded by tech and sometimes Here it is referred to is that we live in a bubble. Do we actually live in a bubble? Does everyone agree with that? Or you feel like that? Yeah,

Jem Young
absolutely. Yeah. No question in my mind. Like, easy, easy, lazy example is all these startups built for iOS, one of the vast majority of the world uses Android. It's like, it's right there. And I tell people that when they decided, I was like, why don't we go for Android? Well, you know, use iOS. And I'm like, everybody else doesn't MCSA machine. Yeah, exactly.

Derrick Showers
I think another good example of why we live in a bubble is the importance that's put behind things that do not make money. It's like, oh, you know, I'm not making any money, but my growth numbers are off the charts. And then they just get more money. And then they just, you know, that's the trade off. So that's definitely a good sign.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, the money will come in.

Sarah Federman
It's also like, the bubbles that we're talking about here. It's like, there's one about just tech in general, right now, there's so much money being poured into it. And we're starting a little bit. But there's also the bubble of like, we live in Silicon Valley. And we have a different perspective, because there's so much saturation here.

Ryan Burgess
I think even for you know, when you think of like testing your app, or something like that, I know, so many companies do user testing, user testing in in the Bay Area does not count. If you're going to use your test, you need to go outside of this, like outside of Silicon Valley. It's like that's not the ideal place to be testing.

Derrick Showers
The demographic here is like so skewed towards people who are very, like tech savvy and true, you know, and your target market might be. Yeah, but

Jem Young
also in the average salary of the San Francisco area is extremely high. So yeah, your your startup that comes to your house and watches your dog for you. A pretty stressful startup. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
What's it called Grover?

Jem Young
Startup, I just see how many startups we can pick up just like stupid ideas, to see if they are real.

Ryan Burgess
Well, don't you just like throw the Uber of this? Like, it's like, that's the new thing is like you just say, though, well, I can understand that.

Jem Young
I was. I was speaking at React Rally last year. And I had a joke and jokes are called tattoos for babies. And it turns out, that's a real startup. That's your baby. So like, if you got lost or something? I don't know. It was a real thing. Someone sent me the article. And I was like, No,

Ryan Burgess
did you find out when it started? Did it like start because you kick that off at React?

Jem Young
Awesome. valuable company.

Ryan Burgess
I don't. I don't I wouldn't tie myself to that one. Oh. Yeah. CPS.

Jem Young
Yeah. But still, yeah, you're you're crazy, stupid idea that it might work here because people are they make a lot of money. They don't like to be inconvenience in my work here. So you're like, Oh, yes. And then you move outside. That's a story of a lot of companies in Silicon Valley.

Derrick Showers
actually kind of building on that something. And this actually doesn't even pertain to Silicon Valley specifically. But hackathons also have also kind of blown up. Like when I did hackathons in college was like, pretty chill. But now like hackathons you like apply? No, like full lie. I call it submission. Great. Hey, like, give us a resume? What are your projects, and you might get into this hackathon to compete, and then you get like, a startup? Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. There's like so many huge hackathons now, and you have to like full on apply just to get into them.

Sarah Federman
I've gone to diversity number.

Ryan Burgess
How do you know it's a diversity thing?

Sarah Federman
We didn't really say that. Well, so I went over slack. Yeah. And like, basically, all the people on the slack are like female designers and also did HTML CSS. And that was it was not that kind of hackathon. I knew like nightmare because I've been asked to apply. I know I was asked to blow.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, at least they're trying to

Sarah Federman
actually bad because they're like, were anybody else. Too many designers.

Ryan Burgess
So what are some positives of working in

Ryan Anklam
Debian? So

Derrick Showers
I feel the culture here is very interesting, and that many things are geared towards convenience. And there's things you wouldn't experience in other places that you would experience here. Like I found out like there's this restaurant in SF that like will just make salad bowls for you. Like it's just it's going I'll just spit out soluble. It's super fast, super easy. And it's like what a ton of people in here SF like There's just so many things that you experienced. Oh, we

Sarah Federman
also have like, exploring, like weird explorations like that, like, you can get a sushi burrito. And it's just like, awesome.

Ryan Burgess
Isn't that one your favorite thing I love

Derrick Showers
it's so delicious. He they'll provide sushi Rita's are

Sarah Federman
read, I love you.

Ryan Burgess
Please start giving therapy

Augustus Yuan
free burrito.

Sarah Federman
I love you forever.

Derrick Showers
I think one of the advantages, I guess I'll say this is kind of like a cliche thing. But I think one of the advantages to working in Silicon Valley is you have the opportunity to influence almost whatever you want, like so maybe it is a startup that takes care of dogs at people's houses, maybe somehow you think that's going to change society, but you know, maybe it's maybe it's working with some sort of like, you know, assistive technology company like that we have not less last episode of accessibility. Like there's lots of big players man around here, you know, like, these think you have a lot of different ways to give back to society.

Ryan Burgess
Let me just really, yeah, that's a good point. Technology is improving. And it's why Yeah, making it easier. And maybe it is just convenience that it is giving them a salad bowl or helping you take care of your dog. I mean, that can really help someone's life. But you're right, even to the point where it's impacting someone that needs assistive technology to actually be able to serve just the amount of products like

Derrick Showers
you're saying.

Ryan Anklam
For me, the positive I think, like when I was back in Wisconsin working, I was the guy that was the front end engineer, I was challenging people to write better code. And the second I moved on here, and people were starting to challenge me more in really pushed me to become a better fun engineer write better code and write cleaner code. I think that's the biggest thing that I've noticed is I've become a much better engineer just by being surrounded by so many smart people.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, it's like you're no longer top dog. It's like you're here in there growing up because you're learning.

Ryan Anklam
Exactly. Yeah, that's why I came out here to work.

Derrick Showers
I mean, there's there's very few other places not to discredit other places, but there's very few other places in the world he go as a engineer and be challenged. Yeah, I think there's,

Ryan Burgess
I mean, you're going to be challenged anywhere you go. But I think because there's such a demand on people being here. There's like so many engineers that are just talked how talent out here. It is constantly challenging. You're learning from each other, which I do find that ever since I've moved at home, that has been a big part of moving

Sarah Federman
here. You kind of have to come to terms that you're a smart person. I like it's not good for everyone.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, it's I agree. It's can be very stressful.

Ryan Anklam
Or some people who said the quote, if you're the smartest man in the room, you're in the wrong

Derrick Showers
room. I was just gonna say that. I don't know. I forgot we said it. But that is like,

Ryan Burgess
really good. isn't good.

Ryan Anklam
Bay Area code.

Jem Young
That's number one real chess betters play their butterflies. Yeah. Sure. Like you mean, Ryan. Ryan, you guys really love.

Ryan Burgess
I don't like I don't really. I'm like I've worked with Gemini. When I

Jem Young
lived and worked in South Georgia. There wasn't a tech community. There was like, I read Hacker News and read about cool things people are doing but never never me. I was like, Oh, yeah. That was crazy. Craziness. Yeah, here people are like writing frameworks. So yeah, I agree. That's definitely the community

Derrick Showers
is like me, the amount of meetups out here is like if you can't find a meetup that interests you each week.

Sarah Federman
I still like as an intern, I would go to like three weeks just

Ryan Burgess
meetups are great to learn and work and everything but you're right you could pretty much eat for free like your whole week. You're just going to different meetups

Sarah Federman
no other way like Sure. What's

Ryan Burgess
wrong? Yeah, I've had I've had pizza I've had like there's lots of different foods that Salesforce wanted me sandwiches so good, like bomb year. Oh, nice.

Ryan Anklam
Thanks a pretty good segue to like engineers out here are treated very differently than they are anywhere else.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, that could be positive or

Ryan Anklam
negative. It's a great thing to be engineer but for example at Netflix once in a while the kitchens on the floor. We have these tubes of just snacks that you can come and get their label one is m&ms One's almonds and what's check mix and someone like crazy he one day and they put chex mix in the almonds tubes. So there's two, two texts. We got an email on this deal of like, where am I almonds? You know, this is filled with chex mix. And I mean, it got responded to really fast. There was a lot of exclamation points and a lot of apologies. And it was like, just crazy. I couldn't fathom that this was such a big deal.

Sarah Federman
About their free food. Yes, they are killing us in California too seriously.

Jem Young
They use some of water and want to give her like water. Just

Derrick Showers
like no. Yeah, I agree. I've seen in some jobs here that I've had, like, people are complaining about free food or thinking it's

Ryan Anklam
like, you realize that other places in the world, you know,

Ryan Burgess
the free food has ruined me a bit too. I don't have food in my apartment. So you get lunch, you can get lunch given to you each day, which is amazing. And that's awesome. But then I get home and I'm like, Well, I don't want to cook like where's my food? Like, someone usually takes care of this. And, you know, obviously, I'm exaggerating it. But the fact is, is like you just kind of get used to that. And I feel like I used to cook a lot more now. I'm like, no, no, that's that's a lot of work and effort. I never don't. Zero. That's a customer. I can't help.

Derrick Showers
But all the viewers are getting this right now like. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
So those are some of the positives, like, what are some of the negatives? Because there's some negatives about even working and living here? I'd love to hear your thoughts on them as

Sarah Federman
what are some of the diversity? In, in what sense? Like in mindset, in like industry, in people in the industry? Like, there's, there's a lot of saturation here. And there's a lot of like an echo chamber?

Ryan Burgess
Do you think it's getting better, like I have seen, and I'm not saying we have a long ways to go. But I have seen a lot of effort lately. I feel like we're trying to make

Sarah Federman
something it's not working like Google wants to pour 10s of millions of dollars into this and like nothing happens there needle hasn't moved at all. So like people need to really start assessing, what can we do? I mean, asking for free work from whoever's the most minority like not helping so we'll have this discussion.

Jem Young
Yeah, I agree. There's not there's not enough diversity here. That's, I'll say this. I'm saying diversity upset. But if your company is a VP of diversity, there's something wrong with your like the people that were like, not your company never left your culture, because Twitter and he's like, yeah, that's another story. But let's not go Yeah. But seriously, like, you shouldn't need a VP of diversity, you should just naturally know.

Sarah Federman
That looks like they're making an effort. But we can't like say, Oh, it's okay. They're making an effort they still need to actually do.

Ryan Burgess
It's like, we recognize there's a problem. So we have a VP to take care of that. It isn't weird. I mean, at least they're trying to recognize it and do something about it. But

Sarah Federman
it's actually one of the questions that I need. Like I always asked her interviews now, like, what are your diversity goals, specifically? And what are your current numbers? It's actually a good question. You should really have concrete goals,

Jem Young
I'll say negative looking at here is the rent is so freakin high. It is not coming from New York, like a very high rent place, which is funny because

Ryan Burgess
Manhattan used to be the most expensive place in North America to live is no longer the

Derrick Showers
case now, like the rent is so and not just rent the like housing prices. It's just I don't think like I'll ever be able to live here, which would be like, my plane would have

Ryan Burgess
to go, our salaries are fairly high here, right? And yeah, you can't even afford a house.

Derrick Showers
Like I can't help it feel like the high salaries are like a majority that is because of the high rate was like some, like some companies like we're giving you a higher salary too, because we understand the rent is really high.

Sarah Federman
So I read an article the other day, it was like a guy went back. And you know, when they started doing rent control, they started recording the actual rent prices. But he went back and he wrote down all of the rent prices from years and years before that, before they were actually digitized. So we went through all these like newspapers. And there were like three things that like were really affecting it. It was, I think it was the amount of salary, the amount of tech people and the amount of housing, and we've actually been going up steadily at a 6% rate ever since like it ever since San Francisco has been a place so it actually hasn't changed all that much. But like the only thing that we can basically do is like build like basically more housing is even possible or like, cut our salaries in half, so maybe we'll figure it out. We're like

Jem Young
the definition of nimbyism here. For those who don't know what nimbyism in its means not my backyard, like, oh, we should have a homeless shelter. But not my backyard. We should build like high rise apartments, so like to bring down the cost of housing, but not my backyard. And that's so true. Yeah, I think one of the most notorious neighborhoods is hauled off, it was like, very, very bad, because there's a lot of wealthy people housing, super expensive, but they don't want to build their housing, they're like, they actively block it every single time, they want to, like put on new hire writers, because they own the property value. So and that's, that's one of the key features of high rent, there's like, there's not a lot of high rises. For such a large city. It's like no, blew my mind.

Ryan Anklam
I think besides housing, I think one of the negatives is you do have to be mentally strong to be here. I mean, every day, I go home and have imposter syndrome. And every day I go home feeling like geez, I'm just everyone that I'm working with is so much smarter than me. And you got to be able to fight that and push hard and keep learning and you have to be mentally strong, you have to be hungry, and you have to passionate, and it's a lot of work.

Ryan Burgess
It's a hard one to get over to. I mean, cuz you're working with such just like you do is that people are smarter than you. I mean, it's a great thing to have that, like we just said that was a very big positive is that you're working with these talented people? Yeah, it is. daunting. Yeah.

Sarah Federman
I mean, there's two sides to like, if you're really smart, or you think you are or whatever, you still need to be humble, and you still need to, like make newcomers feel welcome. Because when you're not, that's what contributes to these like shitty cultures.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I think kind of to go along with that, too. I think that it's a tough place for entry level. People to start just because you either have to, like Ryan said, be really strong willed and like, have a lot of self confidence and sell yourself maybe a little bit higher than than then which might be not a good thing. Yeah. Or you? Yeah, you just need to be ready for knows. And I think that can be really difficult. You know, there's there's lots of talent. And I think a lot of these tech companies are hiring, you know, graduates from computer science degrees from Stanford. So for me, you know, I never had a computer science degree in law, I think a lot of us are all like, self taught. So it's, it's tough, you don't have any experience.

Ryan Burgess
And we're not going to go to Stanford. Definitely did not.

Sarah Federman
I could now you're broken up. Yeah, they like me that so it's free for people.

Ryan Anklam
It's actually pretty awesome. I think a good thought exercise or good exercise to get used to that is submit a pull request on any big framework and see how people respond to your code, they will tear it apart, they will look at every single line, they'll tell you what shit. And you got to learn from that and not take it personally and don't get discouraged. Just take that, that they're actually trying to make your code better. And learn from it. Use that to write better code,

Derrick Showers
your code your idea, everything. Yeah, sources

Sarah Federman
notorious for people being dicks. There's no reason like, you can create some money without being like you're poking at it because you wrote this thing. And don't be like us. Or let us or our racism thing.

Ryan Burgess
You don't have to, basically don't mean Yeah,

Ryan Anklam
I think I mean, a lot of the popular frameworks, Ember react, those guys are in Angular, they're really nice. And they're really there to help you. If you submit a pull request, no one's gonna live see they're not going to be like that. They're going to actually tell you you know, this is what you can do better. Now I

Derrick Showers
was just gonna say like, a lot of open source frameworks that like if you're new to like, those are like some other ones that have like hitters or, or Slack channels. Like they're pretty nice. Like I said, we have that was at least my experience with distributing like, they're usually pretty open. Because like,

Ryan Burgess
it's all it should be nice. Yeah, you are literally helping them do their project for free. Right. So why the hell wouldn't you be nice? Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I almost like I almost feel like it's nicer to like to code for open source project and my preferred company because it's like people it's like, people are so much nicer on that stuff. It's just you learn so much. I think maybe it's I think what I'm saying though, everyone has an opinion so that even if they're nice, it's still like you might submit this Pull Request thinking this is this is awesome. I got fixed a lot of stuff here and then you

Ryan Anklam
think they want try to be nice, they will go out of their way to be nice. They'll know they'll sell their opinion and they will just be very blunt about it. In some cases.

Ryan Burgess
They're direct and which is actually a good thing to is like a direct. You don't have to be a dick to be direct. You need direct just to the point and and be clear of like, what you're trying to what your project was doing or what what was wrong and just be direct people. I think there's nothing wrong with that.

Ryan Anklam
Yeah, that directness, it's it's hard to take that first time to get

Augustus Yuan
something like that. Like,

Sarah Federman
even when you're being direct, make sure that you're still thankful that somebody is taking time out of their day to learn your framework, contribute to it make it better. Yeah.

Jem Young
I'll say one bad thing about being yours. You see this out of me personally, because all my friends report, but you see people like getting to stupid, rich, like instantly and you think, Oh, I can do that save like, our head, this startup that comes your house and washes dogs, and it's going to IPO make so much money. And like we in America, we are the hustle, like being broke and like being wrong, profitable, things like that. But in truth, like that's a stressful life, that's not it's good to get that done, like be able to push through and like get your work done. But let's not glorify it, let's not say like, oh, yeah, it's cool being a part of late people making no money, because like, you're starting to take off, it just, I see a lot people come out here, they're not pragmatic about your chances, like, odds are, you're starting to make a lot of money, you probably can lever, but like, get some experience and like, that's not

Sarah Federman
actually like things that most people that come out here as new grads and think that should seriously consider not doing them. Because one, you're not gonna have anything good on your resume, like people are gonna know that it's really hard to get a job after that, like, just start off is

Ryan Burgess
what's funny to jam, you mentioned about stock. And I think stock is actually a pretty big selling point for some of these companies, whether it be their early early startup, or even if you went to work at somewhere like Uber, it's like it has an IPO yet. So you are getting stopped when you start. And that's kind of like part of your package. Google still gives you stock like most of these, like I'm sure LinkedIn does. Netflix does, like you get stock in these companies. And that's like a big selling point, especially on some of the for the IPOs and are sort of pre IPO. And that's usually like a big selling point. But it can be very stressful, because like you just said, they don't always make it. And so you're like banking on that. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna get Facebook rich. Well, like, that's one company out of how many startups that have been here.

Sarah Federman
And you also have to be like, educated about this stuff to like I was looking at, gave me an offer with stock and they were like, oh, yeah, we're gonna IPO soon. I'm like, how soon they're like, in like six months? I'm like, Well, my stocks invested. Like, I'm not gonna have any

Ryan Burgess
like, Oh, that's interesting. He was just asking those questions.

Sarah Federman
Yeah, why you gotta ask the questions. And you I mean, even if they say like, you get 50 units stock, you're like, Well, can you give me an approximate value of those based on your last valuation? That you got? You got to, like, actually understand this stuff. And a lot of new grads?

Ryan Anklam
Yeah.

Derrick Showers
I don't even understand all this stuff, like rounds of funding and like, how, like, all that stuff works is super important. Especially I look, I've really never worked for a company smaller than LinkedIn. So I worry about it. But if I you know, if I were to go smartphone, maybe simply something.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, definitely something to learn.

Sarah Federman
That's also part level. I mean, like, you go to play some Virginia, and you're likely ever looking on our series. See there, like

Derrick Showers
I think the other thing that people probably do, maybe right after school, or just anybody is like fall victim, like, especially somebody new to the area, might fall victim, like getting, let's I don't know what the word for it is. But like, seeing a company be like, Oh, I love this company, you know, like, but you know, and then just kind of going for that company, because they like that product, which is really easy to do here, because there's so many companies that we use every day.

Ryan Burgess
So another thing that is interesting, too, is like, what was it 2008 When there was a tech bust. And we're printing Eric right now everything is booming. But is that bus going to happen again? What do you guys think? Is that actually could that happen is going to happen? What is the likelihood of?

Jem Young
Yes, like, take over? Yeah. Why haven't my IP owed because they know that their valuation isn't? Like this is pure speculation. I don't know. But they're what $50 billion company 60 billion on it. Like why would you not IPO so Zeos and like, everything hashed out because they know like, we're at a very good point in time. I'm not gonna call Evernote software, you still work there, but a good example of things that you're rich on paper, and then slowly the eldest person, remember, example is yo, Alex. What are they like?

Derrick Showers
13 million and they got like, yeah, they got like an insane amount. And what did the app do? Like it was literally literally literally like Snapchat, but instead of pictures it was yo you just go people. And I was shocked when I got like, it's almost like encouraging like people to like pursue making startups to like, these things that aren't

Ryan Burgess
solving any problem at all. But it's like

Sarah Federman
crazy thing is people actually used you for a while it was a fad product.

Ryan Burgess
So all my friends, I never tried it. I just

Sarah Federman
like couldn't deal with that I went and I saw them at CES, I got a yoga mat from yoga mat, and that's pretty

Ryan Burgess
sweet. They were giving out yoga mats,

Sarah Federman
like light up shot glasses. All right. Well, they capitalized on

Derrick Showers
the swag. Like, we can make an app, let's call it yo, we can make yoga mess.

Ryan Burgess
Up, that's why they started the company. They're like, alright, we need to make yoga mat. Now. What kind of app? Should we do that we can put our branding on a yoga mat? Yeah, that's how they started was yoga on the yoga mat?

Sarah Federman
It was purple

Derrick Showers
didn't want to pay the licensing for yoga. Going back to the question about if the bubble burst. Like, I guess I don't have an insight. So if I think the bubble will burst, I sincerely hope it does. But I definitely feel like it is expanding. Like the bubble has expanded to like even places in Seattle or Austin, like those places are starting to like, come out with a lot like like companies are starting to realize like, hey, these, these places have like, pretty, like pretty good tech communities. But like, the rent is way cheaper, like housing, like, offices are way cheaper. And so it's definitely expanding.

Ryan Burgess
Do you think it's harder though, for those companies to start in other? You know, like, there's so many startups that have been here, we talked a little bit about the VC company or like easy's backing these startups in? Do you think it's actually harder to start up? And you know, Austin, I know is a big one Seattle, there's like quite a few New York's actually really big tune just came from there. There's a lot of places that companies are starting. But do you think it's more difficult for them? I mean, outside of the Bay Area? Yeah. Outside of the Bay Area.

Derrick Showers
So I don't know, Austin, or Seattle with the market is like for engineers there. But I think actually, that's kind of why start, like a lot of startups move to Silicon Valley, because we have such an awesome market in the bay. Oh, in the

Ryan Burgess
Bay Area.

Derrick Showers
I was like to agree. Yeah, there's just like a such a strong market of engineers in the Bay Area, which is.

Augustus Yuan
There's a strong market in Silicon Valley.

Ryan Anklam
Right? There's a strong market, but then they bring him in as all the engineers asinine interview,

Ryan Burgess
which we have covered in previous episode.

Sarah Federman
Is there actually a strong market here? Because there were a lot of good engineers and they all come here because I think all the other good interviewers,

Ryan Burgess
they all come here late. I mean, going around the table, we all we all move here, so you don't have to tell listeners No, but I mean, we all moved here to be there for a reason.

Ryan Anklam
And we all feel like we saw pretty much

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think that's the thing is we all feel like that it's that imposter syndrome is a true thing. So alright, so if you could give one piece of advice to someone considering moving to Silicon Valley, what would it be? Do it do it do it I'm all for doing it like

Sarah Federman
you're never gonna get another chance like just make the plunge for a couple years you know, to be here forever

Derrick Showers
before value Jem gets negative over there. I'm gonna agree. I do not regret moving out here for a second I think that the amount I've learned in the past two and a half years is I would never

Ryan Burgess
take that the one thing I think Sarah was even touching on there is move out here in the right place for you. It's like you can move back or move to another place it really doesn't matter.

Derrick Showers
Breaking your lease is a little expensive because it's $4,000

Ryan Burgess
Fair enough, but make it over a year like

Sarah Federman
well you pay relocation Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
that's true. And I think I think it's definitely you can learn a lot in that sort of fun.

Ryan Anklam
I think Mikey's advice was a be mentally strong. Know that you're gonna come out here and you're gonna think that you suck everything that you're gonna fail. Have that self confidence and know that you can get through it and you can work hard and study and write more code. Yeah, keep hustling. Exactly. And you know, evaluate know what you're getting into when you come out here. I think everyone knows the housing markets expensive. Everything else is not not quite as percentage wise as much of an increase over housing but you know, there's there's a lot of other things to consider out here. schooling and all that is something new family is definitely you got to really do your homework before you had to take that leap. If you're have a family The

Jem Young
advice I definitely got for everybody here. I say, I say don't do it. I think Silicon Valley is in the hole because we get all these new engineers and we get all this VC money and like it's just, it's a state that just keeps eating itself over and over and over. And well, I would I would rather see TechCrunch and other cities like Denver, Austin, Seattle, even New York, I like New York because New York you can still live fairly affordably and then

Ryan Burgess
come in, but it was so expensive there a few but now you

Jem Young
can move on the outskirts New York's expensive you want to live in that wall?

Ryan Burgess
Okay. But you could live in the Bay Area and do the same

Derrick Showers
pretty expensive area.

Jem Young
Actually. I think I think riot riot comm has it when I fill in the head like know what you're getting into before you come out here don't come out here with like, stars in your eyes for the glory mega rich off your IPO? Like it's probably not just except that you're going to you might make like $120,000 a year and you're sharing apartment with three other dudes and you think this is life now.

Ryan Burgess
But you're speaking just to start. There's also companies that are established, we're all at a pretty established companies. And people do move out here. You just moved out here to work at Netflix. And I mean, that's a little bit different story. It's like, yes, you still deal with the expensive ranch and you still deal with all that. But Netflix is already IPO. So you're not really doing it for like that small startup.

Jem Young
Sure, if not for Netflix. like Netflix was accepted. Like, I don't regret that. No. And exuding salary, because, well, let's say very well, but excluding that, like, just definitely work for such smart people. But I think if you come out here as a junior engineer, like you could suffer, you can really suffer. And the problem is like, we are that suffering, saying like, Oh, no, it's gonna be boring, just like, totally just eat ramen every day. Suck it out.

Sarah Federman
And what you've just somewhere else, I mean, like, I have genuinely no complaints about that, like, I make way more money than any other like, Nubra that I know. Like, I don't deserve it. I think it's also and even though my rent is so high, like I hear like sitting on podcasts, what's cool does drink beer. And it's like, expensive. Like, I go out for dinner, like, I'm very privileged. And I mean, like, I can complain all day about my rent, like, at the end of the day, I can still pay. That's something to be

Ryan Burgess
having. That's probably my biggest complaint, or only thing I could actually complain. No, try not to complain about too much. But I think that's, you know, can be a complaint is your rant. But after that, I think there's so much value here.

Ryan Anklam
Throw put into perspective, my salary, from when I lived in Wisconsin is tripled since I've been here, or what I was Wisconsin, I'm living the exact same lifestyle.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, it's not like you're like, making really

Ryan Anklam
good money back in Wisconsin. But down here, I'm

Sarah Federman
no opportunities you have here.

Ryan Anklam
I have a lot more to learn a lot more opportunity to grow. But I think just don't look at that dollar figure of your offer and think that you're gonna be living large, and you get an offer for

Sarah Federman
ramen anymore.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, well, actually, like, I think this goes into my opinion, I think it's not 100% necessary for you to move to Silicon Valley, I think you should go where the opportunity is, I think you can still learn a lot from even going to like places in Seattle or Austin or whatever. Those have, like pretty good. Emerging markets have, like Jamie mentioned, like, he moved to Seattle. Are you? Sorry, you moved. He moved here for Netflix. Because Netflix was such an awesome opportunity. Really, like go where the opportunity is. I definitely feel like the Silicon Valley culture is worth experiencing once in your life. I think we get a lot of insight to like things that come out before a lot of other places know about it. Like it was so funny. My parents were like telling me like they were in Hong Kong. And they're like, you know, this thing called Uber. So here, I'm like, yeah, it's been an SF for quite a while man. Started getting bigger in Hong Kong. Yeah, they're just like, oh my god, it's incredible. Like, I can also want to

Ryan Burgess
budget for Ubers. Yeah, I can add up quickly. To wrap up today's episode. Let's go around and do pics. Ryan, what do you have for us this week?

Ryan Anklam
So my first pick is going to be the dash application. I think it's OSX specific, but it's just a great man have shortcuts in vim to open it up. And I have a word highlighted. And it's just basically an app that sucks in all the documentation for all the projects that you imagine is a really great way to have all that centralized and do look it up really quickly. My second one Is TypeScript actually, I've been playing with it a lot lately, and I'm actually starting to drink Kool Aid. And I've really gotten a lot of a lot of benefits that I see on it. So if you haven't checked it out yet, check it out. Play with it. Give me a chance. When I first heard of TypeScript, I was like, fuck this this is not stupid to try to make a dotnet

Sarah Federman
Microsoft paid for it. Yeah.

Ryan Anklam
But I've done a full one ad on it and I've noticed a lot of potential bugs it caught before I even released code I do not know how time errors and yeah, so give it a shot and check it out. And music I'm listening to the song I'm recommending is called army of me by Dr. Gracia mnemonic not a problem. And I think you did. I think you hit it on the head. Was that an escape? Because God, those are the two I could never pronounce. But no one's been checked. That sounds a great great song. Probably.

Jem Young
Yeah. Yeah. Well, because I'll say this. I'm I'm on. I'm almost on Red Rising, but it was raining. First. I think my first son. Fantastic. Fantastic. So you have now earned the right that. I will trust you. If you will try to TypeScript now. I'm going to try I saw it I didn't like it. Because looking at look just like Java, it was public static void. Oh, yeah. What are we doing here but I'll give a shot is Brian from

Sarah Federman
TypeScript a couple years, maybe it was a year ago, it was pretty good. I like the like, kind of like Sass where you could just kind of write JavaScript and also compile

Ryan Anklam
socket as much as you want to you can declare your all your fixtures any and just write jobs can make it very strict by

Sarah Federman
just like letter as you add more to

Jem Young
my picks. First one is the s6 compatibility table. It's good to know because I think most real estate will write some form VSS. So it's good to know the browser set where as far as translation goes, things like that. Second thing is music for programming. It's good because none of the music is local. So it's good to like, lock in zone out some of us it's dubious. But overall, I think it's pretty solid. My last bit, this one is great wrapping deconstructed in box, put on article about hip hop in just half of all years, and it's just like, it is insane. Just the if you think of how far outstrips has come just think of our rapping. It's like it's crazy for someone to do actual breakdown of it. I highly recommend watching. It's like, seven, eight minutes. It's just

Ryan Anklam
four minutes. Totally locked for that

Derrick Showers
in my mind.

Ryan Anklam
It was such a good 12 minutes spent if you have any interest in hip hop rap at all.

Augustus Yuan
So good. Yeah,

Jem Young
see, like where we come from, like 80s. Now Kendrick Mars destroys destroys people from 80s. And like, it's so much more complex than you think hip hop is just like this kind of dumb medium where there's rhyming words together, but the low complexity really tells you to do to like do it at high levels. Just incredible. Yeah, I highly recommend it.

Ryan Burgess
I wouldn't call it dumb.

Jem Young
I think some people think it's dumb. It's like matching words with a beat and that's it. But someone like has like bars like four beats, like a different word every single time rhymes all together. It also it also tells a story at the same time. Yeah, it

Ryan Anklam
makes him rhyme with sentences with the way they ended. Yeah.

Sarah Federman
Amazing sexist shit. Some people's. That's yeah, I mean, like, somebody likes, like the best shit that I can listen to. It's like even with Drake, he was like, Good girls. He gets that girls all time, which is like less subtle version of sexism. who's a fan of pretty much even though you're still from Canada, I know. Soca Music programming isn't like a pointless reselling website.

Jem Young
It is a website. One of the designs awesome it's like a funky old school consoles. But it's really it's done by a lot of famous electronic artists so it's just not ambient quite I really like ambient but it's an ambient it's just music with no lyrics else. He just kind of put it on to know that you probably won't get interrupted from your flow. It's like good background

Sarah Federman
music. I like so my pics. I don't know. I didn't want to like make Maker Faire pixels. Like today was last night. I was just awesome. I went there and there was this and they actually had this thing called the stencil morph which is a Kickstarter project I backed, like, last fall, but it's like kind of like a Wacom tablet where like you have the pen but it's actually built with sensors. So responds to pressure. So you can like draw with like a paintbrush, or you can like it has over like overlays that like you can magnet on and you can put like a MIDI keyboard on. And it responds to like the pressure of whatever you're doing, in a sense the shape of whatever you're pressing in. So there's so many cool possibilities. And I'm really excited for it to get shipped to me. And it was cool to try one out of the Maker Faire. My other pack is like I just saw earlier that Google has released a IFTTT integration for the OnHub router. Four. Yeah, so I have to say after because too many G's. Yes, that what Brian's done is basically you can connect little channels and create recipes. So you could do things like I think I set up one like if I put up like a message in Slack, you can add it to an Evernote or you can do all sorts of things. Just like connecting different like social media or like products like Philips Hue lights.

Derrick Showers
Yes, it rains, my lights turn blue. Oh, never. Never read in the mirror is yourself.

Sarah Federman
Yeah, like you could just stop like, turn on your lights, if you get close to your apartment and you connect to the Wi Fi.

Ryan Burgess
If this and that is amazing. So that is pretty cool that the OnHub is now connected there.

Ryan Burgess
Augustus What do you have for us for this episode?

Derrick Showers
Yeah, so some things I've been looking to one is this thing called Tiny letter. It's this like side project at MailChimp started where essentially, it's like a personal newsletter. It's pretty interesting. So this, I'm not sure how effective it is. But, but it's like, you can essentially start your own newsletter for people and they can subscribe to it and just makes it really easy. And I'm kind of actually going to merge two, I think like a lot of companies are starting to explore like keyboards for mobile. So G board is one that Google came out with. So like when you when you type something you can like search you get it makes it really easy to just automatically search and does like all in place. So if let's say for example, we were sending someone like Google Maps location, like you could type a location or something. And then it was like, come up with a Google view of like, Oh, here's the application, you can just text that immediately. Have you tried it? Yeah. And one thing I do want people to be aware of is if you look at the legal like they do, of course, look at what you're typing to people. So that kind of bothers some people. So whether you like yeah, the good thing with third party keyboards, too, is iOS blocks, like Yeah, yeah, passwords and stuff. Like Exactly, yeah. So I noticed like on one password, it didn't work. Yeah. And for everything else it did, but I think it's definitely worth exploring. And I also know that Microsoft came out with a workflow. And they essentially modified it so that they optimize it. So you could use keywords with one hand one hand. Yeah, no workflow. I gave up on it. I didn't

Ryan Burgess
wear it and I was like, it's terrible.

Derrick Showers
It's terrible. I think it's good. I just felt really good. Yeah, I think it's like super interesting how they're exploring. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Oh, totally. I I was sold on the idea, but I just couldn't grasp it. It's like then like, couldn't get

Derrick Showers
Do you swipe? Or do you use like, yeah, I just don't know if I want to get good swipe. Anyway. All right, my pics. So my cups are not really anything new. But my first pick is Periscope, just because so some of you know that I'm a big Apple fanboy. And so I wanted to visit the brand new store in Union Square opened in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. I really wanted to go but I'm also very lazy and don't like to get up early on the weekends. So I was able to watch somebody wait in line and go into the store for like 45 minutes on Periscope. And my wife and I laid in bed and watch this unfold flop. Yeah, but it doesn't have to happen just in Silicon Valley anywhere in the world they can immediately see.

Ryan Burgess
And the funny thing is on Derek's wife Sarah's Instagram, I saw her take a photo of their TV and say like that's what they're doing. And I was like, This is hilarious. I didn't even know there was a new Apple Store being open but I did because of her Instagram

Jem Young
wasn't Periscope

Derrick Showers
Yes, we went later in the day when I was

Jem Young
watching I saw

Derrick Showers
my Periscope actually is has added a whole bunch of features just recently so now every video is automatically saved which is kind of cool. So there's like a point if you don't have any watchers, you still at least have the video to say and they have like you can draw on the screen and stuff like that. Another app that was gonna say Snapchat, and my other pick is Firebase. So I really liked Firebase before and Google at Google, I know they just made an announcement, which is, I'm really happy to hear because I think there's a lot of cool stuff that came to it. They added like hosting and like, basically like a one stop shop for AP grep element. But the the other thing I'm really excited for is that they're putting a lot of weight behind it. So I used to use parse, and that went away. So I'm glad that I'm glad that Google is embracing Firebase, I think is a really good tool. You don't want to build a back end.

Sarah Federman
And so what did they actually announced? They're like requiring?

Derrick Showers
Yeah, so they just announced like, I mean, from what I can tell, it's kind of like a Heroku. And our base used to be combination. So it's kind of like that hosting. They've CDN hosting that. Basically, all you need to do is build the front end and you have everything.

Sarah Federman
But what was the actual amounts, like just all

Derrick Showers
the new features because Firebase used to be just like? Yeah. And they also now it's like analytics. Oh, yeah. Huge is like you could like, get how it

Ryan Burgess
works. Great. So my picks for this episode is, especially with Silicon Valley is our topic.

Sarah Federman
I thought I would say area, the Bay Area.

Ryan Burgess
I chose one of mine as Phil's coffee. Super delicious, really good coffee. So I figured, hey, why not add that on there? I think it is only available in California. So I figured why not add that one. Another one I have is a pair of shoes I bought the other day. I feel like someone had tweeted about them. So that's what sold me on them and try them is called Allbirds shoes. Yes, I am actually wearing them. They're super comfortable. Highly recommend trying them. They have like, I think there's only like four or five colors for both male and female. Really, really comfortable. And they're like you can machine wash them and everything's so easy.

Augustus Yuan
And easy.

Derrick Showers
I've never even heard of

Ryan Anklam
super expensive shoes.

Ryan Burgess
These ones are penny wise. Yeah, these aren't too pricey. They're like 100 bucks. So very comfortable shoes. I've been wearing them for the past week. Really good so far. And then my music pick is actually a Canadian artist by the name of city and color. And it's actually spelled the Canadian way in color. So it's got the UN really good. If anyone ever listened to Alexisonfire, that was another Canadian van Dallas Green was one of the singers in Alexisonfire. He started this band separately. And so let's make it like you've had. Yeah, I'm actually wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs hot.

Derrick Showers
So just a little bit of trivia. I think they'll actually just branch out of the Bay Area. Oh, whoa. So and to say that because we're in LA and DC.

Ryan Burgess
Oh, nice. Yeah. Well, I guess I said California because I wasn't sure how far it went. But that's cool that they're even in DC. So yeah, yeah, that's awesome.

Sarah Federman
DC is a cool place for tech. Alright.

Ryan Burgess
So before we wrap up everything today, let's go around the table and we're Can everyone get up? We'll be on Twitter. Right?

Ryan Anklam
So I am bittersweet Brian on Twitter. Yeah,

Jem Young
I am Jem Young.

Sarah Federman
I'm Sarah underscore, Patrick.

Ryan Burgess
Are you saying it's boring because he can't you didn't get your name? Yeah.

Sarah Federman
Is that PhD girl? I hate her.

Augustus Yuan
Augustus mines off Berto,

Derrick Showers
Aug pu RTO mines at Derek showers and you probably don't care is no one in this world does you can just go to at front of happy hour.

Ryan Burgess
And I'm at @burgessdryan. So that's pretty much it for today's episode. Make sure to follow us on @frontendhh on Twitter. If you've been enjoying the episode, or any of our other episodes, make sure to rate us on iTunes and help us out by telling us what you think.

Sarah Federman
him and give us five stars.

Ryan Burgess
Oh yeah, five stars. So you don't Sarah doesn't want to see anything? Oh, I

Sarah Federman
see anything. I mean

Ryan Burgess
we've had a bunch of drinks. This is what happens.