Kent C. Dodds: 0:00 Hi, everyone. My name is Kent C. Dodds, and I'm super excited to be joined by my friend, Samantha. Say hi, Sam.

Samantha Bretous: 0:06 Hey, all. What's going on? I am a software engineer at Mailchimp. I also do have a YouTube channel where I teach people how to use React as well as just understanding how to progress in your career as a software engineer.

Kent: 0:22 Awesome. We're so happy to have you, Sam. I'm trying to remember the first time we met. I think we met online first, which is basically almost my friendships. In fact, thanks to COVID it's how most my friendships start and just continue. I don't meet people anymore. We did meet in person, I think, at React Rally first.

Samantha: 0:52 Yeah, in California. Sure.

Kent: 0:54 That was great.

Samantha: 0:56 I love that conference. It was one of the biggest conferences I spoke at, so I like that one a lot.

Kent: 1:03 React Rally's my favorite conference. I think I got this shirt at...No. This was when React got 50,000 stars, I think is when I got this shirt. Anyway, this was totally unrelated. Never mind. I won't bring that up.

1:19 React Rally is awesome. You've been using React for quite a while now. When did you get started in...Actually, I'm curious. What's your whole story into getting into software development in general?

Samantha: 1:35 When I went into college I was actually a theater design major. I was too stubborn to pay somebody to build a website for me. I'm older than people think that I am.

Kent: 1:49 [laughs]

Samantha: 1:50 Before Wix and stuff, I knew about Wix. I wanted to put my artwork online and I was too stubborn to actually do that, so I started to learn how to use JavaScript by myself. The thing was, I actually didn't start really coding until maybe four years after that.

2:08 When I was in New York City I was struggling. I was like, "I need a change in my life." I started fulltime studying coding, HTML and CSS. I quit my job. I did that for two months, then I was like, "Ooh, I need some help."

2:23 Then, I went to a boot camp where I was able to do this completely fulltime for 10 months, where we learned React and...What else did we learn? We learned React and Express and jQuery. This was about four years ago, when I started really diving into coding.

Kent: 2:45 10 months, that's a long time. Actually, like a leap of faith. You quit your job and you went transition from design to actually coding. Were you nervous at all during that time?

Samantha: 3:01 When I quit my job, I thought about doing it for a long time. I sacrificed a lot. I started saving money, because I knew that once I did, how am I going to survive in New York City without any income?

3:14 It was not something Saturday night, I did. It's more a thought process, but I knew this is what I wanted to do. I'm a very big risk taker. If I am passionate about that risk, I know that I'm going to succeed in doing it.

Kent: 3:32 That's awesome. It's really inspiring too. For me, my path was not really well laid before me. I had to make decisions and stuff, and there was some uncertainty. I never had to take such a big leap of faith like that. I think that, it sounds like it was very intentional on your part. You were very thoughtful about it. That's very inspiring to me. Good job, that's great.

Samantha: 4:00 Thank you. I guess for me, I don't know. It's just like, when you know, you want to do something, you just have to believe in yourself, because the only person that's going to believe in you is you.

Kent: 4:13 You really take a lot of self-responsibility. That's awesome. You go through this bootcamp. That's a 10 month bootcamp, it's a long time. That's a pretty big investment of time and probably money as well. When you wrapped up that bootcamp, where did you go? Did you start with your first job into React?

Samantha: 4:33 Yeah, even after you graduate bootcamp, it was still a struggle to get a job. I went to a lot of conferences. My first conference I went to was React Camp, that's put on by Facebook. They also have scholarships that you can apply for. I applied for the scholarship, and I won it.

4:51 That's how I start my job process. I met somebody at the conference who knew the bootcamp that I was in. He flew out to New York City as well and then he's like, "Oh, I know somebody that might have a job." He pointed me to somebody else and that person point me to somebody else.

5:07 It just kept going like that and I finally found somebody who was, "Yeah, I have a job." They gave me their contact information. The thing is, I didn't hear from that person for five months. It happens, right? You just got to keep taking people's numbers, keep taking their information.

5:25 In five months, I still didn't have a job. They saw that I was being active on Twitter, and I'm at this conference doing Docker, and they hit me back up, it's like, "Oh, are you still looking for a job?"

5:37 That's how I got my first job at MLS, was by being active on Twitter and just keep coding. Even though it's going to take a while, just know that you are going to get one. There's tons of jobs out there. Tech is completely growing. Just keep trying and keep networking.

5:56 I know for right now, it's harder because with COVID is happening right now. It's harder because you're not able to go in person to meet people, but actually, people are a lot less busier than they were before the pandemic happened.

6:10 It's a lot easier to reach out to people and for them to help you out. Jobs are still available. Even though times are changing, the tech industry is still moving forward.

Kent: 6:22 That's great. Actually, I hope you don't mind if we dive into this a little bit. It occurs to me that plenty of people who are taking Epic React are in the position that you were four years ago, while you're waiting for jobs, and things.

6:36 Especially with COVID, uncertainties, and everything, I'm sure there are plenty of people who would love to get some tips and advice from you on, what do you do while you're waiting? You said you kept coding, you would go to these conferences, take advantage of the scholarships, which I think is just wonderful that those are offered.

6:55 Was there anything else that you did to make the most of your time while you're just waiting on these opportunities?

Samantha: 7:02 Some days I did better than other days, to be honest. It's hard sometimes to motivate yourself to keep coding and interviewing for jobs is very hard, emotionally on you. You feel like it's your fault, but it's really not your fault. Just keep going.

7:20 I think for me, the thing I did was work on projects. It was find one project that is super passionate about and just build on top of that. When you're interviewing, you only need one project.

7:35 You show them your project during the interview, they're not going to look at all of your projects. They're only going to look at one project and talk to you about it. Just making sure that it's beefy, and you're passionate about talking about it.

7:46 One thing I did when I actually went to the interviews was, sometimes I lead the interviews in a way, where I had a project, I called it shut-up-tom, and it would read the sounds in the room. If it was too loud, it will send out a slack message to anybody saying, "Hey, be quiet."

8:02 [crosstalk]

Kent: 8:03 That was awesome.

8:03 [laughter]

Kent: 8:04 I love that.

Samantha: 8:07 I literally brought my hardware into the room and show them, "This is what I've been working on." They can see how passionate I was about the project. Just find something that you're really passionate about working on and keep building on top of it.

8:21 Projects can never stop. It's like art, it's never going to end, you're never going to have that stopping point where you can't build on top of projects.

Kent: 8:30 I love that. [laughs] That project sounds so awesome. We were talking about conferences earlier. Conferences typically have a speaker dinner or something, and they always do these super loud bars, with loud music, or the after party is the same.

8:52 I would absolutely want to have something like that at a party. If we all just talk a little quieter, then we don't have to shout to hear each other. [laughs]

Samantha: 9:02 Sometimes people are afraid to tell people to, "Shhh." It would be like a machine that tells everybody to be quiet. It's a little bit more friendly.

Kent: 9:10 I definitely appreciate like having automated tools telling people, like a linter, "You did this wrong. It's not me. We decided on these rules." That's awesome. Work on projects, you also said that you were really active on Twitter, and that sort of thing, and that helps you get some visibility as well?

Samantha: 9:31 Yes, I think it's important to just slack, not slack, tweet out what you're working on. There's these all these different communities that you can be part of. 100 Days of Code is a perfect one to be part of. It forces you to tweet out every single day what you're working on.

9:48 A lot of people when I talk to them, they don't even have a Twitter. I'm like, "Twitter is the place where developers are hanging out." You need one to help you network. I think Instagram and maybe Pinterest are probably not the best places for you to be hanging out.

10:03 Maybe Reddit is also cool, but just know web developers are hanging out. You're not really asking people for jobs, you're just showing them that you're active in the community. They will figure out, "Hey, let's try to hire this person."

Kent: 10:22 Being active, creating content and that sort of thing, whether that be tweets or whatever. That makes a lot of sense. It's sounds like you're intentional about what you were doing. Is there a game plan that you were implementing, or did this happen naturally?

Samantha: 10:38 For me it happened naturally. When I am telling people now about some things that I wished I had done was practice algorithms more. When I got to the interview, you could get past all the coding projects. Then you get to the interview and you have to whiteboard or you have to take a test. Being able to practice your algorithms would be the best thing that I would have done if I had known.

Kent: 11:03 It's interesting, when you said it like you need to take a test. I hadn't heard it said that way or at least thought about this. I had heard it said that way. My brother graduated and got a job as a physician's assistant. I'm pretty sure during interviews for jobs like that you're not opening up a cadaver during the interview. Doing the job during the interview.

11:31 For them, they take tests. The lawyers take the Bar exam. It's interesting that for software developers you're taking a test with every single interview. In other industries you take a standardized test and then you say, "Here's my score on this standardized test. Now, let's talk about other stuff."

11:50 Software it's like, "Here I am. Let's talk about stuff but I am also going to take your specially designed test." It doesn't seem fair.

Samantha: 12:00 Maybe we could have a standardized test for software engineering. I don't know.

Kent: 12:06 The whole interview thing for software is tough. Did you interview at multiple companies? What was your interviewing process like?

Samantha: 12:16 Most of the time you're talked to the recruiter at first. Then if they like you then they would send you a coding project. If you passed the coding project you would probably do a phone call with somebody like the hiring manager.

12:31 Or a software engineer sometimes, we would do a comparing over some software. We could code and watch me make a code. After that you would definitely go on site. You'll have half a day of quizzes and whiteboarding and just talking.

Kent: 12:46 A lot of emotional stress.

Samantha: 12:49 A very long process.

Kent: 12:55 Personally, it's messed up. It is what is. I hate that phrase. It's unfortunate that that's the way it is. We can move on from that now. I'm curious what is it about React that's kept you interested in the four years you've been using it?

Samantha: 13:15 First of all, JavaScript is not going anywhere anytime soon. Unless websites go away. It's a stable career choice. There's always so much that you can learn. First you need to learn the foundation of JavaScript then progress into React.

13:32 My favorite thing about React I would say in coding in general the small wins that you get every time you solve a problem. You can start with how do you do 2+2? There's a win automatically. As you progress in your career, you start doing harder problems. For me, any technology problem can be solved as long as you put the work in.

14:02 Our community is good about being open source and being able to put answers to questions like Stack Overflow. On there all the time, copying and pasting. I know you're not supposed to do that, but I do copy and paste.

Kent: 14:17 I'll interrupt you really quick just to say somebody tweeted at me minutes before we started recording. They gave me some code that I had in one of my projects in one of my workshops. "Why did you do this way? Why couldn't you do it this way?"

14:34 My first response was "I actually found that code on Stack Overflow. I just copied and pasted. I don't know exactly why it's done that way." I've been doing this for a while also. I still copy and paste from Stack Overflow.

Samantha: 14:49 Copying and pasting is OK. For me, if you got to finish a project you don't want to get stuck on this little part of the code that might not be that important. A lot of early developers get stuck on this small little section of the code and they can't complete the project. It demotivates them from finishing.

15:11 Maybe you need a little bit of a nudge to keep the project momentum going. Eventually when you get older and you're progressing in your career, you going to understand that code. One thing that I do when I'm learning is for me when I learned hooks, I didn't sit down and read the documentation.

15:29 I looked at our code base, I copied from other people's code and put it in my code. After you do about 10 to 12 times, you're going to finally understand how that works. You're not supposed to copy and paste, but I do it. That's how I learned.

Kent: 15:47 Copy, paste and modify, it's a terrific way to get some understanding. I'm saying the same thing you did. I totally agree. Sorry for interrupting. You're talking about what it is about JavaScript and React that keeps you so excited and interested.

16:06 I agree with you, it's those quick wins. That's one of the things that drew me in. I was in Java before and my feedback loop was in terminal output. Then I go to the web, it's visible things that I can click around and interact with which was cool to me.

Samantha: 16:25 One story that people don't know about me. I was a Ruby developer at first. That was the first thing that I tried to learn. At the time in bootcamps Ruby was on the up and up. For me, I didn't quite understand Ruby at all. It wasn't clicking. Everything was output to the console.

16:46 I knew that coding was something I definitely wanted to do. I found another language. A lot of people get stuck on you only need to know this one language whether you like it or not. It's OK to pivot and go to a different language.

17:02 For me, since my background is in art and theater I am more of a visual person. Being able to see things move across the screen in the browser made it click for me a lot better. That's probably why I enjoy JavaScript at first.

Kent: 17:19 React, in your bootcamp you were using jQuery. Did you mentioned that you were doing React as well as jQuery or it just jQuery?

Samantha: 17:29 I did jQuery first then React.

Kent: 17:34 What were some of your pinpoints in learning React at the beginning, if you can remember. I know it's hard to remember that far back. If you can remember any of those pinpoints, what are some of the things that have stuck with you that keep you excited about working with React?

Samantha: 17:54 For me, since I already knew HTML and CSS coming into the bootcamp, I didn't have to learn all of that stuff like some of my other cohort people did. The hard thing for me was, maybe, createElement, and having to nest it all the way through.

18:12 Sometimes you'd be 20 levels deep with the createElement, and you're like, "This is too much. I'm trying to figure out all of this text." I wasn't using VSCode, I don't think, by that time. I was using maybe Sublime or Atom. I don't think they had the Prettier fix all of these...

18:30 [crosstalk]

Kent: 18:32 Life before Prettier, it was a dark age.

Samantha: 18:35 [laughs]

Kent: 18:37 I'm so glad that we have JSX. [laughs]

Samantha: 18:40 I guess that also helps. Prettier, I feel like sometimes messes people up because they don't know the syntax. Prettier will fix it for them to be able to go through that struggle. I love struggling because that's how you learn. Any time I struggle is great for me.

Kent: 19:01 That's a good perspective. In the moment, it's annoying to struggle. [laughs] That's a good perspective that you see that as a benefit. Very cool. You also mentioned earlier that you've got a YouTube channel, and you're teaching and stuff. I'm curious, what kinds of things do you teach, and what motivates you to do that teaching?

Samantha: 19:26 For me, I want to see people of color break into tech. I think there's not enough diversity in the industry. I talk to people like, "Oh, you're a very rare gem." I don't think it should be that way. Tech is such a nice field for everybody to have opportunities in. We need more people within the field.

19:45 I not only want to help people break into tech, but also help them grow in their career. I have been through a lot in my career, and I want to pass down that information down. How do you handle your manager? How do you start learning a new language?

20:04 Because right now, I'm learning my second language, which is Python. Having to redo all that over again is very interesting to know. Being able to mentor people. I do enjoy doing that. I love being able to go back in time a little bit and relearn some of the things they're learning. One of my mentees is in a bootcamp right now, and they're learning Node and Express.

20:29 I, personally, am not in the backend very often. Being able to go in there with her again, and dive deep in Node and Express, and trying to get her project up and running is super fun to me. Now, I've just put out my first JavaScript tutorial where I'm teaching people how to do a timer.

20:46 I'm excited about breaking down things very small and making sure that a wide amount of people can understand. I think JavaScript is such a great language to learn, and I'm excited about getting more people into the industry.

Kent: 21:01 I love that. I think that's such a noble mission. Years ago, I was a podcast host, and I had a panel of people. One person on my panel, her name's Pam Selle. She was an awesome contributor to the podcast. It was a live broadcast, video podcast. Sorry, I'll try to keep the story short. [laughs]

21:30 My wife was watching the podcast while I was in my office during the recording. She was watching it with my daughter. My daughter saw Pam, and she was like, "Oh, girls can do this too. That's great."

21:45 That was the moment where I realized representation is super important for especially younger generations. To see that like, "Oh, yeah. Girls can do these things as well," or I see somebody like me doing this thing. I guess that gives me permission to have interest.

22:07 I'm so glad that you're doing that. It takes a lot of work. That you're putting that work into it, that's a wonderful thing. It's good stuff. I actually watched one of your videos a while ago. How long have you been doing this? Because I feel like that was a long time ago.

Samantha: 22:25 Just for a few months now when the pandemic...

Kent: 22:27 Few months?

Samantha: 22:28 Let me do something. [laughs]

Kent: 22:30 Maybe I watched your first one. Was it career-focused?

Samantha: 22:35 Yes.

Kent: 22:37 I remember. It's good stuff. I encourage people to go find it. Where's the best place for people to find that?

Samantha: 22:44 You can follow me on Samantha Bretous. It's my YouTube channel name. On all social media platforms.

Kent: 22:50 That makes it easy.

22:51 [laughter]

Kent: 22:56 We're getting close to the end of our time. Is there anything that you want to bring out or mention before we wrap things up?

Samantha: 23:06 Yeah, sure. People who are watching this course, make sure you keep going. You are worthy. You are amazing. Keep going. Keep pushing yourself. Somebody will see your potential. Believe in who you are.

Kent: 23:25 That is so nice. Thank you, Samantha. I'm not even going through the course, and I feel better about myself. That was a Mr. Rogers moment from you.

23:36 [laughter]

Kent: 23:38 Thank you. Wonderful. Samantha, the best place for people to keep up with you and follow you is through YouTube and Twitter, I'm guessing.

Samantha: 23:47 Instagram as well. So many platforms, yeah. [laughs]

Kent: 23:53 Thank you so much for giving us some of your time today. We'll see around on the Internet. Thank you.

Samantha: 23:59 Thank you so much.

Kent: 24:01 See you, everyone.