I'm Cassidy, I teach coding and create fun videos on the internet. AMA 👇

@karlclement I'm glad you're working at this early! It's something you really have to strive for, from DMing folks to posting in groups like https://blacktechpipeline.com/ and https://www.hiretechladies.com/. Offering referral bonuses (even small ones!) are great too for pushing for finding good people. Also, not just recruiting, but retention is so important! Having (and communicating!) support systems in place for folks who are historically marginalized is so, so helpful both for hiring, and keeping people around.

@cassidoo Thank you Cassidy, excellent idea to offer a referral bonus! Also, great point about retention. Convincing someone to join is one thing, but making sure they are happy with their career is essential. We're attempting to focus on transparency with team wide discussions and 1-on-1s to make sure everything can be candid about their experience.

@tomfrankly oh hey friend 😊 As much as I'd like to say the hand-curated technical content, it's... definitely the joke. People love the joke. I'm very confident that a significant percentage of people read it for the joke.

@tomfrankly @cassidoo we do read it for the joke

@john_cogs Measuring dev rel, the bane of our existence, hahaha! We measure top of funnel signups, and also (less numerically) how much we help other teams (like UX/Design, Marketing, Sales, Product, etc) with our work.

@cassidoo It truly is. :) The second part is really cool. Definitely good food for thought. Thanks for sharing.

@timsitorus1 ayyyy friend! 1) ...I admit I didn't dress up 😶 I wanted to but was very indoors watching TV instead hahaha. 2) I have, oh man. I actually turned down CodePen at first before actually working for them. I realized my mistake very quickly and went back asking them to take me back a few months later! There have been other companies too where I genuinely really like the people, but the fit just hasn't been right at the time. I've definitely tried to keep in touch with those places though, in case something ever changes.

@fernandocomet Hmm, I admit I don't have a post on hand! That being said, I recommend watching other teachers to see which styles you might want to adopt. That really, really helped me develop my own teaching style.

@yaaang hahaha! 1) idk I just kind of try things 2) 100% the memes. Like I had a decent following before I made memes more regularly (around 20k on Twitter or so, and around 2k people subscribed to my newsletter), but all of that explODED once I started making TikToks and jokes more regularly. Which is both fun and also like "but wait what about my tech work" hahaha. I do think people come for the memes and stay for the occasional useful tidbit about technical things :) 3) I think if you want to build a community, you need to think first of what will your community get out of it. Do you want them to just look at your content more? That's an audience, not a community. Do you want them to be friends with each other? Do you want to give them swag? Do you want to have more eyes on your product? Once you have that goal in mind, you can start to figure out how you want to go about it. Just making a Discord group and say "hello, come now" to people isn't really... helpful. I'd start small first with some key people who might benefit from a community with you, and then grow it over time. Also... have a code of conduct early!

@yaaang @cassidoo All really great points!! Thank you 😀

@mehdi_benadel That depends 😉

@val_pinkman If your customers are developers, you need to care about their experience. Just like how user experience specialists are important for products to work well, developer experience specialists are important if you want developers to work well with your APIs/SDKs/platforms!

@cassidoo thanks for answer ;)

@cannikin Hey! My day-to-day varies a lot. Sometimes it's a lot of coding, sometimes it's a lot of meetings, sometimes it's a day of writing, sometimes it's a day of speaking, and sometimes it's a combo of all of the above! It's definitely a "jack of all trades" kind of role. On documentation, our team does weekly rotations where one of us works with our documentation team to both help improve the docs website, as well as help refine wording and code samples. As for the product, we have regular meetings with both engineering and product management teams about our learnings, and advise on decisions. We're regularly "developer 0" for new features as well, where if we find a bug or something weird in something that hasn't been released publicly yet, we talk it out with them so that we can have something very vetted once it goes public.

@iamvp7 1) My day-to-day varies a lot. Sometimes it's a lot of coding, sometimes it's a lot of meetings, sometimes it's a day of writing, sometimes it's a day of speaking, and sometimes it's a combo of all of the above! It's definitely a "jack of all trades" kind of role. 2) I typically don't work on the product itself, but on projects and aspects of things that make a developer's experience on the product better. My team sometimes does rotations on the product team (I did a 3 month rotation earlier this year) to get to know different aspects of the product more so that we can do our DX work a little better. But at Netlify specifically, I know that developers will want to use [some framework] or use [some feature] and each of us on the team have different goals for how we can improve that experience for each feature and framework that devs might use. 3) I'd say to think deeply about your users. If you're a backend developer, you probably know what it's like to deal with funky APIs, build systems, databases, etc. Write about that type of experience, build tools to make that experience better, and figure out how you would want to improve that kind of experience for others!

Thanks @cassidoo for detailed reply. I will work on #3 so can improve myself and join DX team in future.

@anthkris This can really vary from person to person. I tend to pick a project that interests me (and that kind of scares me, because I don't fully know how I'll implement it), and try to work on it after work. I've found though that often when the work day is busy, I don't have much energy to work afterwards on my projects, so I'll often switch to working a little bit before the workday starts. It really depends on you!

@idev I agree with that completely! That's actually how I first learned coding. It was yeeeears ago before online classes were a thing (literally before YouTube, showing my age here), and viewing the source of websites was how I first learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Learning how to read source code is so helpful both for learning code, but also learning how projects/frameworks/etc work. I know I learned a lot about React by reading some of the source code under the hood, too.

@osayilasisi I'd love to teach more, and to be more creative! It sounds very generic. It's been particularly tough in the pandemic to be able to, for example, play music, draw, go out and teach workshops... stuff that I really miss doing. I want to figure out how to bring those kinds of activities back into my life again (without burning out).

@imdaeshawn I personally use StreamLabs OBS on my PC! It was really easy to set up, definitely recommend it.

@jdetle I definitely make content and work more publicly when I have energy, and just... don't when I don't have it, hahaha. I very actively maintain my calendar, to-do list, and note-taking so that I can take advantage of the time when I have it!

@stefan_smiljkovic Hey! I have around 13.5k subscribers! Typically each week when I send it out, it grows by about 50, but around 30-40 unsubscribe. Each week varies, of course!

@5harath Hey! Honestly I don't have much of a process. I really just... play with ideas a lot. I sometimes come up with video ideas based on music, and sometimes have an idea and search for ways to communicate it. Some of my "most popular" videos are ones that I worked about 10 seconds on, and some are ones where I've really put effort in. Some videos take me months to refine the idea, and some just pop up as a concept *after* I've filmed it, hahaha!

@li_gri Thank you notes, hands down. If you're ever at a meetup, or conference, or Twitter Space, or async chat, or even a simple voice chat, sending thank you notes are SUCH POWERFUL TOOLS that so few people use! It can start a connection that can turn into a really great relationship. Some of my closest friends and mentorship relationships have started with a simple thank you note.

@cassidoo Thanks! That's really great advice!!

@lee_hee_jae I have a whole guide on this! cass.run/gig As for specifically a job abroad, I admit I don't have a lot of experience in this area, so I don't know if I'll be very helpful for you. I've heard good things about https://www.remote.io/ though!

@cassidoo wow cass.run/gig looks really good. I've heard that site, I should check it out. Thanks

@daniel_uhl I'd say to start working in public! Share your learnings, even if they feel embarrassing, and give back as much as you can. That pays dividends!