#TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙
...where Tech, Engineering, and The Culture intersects.
#TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙
Backstage with BobbyD featuring Michael Frohberg
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I am an expert in the front end, but I'm also the back of the front end. How do you build front ends?
Speaker 2:How do you build multiple front ends?
Speaker 1:It's about the back of the front. I build the testing suite that the front end goes on. I build the GraphQL API, that those go on. I also do a lot of the Kubernetes and a lot of the containerization and a lot of the cloud stuff as well. Throughout my career it's been the level of building framework. I mean I do build applications.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I've had more success building frameworks that build applications.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't give enough credit for people that build frameworks. Right, it's like templatizing the way that you should be doing things. Follow this template, your success rate will increase higher, and then if anything needs to be changed in the template, we'll change it so everybody else gets advantage of it. So I always loved frameworks and frameworks being like a foundational thing in terms of just skills development. Welcome, welcome, welcome. What up d d hustle? My guy holding it down guess where we at man the big apple the big apple, nyc.
Speaker 1:We hold it down what is?
Speaker 2:real good and we, right on 42nd street, time square right outside broadway.
Speaker 1:let's go 42nd and broad Times Square right outside the window, and Broadway.
Speaker 2:Let's go. 42nd and Broadway. Big shout-outs to everybody here in New York City. We got a special guest for us today. Who we got? Who we got Michael.
Speaker 1:Froberg have you heard of that guy before? I like him already.
Speaker 2:Let's bring him to the stage already.
Speaker 1:Michael, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me. Oh my gosh, I'm glad to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Definitely want to make sure that everybody can hear your voice, because my man used to kill this audio game here and then get into tech afterwards. We got a story to tell, but, michael man, thank you so much for pulling up.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, for sure, I'd like to engage with your, you know, with your audience and everybody like that. Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:And then we got D-Hustle in the cut right.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir D-Hustle always holding it down. There we go, but Michael and I has had the pleasure of being introduced by Patat right on LinkedIn Shout out to Patat, for sure. And the situation was is that we in NYC, you know, I told y'all to pull up because we're going to have a pop up location for the podcast and my guy's name came through and I was like yo, let me see what Mike got on his plate, to see if we can get onto his schedule, see how you know the credentials looking fine. Yeah, you know, I was like yo, we got, we got to get Michael on our show. So thank you all so much for pulling up and we're going to hear Michael's story. So, to kind of kick this off, tell us a little bit about how you got into tech and how this all started for you.
Speaker 1:Sure enough. You know, I think to talk about tech I have to go backwards a bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right Kill if a dog was, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:But no, I would say I started my career as a kind of adult working in television production. So I worked on uh you know things like um top chef project runway, making the band um apprentice yeah, yeah, we'll do that one alone.
Speaker 2:We'll definitely that one alone. I can't say anything about what I heard.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so basically working in television. You know it was a great job, I was very happy to do it, but I got really kind of a.
Speaker 2:interestingly enough, the iPhone came out and I was like blown away by it at the time, and so my idea, my thought was sorry.
Speaker 1:my idea and my thought was to do. You know, I wanted to make apps, I was very much interested in that world and you know I was like jailbreaking phones and all the craziness, because I was, you know. So that was my doorway and my sort of you know my door into tech.
Speaker 2:I would say is through mobile.
Speaker 1:And so the first thing I did, you know, while I was working on set, you know, I had a bag on my chest, you know, with gear, and on top of that, I had my iPad, I started going to school. I went to school for mobile development at Full Sail University. It was interesting. I was definitely happy for it, but I just didn't feel like it was going to, at the time, really move because I felt like I needed to get into the game sooner.
Speaker 2:He was like yo they're moving too slow. We need to get this thing going right.
Speaker 1:This three-year thing isn't happening for me, yeah yeah, so I decided to get the degree and then, kind of through the process of getting the degree, discovered that there were boot camps.
Speaker 2:Boot camps. Yeah, this was the very first generation of boot camps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I was like wow, this is very interesting. And so I was like wow, this is very interesting. And you know, let me look into this. And I did look into it and I was. I ended up signing up for the fifth web development immersive Rails camp. Yeah yeah, that they still had, like you know before that they were still doing a lot of kind of not sorry one second they were doing a lot of like startup kind of integration stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah At the first, where that was kind of the focus, yeah yeah, and then secondarily, they had classes there.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I got you, and so when I got there it was the first sort of you know cohort of the classes. I was very early in boot camp, yeah, and that immediately turned around to a job for me. It was like I did the project that they asked me to do and then we had a science fair kind of thing where we did our project Show and tell type stuff, and then two of you happened to be there or whatever, and I ended up getting a job with two of you.
Speaker 2:Give them a round of applause and big, big plug here, because we're dropping gems. Here is showing skill set development, not just from educational, supplemental education is the key thing, right, and boot camping, vocational schools, technical schools is the avenue that I got through too was through technical school Definitely has those genuine experiences because you're going to be developing the skills hands-on and then you get to show and tell and then you get a job opportunity right there.
Speaker 2:So definitely big shout-outs to you, Michael for making that transition and definitely big shout-outs to the boot camp for making that available to you.
Speaker 1:I think my path kind of going through tech started off interestingly enough, I had done that full stack, you know development thing I got hired as a UX developer. You know which was like, what is this, but you know, interestingly enough, I think that was probably one of the best things that I could have possibly had gotten involved in and gotten you know at the beginning of my career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Doing so enabled me to sort of start by like building frameworks. You know, I always kind of throughout my career it's been the level of building frameworks.
Speaker 2:I mean I do build applications, yeah, yeah, but I've had more success building frameworks than build applications, yeah, I even like the way that you dropped that, because you said building frameworks to build applications, because I don't think we take enough or we don't give enough credit for people that build frameworks. Right, it's like templatizing the way that you should be doing things. Follow this template, your success rate will increase higher, and then if anything needs to be changed in a template, we'll change it so everybody else gets advantage of it. So I always love frameworks, and frameworks being like a foundational thing in terms of just skills development is something that's extremely impactful. So big ups to you really embracing that concept around frameworks, rather than continue to pursue the idea of, hey, I'm going to create this app, create this app, create this app, versus creating a framework that you can make all of those apps on.
Speaker 2:So big ups to you, I'm wondering why Michael don't have his own company yet right. It's in the works. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Several phases of development.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, that's what's up. When year was this that you started off boot camping, getting your first opportunity? When was that?
Speaker 1:2013.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a really good year, 2013,. The industry itself was very popping right. That's still very active. A lot of opportunities in terms of skill set-wise to really make leaps and bounds into, you know, bigger companies and, rather than you know, startup scene, which is kind of like what we had, that iteration afterwards, because then startups start to come out like crazy but did you ever get a chance to make it out to the West Coast at all during your time?
Speaker 1:Yes actually. I did. I worked for a company. It was Infosys. That's a new company, right? They owned another company called Scaba. That was an e-com company that was based out of San Francisco. Oh, that's what's up. So you know, I went there multiple times. You know, kind of that was our base of operations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, even though I was in New York. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know we still had to go there for various things, and I'm trying to think there's a couple other things I've done there as well.
Speaker 2:You know kind of conference or whatever, but I've been out there having, and my friend was so yeah, in Amapark. Yeah, tell me a little bit about that. You were saying that they kind of inspired you to get into tech in some form or phase, or was that something else?
Speaker 1:So I had basically a cousin, a really kind of black cousin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I'm related to that. He's my cousin too.
Speaker 1:We know what's up here, so yeah, I had you know who was kind of ahead of the game. You know like he was involved at Facebook early on and wound up being able to exit out very nicely. Yeah, yeah, from when it was before it was public.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know he was somebody that you know when I was thinking about this. I kind of don't use him too much in a way, but like at that time I was like hey, I'm looking to figure out what's the best kind of entry in. Right now I'm doing this thing right now, and he was like GA and I was like bet.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. That's all I needed to hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, and I immediately took his advice to heart and, yeah, yeah, story to tell today.
Speaker 2:The rest is history. The rest is history, yeah, and then that's always a good thing in terms of when you have those family members. A lot of people reach out to me also and sometimes there's some hesitation to reach out, but for me I'm like yo just come and ask me a question, I can just give you just a little bit of this sauce here and you're going to be gone, right, and it's always great inspiration to hear, like, the other side of that, like it was just a little bit of giving. Um definitely turned out to be a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of, you know, access and definitely development and knowledge. Um is something that's so inspiring. Um, yeah, facebook. Back then it was uh, twitter and facebook were fighting like this that time and era man.
Speaker 2:I, I remember, I remember actually had a co-worker of mine that, uh, left twitter to go to facebook and came right back to twitter. It was like no hell, no, I can't work over there. It's just something about the, the, the, the, the fighting that we've always had. That it doesn't matter, he's still viewed as a tweet over there. So I was like I'd come back home. We always welcome you anyway, but but it's always interesting to hear how the Silicon Valley competition in terms of engineering really helped influence the industry too, because we're definitely going to be talking about some tech a little bit later. But in terms of your skill set, so you're mostly on the front end side, right? No?
Speaker 1:No, I apologize. No, no, it's okay. Uh, no, I, I I'm. No, no, it's okay. I would say that I, I am an expert in the front end, right, but I'm also the back of the front end right Like. I'm how do you build front ends?
Speaker 2:How do you build multiple front ends?
Speaker 1:So it's about like the back of the front, like I build the testing suite that the front end goes on. I build, you know, the um, graphql API, that those go on, so uh, and also do a lot of the Kubernetes and a lot of the containerization and a lot of the cloud stuff as well. So I would say like I'm most known for that because I've spent the most amount of time in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But a lot of what I've been doing lately has been broader than just that. It's more full stack. Yeah, michael said yo, don't put me in a corner. I'm trying to get a job right now. I'm selling my life experience.
Speaker 2:Basically he's saying he's international Shout out to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he said he goes from one side of the infrastructure all the way to the other side. Don't sleep on him. Don't sleep on him. My bad Michael round again my bad, michael I didn't mean to be like no no, no, no, but.
Speaker 2:But the thing is, is that the skill set wise. It's always really great to hear, uh, engineers step into that right, because some engineers will only stay in that specific lane and be like yo. I only mess with front end javascript typescript. Don't talk to me about anything else. Rather than what's needed in the climate that we're in right now is broader skill sets right and upskilling right. It's like, hey, yeah, I only used to do front end, but I know how the middleware works. I know how the back end infrastructure works and that thing you call cloud that everybody's kind of mysteriously about. I know how that works. So, uh, definitely, big shout outs to you in terms of, just, you know, I'm broadening the scope, calling me out like yo, whose podcast is this again, like, don't put me in this corner like this. But the cool thing is that it's just really going to help our audience be mindful of like, hey, skill set wise, keep the spectrum broad right, especially during the climate that we're in right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that came out of one of the companies I worked at, skyva, the InfoSys company, was that we had the front end. But because the front end was in Node and I also kind of go back I'm a Node person From the first job I was talking about Nodejs and using Grunt and using other stuff was how I kind of got my JavaScript and Node things in there. And I would say, as a result of that, when I went to that company we were building up this kind of React server-side rendering stack.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And nobody other than us knew how to do that, so they were like we're going to need you to spin this up and figure out how this all works, how to scale it horizontally or vertically what it?
Speaker 2:actually entails to do it vertically what it actually entails to do it.
Speaker 1:And then also, yeah, we're also using this thing called Kubernetes Learn it, I can learn it in three weeks, and then from there I've known Kubernetes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, kubernetes Big shout-outs to Kubernetes. It's great, and we've had a few episodes here on the podcast talking about Kubernetes and talking about containerization. It's actually one of my expert skill sets, right, that's kind of like my box that I check is building infrastructure at hyperscale, because that's what I did at Twitter is build one of the world's largest compute clusters, not running Kubernetes, but running a software predecessor to Kubernetes which is called Mesos and Aurora. So it's almost like Google released this product, not released it, but they talked about a white paper on Borg. I don't know if you've ever heard their orchestration system.
Speaker 1:That name sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:And then, once they did Borg, they were going to make Kubernetes, but there was grad students from Berkeley that started working at Twitter recreating Borg, and then that's what we got not stuck on, but that's what we started to develop. Unfortunately, you know, in these races two products come out. One of them is going to come out on top and unfortunately, Aurora Mesos didn't really make the cut and everybody moved to Kubernetes. And then that's where we are right now, where everybody's taking advantage of this technology because it does allow you to scale horizontally right, massively right. I mean, one of our compute clusters we ran over like 500 containers with just one cluster right, and that was one of our limitations, why we couldn't move to Kubernetes, because it couldn't scale that way. But there's definitely headwind that's heading in that direction and it's always good to hear industries picking up these technologies. That really will change the game for them.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's what's up. That's what's up. So if the broad spectrum, in terms of full stack, what is your programming language then?
Speaker 1:I would say my primary programming language is JavaScript or TypeScript. Yeah yeah, so if I can do Node, I will do Node.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's the right thing to do, not you know?
Speaker 1:whatever you know exactly, but I always have to use it anyway. Yeah, if I'm using the front end, so I would say that's been the most, because it's, I think, it allows more developers to do more things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If we're using, say, a Node stack or whatever, then everyone's full stack. Even though they're used to one thing they can still utilize the same language.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the same language so that you can cross-platform in terms of reviewing code, get code changed and things like that. So I've heard TypeScript is really making a headwind on this scene here. So how do you feel about TypeScript?
Speaker 1:I think TypeScript is incredible. Obviously, there are probably small things anybody can argue about, but I think it's basically made JavaScript into Java, I mean yes, I know, it's not really that, it's like a pile or whatever. Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that it's really good because it has brought type safety at least the idea of type safety, you know into sort of the front end.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And in doing so, I think, even in the middle layer, I think it's allowed us to be able to, you know, basically make things a little bit easier to test.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even sometimes not having to write a necessary test because we know that, like the shape of the data you know will be the shape of the data anyway. So I think it's kind of made it easier to test. You know, because of that, we have to write less tests as a result of it. And then also, I think it, you know, it has made, I think, just generally speaking development better with regards to things like type safety, understanding how shapes of these things operate throughout our this. You know what have you. So I think that that's been very yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean there's other things as well, but I think largely you know the ecosystem around. It is very helpful. They do a lot of you know updates and I think, just in general, having people think about interfaces and types and these kind of things you know anywhere along the stack is better and safer.
Speaker 2:I was talking to another guest we had here. What up, sebastian? What's going on, player? We appreciate you pulling up, and he was also making some great evaluations of the value around TypeScript compared to JavaScript and more or less becoming close to the norm in the industry. When you're looking for jobs, is that one of the skills that they're looking for?
Speaker 2:But more specifically around types, it's always kind of so. I'm more Python right. So data types, we really don't care. But we got to write code that blocks code or blocks those invalid data types, and what you find is a lot of new engineers don't actually. But we got to write code that blocks code or blocks those invalidated types, and what you find is a lot of new engineers don't actually write code like that.
Speaker 2:They were actually not looking at type inside of their function or method, but they're just expecting it to be received, and that's one of the the buggier things about python is that you can pass in anything and not really define the types. They have helpers to kind of let you know what is expected as input and output, but there's really no blocking code to actually say, hey, you sent me the wrong crap. Here goes the exception, go figure it out type stuff. So. But I'm finding out that even the, the more structured programming language like, uh, java or even golang, being really uh, standing on that, you find out why it's important to include it.
Speaker 2:For me, I never even cared, even cared. I was like yo, my function works, I don't care what you send, right. And then, like you said, I used to have to write even more tests just to validate the data type and what would happen if you gave me some bad data type. So great ideas and thank you for bringing that to the table in terms of just things to be mindful of when you're choosing a programming language. And hey, typescript is the new kid on the block, so I'm hoping everybody picks it up and sharpens it up.
Speaker 1:It's been helpful, you know, and particularly in building libraries.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, like I say, I only build frameworks and libraries.
Speaker 1:You use my stuff.
Speaker 2:I don't use your stuff.
Speaker 1:I build apps that build apps.
Speaker 2:That's nice. So, in terms of like one thing that I think when I first checked out your LinkedIn, it's just skill-wise. You're definitely at the higher level of senior engineer, right. Shout out to that. Big shout outs. Right, there's like level one. Well, there's interns, level one, level two, sometimes a level three before you get to senior. Then you've got the staff principals and then distinguished engineers and you're sitting definitely at the staff principal level, which has had some requirements for you to be in a leadership role. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I think you know a lot of what I'm asked to do when I come in for work is definitely to provide sort of you know, mentorship is one element of this right, sort of like helping the engineers, kind of working as a tech lead and sort of like maybe a person who, some companies I'm the only one who can sign off on certain things yeah, so some of that is kind of like having to do that piece. What I've really enjoyed.
Speaker 1:It depends on where you're working how much of, say, ic, like management they are doing yeah, and also whether or not the management I'm doing is actually related to um uh, it is like, am I doing one-on-ones? Am I doing these kind of things? Yeah uh, for career stuff, and I think like generally I've kind of avoided that part of it and kind of was more of a tech lead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and then mentor and then, you know, there were direct reports I have had. Interestingly enough, my first direct reports were at a company called understoodorg and basically they were so happy to get me to come on because they were going to be working with a team called Andela, which is in Africa, Like you know, Africa Accelerator and then, like they basically hire people from Andela, yeah, yeah. And they come from different places like Africa and Kenya.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, and that was really cool because it gave me a chance to sort of work with people, our people, for the first time and you know they were such great, great engineers. I had a chance to had opportunity to work with um and you know we were able to kind of um. There's a lot of feedback that I was able to give um and they were, you know, very. I think some of them are on my uh, yeah, I think most of all of them written recommendations.
Speaker 1:I see some recommendations like two, three paragraphs whereas I was like damn Michael's, killing it out here. So I think you know they would probably say that I was very giving in terms of, like you know, a like opportunities, like you know, sort of like I gave them ownership.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think you know, in a lot of ways ownership is really important to engineers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you give them, here's your thing, here's your slice, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know and we'll work on that. But like I think that was important ownership, you know, sort of giving ownership in my generally speaking, yeah, you know, not just with that group. But you know, giving people ownership was an important aspect of that for me. Yeah, you know I did a lot of pair programming. You know it's kind of a huge part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love pair programming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know, so that's been, that was and I do that even at my last job. Lots of my jobs like that's kind of, you know, like I'll do a deep dive in a bug and that's kind of things. But yeah, I think, working with teams of people, there's lots of different ways in which we do that, I think, but ultimately, when things are broken up into smaller chunks, I help them create the tickets.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:I think it was earlier on. We have an understanding of what a chunk of work looks like and what should be expected instead of you know being, you know within the time span you know. Yeah, you don't want to give somebody too much, too little, so sort of understanding like that aspect of things. He's on fire.
Speaker 2:I like it. I like it. I definitely want to give you a chance to speak on, especially for our audience, because our audience are mostly underrepresented and even when I was describing the levels right, from senior to staff and principal, there's not that many of us at that type of level right and first of all, congratulations on being able to, you know, make those type of impact and leading engineers and giving them the, the gems, the, the sauce in terms of how to be successful. But tell us a little bit about you know some of your challenges of being probably one of the only black you know, lead team, lead staff engineers or principal engineers that you've encountered.
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I think probably people not taking me like, necessarily taking me seriously, or thinking somehow that because of who I am, I must know less. I mean, I'm not sure that I've seen that specifically. Like you know, somebody's been very like hey. But like I think you know, just kind of noticing that, like you know, people are like eh, they're trying to you know they're going to want to question you more.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And push back on things more. Yeah, you know than on things more than I have seen them do with other people. Facts, so I just expect it. It's sad to say, but I just kind of expect certain things, and so I try not to make a noise about it, because it's not going to help me anymore, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:And let me tell you it's definitely an honor to talk to another engineer that has climbed a level to get to there, because I know you've definitely had those more challenging conversations, first of all to justify the role and then also just about justify your voice when there needs to be a decision making. It's something I had to deal with and also teach my counterparts. I had a lot of obviously you know, more represented, you know, background engineers that you know were amongst my peer group and they could see that from their own eyes in terms of how I was treated versus them right, and it definitely made it more easier for me to to get them to be more empowered in their responses and supporting me to grow and develop. Big shout outs to you know those engineers Demi G what's up?
Speaker 2:Santos, frank and those engineers definitely wanted to make sure that I wasn't somebody left behind because of that and definitely opened the lanes for us. But there still isn't enough. There still isn't enough of us around to see it and definitely this job market that's coming up will, unfortunately, have even more of us on the sideline waiting. But in general, definitely big ups to your journey, big ups to becoming a staff principal engineer, much respect and he said I build frameworks, I build apps on top of apps.
Speaker 2:That's probably one of the hardest things I'm gonna I might trade my michael's gonna co-sign it make sure you put tm on top, all right, all right, so, uh, one of the next things that I want to talk about is we kind of uh briefly talking about, uh, kubernetes, containerizations and some of the work that I've done. But there's this area that I think is opening up, and I'm not sure if you've been exposed to it as much as I want to dive into. It is around AI and machine learning and machine learning operations, or ML ops. How do you feel about AI number one, and have you done any work with it in terms of your roles as an engineer?
Speaker 1:I'm very happy. Ai is very interesting, obviously because it can quickly become. I wrote AI that wrote code.
Speaker 2:Ready. I'm like damn, I'm already going to replace somebody. No, that's not okay.
Speaker 1:But I do think that it's obviously it's here to stay, and I've had some interesting experience with it as well. At Wayfair, where I most recently was employed, we had a hackathon sponsored by Google and Wayfair together on generative AI and they gave us, like the toys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all the toys.
Speaker 1:You know, we had all the LLMs, we had all the different things, and there was this hackathon that they wanted, you know, to say hey, how can we increase or do something cool with Wayfair business, you know? And so I sort of pitched the idea of creating automated code review for AI of creating automated code review for AI. So this was, you know, basically what we did was we trained a model on like React documentation and a lot of different code bases.
Speaker 1:You know sort of our code bases, yeah, and you know validated it by you know creating a PR, you know kind of going through a process. So it was like more like more than just like AI generation. There was also AI generation in the process of of Git, kind of checking and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, creating like a pipeline. Yeah, pipeline exactly.
Speaker 1:And so part of a pipeline was that we would you know, basically it would take in the you know the code and basically say, well, this is not good, this is okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know so the code review would I think in our case we used React. You know we basically had some bad kind of like things that would not be okay, you know in terms of how we do it, and then it was able to you know, recognize, you know essentially various different, you know whether or not it was good or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, almost like a scoring system or something like that, or actually line by line.
Speaker 1:I would say a bit of a scoring system in essence, a little bit yeah. But more at this point, line by line. Yeah, what we're trying to accomplish at the level that we did for the Hockathon. Yeah, yeah, we were actually before I left, we were actually building that out.
Speaker 2:So that was the real thing.
Speaker 1:So it's one thing for what we did do, which was kind of a proof of concept, and so, yeah, creating proof of concept using AI has been really interesting. I've even been using it in my job search. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know using tools that allow me to take the JD or job description and then change my resume based on the job description.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's awesome. Give him a round of applause right there. Yeah, that's using the AI to its full potential and, in my opinion, it's definitely something we cover on our show all the time. And I tell you, know, our subscribers, my mentees, that I need to follow along, but not just follow along. I need to touch it, it, experience it, so that you can see, um, how it's going to force, multiply you as an individual, but also the things that you're working on too.
Speaker 1:um is find the right place for also finding that it's good for, uh, writing code. Yeah, um, and you know, sort of just you've been getting out like a basic structure or something and then kind of going through and figuring out what the problem is yeah, yeah, there's always going to be one problem. You're like ah, For sure, it's like inverted the you know semicolon or something is done.
Speaker 2:Starting from a blank sheet of paper is always one of the toughest things, for me too, and that's why frameworks are so great. That's why they're so great, because frameworks for me, my starting point is how do I use this framework? Oh, I need to create these interfaces, I need this. All right, start that, boom, we're there, right. That's why I've always, always, enjoyed frameworks, because starting from scratch has always been difficult for me.
Speaker 1:Certainly, that's what's up. I'm a framework, you know, friend of frameworks.
Speaker 2:He said I got you, I got you All right that I wanted to throw out there, michael, real quick. Is we? We, at our show, have really honed in and supporting the next generation of engineers that are coming out. That looks like me and you and more or less just want to give you an opportunity to reflect and give some advice on like what, what they should be working on, especially the, the young professionals, in terms of developing so that they can get their first opportunity, potentially in the tech industry.
Speaker 1:Sure, I think one of the things that's been very helpful for me is keeping up to date with what's going on, whether that's frameworks, whether that's latest updates, api that you're using or these kind of things. But I think it's important, as you're coming up, to have a culture of learning. You know, um, I know a lot of developers that have been like. You know I'm not.
Speaker 2:You know that you kind of get to that point where you want to learn anything new.
Speaker 1:Yeah you know, I mean like it's like you've seen them before. They always kind of like I don't want to change frameworks, you know I don't like this, you know, but it's like that, I get that. You want to keep things, you know. Status quo. You want to keep things from constantly changing. Because, a lot of people get caught in that sort of like oh, what's the next thing we can do, what can we do, what can we do.
Speaker 2:Particularly junior engineers who are in senior positions. This is a new toy that just came out, exactly so it's important, I think, to understand that and respect that.
Speaker 1:It just came out Exactly, so it's important, I think, to understand that and respect that, but also always be learning. I think it's important, I think, as people of color look, I'm going to say it. I was taught from a young age that I have to go twice as far to get happy.
Speaker 2:You know that one, that statement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So you're going to have to be that People are going to be looking at people with extra eyes, so you can't. I think you've got to just keep yourself straight, because otherwise people are going to automatically put you in a box. And I hate to say it but you have to kind of code switch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the industry, unfortunately, is making a shift back towards where that's going to be norm right. It was like diversity inclusion was really popping, really popping, and now companies are dropping diversity inclusion like it's nothing and it's more or less going to force us to have to do that code switching back to what it was. Yeah, but definitely appreciate the kind words for our audience, because I don't think enough of us get a chance to talk and tell about these small things like love to learn, like you're going to have to learn, like, hey, the climate we in you might have to code switch right, and just hearing it straight up is always something that I appreciate my guests coming through and dropping. So thank you so much for that.
Speaker 1:You're going to learn today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're going to learn today. You're going to learn today, awesome, awesome. So the next thing I want to give you a chance is talk about any you know recent projects. You've got going on anything you know. I believe you might be in the market right now, but what do you got going on in your current phase in your journey?
Speaker 1:Sure, I think you know kind of what I'm doing right now, actually getting out there more talking to people doing talks and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:A big shout out to the Tech Hustle podcast, my guy. He says if I got to do it, I got to do it here.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think, my content creation and being able to create a space for that as well, which you're going to say a space, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, kind of providing. You know, I think that providing an opportunity, a place and a forum through content to be able to do this. So I'm kind of just working out what that looks like. Yeah, you know where that is. You know, I kind of haven't. You know, I've been on TikTok and doing my own thing for a long time.
Speaker 2:I'd rather separate that out, because that's a different thing. We're going to have Michael's links all in the description below. I need y'all to like, subscribe, follow anything and everything he's touching, because my guy got some knowledge and experience that you just do not find every day. I had to go look in my Rolodex to find him and I had to get on his schedule right, so definitely make sure you follow along. So we're getting close to the tail end of our conversation here and I didn't give you a prep for this, but this is a chance for you to ask Bobby D anything. We're hanging out backstage with Bobby D, so if you have anything or any questions on the top of your mind that you want to ask, feel free to throw them out. If not, we're going to be wrapping it up soon. So what's up, Michael?
Speaker 1:I would love to know. First of all, were you at X when Elon? Was there at the end of that, or did you manage to get out before the shitstorm?
Speaker 2:Thank you for describing it like that.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 2:Actually a guest that we had in the show right before yours. I mentioned to him that I've been off of Twitter for one whole year Actually, yesterday was marked a day so I boycotted Twitter. Since the day changed for exactly one year. I got back on to it last night for the first time and, oh my gosh, the platform looks totally different.
Speaker 2:Lots of echoes, If you didn't notice advertising is our main thing night for the first time and, oh my gosh, the platform looks totally different and, uh, if you didn't notice, advertising is their main thing, because that's the first thing that popped up at the top. So elon's trying to catch a check, but anyways, uh, so I was at twitter for almost almost a decade, almost 10 years it was about nine and a half years, um, and then, like I said, I worked as a staff engineer there, becoming a site reliability engineer. My background is more in systems engineering, so all of that cloud infrastructure stuff. I was there since day one, from building computers to putting them on the internet, installing hypervisors. Kubernetes as a concept around containerization is something that I've seen developed under my own eyes type stuff. So I've really seen that progression in tech and a lot of that was developed at Twitter. Also, another skill set I have is I'm kind of dual skilled, so I'm a software engineer too. So I write mostly infrastructure code, mostly in Python, because it's very phonic, it's very easy to understand what's going on.
Speaker 2:They didn't get you into Golang with that. They definitely tried to get me to Golang, but no, I was Python. Is it for me? But I will say Golang is the next. Like a TypeScript, like for JavaScript to TypeScript, I would say Python to Golang would be the next kind of transition in my opinion, especially being a more typed, compiled programming language, lightning speed compared to the single-threaded Python, but that's another subject. It's still my preferred programming language, but during my time there I worked on the compute platform team, so I basically help was the technical lead for all of the, the cloud computing infrastructure there.
Speaker 2:So if you say aws. I was a part of the team that built twitter's internal aws infrastructure just to follow up on that.
Speaker 2:Uh, so twitter didn't has their own version of that like, yeah, okay, yeah, so that's the thing that most people didn't know twitter built data centers from the ground up. Under my management, I had more than 300 000 computers around the world that my team of five had to support and manage, running hundreds of thousands of containers right at scale. But yeah, we didn't mess with none of that because it was a hustle right. It's like if you that became the new hustle is they charge you and then they upcharge you and they keep up charging you. Why not just own your own hardware and then you build an engineering team that could support it, and that's what team that I help lead to really just solidify that.
Speaker 2:They did start to run some cloud stuff, but when Elon got there, he's like hell, no, I'm not paying that bill but, so the reason why I tell you all this backstory is is one of the cool things is being a tech leader in that organization that I was in is that we kind of heard things coming before they got there. So I remember I was in a meeting with a director one time and he was like hey, uh, can you tell me how much money we spent here and what we did here and what we did there? And I was like, hold on, only time this happens when we're about to be acquired. You want to know assets, you want to know this type of stuff. So I was coming to the end of my time there.
Speaker 2:I wasn't ready for a new regime change and I was like, yo, I'm going to be out. And as soon as I left at least three weeks later that's when elon was starting to pull up and the words was in the wind I was like, oh my gosh, thank you, I didn't have to go through that. But, to answer your initial question, I got out right before he got there, um, so I didn't really have to go through that, but I had so many colleagues unfortunately had to go through that shit show, just like you described it. Um, in terms of um, the, the morale, the, the culture, the tech, um, and all of that back and forth that he created internally. Just, I would have been, it would have been a problem for me.
Speaker 1:I guess I would love to ask you a question.
Speaker 2:This is probably my last necessary one Keep it on In terms of like how the market is right now my question, I guess, would be what?
Speaker 1:how do you feel about this? Do you feel like this is way different? Because to me it feels like what the hell? I'm sending out 100 times more resumes than I ever have before.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is this something that you've seen before? And then, if so, what would you suggest for, like strategy-wise, for sort of getting, I guess, more resumes, the right people? I just want to understand what you think about that. Yeah, that's a good question right there, I like that.
Speaker 2:Thanks, steve, you're holding it down. That's right, michael got some. He got them lined up. He's got the heat.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're king of fire baby You're king of. I mean he came to fire.
Speaker 2:So I go back to when I first started in 2002 is when I first got into the industry and I started off not as an engineer, I started off working at the help desk. So that was my way of getting in. But for me to get into that position I actually had to almost switch a little bit, because I started off being a systems administrator and they were like, hey, you can be a help desk guy or you cannot have a job. And I was like, like you know what, I'm going to take that help desk opportunities and I'm going to level up that way, through it, through it. Yeah, so I came up through help desk into systems administration and then the systems engineering, and then that's when I just went, you know, crazy, especially once I really start to level up my skills with linux administration. Um, but the key thing about that error on that time was that number one I had to be willing to switch it up a little bit. Right, I had to be willing to say, hey, if I really want an opportunity, I might not be this administrator right now, but I'm going to take this other job so that I can eventually play it out. The other thing that I would say, in terms of the climate that we're in right now and that's why I really enjoyed our conversation when I tried to put you in the corner over there you're just a front-end type engineer and then you say, no fuck, that I'm more than that. Right, that's what's going to get you. The opportunity is that you can upskill and have more than just software or front-end engineering as a skill set. But you can talk Kubernetes, cloud, you can talk CICD pipeline, you can talk back-end with Node. Those are the things that are going to give you the upper hand against your competitors that are out there, peers and people that are looking for job opportunities. So showcasing those skills are going to be key for you to be recognized as more than just a front-end engineer. And that applies for anybody else that's in the industry is like broaden the scope a little bit, right. Make sure that you're upskilling and learning more than just what everybody says specifically for this.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing is I don't think we have, I don't think candidates spend enough time reading job descriptions to understand what skills jobs are looking for, right? I have a lot of my mentees be like, hey, yeah, I want to go and learn this and I'm like all right, so what kind of job you want? Oh, I want to go work there, all right? Right, let's go to their website. These are the skills they're looking for. These are the skills you're developing, right, make sure that they're aligned and then that's going to open up those opportunities for you. So, uh, definitely for those that are on the market, keep at this hustle. It is a different climate. It's not the same as it was covet time 2020 people, you know, dropping offers left and right, um, and it's going to be those that do the most, that do more, that reach out more. That cold call like our error we used to have to pick up the phone de-hustle right, they're like yo uh, can I speak to hr um?
Speaker 2:can I speak to the hiring manager? Can I speak to right? We're going to have to do those type of things to really get there.
Speaker 2:I miss those days yeah me too, me too, but hopefully that answers your question, michael. Certainly, thank you, I appreciate. I appreciate that. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And if you're out there and you are looking for opportunities, our community is here to continue to support, definitely holler at us here at the Tech Hustle, because we run a vibrant community and always looking to support you all and level up. I had to drop that plug in there just for a little bit. All right, all right, michael. Anything else before we close it out? No, I think you know. Oh, michael had a good time. Turn that music up D-Hustle. Let's see what we got going on. I hope y'all enjoyed this episode of Backstage with Bobby D. We got my guy, Michael Froberg.
Speaker 1:Froberg, froberg. Yeah, I took a slow Shout out to.
Speaker 2:Michael. Shout out to Michael. Yeah, big shout out to Michael Froberg for coming through hanging out with us today dropping gems. Make sure y'all listen for that sound rewind to it. I guarantee you there's going to be some knowledge that's being dropped and definitely we're in these streets and we got a few more guests coming through next up. We're going where. We're going to Houston next up. Yeah, so we got Houston on the track and then you never know where you might find us at in the nation. But always come through here at the Tech Hustle. Holla at your boy, it's Bobby D.