Samuel Robertson - Intern to Indie Hacker

Sam Huckaby: [00:00:00] Is

Samuel Robertson: I consent to recording.

Sam Huckaby: Um,

so first off, thanks for coming on and, uh, chatting with me about your career,

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into that.

Sam Huckaby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get, we'll cover a really wide swath of things while we're talking, but I really want to start off with what was like the, the place where you began programming?

Where was your first experience with coding or computers, I guess?

Samuel Robertson: So, uh, growing up kind of like every, every nerd, I was really into computers in any scenario. I grew up playing video games. My dad got me into them. There's like old pictures of me sitting on his lap playing, um, like Star Wars X Wing and like original Star Wars games on like windows, I think 95 at that point, um, Oregon trail.

family with [00:01:00] dysentery. All that stuff is great. And, um, see, I always liked computers. And then my first, like, Introduction to programming, even being a thing, it was, I think I was 12 or 13. And my dad and I built this like kit robot thing that I can't remember the brand, can't remember the board, anything like that, but it was this robot that.

Had this just central board and we connected like literally like office chair, roller wheels and stuff to it. No really janky old webcam. And it all worked with the board. We could control it from our computer and all that. And then after messing with it a bit, I realized I could program it. Um, and that was how I learned programming was a thing at all.

And, um, unfortunately I never actually programmed that robot. I have it sitting upstairs. So I'm kind of like. At some point I should go back and try, but it's like, I don't know, 15 years old at this point. So I doubt [00:02:00] any of it's even supported anymore. Um, but that was what showed me that programming like exists.

And so from there through high school and stuff, I. Um, got involved in some forums, mostly like computer security forums and started programming in like visual basic, um, did some C plus plus, uh, went through the classic courses of like teach Sam's teach yourself C plus plus in 21 days, um, type things. And all through high school, I never like.

Actually made much progress. I never built anything cool. Um, I definitely didn't do as much with it as I wish I would have, um, looking back, but I at least dabbled in it. I knew some of the basics and pretty much at 13, once I discovered it, it existed. I was like, Hey, I'm just going to do programming when I go to college.

Um, and that's exactly what I did. Picked my major right away, went for computer [00:03:00] science, and that was it.

Sam Huckaby: Oh, okay. So Visual Basic, when did you say you did Visual Basic?

Samuel Robertson: Um, I was probably 14, 15, so that was 2009 ish.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. Interesting. Always. We always skip the connection of visual basic. I think every

Samuel Robertson: Yeah,

Sam Huckaby: has a connection.

Samuel Robertson: I, to this day, I don't think I've ever actually seen a job that has asked for Visual Basic. Like, I'm not, I'm not convinced it's a real language that has ever actually been used in, like, production, ever.

Sam Huckaby: Oh yeah. Uh, I've seen used in production. I'll just say that

Samuel Robertson: That's terrifying.

Sam Huckaby: pretty, but I've seen, um, yeah. Okay. So go through high school. You've experienced all these like little programming things, a little bit of robotics, not really since you didn't program it. But, uh, so college, you decided for sure you're just going to college. It was

Samuel Robertson: Yep.

Sam Huckaby: the tablet. [00:04:00] You weren't going to college.

Samuel Robertson: Yep. And that was, that was partially like, um, from my parents to like, they, they always pushed me towards college. Um, I was homeschooled K through 12, but they stuck to like all state regulations. They studied all the, the state requirements every year as they were updated and make sure I was getting everything I needed.

Um, and they, you know, They just kind of assumed I would go to college. Um, I always assumed I was going to go to college. I never felt like, uh, negative pressure in that regard. Um, they were fine if I like went and then decided it wasn't for me and found an alternate path or whatever, but they were like, you need to at least go try and see if it's for you, see if you like it.

And I was always pretty like academically oriented and motivated. So it, It was pretty easy choice.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. Uh, so you'd say that your dad was the one who kind of got you this like robot sort of deal set up. Um, does your dad do either of your parents [00:05:00] code?

Samuel Robertson: Nope. Yeah. They're both in the, the medical field who they were there. They're both retired now, but yeah, no, no technology orientation at all. Um, my dad's pretty tech literate. Um, my mom is not as much, um, and, but they were both, um, pretty. Pre science oriented and my dad could have easily been a engineer if he wanted, um, but he went, went the biology and medical route instead.

Sam Huckaby: So college, moving on then. You get to college, single minor, computer science, not dual.

Samuel Robertson: Uh, I did actually double major for most of my college, so I did. Um, computer science initially, um, and then after freshman year, um, I declared a double major in economics, um, which was insane because even through high school and into college, I was never that good at math. Um, I didn't [00:06:00] enjoy math and computer science and economics are both incredibly heavy math majors.

Um, I found out economics almost more so math heavy and weird math, like statistics and econometrics and all that. And, but I thought it was cool. And I thought maybe I could combine them later, um, into some kind of cool, unique job. And that didn't pan out. I ended up, um, I think my last, we'll get into it a little bit more later, but my last semester before graduation, I stayed an extra semester, um, and I I had two more classes I needed to finish for my economics major.

One of them was econometrics and it was basically advanced statistics plus programming in R I think. And I was like, okay, sick. This'll be, this is like best of both worlds. I did pretty good in statistics. I'm like half decent at programming. I can crush this. It absolutely destroyed me. Like I had no clue what I was doing on any of the [00:07:00] homeworks.

I like, I had a friend in there who was super good at all of it. He tried to like hold my hand through it. It was just all totally over my head. I went to the first exam, did not know a single thing. Like I barely even like shaved off any partial credit on any question. I think I got like a 32 percent or something like that.

And after that I was like, okay. This is clear. This is not going to work out. Um, I'm not going to pass this class. Like there was no shot. I think that first exam was like 25 percent of the final grade. Um, plus all the homework side failed already. And so I was like, I actually have no shot at getting this.

And so I just emailed the professor right after the, we got the exam grades back and I was like, Hey, it was past the like ad drop date past the withdrawal period. I emailed him and I was like, I am just not going to be showing up to class anymore. And he was like, I highly advise you to not do [00:08:00] that. And I was like, that's cool, but I'm still going to do it.

So I just didn't show up. Um, didn't show up to any of the exams, didn't hand in any homeworks and just got an F.

Sam Huckaby: All right, well,

Samuel Robertson: And so that's to that, to say it dropped my major down to a minor. So I graduated with computer science with a minor in economics.

Sam Huckaby: gotcha. Okay. All right. So you finish computer science bachelors. Did you want to talk about the cyber security degree?

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. So since I was interested in, um, cybersecurity going into programming and stuff, um, I always thought security sounded really cool. And so I was part of like all these forums. I was an administrator for some forums and stuff, um, growing up and through high school. And so I was like, okay. Um. I don't like web development.

The little bit I've tried a little bit I've done. Um, I didn't [00:09:00] do any web development in college. Um, and so I was like, security sounds cool. Um, it, it seems like it'd be a lot of fun, be a hacker or whatever, be a researcher analyst. And so after, or during my sophomore year, um, I found out about a program at New York university or New York polytechnic university, um, that, um, Had some super technical name for, for the program.

Um, but it was basically you would go and get, um, either bachelor's or master's in cybersecurity. Um, and if you got accepted into the program, um, you'll get a full ride for both the years. So it was only for juniors and up or graduate and up, and they would give you a full ride plus a salary. And then the kicker was that afterwards you had to work for, um, a government agency for two and a half years.

Um, I think. And, um, it was basically like you would. As long as [00:10:00] you weren't an idiot and graduated, you would get a job. And, um, so I, I applied for that. I somehow got it. I don't know how. Um, and so I went out, toured Brooklyn, toured their campus. It was really, really cool. I was super, super excited. Um, found out it was going to be impossible to find an apartment.

At I think the salary was going to be, cause they covered room and board, but then the salary was like 20 K a year. And that does not cover a New York, um, apartment at all. So definitely would have had to had roommates. But during the summer, um, before, before I was going to leave, um, I was going through the process of like transferring my credits and figuring everything out and not a single one of my credits transferred.

For some reason I still to this day have no idea why like I was at University of Wyoming. It's it's accredited. It's a decent school [00:11:00] and nothing transferred except for chemistry to chemistry. One didn't transfer chemistry to did. I'm like, that makes no sense to me, but whatever and then they transfer Um, so I just ended up having to, to make a decision and I contacted my like rep for the program at NYU and they were like, okay, well, you can still come, we'll give you this, but you have to start over like you have to come in as a freshman and we won't pay for the first two years since the program is only for junior and up and I was like, okay, I'll look at it.

Tuition was 100 K a year and I was like, I can't. Like that's, that's pretty unreasonable and I don't want to start over. And so I just ended up not going. So I went from like having this full ride. Salary, all this stuff, like me mostly guaranteed career path. And then just ended up back at, at Wyoming.

Sam Huckaby: Nice, alright, so you, you passed on New York, went to Wyoming, do you think that [00:12:00] going to Wyoming over New York, like, changed? maybe like the relationships that you would have had kind of going forward or did you know anybody in New York?

Samuel Robertson: No, I only knew one guy in New York. He was a, um, grad student that I had met at Wyoming and then he had transferred to do the same program. Um, and so I knew him, he referred me to the program. Um, but yeah, I didn't have any other, any other friends that were going, but in the internship I did. During that summer where all this stuff was happening, I met, there were two other people at the internship who were going into that program.

And so they were doing it at a different school though. So I wouldn't have interacted with them at all. It was wild to like find these other people who, uh, were in this kind of obscure, not well known program.

Sam Huckaby: Yeah. And it correct me if I'm wrong, but it actually, you and I probably would not have met if you'd ended

Samuel Robertson: No,[00:13:00]

Sam Huckaby: Almost

Samuel Robertson: no, yeah, definitely not. Like it, that's probably one of the biggest, like what ifs of my life is like the, the career trajectory and like life trajectory of going and doing that, that program, cause I probably would have ended up if I graduated, I probably would have ended up, um, either in the DC area, um, working for one of the agencies or.

One of the other big hiring. That hired out of that program was Sandia labs in New Mexico. Um, that's where most of the people from that program went. And so I would have been living in New Mexico, but the, the other out you had from that program, which I thought was cool is your contract could get bought out.

So the friend I had who referred me to it in New York, um, he went to. I think Sandia for a year and he had to be there two and a half years. And after that year, his contract got, got bought out by Facebook. And so he went and became a security researcher at [00:14:00] Facebook and now he's bounced around between Facebook, Apple, um, Google, all that stuff.

I'm like, that's insane.

Sam Huckaby: Yeah. That's crazy. yeah. So you. You stick it out at Wyoming. Tell me a little bit about the internship structure as you kind of finished up your time at Wyoming State because that's how

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. So yeah, yeah. So I did, um, Internships every single summer. Um, so I had four internships by the time I finished college, but the first one I'd, um, worked for our local hospital, um, growing up in high school. And there was a hospital my parents worked at. And so my first summer, so summer after freshman year, I did.

I was just a desktop technician. So it wasn't technically an internship. It was like an actual full time job just for the summer. Um, and that was awful. I was just like upgrading, uh, workstations every day from, I think XP to windows seven. So I would just have this like [00:15:00] array of like. 10 different workstations on my desk, just running through the like installation process on every single one of them.

And that is literally all I did for 40 hours a week all summer. And I commuted an hour each way because it was in a different town. So I had an hour each direction and would just get there. Install windows seven for six to eight hours, drive home. It was awful. Um, and then after that I went and worked at, um, answers.

com in St. Louis, um, which was like, Some people probably remember it. Um, it was kind of the, the competitor to Yahoo answers and it was actually really popular at this time. It was a big, big company doing pretty well. Um, and yeah, so I went, went there. I got a referral there cause somebody I knew knew somebody there.

I don't even remember how at this point. [00:16:00] Um, but I went there and that was my first experience in web development. Um, I worked in node and. That was pretty much it. I think I basically just did node, um, with some really basic like HTML, CSS, and built this little, like JIRA ticket tracker for one of the managers there who wanted like live updates of what his engineers are working on.

So I'd like pull the JIRA API on a like web socket and just update this like really crappy looking dashboard that I like hand rolled. And that was pretty much it. I doubt it ever actually got used. He seemed pretty happy with it. And partway through that internship, he asked me, he says, after my sophomore year, Um, the company asked me if I would consider either one dropping out of school and coming to work for them, um, or to transferring to the university that was, um, like a block away from them in ST louis and working for them like part [00:17:00] time while I finished out my degree and they offered me 50 K and I said, no.

Cause I knew I could get a lot better offer elsewhere. And also that entire summer I was incredibly depressed cause it was St. Louis and I hated it. So,

you know,

Sam Huckaby: Yeah. So answers. com doesn't pan out. You don't end up, well, you finished that, right? You

Samuel Robertson: yeah.

Sam Huckaby: And then next is Comcast, right? Yeah.

Samuel Robertson: my last two internships, so junior year and then senior year internships were with Comcast and the first one was South of Denver. Um, I did, um, it's really crappy, ill defined place. Project for basically mass updating. Um, I think it was basically mass updating, uh, some of the networking [00:18:00] boxes that Comcast had, I think it was like the X one box or something like that.

And they needed to, needed a quick way to go through and update like Mac addresses or IPs and stuff like that. I, it was, Really poorly defined and basically just kind of pulled out of nowhere by the guy who was supposed to be kind of my internship manager for it and, uh, wrote it in java is terrible. Um, and I did not enjoy it at all.

Um, I enjoyed the people. It was fun working there, but the project itself was awful. And I did like, not even just like. My experience I have now looking back on it saying I did a bad job. I like, I knew through the whole summer, I was just doing terrible and like, it was not good. It was not doing what it was supposed to.

Um, it worked, but it was really janky. So it was, it was just not great. And, but they were somehow happy with me. Um, they thought I did a good job. So I was like, [00:19:00] I don't really know what the, the. Expectations were, um, but I made good connections through that. And then, uh, because of that, Comcast gave me, um, like a return offer to come back and be, be an intern again the next summer.

Um, and I was like, yeah, cool. Like, sounds good. Um, I don't really want to go through applying to other internships. Um, Comcast paid pretty well. And so I was like, yeah, I'll, I'll come back. And so that was how I ended up.

Sam Huckaby: Before we get to the next part, want to ask this question before I'm involved in it, how, so up to this point, as an intern, what was your experience interfacing with more experienced or more senior developers?

Samuel Robertson: Um, at answers, it was pretty good. Um, all the engineers were pretty, pretty open, but, um, I was pretty siloed. Cause like going into the answers internship, we had this like kind of ramp up week [00:20:00] where I just worked on stuff with the other interns and because of how I worked with them. And, um, I seemed like, I guess kind of a leader and kind of knew what I was doing.

That was when one of the managers like picked me to work on, on his personal project, which was that JIRA tracker. Um, and so I had access to him, but then the rest of the interns went and built this, like. Project for the company as a whole through the rest of the summer. And in retrospect, I really wish I had worked on that instead.

Cause they did a sick job. They worked together the whole time. They had access to the other, um, engineers. They had good project specifications, um, expectations, all that. And the project went on to actually be used by the company until they went bankrupt like two years later. Um, and so like my, my experience was basically I had access to.

Um, the manager picked me, who is also an experienced engineer. Um, [00:21:00] but I didn't get that much kind of input from him overall. Um, and then the other engineers just had no idea what I was working on. So they didn't really talk to me much about it at all. And then at Comcast, the guy who, who is my. Basically internship manager.

He was just a, he was a systems engineer who wasn't a programmer. Um, so he couldn't really help me out at all. And then the more senior level engineers were super, were either super, super busy, had different schedules than I did, or they were contractors. So they didn't feel like very invested in me and I could ask him questions, but like.

With that project, I felt like I didn't even know what to ask because I didn't even know what the expectations of the project were, which in retrospect was a failing on my part of not being able to like actually extract that and know what I was working on. Um, but I felt, felt pretty siloed there, [00:22:00] felt pretty siloed at Well,

Sam Huckaby: Okay, all right, so then we continue on, so you get an offer to come back to Comcast, how does that work? Okay.

Samuel Robertson: yeah, so I got an offer and, um, I didn't, I don't know what the like placement process for it was. Um, so I can't remember how, how I ended up with you. Um, but it was like, Hey, uh, we have this position in downtown Denver, um, working on our ad platform team. I was like, yeah, that sounds good. And so I show up and, uh, You're the senior engineer there.

Um, I don't, were you senior at that point, technically?

Sam Huckaby: Um, yeah, I was always a senior at Comcast. They purchased me as a senior from my previous

Samuel Robertson: nice. Okay. Yeah. So I showed up, um, you were there and basically every, everybody was there. It was really cool. And so I, but like looking back, I have [00:23:00] no idea what I worked on that summer. Like, I, I think you mostly had me, um, so for context, for those listening, Um, Sam was a senior engineer there working on, on this ad platform team.

And the, the whole team had been bought from a different company and kind of installed as this like, um, startup esque, like team owning just this full project that they basically bought out from another company. And so you all knew each other. I had known each other for like a decent amount of time. And then I just come in here randomly as a, as a intern.

And there was like the, the client facing, um, application and then the admin application, um, both built in AngularJS, um, legacy Angular for those listening, not Angular two plus, uh, this was AngularJS not Angular, um, which is the worst [00:24:00] differentiation and naming scheme ever. And. Yeah, I think like I made like two PRS or something through that whole summer.

Like, I, I don't know what I was working on like 90 percent of the time. I think I was just like fixing small bugs in the admin panel, adding small things in the admin panel, um, which is fine for an intern, like, and ultimately like, Especially considering the like internship oriented things we had to do. I only had like 10 weeks there, which is not that much time.

Um, so yeah, at the end of that internship, um, Andy, who is our boss, um, asked me if I would want to, Basically come, come back and work for them. And I was like, yeah, that'd be sick. And, um, but Comcast had this program called Cortec, which was a rotational program where they would hire you, um, give you just the standard salary.

And then you would rotate around to different teams throughout the country and Comcast, um, and do different jobs for six months at a time. [00:25:00] And I applied for that, got into that and, um, told Andy. And she was like, if I can match the salary, um, and position that Cortec is offering you, would you just want to come back here?

And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And so she started that process when I left the internship, I guess you guys liked me enough to get, did she like, did she ask you guys? Like if. You would want me to come back or is that just kind of a unilateral decision from her

Sam Huckaby: Mm. That's a good question. I don't remember if she asked or not. If she had asked, I would have said yes. You actually did get quite a lot done that first summer.

Samuel Robertson: suite, even though I have memory hold all of it and have no idea. But yeah, so she, she went to our director. Um, he okayed it. They, you guys opened a position out of nowhere, just like there is, you had no head count and, and the director just, [00:26:00] just made it exist. Um, I think he texted me Um, because like legally they had to post it on the job board, like the, the open job board.

And he was like, I'm going to post this for literally like a day and I need you to apply. So there's like proof that we let other people apply and that it was out there. And so as soon as he posted it, I applied and then I remember checking like the next morning and it was already gone. So I was like, okay, this is legit, this is good.

And then, so I went back to school for my extra semester and halfway through that semester, he texted me and was like, Hey, we have a hiring freeze. I can't hire you. You need to apply to other places. And I was like, that sucks. Um, so I applied a bunch of other places, um, got some interviews, um, had the, the thing that I feel like every engineer has to do, which is apply to Amazon, get destroyed in the interviews, um, get really sad.[00:27:00]

And that was to this day, that's the fastest rejection I've ever gotten. I think I got off the technical screen of that interview and sat there staring at my computer for a bit. Uh, just in disbelief at how bad I did and then refreshed my email and there was the rejection already, like five minutes later, it was pretty bad.

Um, but then like couple of weeks later, thankfully, um, got an email that the hiring freeze was up. Don't know what the point of a two week hiring freeze was, but there it was. And so I accepted the offer and yeah, came back to Comcast,

Sam Huckaby: All right, so the Comcast, uh, Comcast has one of those interesting reputations as like the most evil company on earth, which is kind of funny you work there. Um, great for parties, right? You don't have to explain what you do to anybody cause no one cares.

Samuel Robertson: you know,

Sam Huckaby: So you're at Comcast And you're now taking [00:28:00] on like legit everyday web development.

What is sort of your approach to learning some of the new tech that you're having to use?

Samuel Robertson: So the first approach was you, uh, Gave me a miniature project. Um, so for context, I came in as a UI engineer. Um, I was basically just directly under you. You were my lead engineer. Um, and so you had control over my destiny and, um, you immediately gave me, this still exists on my GitHub. I love looking at it.

Um, you immediately gave me this like miniature project that, um, was A really basic version of what we were building in general. So you were like, Hey, make this, um, angular application that has a node backend pulls data from that backend has a login, all that, and displays this list of advertisements since that's what we were working on, um, in this angular app.

And [00:29:00] so I just dove into it. And I remember. like reading through the angular docs, reading through, um, our code base, all that stuff, trying to figure out what in the world, all this stuff did, what it meant. And I like vividly remember driving up to Wyoming to visit my parents one day and just going through in my head, like what a model was, what a view was, what a controller was, what a business service was like going through all these terms and things you were making me learn and just trying to like, Jam them into my brain and figured out how, figure out how they all work together.

And I think you gave me like two weeks, um, to deliver that. I think I did it in like two days, um, or like even one evening, something like that. It was, it was stupid. I had no friends. I had just moved. So I was like, I'm just going to do this and I, it was also fun. And yeah, that was how I started learning that I actually kind of liked web development and, um, That's like 90 [00:30:00] percent of development jobs out there, I think.

So that's nice too. Yeah. And so a lot of it was just, just like working on that project, reading docs, talking to you constantly, asking you for help constantly. Um, and referencing that the code base for a lot of stuff.

Sam Huckaby: Okay, so you've kind of now, this is your first technical job as a software engineer, full time. Um, do you feel like in your first experience as a software developer you had to like prove yourself or do you feel like you had the title and you were good?

Samuel Robertson: No, I definitely. Wanted to prove myself and wanted to be good. Like I had, I had worked with interns and stuff before who were not good at all. Like at the answers internship, we had one intern, um, who got fired two weeks in cause she was, Uh, so bad and she went [00:31:00] out for lunch break one day, they emailed her and they were like, Hey, uh, please don't come back into the building.

They disabled her badge access, sent her stuff down, and that was pretty brutal. I don't necessarily agree. With that, um, I think if you do a poor job hiring your interns, you kind of just gut it out for the summer, give her something to work on. And yeah, but I, I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to be good.

Um, especially cause I don't feel like. To this day, I don't feel like programming really comes naturally to me. And I feel like I have to try really, really hard to understand stuff. And I feel like I'm a really slow learner. So I was just, yeah, I was just trying and I was like, okay, I have this title. I want the next title.

I want to prove that I deserve that next title. Um, I want my coworkers to like me. I want to actually contribute to this code base. And I think that was one of the uniquely like cool things about the Comcast gig was when I joined, all [00:32:00] you guys had for the app was the login page at that point. And then maybe one detail page when you log in, just so there's not nothing there.

And so I got to be like a part of this, this Rewrite from flash to angular, um, and be in like right at the beginning. Um, and so I got to learn like everything, got to build the node back and got to build, um, all our components, got to deal with login, got to deal with, uh, state management and everything else that comes along with it.

I wasn't just like siloed to like, okay, you're a junior engineer. Make this button green instead of blue. Um, even though I still had to do that, it was because it was part of a like bigger feature that I had to build for, for this app.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. Yeah. All right. So I don't want to fly through all these jobs really quickly, but I do want to kind of move on from Comcast because I know that the next like group of things is [00:33:00] very interesting. So eventually there comes a day where you realize the Comcast, isn't it? Like it's not enough. It's not, it's not the end goal. me about your train of thought. when you were coming to the conclusion that it was time to find something else.

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. So basically what, what kind of pushed me towards that was we went, we went remote in 2020, um, and at that point too, like. We had basically finished the app, like we were doing mostly maintenance stuff. And then we were also under pressure to upgrade to Angular two. And because there was no really good upgrade path, um, except for what Sam Julian had published, um, we were basically just surviving off of his writing and his, his stuff for that.

Um, Um, I, I was just like, there's, there's not much [00:34:00] left here for like actual kind of career development. And, um, I could have, I guess, tried to transfer within Comcast, but I also knew I could probably get more money elsewhere. And so I was like, okay, like we're, we're in a really chill period, especially when we all went remote.

Like, I think at that point I had like, I don't know how much you were working at that point, but I felt like I had like two hours worth of work a week. It was, it was pretty, I like, I milked that for a while. Um, but then eventually you just get tired of that. And I knew that like, I could enjoy that for a while, could enjoy doing nothing for a while, but that wasn't going to benefit my career.

And I needed this to actually be a career. And so I needed to actually try, cause I was three, three and a half years in at that point. And I was like, I can't, I can't just put on. The, the cruise control right now and just do maintenance on a, on an Angular app and [00:35:00] Angular upgrade for the next six years.

And so I started applying, um, and ended up, I think I sent out a decent amount of applications, but probably not probably under a hundred, probably under 50, honestly, um, just looking in the Denver area, cause I didn't really want to move and. Ended up applying to this, this place called system one. Um, they were an advertising company and I didn't necessarily want to work in advertising again.

Um, but they, I really, really wanted to work in react and wanted to stay on the front end at that point. And their position was specifically for react, uh, with some full stack stuff. So I was like, okay, I'm, I'm perfect for this. And so I applied, uh, interviewed. Cruise through the first two technicals and then, or first phone screen and then technical, and then got to the second technical and this, um, super, super [00:36:00] scary, intimidating, uh, Siberian dude named Max, um, gets on the call and for the next 45 minutes, just absolutely destroys me and rips away any confidence I had in getting the role.

Um, he. Asked me like really deep technical parts of like JavaScript itself of react. And I was like, dude, I've never written a single line of react yet. I want to work in it, but I haven't worked in it yet. Um, and so I just got absolutely shredded by that interview. And, um, Then a couple of days later, a couple of days after that interview, I'd started sending out applications again.

I'm like, there's no way I'm going to get this. And they emailed me and they were like, Hey, we want to hire you. Can you hop on a call? We'll discuss the offer, all that stuff. And they gave me the offer, um, which was. Probably 30, probably a 30 percent raise, I think, um, over Comcast. [00:37:00] And I remember being like, I should ask for more.

And so I asked for more and they said yes. And I was like, that is weird. Like, I don't, I don't know how, how I justified that, especially knowing that I've loved the interview completely. Um, at least that one. And so I got hired. Yeah, so I think, and so I got hired, and it turns out that the project I was going to be working on was MapQuest, um, like THE MapQuest, who hopefully some of your listeners remember, um, especially those in the older age bracket, and, um, And MapQuest was being rewritten from AngularJS, ironically, uh, to react.

And, um, so I just dove into that, like started, uh, with doing some like bug fixes in Angular, but I made it clear, like, I don't want to work in the Angular side of this, [00:38:00] I don't want to just be that guy who has Angular experience and comes in and like updates the legacy app. I was like, I want to do the, the.

React rewrite of it. And that was a really, really cool experience. Like the very first week I was there, um, they hadn't even started the rewrite. And so they had a two day, my team had a two day hackathon, um, to basically start the app and so all of us, um, just started building like different parts of it, like I built, um, kind of a like map.

Uh, parser or, uh, component in react. So I use the map box APIs, built the component for it, all that just as this little standalone react application. And then, um, max, the super scary lead engineer built like this nice, um, custom bundler, which in retrospect, that's not the piece you want to necessarily go custom on.

But, um, he built that, [00:39:00] got the application bootstrapped. One of the other senior engineers. Um, got like the UI itself started and like the whole team, I think it was like seven, seven to 10 engineers, we all just like pitched in on this two day thing. And then almost all of it ended up being used in the actual app once we officially started, and that was a really, really fun experience.

Sam Huckaby: Nice. So you said that when you were interviewing, you hadn't written a single line of react. Is

Samuel Robertson: Yeah,

Sam Huckaby: that, is that

Samuel Robertson: I never, yeah, I, I, I didn't tell them that, but I hadn't written any, I had like, I guess, maybe. Like looked at how to make like hello world in it or something, but I hadn't, hadn't done anything besides like pull the create react app repo and like make something show up. So I didn't really count it.

Sam Huckaby: Gotcha. Okay. So what was it about the react that made you interested to work in that as [00:40:00] your next tech?

Samuel Robertson: It was just really, really popular at the time that was before reacts like villain arc, um, which I still don't agree with. I think react is cool. I still like working in it. I just reviewed some react native code the other day and I was like, Oh, this is, I actually know this. I understand this. This is nice.

Um, and so I, I still enjoy it a lot. Um, I, I don't pay attention to any of the drama surrounding it. Um, but it was like, it was just immensely popular at that time. It was like late 2020, early 2021. And it was just what everybody was using. Um, and the, the choices were basically Angular react and view at that point, like Svelte hadn't gained any, any popularity if it even existed then.

I can't remember. Um, and the team didn't want to use view. Definitely didn't want to use angular because that was what the app was already in. So react was kind of the, the choice there. And we went a weird route kind of dictated by max of not using any [00:41:00] framework. Um, so we had our, our own bundler, our own router.

Um, we just used. Straight up Redux for the state management and built all our, all our own helpers and stuff around it. We use some small stuff like Emmer for some immutability stuff with the state. Um, but that was pretty much all we used it for. Uh, we didn't leverage many third party libraries at all.

And Max came from this like, um, C plus plus background and like, uh, streaming and protocol and like low levels, like systems background. And so his entire. thesis around the app was keeping it as like small and performance as possible. And, um, when I, like we, we completed the rewrite for the most part while I was there and by the end with the whole app, it was all client side rendered everything.

Um, it was still under like, I think our main bundle was still under. A hundred [00:42:00] kilobytes. And then we eventually swapped to preact, um, which was a nice just plug and play replacement and that dropped it to like 76 kilobytes or something like that. And we would occasionally pull in some extra bundles, um, cause our dialogues were in a different bundle.

Um, but if you didn't pop a dialogue, didn't do some specific things in the app. You just got 76 kilobytes of JavaScript and did everything you needed, which was pretty neat.

Sam Huckaby: Nice. Okay. So your experience then at system one, good. You're jumping straight into a language framework that you're not familiar with, but you pick it up fairly quickly. do you think you experienced a lot of imposter at this company?

Samuel Robertson: Yeah, I, I definitely did. Especially, um, because Max was very, uh, straightforward with me when I joined, um, that he [00:43:00] didn't want me there and he had, he had given the hiring panel a hard pass on me. Um, and, and for whatever reason, like I guess everybody, everybody else. Liked me enough personality wise that, that they were like, we're, we're going to hire him anyway.

And he, yeah, he was honest with me that he thought it was a mistake and I'll, I'll redeem him later. But, um, yeah, it was. I forgot the original question.

Sam Huckaby: But did you feel like you had a lot of imposter

Samuel Robertson: Oh

Sam Huckaby: going into

Samuel Robertson: yeah. Yeah, I definitely did. And it was, it, it came more so, um, later cause the first like six to nine months of the role, I was just doing kind of the, the standard mid level stuff of just taking a ticket, building the feature. Um, I didn't, um, didn't have to deal with much of the like complex parts of the app much at all.

So I was just building react components, building the functionality. It wasn't that bad. [00:44:00] And, but then later, um, Max and one of the other lead engineers left the company, um, cause he got poached by Facebook. And, um, so I became the lead engineer and right there. Then that coincided with us launching the rebuild of, um, the route planning part of the application, which was like far more complex than, um, anything we had worked on in the app before.

And so all of a sudden I was like, just kind of given the responsibility of leading this project for like the complex part of it. And they were just like, here you go, Samuel, like you're in charge now. Figure it out. And that was when I took a lot of walks at lunch, just like thinking about stuff and like trying to figure out how in the world I was going to navigate this.

And I was still a mid, mid level engineer then. Like I, I didn't have the senior title or anything like [00:45:00] that, but I became like the tech lead for this, this project. And yeah, it was really intimidating.

Sam Huckaby: Yeah. But you survived, obviously. Yeah.

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. I survived and I was. I kind of got a bit of a boost in confidence because when Max left, I had been working with him probably for nine months at that point. And the day he left, um, we had, we had built a good relationship over time. Um, became friends, talked like constantly on Slack. Really, really cool guy, great guy.

And he told when the day he was leaving, like we were coming to the end of the day, so he was going to get his Slack access revoked, all that stuff. He sent me a message and was like, Hey, I just want you to know that I was wrong about you and you're one of the best engineers I've worked with. And then he was like, you have an open referral to anywhere I work.

Whenever you want. And then he logged off. And so I was like [00:46:00] that, that gave me a lot of confidence, made me feel really good. That like. I'm actually capable of kind of redeeming myself from like a terrible interview process because to this day I'm still bad at interviews. And when I get into the actual job and get into unfamiliar stuff, I can still make things work.

Sam Huckaby: right. So you're not working at system one now.

Samuel Robertson: I'm not.

Sam Huckaby: Take me through the train of thought as you decide you're leaving system one.

Samuel Robertson: Um, so leaving system one, I, after we finished the route planner, Um, part of the application, I got pulled to a different project. Um, that was supposed to integrate with one of the other teams in the company, um, for a totally different product. Cause system one had a bunch of products under, under their banner.

And I was basically supposed to build, um, Web components like vanilla web components, versions of a lot of our, uh, MapQuest components [00:47:00] so that this other team, which is a search engine, um, could use them and have them like embedded in their search results. Cause, um, this is, this is still a search engine that exists.

It's fairly popular, but they're, they're very, oriented and not like don't want to track anything. So they wanted, um, a lot of custom components that didn't involve Google maps and stuff like that for all their mapping. And so I got pulled, um, to be the one that would build these, um, web component versions of, of our components.

And for some reason that project just went so poorly. Like I did not enjoy working with the other team at all. Um, They were not enjoyable people. Um, and I didn't enjoy the work I was doing day to day. Um, we had kind of this weird hack together generator for web components that, um, one of the previous engineers had written and it didn't work very well.

Um, [00:48:00] and I basically, I had no idea how I was going to basically do it, how I was going to succeed, and then how I was going to deliver this to the other team. And. Then the project itself kind of had got like deprioritized. And after that I was just kind of burned out. Like I'd been working by myself for like three months.

Um, the project wasn't really going anywhere. The team that I was building this for, even when I eventually had deliverables for them and they could actually use them, um, they didn't want them. And didn't end up even using them at all. And to this day, I don't think they have maps in their app at all still.

Um, which is kind of sad because I gave them a way to do it. But, um, so I was just like, I, I don't really want to be here anymore. And the other side of it was, I didn't really see like as, as much as I loved the people I worked with and my team, and I liked what we were building. I didn't see a future for the product.

Like MapQuest, unfortunately [00:49:00] is never going to be. Uh, really prevalent name. And, um, I was just like, I, I want to work on something that's, that's a little more, uh, modern or not even modern. Cause we did modern stuff, but like a product that, that kind of had a future.

Sam Huckaby: Yeah, because MapQuest was sort of old news.

Samuel Robertson: Yep.

Sam Huckaby: MapQuest, but it was not a, not a household name anymore.

Samuel Robertson: Yep. The, the fun fact for MapQuest though, is while I was there, we served on average 1. 5 to 2 million unique visitors a day still is wild. I have no idea how,

Sam Huckaby: Yeah. Nice. Okay. So you kind of reached the point where maybe the frog's been boiling for a while. Right. And you finally kind of. They decide not to use the stuff you shipped. stuff gets put on the back burner. And that's sort of the, that's the flag that flips, right? That [00:50:00] says it's time to start looking. your approach to looking? You've now been in software for a little while. Uh, do you just go right back to applying places? Do you have connections, recruiters?

Samuel Robertson: no, I didn't. I worked with a couple of recruiters, um, and they gave me a couple, a couple of good leads, um, there's a couple. Boutique, uh, recruiter shops in Denver that were actually pretty good. Um, so I worked with them, some interviewed at some places, got a couple offers that, that I wasn't really interested in.

Um, and it was also just cold applying to places. Um, and everything was remote at this point. So I was, I was applying, this was end of 2021. Um, so I had been at system one for a year and a half. And, um, so I was, yeah, just cold applying using recruiters. Um, but then I just randomly, at that point I had gotten on Twitter finally.

And, um, didn't have any followers, didn't know anybody, but I [00:51:00] randomly saw, um, a tweet from a guy named Grant who worked at DocuSign and he was like, Hey, my team is, um, hiring. I think Wes. It was either West boss or Scott Tulinski, um, retweeted it. Um, cause I guess they knew new grant. And so that's how I saw it.

And so I reached out to grant, I DM'ed him on Twitter and I was like, Hey, I would love to apply for this position. And he was like, yeah, cool. So he referred me not knowing who I was. He put in a referral, um, and I applied. And pass the phone screen, pass the first technical. And then Grant was the lead engineer for the project, um, and for the team.

And so he had to interview me, even though he referred me, um, which was kind of a funny, like almost conflict of interest. And, um, he. Again, absolutely destroyed me. Um, he gave me like a [00:52:00] year and a half of react experience at this point. And he asked me a bunch of really technical react stuff. Um, and I, he, he gave me a grade later on.

He said, I got like a 40 percent on his interview. Um, but personality wise, he really liked me and he knew I had done well in the other interviews, the other engineers that liked me. Um, and so he pulled the trigger on hiring me. And so I went to DocuSign and my role there was basically, um, My technical title was UI infrastructure engineer.

And so we had this, um, uh, NX and next JS app that generated and served all the static marketing pages for docuSign. com. And, um, the. Original creator of the project who'd worked with grant was actually Dylan Mulroy, um, who you've had on this podcast before. [00:53:00] Um, and so I've read a lot of his code, worked with a lot of his stuff.

He is as good as he appears on Twitter. Excellent engineer, um, writes some really complicated stuff that I to this day don't understand, but it worked really, really well. And, um, definitely don't understand a lot of stuff he posts on Twitter, but it's, he's a really good follow anyway. And, um, So we basically had this, this front end design systems team that was building, um, the components themselves that would go on the page.

And then we had an integration with Contentful that we used where marketing, um, and designers could pick and choose from. The templates and the components that the design systems team was building, um, put them on pages and then our next app and NX, um, would pull that in and generate all the pages, um, at build.

And so I worked on. The, the page generation, I worked on internal development tools [00:54:00] for the design systems team for the contentful integration. Um, I worked on random little components like our translation and language detector, um, and yeah, various things like that.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. So. This is your first infrastructure sort of gig. What was the biggest challenge going from a web developer into sort of an infrastructure y role?

Samuel Robertson: The biggest challenge was. It was not as easy to just like quickly iterate on what you were doing. Like if you're building a component, you can have it up on the site or you can have it in, um, storybook or something like that as you're building it and see it as it changes, you can be like, Oh, I just want to add round padding to this and make sure it works.

But, um, going into the, the infrastructure and generation side, like, It was not as quick, like [00:55:00] feedback loops, um, especially building some of the, the internal tools I built, um, like our, our design systems team had like a very specific structure they wanted for all their components and they were doing a lot of copy paste of it and NX, um, the monorepo tool.

Let's you build a lot of code gen stuff. And so I went and built, um, some code gen tools for them and I was having to like traverse the AST and stuff like that. And that. Uh, is not near as easy to debug and to like quickly iterate on, especially when you're new to it. Um, thankfully NX makes it really good.

Um, and really as easy as it could be. Um, but it was still a very different like workflow and then. Like building Contentful integrations and stuff. Um, that's also much slower feedback loop, um, especially because we didn't have a really good separation of like stage and dev and prod for Contentful itself.

And so, [00:56:00] um, building integrations for that, that I didn't want other people to use while I was still building them was a little more tricky. I can't remember how we solved that. I think we eventually got a stage version of Contentful up, um, and that worked, um, and then. Yeah, it was, it was just a lot of, um, just doing my best to actually like write code in a one shot kind of way and, and hope it worked.

Um, but yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. I really, really enjoyed that role. Um, really enjoyed the work I did. I get to be on, I think it was on like five different projects at any given time, working with marketing, working with design, working with, um, project managers, working with the design systems team, working with grant, like, um, he and I just kind of divvied up like all these different projects and just took on different ones of them.

And it was really exciting. Um, super, super impactful, like impacting. All of [00:57:00] DocuSign. com, even though it's just a, just a marketing website, it was still really cool to just like be able to impact this, this product that one people know about, like it had great name recognition, recognition, and then to like literally millions of people were visiting it and seeing the stuff.

Um, I was building and I was enabling my team to build every day. It was awesome.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. So you've taken on the role of infrastructure engineer, been pretty successful. You're not with DocuSign terribly long though. I know

Samuel Robertson: No,

Sam Huckaby: I know you.

Samuel Robertson: yeah.

Sam Huckaby: what was the catalyst at DocuSign that made you, and it sounds like you really enjoyed this role. Why were you willing to take another leap?

Samuel Robertson: So, um I was there for nine months total which was a really unfortunate amount of time because I didn't get any uh, stock festing. Um, not that the stock has ever gotten back to where it was granted for me, [00:58:00] but, um, I. Yeah, after I think after I had been there about six months, um, I joined in January. And so this was probably June, July, um, Grant left the team.

Um, he was, um, he had kind of been applying internally and talking to other teams and Um, asked to go be the lead engineer for one of DocuSign's kind of flagship products. And he was like, I, I gotta do this. Like it's, it's a promotion. It's, um, uh, more kind of technical role. Um, It's what he, what he wanted to do.

And so I was like, yep, cool. Like, obviously I can't stop you. Like you'd already accepted it by the time he told me about it. Um, so he left and him leaving gave me all of his projects. Cause I was then the only. Like UI infrastructure engineer, um, for docuSign. [00:59:00] com. And so I think then I was on like eight projects and I had as an individual contributor, as a mid level engineer did not have a senior title.

I had gone from system one where I had the senior title to docuSign where I didn't. Titles don't matter. I was making a lot more money at docuSign. Um, but it was still like in the eyes of docuSign, I was just a normal mid level engineer. Um, but all of a sudden I like had. Essentially tech lead and ownership of all of docuSign.

com and all the projects and expectations that kind of came along with it. And so I think on average, I was in about six hours of meetings every single day. Um, and that is just not, um, a good place to be. And. It wasn't even like that. I could just not go to a majority of those meetings. Cause I had to give input in like, I think I spoke in, in almost all of them.

I gave input on almost all of them. Um, but DocuSign is very like [01:00:00] bureaucratic company and very large company. And so there's just a lot of meetings. And, um, because I was, I was the only one in my role. I had to be in all of them and then two weeks after Grant left, my boss left, um, left the company as a whole.

And, um, so then I got new manager by then, um, the director who had hired me had also left probably four or five months before I'd really, really liked him, worked really closely with him. And so when he left, that kind of sucked. And then. Eventually, like all the leadership structure above me kind of got replaced, uh, with not good leadership, um, for the most part.

And so between, um, my team leaving, um, all the meetings I was in, I am not getting along with kind of my new manager and not agreeing with kind of the direction of things. I was just like, this is not really a good place to be. And, [01:01:00] um, The director who had left went to this company called subsplash. And is this company that, um, basically builds software for churches.

I was like, that's pretty cool. A really neat niche that I didn't know existed. Um, I'm a Christian, so that kind of speaks to me as like, uh, as much as a tech company can. And so I just reached out to him cause they had a job posting for a couple, couple engineering positions. I reached out to him on LinkedIn and cause they, they're a remote company and they had a list of like States where they hired in Colorado was not one of those and I was like, Hey, I'm not looking to move, um, companies or anything, but for future reference, like, do you guys hire in Colorado?

And he was like, Hey, can I call you? And I was like, Oh no. So he called me and was like, Hey man, I won. I'm glad you reached out because he had. Um, a non compete agreement or something like that, where he couldn't contact [01:02:00] any of us at DocuSign to try to hire us, um, like legally couldn't contact us. But if we reached out first, he could, he could talk to us.

Um, so he was allowed to talk to me and he was like, yeah, we, we hire in Colorado. We have several people in Colorado. And I have three positions that I want you to apply for that. I think you would be good for it. And I was like, dude, I told you I'm not interested, but he was like, just apply anyway, go through the process anyway.

And I was like, okay. And so I applied. And, um, right after I applied, I drove up to Wyoming to visit family and literally on the way there,

was just like praying. I was like, okay, if,

if like God, if DocuSign is not where you want me to be, then. Because it was such a cool role. I wanted to be there so bad. I was like, I need that to be really, really clear.

Like I need DocuSign to basically like crumble around me.

a Cause otherwise it just doesn't make sense for me to go. [01:03:00] And in that next month, um, that was when my boss left. That was when Grant left. That was when new leadership came in, um, all that stuff. And so I was like, okay, well that's like about as clear as it can be.

Um, but like DocuSign is just crumbling around me. And, um, so I went through the interview process at sub splash for once in my life. I didn't bomb any of the interviews, um, to this day, uh, from what I heard, I'd still hold the record for like fastest completion of their technical screen, uh, which is really cool.

Um, and I didn't know that until somebody mentioned it at our onsite a couple of weeks ago. Um, so I should put that on my LinkedIn or something, but, um, yeah, so, um, Yeah. So I, I, um, got the job offer from subsplash and they really wanted me. And I told my boss at DocuSign, like, Hey, I got this offer. Um, I'm going to accept it.

And he was [01:04:00] like, can you give me a couple of days? He was like, I want to, I want to see if I can make some things happen. So I was like, okay, sure. And two days later he comes back to me and is like, Hey, I got you, um, uh, like retainment bonus. Um, like if you stay at DocuSign for nine months, um, you'll get. Uh, I think it was like 40 percent of my yearly salary or something at that point in one lump sum, which was a significant amount of money, um, especially at that time.

And then he was also going to get me, even though I was a mid level, he was going to get me a rate, immediate raise to senior level salary, just without the promotion and then more stock grants as well. And I was like. Okay, this is, uh, a lot of money. And so I was like, I can't, I talked to my wife about it.

And I was [01:05:00] like, I can't really, like, I don't enjoy DocuSign right now, but for this amount of money. I don't feel like it's responsible for me to turn that down. And she was like, okay, that's like whatever you feel is best. Um, that's okay. So I turned down sub splash. Um, and then that night after I rejected sub splash, um, I, in the middle of the night, I woke up.

Sobbing. Like I have never in my life woken up crying before, but I just woke up. Like, I assume it was kind of a panic attack. I don't know. It's I've never had those. So that's as close to it as I, as I can kind of imagine. And obviously woke my wife up and she was like, what's, what's going on. And I was like, I feel like.

I just made the biggest mistake of my life. Like, I [01:06:00] don't, I don't know why, I don't know what it is, but like, I just feel like sheer terror, um, over the fact that I just like turned down subsplash. And, um, so we just like prayed about it, talked about it, went back to sleep. And the next day, like Kelsey had been really good about being just kind of.

An objective third party about, about the move, um, and not like pressuring me. And the next day I was like, I need you to tell me. Like what you think I should do. Um, cause I'm just kind of lost at this point. And she was like, I think you should go to subsplash. And so I called, um, Chris, the director hired me at subsplash and it was like, Hey, um, I'd like to unreject subsplash.

And, um, he was like, yeah, that's, that's fine. Like, we'll, we'll send you another offer. We can hop on a call in an hour and that'll be that. And so hopped on a call. They were super happy to, to take me. Um, [01:07:00] and so I went, I left, um, my boss at DocuSign couldn't believe it. I couldn't really believe it. Um, like I, yeah, it was, it was like, as far as what I was leaving on the table at DocuSign, I was like, well into the six figures, I was like, it was just an inconceivable amount of money.

And, um, so I went to subsplash two weeks after I got to subsplash. Um, most of my team at DocuSign got laid off. And then two months later, um, the rest of them got terminated. And so I, if I had stayed at DocuSign one, I wouldn't have had a job to none of the retention bonus or anything would have mattered.

None of the salary would have mattered. None of the stock would have mattered. I still wouldn't have hit my one year vesting period. Cause I would have been fired before that. Um, and so I was like, well, now I understand why I, why I woke up in the way I did. Um, For me, that was just, [01:08:00] that was just a God thing.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. All right. Wow. Okay. Well, you definitely have the record now for like the most extreme job change story.

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. I hope that's a record. I never break for myself either.

Sam Huckaby: Me too. Me too. Uh, and I'm sure Kelsey also feels the same way.

Samuel Robertson: Yeah, exactly.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. So you've been at for a little while now, a little over a year, right? Almost

Samuel Robertson: Two years, two years. So

Sam Huckaby: What has been the thing that you have most enjoyed about working at subsplash?

Samuel Robertson: definitely what I've most enjoyed is the amount of agency I have. Um, I'm on a project by myself as people have probably seen through my rants on Twitter. Um, but. And with that, like there's, there's downsides to being, um, siloed like I am and kind of working on the tech stack that I am, but [01:09:00] especially over the last year, I've tried to be a lot better about turning that into just appreciation for like the agency and the decision making I'm able to have and the trust that, um, upper management has, has put in me to kind of guide this project and do.

What I see is best for it. And, um, that's been, that's been really fruitful overall. Like, um, especially being at our, at our own site a couple of weeks ago, like talking to management, talking to other engineers, like everybody, Seems to have a very positive view of what I've done and, um, and is, is really happy with it.

And so like through the, the kind of bad days or the days where I get a little burnt out or something like, um, I have. A lot of freedom, a lot of agency, um, really, really good work life balance. Um, no stress, um, except for every time I release something to prod. Um, but that's, that'd [01:10:00] be the same anywhere. Um, and no matter what project I was on, I still get nervous doing that.

Um, but. Yeah, it's, it's for all the, all the complaining I do, that's, that's mostly just kind of stream of consciousness, just like, and sometimes it's just funny. And that's half the reason I post on Twitter. Um, but I still, yeah, as far as the role itself and being at subsplash, like it's a fantastic company.

Um, I have, yeah, a lot of agency, a lot of freedom, a lot of trust, and that's all super valuable.

Sam Huckaby: Awesome. Okay. So here we are, you've been at subsplash now two years, your career is still, you're, I'm going to say significantly younger than me, but I know that's not really true. Um, so you've been here two years, you got to start thinking ahead now. So that brings us to the part of the, part of the interview that is the most difficult part and that is where do you see [01:11:00] yourself in like 2025 years like what's the goal state for your career for your life?

Samuel Robertson: 20, 20 to 25 years, I would like to have enough financial freedom at that point to retire if I want to, and not be reliant on, on a job. Um, I'll still definitely be working then like I turned 30 in a couple of weeks. Um, so like in 20 years. I'll only be 50 and that's like, you can still be young and healthy and cool at 50.

And so I, I definitely don't think I'll be like not working. Um, like I'll probably still, still have a day job, um, or hopefully be working on video tap or something along those lines. Um, or like a side project that makes money. Um, but I'd like to have the financial freedom to not work if I don't want to.

Um, and for my [01:12:00] family to be very, very well provided for at that point.

Sam Huckaby: Okay, so then that that's my follow up question then maybe you mentioned video taps Maybe that plays into it a little bit here are you doing today? That's making an impact on that goal

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. So probably videotape, it'd be one of the biggest things. Um, for those who don't know, it's a side business, um, that, uh, Chris And Otto, who's his last name, I don't know how to pronounce. I won't say it. Um, brought me in on, um, year and a half or almost two years ago now. And it makes money. Um, not a lot of it, but it does make money and I think it has a lot of potential.

And, um, so my goal right now is to, um, kind of be happy in my current role for the most part, unless. Like somebody off Twitter wants to just hand me a different role or something. I don't know. Um, but to put a lot of focus in that and building [01:13:00] like a side business, um, that we can eventually sell, or it just makes us a good amount of money.

And, um, alongside that, I just try to. Um, be the best engineer I can be the best developer I can. Um, I'm not very good at doing that. Um, I still am a very, very slow learner. It's still, not as disciplined and ambitious on a day to day basis as I'd like to be, but. Yeah. So in the, in the immediate term, just learning as much as I can, valuing the time and freedom I have as much as I can and building cool stuff with, with Chris and auto.

Sam Huckaby: So you've mentioned a couple of different times you feel like you're a slow learner with the way that you kind of learn stuff. What would be your process if tomorrow you were dropped on a team and that team's entire stack is built into Go? What would be your process to getting up to speed to where you would be able to make an [01:14:00] impact there?

Samuel Robertson: Um, so I do actually think like I have a lot of deficiencies as a developer, but I think one of the best, one of the things I'm best at is. Getting dropped into like large code bases that I don't understand. Cause I've done that at MapQuest. I've done it at, um, DocuSign, did it to an extent at Comcast. Um, and I've definitely done it here at Subsplash.

And like the, the main part about it is just like. Looking through it, like for go, for example, there's pretty common patterns for how apps are structured, how the routing works, how, um, like type system works, all that stuff. So just follow a path through it. Like just start in for go start in the main function.

And when you see things get called, when you see things get created, like go look at them, go learn what they do, go learn why they do what they do. Um, or if that's a little too overwhelming. Uh, just follow one path, like look at, okay, [01:15:00] especially cause we use go at subsplash. I don't get to work in it, but, um, I hopefully will soon, but we use it for all our API.

So it'd be like, okay, I just want to know what this one API route does. I'm a front end engineer. I know how to call an API route so I can go see what it returns and then just go to the code base and look at how it gets that data. Like look at how it's instantiated. Look at. Just the path that code follows the whole way through.

And if you can do that while also knowing, um, just goes kind of standard structure for stuff, it's really not that bad. And that goes for, for most code bases. Like there is in any code base, no matter how scary it is, there is a way. That data and, um, users get from point a to point B. So just, just follow that.

That's, that's it. Like, will you understand all of it along the way? Will you have to like black, black box some of it in your head for a bit? Yeah, that's [01:16:00] fine. But just learn. A to B, learn the parts of it. You can along the way. And then the next route you look at the next method you look at will make a little more sense because you know what you looked at already, you know, some of the patterns that your team is using.

So just apply that and just keep building on it. And a really good recommendation that I saw recently, um, on twitter. I think it was from, uh, this guy called Ludwig on Twitter. He said, uh, a really good thing to jump into a code base is find who the top contributor to that code base is and go look at their PRs.

And just see what they're building, what they're doing, how they think, what's important to them and do the same for like all the other PRs in the code base. Like, even if you're not a reviewer, even if nobody asked you to look at it, just go look at it. There's no nothing stopping you assuming your company's code bases are open and you can go look at stuff, just go look at it.

And so I'm, I'm spitting up [01:17:00] on a new project right now because of a. Integration we're doing and so I'm doing exactly that with this new code base. That's already huge that I'm going into is I'm like, okay, how do we get from point A to point B? And then I'm also looking at the contributors, looking at PRs that I'm not tagged on and just being like, what are they doing?

What is the day to day life of this code base? Um, what are the top contributors doing? How are they doing it? What's our documentation? And it all kind of eventually comes together.

Sam Huckaby: Okay. All right. Well, that is it. That wraps up all my questions. Thanks

Samuel Robertson: Awesome.

Sam Huckaby: coming and chatting with me and me your

Samuel Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me and thanks for, uh, hiring me.

Sam Huckaby: Yeah, for sure.