Joe Karow - Career Transitions and the ADHD Experience

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Bekah: 00:07

Hello and welcome to Season seven, episode two of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. I'm Bekah, and this is a podcast that features members of the virtual coffee community. Virtual Coffee is an intimate group of developers at all stages of their coding journey, and they're here on this podcast sharing their stories and what they've learned, and we are here to share it with you. Here with me today is my co-host Dan.

Dan: 00:36

What up Beck? How's it going?

Bekah: 00:37

It's going.

Dan: 00:38

good. Um, hi. Yeah, we have an awesome episode for y'all today. Uh, we're talking to Joe Karow. Joe's been a member for a while and he's been pretty involved in the community. Um, and he's, he's a really great guy and we had a lot of fun talking with him. Joe has been an active volunteer for a while. He's done things like run our JavaScript coffee table group. He's appeared on TypeScript Tuesdays, and he's been a really active open source contributor for our virtual coffee projects. So today we're talking with Joe about, uh, career transitions and also his experience with ADHD, in his tech career. And it was a really good conversation.

Bekah: 01:16

Yeah, it's always great to hear a good transition story. Joe used to be in hotel management, so there's some skills he was able to bring over from there. But to be able to kind of compare those experiences and see Joe in a position that seems to really fit his skillset in the things that he's interested in.

Dan: 01:33

Yeah, absolutely.

Bekah: 01:34

We start every episode of the podcast, like we start every virtual coffee. We introduce ourselves with our name, where we're from, what we do, and a random check-in question. Today's question is, would you rather go to a waterpark or an amusement park? We hope you enjoy this episode. My name is Bekah. I am a technical community builder from a small town in Ohio, and I would prefer to go to an amusement park, which is ironic because I will be at a waterpark next week.

Dan: 02:16

Which waterpark

Bekah: 02:18

Kalahari in Austin giving a talk.

Dan: 02:20

At Kalahari?

Bekah: 02:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah. At the top of the water slide. I think

Dan: 02:24

Best technique for, you know, maximum

Bekah: 02:27

where they put the keynotes. You're like at the top slide. And then if you are not doing a keynote, then you have to go to like the lower

Dan: 02:35

Oh man.

Joe: 02:36

Yeah, and the whole slide down is, it's a metaphor for something.

Bekah: 02:40

Yeah, exactly.

Dan: 02:43

Um, all right. Well, hi. I am Dan. I, uh, live in Cleveland. I do computer thingies and, uh, what is the question? Oh, um, yeah, I would say I don't really, I'm not a huge fan of either, honestly. I don't really like large crowds of people, and I definitely don't like standing in lines. Um, but I think I would say the amusement park. My sense is that the food will be better. That's gonna be my, that's gonna be my, like my main, you know, like a get like a really good, you know, corn dog, like a, you know, like a funnel cake. Yeah, yeah. Like all that, all the fried stuff, you

Bekah: 03:19

Have you had one of those funnel cakes that has like ice cream and whipped cream and strawberries on top?

Dan: 03:24

I don't think so. But that sounds good. And now I shall find one we used to go to, um, before our covid and stuff, we'd go to Octoberfest here at Cleveland, like at the fairgrounds every year. And that would be our, that would be like our fried food, you know, fix like final cake and corn dogs and stuff. And also beer, you know, it was just, it's like the perfect combination. But yeah, amusement park would be my.

Joe: 03:46

All right. And I'm Joe Karow. Um, I'm the lead engineer at a small nonprofit, um, and I'm based in the Washington DC metro area. As far as the question goes, I'd probably go also for amusement park. Um, I don't know, like, again, I'm, I'm also not a fan of large crowds, so if I'm gonna be miserable, I'd rather not be damp and m. I'll go for dry and miserable

Dan: 04:11

Yes.

Bekah: 04:12

Dry and miserable.

Dan: 04:14

Yeah. Dry, miserable. Yeah, no, that occurred to me. Yeah, that was one of my things. Waiting in line if you're, if you're gonna be waiting in line rather be dry. Yes.

Joe: 04:21

Yeah. I also, I, I got my, my fix of all those, cuz like, I grew up, uh, in Tampa, Florida. So the default school trip for anything was Busch Gardens. Um, I can't, I think it was, it was one of the, I think it was like my sophomore year in high. just based off of like, you know, different departments like that. I think I went to Bush Garden six times in the same year for school trips.

Bekah: 04:45

Oh my gosh.

Joe: 04:46

Yeah.

Dan: 04:49

Yeah, we, we did a lot of, that's, that's impressive. Six times is

Bekah: 04:52

Did you do a Cedar Point, Dan?

Dan: 04:54

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of Cedar Point. Yeah. Was there a lot of times as a, you know, as a kid last time, I think the last time I was there, I got really bad food poisoning. It was like a field trip. My dad had to come pick me up and stuff.

Bekah: 05:05

Oh,

Dan: 05:06

So it, uh, I, I refused to try to think about which food, what caused it, you know. I've had, I haven't, I don't think I've, I haven't not been back to Cedar Point because of that, you know, like I would, I would go again, but yeah, it was, it was not that fun.

Bekah: 05:21

We had Kennywood, so that's in Pittsburgh.

Dan: 05:24

Oh yeah. I've driven past there.

Bekah: 05:27

I used to love the rollercoasters, like back in the day when I was younger and now having kids and like doing roller coasters with them. I find them very terrifying.

Joe: 05:37

Well, awesome. So now like. We're older, we get back and neck problems

Bekah: 05:41

Yeah. Alright, so I think the, the takeaway from this is we are all boring Don't go to the amusement park with

Dan: 05:54

We would rather be dry and boring than damp and boring.

Joe: 05:57

right? And one of us will hold your bags.

Bekah: 06:04

Um, welcome Joe. It is good to have you here on the podcast. Uh, we always like to start off with your origin story, uh, but first I have asked you to choose one word to describe your developer journey. So let's get started with.

Joe: 06:20

I dunno. It's somewhere between chaotic and good. I didn't really expect to kind of

Bekah: 06:24

wracking is

Joe: 06:25

nerve wracking. There we go. Yes. Um, I didn't really kind of aim to be a career changer. It just kind of happened. Um, uh, because prior to this I was in the hospitality industry. Um, you know, kind of wore several hats in that. So I started off doing front desk, which is like people, people, people all the time, you know, you're there to solve everybody's problem. And then I moved over to finance and kind of worked my way up, you know, through the ranks of that. And I was still just solving everyone's problems, but it was just internal ones. Uh, but with Covid it just, the industry just went into disarray and it was just, it was not enjoyable anymore. So, um, I had, I had decided to take a break, um, and then at that point I was like, Hmm, what do I want to be when I grow? you know, and it's always fun asking yourself that question, you know, at the age of like 37 Um, and it was just something where I, I kind of started looking, you know, into web development. Uh, cuz it, I've always messed around with technology. Uh, I actually did web development, like when I was like high school, middle school, um, like literally back, I actually found one of my old websites, which is somehow still. From 1999.

Bekah: 07:49

We would like a link to include in the show notes.

Joe: 07:52

never gonna happen. Never gonna happen. Uh, but I'll tell you right now, when that, when that site meant free hosting for life, they meant it

Dan: 08:04

Yeah. That's impressive. That's awesome.

Joe: 08:07

But yeah, so, um, I, you know, I kind of said along what Vil meant. It was, you know, I kind of talked it over with family when I went, I went back, uh, for holidays. You know, chat with them and came back in January and I was like literally getting ready to like pull a trigger on doing one of those multi-thousand dollars boot camps. And I stumbled upon um, a Reddit post for uh, 100 devs and I was like, well, let me try this first before I go. And I, you know, commit to money I don't have, cuz I figure if it doesn't work out, the only thing I've wasted is time. And that was the one thing I had plenty of So, yeah, going through that it was, you know, it was, it was really, well, you know, the way it was done. Um, and the, I think the biggest part about doing that versus doing like the whole kind of free code Camp Oden project thing is having that community around you. Because when you're just there by yourself, you're like, it's really what I'm supposed to be doing, you know? And you don't really have anyone kind of like holding you accountable or. in the trenches of misery with you whenever you just can't figure something out. So at least you can, you know, kind of be like, oh, well I'm not the only one who can't figure this out. So it's not just me. And then I, I happened upon this job and I've been, um, working here for, since about Labor Day, so going on like a little over four months now. And I love it. Nonprofit life. It's, it's, slow. It is laid back. Everyone is super nice. So it's like a really big change from like the chaotic world of hotels where everyone's like, I need this and I need this now.

Bekah: 09:50

Yeah.

Joe: 09:51

yeah, we'll get to it.

Bekah: 09:52

That's really nice and I really appreciate the thing that you were saying about learning with a community of people and not feeling like, oh, I'm the only one that doesn't know this. Like the ability just to know that you are not the only one that doesn't get it is somehow really motivating in a lot of different ways.

Joe: 10:10

Yeah, and this is probably not gonna sound right, but like it's always nice to kind of, sometimes you go and you're seeing like how other people are struggling. You're like, well, at least I'm not there.

Bekah: 10:20

Yeah.

Joe: 10:22

I'm doing better than someone.

Bekah: 10:24

Yeah, it, no, I think like all of us have kind of had that feeling too, though. Especially when you're really struggling a lot and you're like, okay, I know. I know I shouldn't take joy in this, but this is what I need to motivate me right now.

Joe: 10:38

It's kind of like, you know, watching Hoarders, we're like, all right, my house really isn't that bad,

Bekah: 10:44

Um, I wanna jump back to your word to describe your journey a little bit more and see if we could dive into that a little bit. So, nerve wracking, right? So as you're going through this developer journey, this learning process, and, you know, as a career changer and somebody who's not doing it in their early twenties, how do you think that that kind of like impacted that journey and how were you able to get through it when it felt so nerve-wracking or chaotic?

Joe: 11:14

I think the biggest thing was going to be like anticipating the imposter syndrome because I've already experienced it, like with other roles, you know, like especially right around like kind of promotion time and you're like sitting in your new office and you're like, man, I wonder how long it's gonna take for them to realize that they've made a massive mistake by doing this. So I think it was just kind of like nerve wracking of like, you know, anticipating that imposter syndrome. Cause I knew, I knew it was gonna come, whatever job I had landed at that, at that point. But it was also just kind of like, um, you know, cause I, I essentially was out of work for a year and I, I, I had a bit of a, a monetary buffer going into it. But, you know, watching that dwindle is also never really fun. So I managed to, Luckily get the job right around the same point where I was like, all right, things are getting kind of tight right now. Um, so it was just kind of like, just nerve-wracking of life of like, am I gonna, you know, is this all gonna work out in the end? Like I don't wanna have to like, you know, start selling plasma or something.

Bekah: 12:25

Yeah, that's really hard. And I imagine that going into the interview process, that made it even more nerve wracking because you're, you're watching that bank account go down. and you know that there's a time period where you're gonna have to make a hard decision potentially. So how did that impact how you interviewed, where you applied in that whole job application process?

Joe: 12:53

so. I got really lucky. I'm just gonna say that flat out. I got incredibly lucky. Um, because the way that I actually came across this job was, um, I had stumbled across this job board where they only list like nonprofits, public benefit corporations. It's like, you know, companies who do good. Um, and you could, you know, you could submit your resume to their talent pool and you could also like look at all their listing. So I did that, forgot I did it for like a month and a half, and all of a sudden get this email from this job board saying, Hey, um, this, you know, this company would like to meet you. Here's an introduction. Um, and that's where I work now, so I only interviewed once. Um, so I, it, you know, and it just, And to be like, you know, I was thinking like, okay, well maybe I can kind of take this offer and like, you know, shop around other places. But between, you know, what the, the, you know, the, the product was and the team and the mission. I was like, no, this is, this is work. This is where I belong. You know, and it it, that's the other thing about working for a nonprofit is not only is it like super laid back and everyone is really nice, um, you also, you get that satisfaction like, you know, I'm, I'm doing something that's, that's benefiting others.

Bekah: 14:21

Joe, Do you know, do you know the name of the job board that you use just in case we can share that out with other folks?

Joe: 14:29

um, I believe it was all hands. I can, I can give you a, a link for it in the, for the show.

Bekah: 14:36

Awesome. Thank you cuz that sounds really awesome. And I know that there's a lot of people out there that are looking for different types of opportunities and I think my first job experience, uh, full-time position outside of college was at a nonprofit organization and I really learned a lot. Through that experience and working on a really small team of people, and I think it just provides like a unique insight into the ways that you can do things differently, the communication, and it was nice to have that sense of mission at the end of the day.

Joe: 15:08

Yeah. And one of the other like biggest points of, you know, especially like working on a incredibly small team is you get exposed to a lot more. Whereas, you know, if I went and I got a job, um, at some big megacorp. I know that like my, the first six to eight months of my job would be like, here, work on this button, and that's all you're ever going to do for the next six to eight months is this button. Whereas, you know, I, I'm leading the rewrite of an entire site right now and it's exciting and scary and exciting.

Bekah: 15:43

Yeah, I like didn't know somebody and that was their job. Like the first six months at a big corp. It was just like dealing with three buttons.

Dan: 15:49

I mean, buttons are important. You know, you gotta gotta make sure the buttons do button things, I, I guess,

Bekah: 15:56

Yes. If your buttons do not do button things, then you're really in trouble. It's gonna be bad.

Dan: 16:01

Yeah. Yeah.

Joe: 16:01

make sure you get that exact right shade of blue. You don't want it to be too blue, but you want it to be blue enough.

Bekah: 16:07

Mm-hmm. border radius, it's gotta be perfect.

Joe: 16:09

Right.

Bekah: 16:11

Total aside for my internal hackathon project, I was like all about the border radius. I'm like, these border border radio is are Ray, what is the plural of Radius?

Dan: 16:21

that was, that was it. Yeah.

Bekah: 16:22

Yeah. They didn't match and I wasn't gonna let that go

Joe: 16:27

Line by line, every css. Gotta make sure that they're pixel perfect.

Bekah: 16:31

I'm not, I'm not even good at CSS. Like I think that's the funny part. Like I ended up designing a lot of stuff and I'm really bad at design, so apologies to anyone that saw my project. But we did win

Joe: 16:43

Honestly, I think there's probably only one person in on the on earth that's actually good at css. Everyone else is just frustrated by it and just does it cuz we have to.

Bekah: 16:52

We have what Dan, you've been doing the CSS battles with Jörn who was on the podcast, um, this season as well. What, what do you do in your CSS battles?

Dan: 17:03

those are fun. Yeah. So it's, it's like CSS battle io or battles, I'm not sure. but the the idea is, uh, you get like a picture and then. A little iframe and you have to basically add markup and CSS to make it look like the picture, like exactly. You know, so if they overlap, there's no difference. And then, um, you submit it and then like it gives you a score based on, um, whether passed and then how few characters you can use to get it to do that. And as a, as a group, we like kind of all just kind of hang out and do it together, you know, sort of like somebody else will share. And then like other people will either, Just like tag along or do it on, you know, themselves on the side, you know, which is what I usually do. I usually try to race everybody see what I can do, but

Joe: 17:50

are these like web layouts that they're giving you or are they like, um, like

Dan: 17:54

Nope. They're like, they're like designs. Yeah. They're like just little not web layouts at all. Yeah.

Joe: 17:59

Okay. Cause yeah, cause I've seen people who are like rec, you know, they're creating like these incredible like, Graphic images using nothing but CSS

Dan: 18:08

Yeah.

Joe: 18:09

and I, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Dan: 18:11

Yeah, I mean, like it's, it's not like anywhere close to that, like, you know, that like depth, you know what I mean? I mean, the ones we've done, and we've only done a handful, but the one this time was just like three little like semi-circles, you know, sort of. But one was flipped and, you know, and so it's like a mix of trying to get the design right and also trying to be efficient, you know? And I don't know, we just usually start by just like trying to get something down and then see how everybody else did it. And then I spent like two hours trying to get mine as small as possible. Last week it was bad but also,

Bekah: 18:44

you update it after Jörn made it?

Dan: 18:47

um,

Bekah: 18:48

It was like one fewer character or something.

Dan: 18:49

I didn't, I didn't, yeah, I didn't. It, uh, now that you reminded

Bekah: 18:54

Sorry. I'm sorry. It's fun to, it's fun to watch everybody talking about it. I haven't jumped into the challenge, but I don't know. It's

Dan: 19:04

Yeah, it's fine.

Bekah: 19:05

like fun.

Dan: 19:06

Yeah, and we always like have somebody just, you know, somebody stream and everybody kind of helps them, you know, kind of try out their approach and there's always like a million different ways to do it too. So, um, that's part of the fun too, is seeing what everybody kind of goes towards without like looking at other people's, you know, solutions first. So, I don't know. It is entertaining.

Bekah: 19:28

So, um, kind of going along with that, Joe, you talked about enjoying the work that you're doing, but you don't really work with a team on. what you're doing right now. Is that right? Or.

Joe: 19:45

Yeah, well, sort of, yeah. So I, um, I'm the only engineer actually on like the, on our payroll, um, as a or an employee. Um, I work with. Two other contractors. Um, and then it's interns and volunteers. So I've only had one intern up until now, but I'm about to get like three more, uh, next week, which is going to be fun and exciting. Um, you know, so it's, it's, it, it's been a bit of a change in management style just because like I'm used to. having a team that is like there at a certain time, you know, but with this, it's very, it's very async. So it's just a change of mindset of like, you just need to take kind of like time outta the equation really, and just be like, all right, is stuff kind of going at the pace that it needs to be going? And, and so far we're, we're good.

Bekah: 20:47

Yeah. That's really great. So it seems like you kind of get to be doing some mentorship with your work, and I wonder, are there skills that you found in hotel management that have helped transfer over to what you're doing now or that you find to be useful that maybe other people might not think of?

Joe: 21:07

I feel it. I mean, it's ma mainly like the situation management was probably like my biggest takeaway. Um, just because for like the longest part of my time in hospitality, I was, I was managing more situations than I was people. Like there, you know, there were some times where I was managing people, um, you know, modest team sizes, but a vast majority was like managing situations of like, okay, this is cropped up. How do we fix. Because, you know, with hotels, like you're dealing with the craziest variable of them all, and that's people Uh, so it's a, you know, so it's a lot of like, on the fly problem solving. And I think that kind of, that lends itself into development because yeah, bugs crop up and, you know, sometimes you gotta get real creative.

Bekah: 21:58

Yeah.

Joe: 22:00

you know, other than that, like with, you know, people management, I was also kind of very lucky because with, um, the team that I did have, um, it was a very diverse team. Um, mul, you know, everyone from different cultures, you know, different countries, different ages, um, you know, but it was great cause we all just, we got along together as like people, and that's, I think that's the biggest asset to a team is like when you can all just get along, you know? casually and, and you know, with each other that just kinda makes everything else fall into place. Um, yeah. Cause like, I, I, my management style is like, I'm not very hard at people. Like, I'm just, I just treat people like people and I think that's really all you can do.

Bekah: 22:53

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm gonna back up in time a little bit because you went through 100 Devs bootcamp, and so for anybody that's not familiar with a hundred devs, can you dive in a little bit more into how that's run, what the community looks like and what your experience was with.

Joe: 23:12

Yeah, so, um, 100 devs. I, I, so I went through the second cohort, uh, but it initially started, uh, the first cohort was, I wanna say it was like October-ish of 20. Uh, so there's this guy named, uh, Leon Noel. Um, he actually works for a nonprofit called Resilient Coders. Uh, by day what Resilient Coders is, um, they're also kind of like a, a bootcamp, uh, but they work within certain, I think they've got, I think they're in like Boston, Philadelphia and maybe somewhere else, but they work in, um, trying to kind of help people. like economically disadvantaged backgrounds, um, and just also bringing a lot more diversity into the tech world. So they work with a lot of, uh, people of color and stuff like that. And, you know, just offering those resources. Um, it's, I think they, it's like heavily, I don't know if it, if it costs anything, uh, or if anything it's heavily subsidized. Um, but they, they, it's more than just like a, here are the buttons to press and here's how JavaScript works. It's all the total package of. All right, here's how to code, but here's how to interview. Here's how to network. Here's actually how to get your foot in the door. So he took a lot of that and brought it into 100 devs. So we just kind of brought it online, um, without borders basically. And everything is a hundred percent free. If anything, if you do 100 devs correctly, even before you get a job, you're making. because one of the things that that happens to that is, um, there's a, a whole section on freelancing. And one of the assignments is you have to go out and you've gotta get a, a freelance client. He's like, I want a signed contract and it's gotta be worth at least x amount of dollars. Um, so, you know, the, the great thing about that is, um, you start seeing in, you know, inside the, the community, like everything is kind of centered around the discord, um, which I think now is up. Like 30 or 40,000 people, which is insane. Like, I don't think anyone thought it was gonna get this big, but you kind of, you start seeing people like celebrating like, Hey, like I got $2,000 to do just this. And people are like, what can I charge that? Yeah, of course you can. You know, if someone's willing to pay it, you can charge it. So it, it's, it's also really helped a lot of people kind of building confidence within themselves. You know, cuz you, especially if you're, if you haven't really been in tech before you, you're like, I can't ask someone to pay this much for that. And you realize, yeah, you can, because they're not, you know, they're not paying you to do like what might only be a few hours worth of work for you. They're paying you just to get this done because they don't know how to do it. They don't wanna know how to do it. It's just, that's not, that's not the best use of their time. You know, if they're running the business, they need to be focused on running the. and then you know, you're, cuz you're just really providing a service to them and you know they're willing to pay for it.

Bekah: 26:30

Yeah. Uh, it's really great to see people coming together and doing that and having that broken down in a way that seems practical and usable during the process. So do you work with teams or groups at any point during the bootcamp?

Joe: 26:47

so. because, yeah, so when, when, when we first started, everyone was just kind of in like, you know, like the, the discord was just one main channel where everyone kind of congregated and it was kind of overwhelming at first cuz there were, because again, like the size ballooned. Um, but as we, as we went on, then they actually started, um, breaking us off into, into other groups. So, There was two different, uh, categories that we were broken off into. One of them was, um, like regional. So you would, you know, you could pair up with people who were kind of within either the same city or the same time zone, at least as you. And then another one was just kind of like, um, like identity and affinity based. So, um, like there was groups for like over 40, over 30, um, adhd. There was, there was a bunch of other ones, but yeah, so you could, um, so you could also be kind of broken up into that. And that's generally where our, our groups could kind of form because you're, you're getting into, uh, conversation with a smaller group of people. But we would also have, um, like project nights where we would go on this one platform called Remo, which, um, the first time we did it, we, we broke it because there was so many of us on it. Uh, but Remos kind of like, um, it's almost like a virtual conference in a way that like there's, you know, it has like a little floor plan layout that has like a bunch of little tables, but each table is like a, like a little zoom breakout room with a maximum of like six people. So we would just all get shuffled into these kind of like, random tables. So we would just meet these people for the first time and go, all right, let's build something together.

Bekah: 28:34

and. Seems like a really interesting approach, right? If you throw a bunch of people into a room and try and figure it out. So how did you kind of work with the other people to figure out what your roles would be and how your project would develop?

Joe: 28:46

Um, I, I often kind of found myself taking the lead a little bit just because everyone was kind of sitting back and like looking around. So I was like, all right, I guess I'll. I'll gets kicked off. Um, I, I would just, I would kind of just at least break down of like, all right, this is what needs to be done. Who wants to work on this? So I, I don't really like to kind of assign things. I, I want people to like volunteer for it first. Cuz if you, you know, you're gonna volunteer for it, you're gonna be more motivated to actually do that. Um, but I think some people will just look. as a whole and they just don't know where to start. So, you know, you need to kind of just break it down to those smaller pieces and then it's easier for them to, to digest and, you know, and kind of wrap your head around cuz it's not just like, oh, all of this. No, just work on this little part right over here. Um,

Bekah: 29:41

I think that's great. It seems like it, that matches up with your previous career skills too.

Joe: 29:48

Yeah. And it, I mean, it is even, you know, it's carried forward. Even the way that I'm working today, cuz you know, right now we are working on a complete and total ground up rewrite of, of our web app. Um, so I, I just go into, to Jira, break everything down into small tickets and just kind of leave everything new column. I'm like, all right, have at it, you know, and it, and if it gets to the point where some things are starting to get stale, then that's where yeah, I'm either going to assign it. Maybe just take it on myself.

Dan: 30:23

Yeah. That's cool. It's cool to hear. And that's, that's, that's, that's a hard skill to, to learn. Uh, you know, especially the fact that you just kind of came into it while you were learning this stuff, already having that ability is, um, That's very cool. Very.

Joe: 30:38

Yeah. Which, and it's a, it's a bit of a departure from like my normal life cuz generally I am not organized in my personal life. Like if we go downstairs and look at my dining room table, it's not a dining room table. It's just like a we'll put stuff here for right now and we'll deal with it later.

Bekah: 30:55

I had a boss once who told me I was the most organized person she had ever met, and I'm like, I have a tendency to be organized with work things, but when it comes to home things, I don't know. It's I, I have my, my piles, you know.

Joe: 31:11

Yeah. Cause even like when, um, you know, when I worked in an office, uh, like. I had piles on my desks, but I knew where stuff was because those piles were chronological. So I could be like, oh, well this happened around this time, so we're about here But sometimes those piles just ended up being like a, oh, I'll just throw this out in two weeks instead of like throwing it out right now.

Bekah: 31:33

Yeah, I feel that. I feel that too. I recently was looking for something that I worked on this summer. and I thought maybe I drafted it online. And so I looked through like all of my regular places. I looked in docs, I looked in Confluence, I looked in Google, keep, like, looked through my email, not there, and I'm like, oh crap, it's gotta be in a notebook, but, but the problem is I have like 20 notebooks or something. And so then I was looking through all those notebooks until I finally was like, you know what, I can just redo this entire thing and it will be fine. Like,

Joe: 32:11

Hey, cause. because even, um, you know, cuz working in hotels, like you get a lot of emails cuz you're just on like 50 different email lists and you probably only care about two of them, but you still have to be on on the other ones. And I had some coworkers who would like meticulously have like the very large nested folder structure and like, oh, this goes here, this goes here, this goes here. Mine was like, everything goes into archive. And people were like, well, how do you find anything? I'm like, Hey, do you notice this thing up here? It's called a search bar. Type in three words. You get it

Dan: 32:45

Yeah, that, that one, uh, you know, Gmail came. because it wasn't really an option before that. You had to like, you know, you only had certain amount of space that you could have on your email, you know, whatever. And so you had to make all those decisions. Yeah. And then Gmail came out and was like, here's a gigabyte of storage, which doesn't sound like much now, but you know, then it

Joe: 33:04

but back then, yeah.

Dan: 33:05

big deal. And yeah, I did the same thing. I and Emily is the same way. Yeah. My wife has, you know, nested folders and labels and all these automations and stuff, and I'm just like, I'm lucky if I even archive it. you know? Uh, but the search is, you know, the search is like the key for that. Obviously being able to,

Joe: 33:25

Yeah, well, sometimes you get to the point where you're just like, all right, I'm just gonna select everything from here down and just put it to the archive. Cuz if I haven't. For it or add it yet. I'm probably not going to

Dan: 33:36

yeah, no, that's, um, this sort of thing is I think, uh, pretty common. I don't know. I, I have ADHD and and, and, uh, I know Bekah does too. We've talked about it a bunch on the podcast, but I think it's pretty common to me. Okay. I was, I knew you did, but I didn't wanna like really, you know, uh, um, diagnose you on the podcast. But, uh, it's a very common thing I think with, um, people with ADHD is like, we learn these coping mechanisms, all, all these different things, ways to be successful at what we. but like our brains aren't still like, set up like that. And so lots of times there's, we all have these areas at home or, or wherever, you know, where it's not as vital to be on top of everything, right? Nobody is going to be, uh, I don't know, losing money or something if my clothes aren't picked up, you know what I mean? Like right away or whatever, you know? And so, um, I, I, I, uh, I've been learning about these coping mechanisms, um, and things like that and, and like even identifying things as coping mechanisms. Um, Since my, when you diagnosed my, my son got diagnosed, uh, recently with ADHD as well, and so like, I'm not now like relearning about all, all a lot of this stuff, you know, from kind of a different perspective. It's, it's really interesting.

Joe: 34:54

Yeah, and cuz like, I'm, I'm actually, you know, I'm one of the like late in life diagnoses. Um, like I only got. The formal diagnosis, um, back in like April of, of 2022. Um, and I think it's, you know, cause it's before really before the pandemic, I just felt like everything was just so busy and chaotic and that was just the way that it was. And then when, you know, like the pandemic happened and like everything just kind of shut down and you're just kind of like, you know, the entire existence was like disrupted. And you're just kind of sitting around watching Netflix and thinking way too much. And then, you know, a lot of like self-reflection. You're like, maybe things don't always have to be this difficult, you know? Cause I, I know that there's been a big spike in diagnosis since the pandemic and I think that's just been a, a big pattern of like, you know, people just had a lot of time to. Sit back and just kind of reevaluate things and going, this isn't as hard as it is for me, as it is for everyone else, you know?

Dan: 36:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For.

Bekah: 36:09

So I probably mentioned this on the podcast before, but uh, Dan ha was telling me about his ADHD experience when I was working for him, and he was saying things and I was like, oh, that's not how everybody does it. Like in, in my mind, I had like no idea. It was totally off my radar. And I remember telling my sister-in-law when I got diagnosed, I was like, yeah, I got diagnosed with AD or no. I said, I think I might have adhd. And she was like, oh, you didn't know. And I was like, oh, no.

Dan: 36:36

Nope. I, yeah, I, I was diagnosed, yeah, in like 2019, but I exact same thing, except with, with Emily with my wifi. I was, was like, kind think I have 80. She's just like, oh, I just thought you knew no, I didn't know.

Joe: 36:49

I don't wanna bring anything up.

Dan: 36:52

She's just like, yeah, I know. I just, uh, yeah. You know, it's, I don't know. It is a very, uh, interesting experience and so, yeah. So when the pandemic hit, I was, that was when I was. I'm really learning about it, uh, for the first time, you know, and, and kind of finding other people to talk to about it and all of that stuff.

Joe: 37:10

well it, I mean also, you know, cause we're all, you know, around like the same age, so when. you know, we were younger and in school it, like, ADHD really wasn't thought about unless you were like that kid that was just bouncing off the walls. But, you know, like, cuz one of the, you know, the, the things that was like, oh, well you're, you're doing well in school, you can't have it. Or like, you know, it was also very generative, like, oh, girls don't have that. That's only a boy.

Dan: 37:41

Yeah. And yeah, and a lot of that is because that bouncing off the walls thing was the only, like, it was being disruptive in, in different environments was like the only basis for diagnosis before. Yeah. And, uh, it's gendered because of that, because women are taught not to do that much more than boys are, you know, um, the girls and boys I guess when they're, when they're kids, uh, in America, unfortunately, you know, and so, yeah, it, it's, it's a weird thing, but I'm, I'm, it seems like it's been changing a lot more recently, and I hope it continues to improve because I think, you know, I mean, I've found, I've personally found being diagnosed very valuable. It's, it's been like a interesting. Not always easy journey you know, but, um, but yeah, it's, I don't know,

Joe: 38:25

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is it helps you at least kind of rationalize what's happening inside, you know, and. I think also, you know, like, and the fact that you were, you know, you were able, that your son was diagnosed, you actually have the ability to make sure that his life is not going to be as difficult as yours was going through. Like, you know, like that, that period of school, uh, you know, cuz like, I, I just remember of like always getting like harp on and be like, why are you waiting till the absolute last. You know, you've had a month to do this. Why are we doing this night before? I'm like, because this is how it gets done, and I'd always get it done. It was painful while I was doing it, but it always got done.

Dan: 39:10

Yeah. I can't always say that it the same my personal experience of actually ever getting things done, but you know. but for sure procrastinating. Yeah. And like, and, and back to what you said about like trying to provide stuff for, for my son, for Bennett, it's like the, yeah. I don't want him to have that experience, you know? And I didn't know why, like, I couldn't do homework and my, my parents were, you know, I mean like good supportive parents, uh, like kind of disappointed. My grades were awful. my test scores were really high and my grades were bad. And I, it's like now a pretty, like, typical, I think a, a very common anyway. you know, sign or whatever, un undiagnosed, uh, adhd. But it's just like it. I still don't know how to do homework. I don't know how to get people to do homework. You know, like, so part of this was like getting some tools for me to like, help, help him, you know, cuz I, like, I don't know what the right solution is. He has also, he's in first grade and has homework, which is just like killing me. Like, I, I, my first instinct was like, no, we're not doing this at all. We're, we're just not doing that. But I feel like that's probably not. The whole school career thing, so,

Joe: 40:16

Right. You're like,

Dan: 40:17

uh,

Joe: 40:17

these things off on 'em. I'm like, oh, we can wait till later to do that.

Dan: 40:21

yeah, but

Bekah: 40:22

the very light, least you can communicate on his behalf to people, because especially with like kids, they don't, they don't know what's going on or what's happening or why it's happening or. You know, in the case of one of my kids, they don't really care why it's happening. They're just having a good time, you know, So like trying to break that down and communicate with them and communicate with teachers as needed, I think goes a long way to help everybody be on the same page and your kids feel supported.

Joe: 40:50

Yeah. And I mean, uh, probably the, the other biggest, you know, valuable thing is just the fact that like, you can help him understand like what's going on in his mind, because I don't know about, you know, for you guys, but like, you know, back then it was like, if you're procrastinating, that's because you've chosen to procrastinate. That's the way it was drilled into you. Like, why are you choosing to make things harder for yourself? And you're like, I'm not, like, I literally, it doesn't exist in my mind until like now tomorrow,

Bekah: 41:22

I think I, my reaction has always been opposite, so I've never really procrastinated. That gives me a lot of anxiety, but it's in the other extreme, like it's gonna be done a week beforehand, so I know that it's done and that I, and if something happens, like I still have more time to do it, but. And I think I, I have been speaking to more and more adult women who have ADHD. They all got good grades in high school. They weren't disruptive. So, you know, a lot of, like the common markers are, are not the issues. And a lot of it comes down to interpersonal communication, relationships with other people, and like recognizing that for me, made a huge difference in how I communicate with other people, how I understand myself. How I understand social situations, because I always used to say I was a shy introvert, and I'm not really sure. I, I think I'm just, um, just a shy, ADHD person like introvert and extrovert don't really serve me anymore because I think that there are times where the ADHD energy comes out when I'm in social situations and that feels very extrovert. But there are other times where I think having to, um, Like behave in ways that are socially acceptable and not ADHD behaviors becomes really exhausting, which would be, uh, something that somebody might classify as being an introvert. So I'm not really sure where I stand on that, but I think what's been helpful to me, at least right now, is recognizing like, all right, you know, if I have to be in a crowd of people where I have to behave in these, uh, these ways, I'm going to be really tired after that. You know, if I'm gonna be giving, I am always exhausted after giving a talk, and I think it's because I have to stay focused for that amount of time, you know? And after that I'm like, all right, I just need to go, like, sit in a chair somewhere and be by myself for a little bit, regain that energy before I can come back out. But I think that that's really driven by that the, the ADHD part of my brain.

Joe: 43:28

Yeah, like, I think like with, with like public speaking, not only do you have to like stay focused, but like the fact that you have like everyone looking at you, it's hard not to like, you know, like let your mind break away going, well, what is that person thinking about me? What is that person think about me? They hate this, but they love it.

Bekah: 43:45

Yeah, this was the whole thing last year. Dan came to my talk at KCDC on, uh, TensorFlow Js. And I, really struggled. There were people that got up and walked out, which is like normal, like people do that, you know, but I just could not recover from those moments where, and I just like felt terrible out about the talk for the rest of the day. Didn't matter what anybody else said to me.

Joe: 44:07

Yeah. Because in your mind it's not like, oh, they need to go to the bathroom. You're like, they hate me.

Dan: 44:14

And the whole rest of the room stayed and, and enjoyed the talk too.

Bekah: 44:18

Doesn't matter. Those people don't matter.

Dan: 44:19

right?

Joe: 44:20

one who broke it.

Bekah: 44:23

Yeah. I'm glad that we're talking about this like less than a week before. I'm going to give a talk. Super anxious about it. Until then,

Joe: 44:33

Yeah. But I, I think, you know, at least kind of knowing it, you, you know, you can kind of. Model, you know, like design your behavior around it. Like, you know, like you're saying about being in, you know, in large crowds, you know, you know, like, alright, I'm, I'm not gonna do well with this. So you can at least plan like all I'm just going to go, you know, take a walk off somewhere else, you know, somewhere else and just take some deep breaths and just kinda center myself and then I can go back in there refreshed instead of just trying to like hammer through it all in one go.

Bekah: 45:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I do find that one of the things that helps me is knowing somebody there, uh, particularly someone that I've met before, because I know, like, is this a person that is not gonna judge my behavior in this moment? If I'm too loud, if I'm talking too fast, if I go off topic in on 27 tangents in a conversation, because then that, that just is. One of those spaces where I don't feel like I need to be editing myself before I speak.

Joe: 45:35

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cause like, I, I went to, um, this AWS event, um, in DC you know, a few months ago, and, I was hoping that I was gonna at least, you know, like, you know, know some other people there, you know, meet up with some other people, but that didn't end up happening. So at like, some of like the end of the night, like networking things, like one of them I managed to actually strike up, uh, conversations with, um, a couple of these girls and we just kinda hung out the entire time. That was really. the next night, which was like the final one where it was like everything was like, you know, big, crazy loud, and like they've got people jumping on trampolines and doing flips and stuff like that on stage. I tried to kind of like insert myself into this one table, and then it was just kind of like, oh, hi, you know, mind if I da, da da. And then everything's kind of fell silent and I was like, oh, okay. Now this is awkward looking around for an escape. And the other thing too is like, I. I, you know, also stopped drinking. So I was like, oh no, I don't even have like that social lubricant anymore. And just between like all that and like everything that's happening, I was like, you know what? Let's just call this tonight. Let's just go home. let's go home. Pet the dog. Watch some tv, eat some dinner.

Bekah: 46:50

Yeah. Well, I think that's really being able to think through that and understand, okay, it's not, it's not worth it to continue to push this, like, this isn't doing me any good, and so it's better for me to preserve myself, my energy and to, you know, do do something that is better for my mental health or physical health or whatever. Uh, it, that self-awareness I think is really key to anything you do really.

Joe: 47:20

Yeah,

Bekah: 47:21

We've made this the ADHD episode officially,

Joe: 47:25

right. Yeah. How surprising. We planned one topic and we ended up with a completely different one. Who would've thought.

Bekah: 47:33

which I'm totally fine with. I think that this is a really good conversation to have, right? It the I get. Frequent messages from people about ADHD. I think it's in my Twitter profile and sometimes people will just DM me and be like, I have ADHD too. You know, and it's often that like story of I was just diagnosed and exactly what you were talking about at the beginning, Joe. It's the same thing of not feeling alone, you know? Because if you don't know anybody else, or you're on this journey, whatever journey it is for the first time. you're setting out alone, and that feels really lonely and overwhelming sometimes. So if you have somebody that's there who you can hear like, oh, I had that experience. Oh yeah, I feel that way too. Somebody else feels that way, then like suddenly you're not alone. Even if you don't know this person and you're just listening to them on the podcast.

Joe: 48:26

right? Yeah. Like yeah, it is definitely scary when you first start up, but yeah, when you kind of start to build up that little group of community, it's not so bad.

Bekah: 48:38

Sorry. I looked at Dan and I thought that Dan looked like he was gonna say something.

Dan: 48:44

I was having an idea. was the, wasn't planning on saying it out.

Joe: 48:51

idea where you start to it to yourself first, and then you're like, alright, I can say this out loud.

Dan: 48:56

uh oh, no. No. I, no, I was just, uh, you know, being a developer with ADHD and like has been, has been an interesting experience. My idea was having like some sort of panel or something like that, you know, or a podcast episode or whatever specifically about that. But it wasn't a well formed idea and I wasn't really planning on saying it out loud until Bekah forced me to, so,

Bekah: 49:19

we should definitely do that. I think that would be really awesome. Um, where.

Joe: 49:24

that one you're gonna need like a Zoom room so we can use that hand raise function,

Bekah: 49:27

Yeah, uh, we're at about time anyway, and so we're gonna wrap up with my last question to you, which was, what is one word that describes you?

Joe: 49:43

inquisitive. That was the one I chose. Yes. Um, just because like, I mean, through about every career that I've had, my one thought was like, how can I make this better?

Bekah: 49:56

Yeah,

Joe: 49:57

you know, like, how can I improve upon this? Um, and that's kind of, I, I think that's kind of what has led me to where I am right now is like, you know, there, there's gotta be a way to automate this part. You know, I would've automated answering the phone and talking to people if I could have.

Bekah: 50:16

That's awesome and I think that's a really good quality to have, um, and a great way to end this episode. So thanks so much for being here with us today, Joe, talking about your journey and sharing with us your experience about ADHD.

Joe: 50:30

No problem. Thank you for having me.

Dan: 50:31

Thanks, Joe. See you later.

Joe: 50:33

Alright, bye.

Dan: 50:37

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. This episode was produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel. If you have questions or comments you can hit us up on Twitter at VirtualCoffeeIO, or email us at podcast@virtualcoffee.io. You can find the show notes, sign up for the newsletter, check out any of our other resources on our website VirtualCoffee.io. If you're interested in sponsoring Virtual Coffee you can find out more information on our website at VirtualCoffee.io/sponsorship. Please subscribe to our podcast and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week!

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.