A New Chapter Begins

In this mini-episode, Tom announces his new job at Ionic and that he is taking a break from the podcast while he is training for this new position.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is gonna be one of those life update style podcast episodes. I have some good news and I have some bad news today. So the bad news is that I'm gonna take a small break from podcasting. We've been on a great run of weekly podcast episodes with some incredible guests, and I've really felt like the podcast has been thriving this year. However, for the rest of the year, I'm gonna take a step back and instead of weekly episodes, I'm only gonna be releasing episodes about once a month. But the good news is that I'm taking a break because I've accepted a job offer with a company called Ionic. I'm actually recording this ahead of time. So today should actually be my second day on the job if you are listening to this the day it comes out. I could probably talk for an entire hour about how excited I am for this opportunity. Right now, I just want to briefly tell you guys the story about how this happened and then go over how this change is gonna affect the podcast. I've already talked about Ionic many times in the podcast, but for those of you who don't know, Ionic is the framework we used to develop the Drive Fitness app. So for a couple years now, I thought it would be cool to work for Ionic or at least find a job developing an Ionic app for a different company. This way, there would be overlap between what I'm learning from my career and what I'm learning from my startup. Last summer, my friend Blake, who has been on the podcast a couple times, mentioned to me that he was working with Ionic through his Accenture project. And I checked their website and I found this really cool position I liked called a developer advocate. And I started interviewing for it and I made it to round three of the interviews, but they told me that it wasn't a good fit, which is understandable because technically it uh is part of their marketing department and I don't really have marketing experience. But they said they were still interested in hiring me, and so they started having me interview for a different position, a solutions architect. And I made it to the third round of interviews again for that position, but I didn't get the job either because of lack of experience. They were just looking for someone who had more like 10 years of developer experience, which I did not have. So after like six interviews, I had to kind of start over and find a completely different job. That's when I applied for a tech support position at Oracle because it was very similar to my experience at MicroStrategy. And Oracle hired me, which was great. And I decided I would work there for at least a year, and then maybe I would go look for you know an Ionic developer type position somewhere in the future. But then fast forward almost a year later, it was a couple weeks ago, and Ionic calls me out of the blue and informs me they have a developer support position that they think I'd be a really good fit for. So I started going through the interview process, and like I mentioned, they ended up giving me an offer. Okay, so what does all this have to do with the podcasts? Well, my main goal for the podcast this year was to release an episode every week. And as I mentioned, I had no intention of starting a new job this year, but now that I am, I can no longer keep up with the weekly episodes. And I'm gonna have to take a break or at least a big step back from podcasting for the rest of 2022. I did the same thing when I started at Oracle, you know, the couple months leading up to the rebrand of the podcast. That's when I was training for Oracle. So it's not gonna be forever. I'm gonna be back. I've been recording all my episodes ahead of time. I'm currently sitting on several episodes, so I'm not just gonna stop posting, but it's the editing process that really takes me a long time. So I'll probably release, you know, an episode every month or so. And then whenever I'm kind of done training or I just feel like adjusted at Ionic, you know, I'm gonna start the weekly episodes back. But I've been thinking about it and realistically, that probably won't be happening until like the start of 2023. I'm gonna be providing support for Angular and React and View. And I currently only know Angular, so I'm pretty excited that I get to learn two new frameworks, but it's probably gonna require almost all of my attention. Even though I'm gonna be pretty quiet for the rest of the year as far as releasing episodes, I'm still very down to record new episodes with people during this time period. As I mentioned, it's really the editing process that is tedious and I don't really feel like I have the time for. So if you're interested in being a guest, please reach out. The remote interviews have been going really smooth recently. So as long as you have internet service, a mic, and something cool to talk about, we can make it happen. Okay. The only difference is that for the rest of the year, there's gonna be a decent delay between when we record the episode and when I put it out. So obviously, that's like the big change is like just the scheduling of it all. I don't know what the future really has in store as far as like the content of the podcast, but I feel like this new career might have an effect on that and like the overall theme of the podcasts. If you've noticed the podcast theme has been more self-improvement, motivational focus since the beginning of 2022. I'm still gonna keep that vibe going. I I really have been enjoying the vibe that we've been on, but I feel like technology and software are gonna become like a much bigger part of the podcast now. I'm gonna be more focused on coding and I'm hoping to interview more software developers and conduct more technical conversations whenever I get the chance. You know, every conversation is different, so I'm still gonna have the fitness episodes and the business entrepreneur episodes. But yeah, I mean, my hope is to really become dedicated to being a developer. So I feel like with me taking on that identity, I'm hoping to educate you guys more about software as I learn and then, you know, connect and and interview other people in the tech industry. As I'm saying all this, I'm still processing everything. It sounds really weird. I don't know if if you guys have switched jobs yet as you're working from home, but it's really bizarre. You know, I'm still at the same desk. I'm still, you know, I haven't moved an inch, but everything's about to change. So it's probably gonna take much longer to process than if I was just showing up in an office. But I'm sure you'll hear more about this in future episodes. I just felt like I had to share this story so you guys understand why I'm taking a break, especially after I was just talking nonstop about weekly episodes and how we're gonna do this all year. And I don't know. Like the podcast was basically my top priority for a while this year just because I was happy with my job, but it I don't know, it just wasn't like where I found fulfillment. This opportunity came out of the blue, and all of a sudden I'm like, whoa, I did not see this coming, but you know, the the podcast is gonna have to take a back seat to my career for a minute just because I I really don't want to mess up this opportunity. I really want to give it 100%, and yeah, I just I just felt like you guys needed some context. I I hope this story inspires you not to give up on your dreams and your goals and your manifestations. You know, after I went through the full interview process for two different positions, it was a little bit devastating, you know. I really felt kind of hopeless. I had big hopes for Drive Fitness, the company, you know, becoming successful, and and I still do, but so far it hasn't, you know, generated any money. And when I first was interviewing, I felt like, oh, this is the reason that I put so much work on the app. But then when I didn't get the job, it was a little devastating and I felt kind of hopeless for a while. And so I don't know. If if you guys are feeling hopeless, if you guys need something to believe in, I really felt like this came out of the blue and I I did put in the work, but I don't know, man. I I I feel like the real reason that I've gotten this chance is just because I I've been persistent, I've been patient, and I've been willing to fail. It sounds pretty corny, but if you know what you want and you're showing up and putting in the work, I really do believe it's only a matter of time until you're gonna catch your break. So don't give up and you know keep striving to be the best version of yourself because you deserve it. But very last thought is I I just want to give a shout out to Blake once again for just helping me get my foot in the door. I want to give a shout out to Matt Dramazos because he taught me a lot about coding, and we worked on that Ionic framework for many, many hours together, and I learned so much from this guy. And also my college professor, Morgan Benton, who introduced me to the framework back when I was an undergrad and taught me a lot about coding as well. I've given those three guys, you know, credit before for helping me get the app to the state that it's been today. So it's it's kind of the same situation. I really don't think I would have this opportunity unless all three of those guys helped me the way they did throughout the years. So thank you guys. I really appreciate you guys, and yeah, everyone take it easy. And you know, I'm taking a break, but I'll be back soon. The podcast is not going anywhere, it's gonna be better, stronger than ever, and I'm gonna go hopefully learn a lot of cool things, and I can't wait to get back here and share my experience with you guys. I I I really don't know how to end this thing, but alright. Peace out.