Software Engineer Turned Youtuber - Jarvis Johnson

All right, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. So today, Jarvis Johnson, who is a software engineer and YouTube creator.

Yeah, recently independent.

Yeah, it's almost like the reverse now. Now I'm a YouTube creator and a software engineer.

Yeah, I've been wondering that. So like I was first drawn to you because you were posting these software videos, right?

So Matt Hackett, who was Casey Neistat's co-partner?

Yeah, yeah, I had one of your videos.

Oh, I didn't—I know he followed me on Twitter. I didn't know he posted one of my videos.

But yeah, yeah, that was I think when I started out. I was trying a bunch of things and the first video that I had that got any traction was actually on Facebook. I posted a video that was making fun of the technical interview in the software industry, and I posted it in a Facebook group called Hackathon Hackers or something like that. They kicked me out for self-promotion, but before they did, it had started going viral. It got like 300,000 views or something.

Oh, okay, it sounds like all right, guys.

Yeah, this—I mean there's so many things I want to cover, but this is like an interesting angle because you're both the beneficiary of the software industry.

Sure, yeah, I'm criticizing it too.

Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering how you tow that line.

Hmm, well, I think that the way I think about it is that the software industry is extremely popular and has gotten off kind of scot-free and extremely glorified for a really long time. Being in it and being someone who had this dream of entering the industry and being a productive, contributing member of it, and then coming and doing that—I both was really gratified with the work that I've been able to do, but also realize there's a lot of stuff that people aren't talking about for whatever reason. And just like liking to make fun of things or like trying to be funny and criticize things that seem like a good sort of opportunity.

I soft-balled.

Yeah, yeah. Because I was like wow, it's like—everyone complains about this stuff, and a lot of comedy is just like connecting how people are already feeling and thinking.

So, yeah, that's when—when we did Comedy Act Day, we put out this video called “Coke Well Deserved,” which was a play to sell your privilege. I don't know if you ever saw that video—it was really good. But basically, this was of the time when the “Sandwich Video” just happened, and every company was putting out the same kind of soft music video with the big sweeping shots of—

Yeah, yeah.

As I put it out immediately, it worked.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think that that's what things like Silicon Valley do really well. And like if you—I think I benefited from the fact that I was coming from the inside, and so I had a lot of information that I can then condense down hopefully to something that was like palatable to people who were both in and outside of the industry.

Yeah, but I mean, in spite of the criticism, I think you're actually doing a lot of good for the world, like getting people into programming.

Yeah, yeah. And I thank you. I don't—I think that—I don't think about that as much when I'm making this stuff, but I do still to this day get a lot of messages from people who tell me that, and I'm super grateful.

And I feel a little guilty because nowadays, I’m not talking as much about tech stuff, but I think it's 'cause I needed a bit of a break from it because I was like spending all my time, you know, working my tech job and then if I was going home, I'm like working on tech videos. It felt like my whole life was consumed by this industry, when really there's like more dimensions to my— you know, me as a person and also like what I wanted to do creatively.

Yeah, of course, I want to talk about that, but I'm sure—over this software.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. So I watched one of your videos where you're talking about programming the TI-84.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But how did you get into it and then how did you even end up moving to California?

Okay, yeah. So I—you know, there's like a longer story. I've definitely tried to draw out this like narrative into a bunch of videos, but the basic story is that a friend of mine, who’s still like a really great friend of mine who lives in New York, turned me on to—he's an Android developer or mobile developer at large now, he's just doing everything. But he turned me onto the TI-84 like TI-Basic language, and so I started playing around with that in my chemistry class, and we would just like make silly games. I just remember making a thing where I could just like move theta around, and that was like the coolest thing in the world to me, just being able to make something that didn't exist even though it's like the most basic thing in the world.

And then that was after we had already tried to learn C++. So I tried to learn C++ when I was a sophomore in high school because I listened to a podcast called Geek Nights, which is like these two New York tech professionals who are talking about—I think there was just two 22-year-old guys who made this podcast after they graduated. And I found it when I was like 14 and I was like oh, interesting, and I tried to learn to program and I failed because C++ is not a great first language to learn, especially if it's just from a book.

And so then I came back to it with the TI-Basic and that was a little bit easier to go down. And then I didn't really care for—I wasn't passionate about any subjects that I was taking in high school, so when it came time to pick a college major, computer science was like a thing that felt like more palatable to me.

Yeah, and then I went to Georgia Tech for my undergrad in computer science, and I just found like such a supportive community there that was able to help support my natural interest but also like help me through the hard times.

Hmm, because it's not like—I mean computer science is not an easy degree by any means.

And so was there kind of an inkling early on that you're like oh okay, like I could do this, following that whole path, that career path?

All of it?

Well, oh yeah, that's a good—yeah. So the other part of the question was like moving out to California and stuff.

I think the first moment of even thinking about—I hadn’t at any point thought about careers like anything beyond college. I was just like, oh go to college and then you get a job, I guess. But at Georgia Tech, there were a lot of career fairs and there were a lot of companies visiting—excuse me, there were a lot of companies visiting for recruiting purposes.

And I was like, oh Facebook is here, Microsoft is here. These are just like things that I know of from like my computer screen, but they're like there are actual people that work there. And there is kind of a culture of glorifying that a little bit where it's like everybody's wearing company swag and then it becomes a thing that everybody wants, and it kind of felt a bit like a game to me where that was like what people cared about.

You're supposed to do so—it’s kind of like hell when your parents are like get good grades and you're like not sure why you should get good grades. That's kind of— I was like I guess I should like go do this thing.

But I was lucky enough to like get some internships, and I interned at Google when I was a sophomore, and that was like my first big moment of “Whoa, like this industry is like a whole thing happening.” And from then on, I was like okay, I'll probably like come out here after I graduate.

Okay. And so then my understanding is then you interned at Yelp?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I decided to work there.

Yeah, I decided not to go back to Google, not for any reason other than wanting to try something else. I don't know. I had a lot of peers who were you know doing an internship their sophomore year, their freshman year, and then doing it, coming back over and over and over and over and then going to work at that company full-time, and that never quite made sense to me because the company can never value the intern that much.

And you miss out on getting a lot of experience with a bunch of like very different companies because companies at different stages, or even at exactly the same stage, can operate completely differently and you're never really going to know what you like unless you try a couple of different things.

So I went to Yelp just to like try something new, and it was in San Francisco, and I didn't like living in the South Bay when I was interning at Google and didn't want to do a big commute. So Yelp was a good fit there, and I just had such good mentorship that I wanted to come back full-time.

Yeah, I think a lot of these jobs can create a scarcity mindset in people.

Yeah, I think—oh man, I don't know if I could ever get the Google job again.

Yeah, it is most likely you can, over a long enough time period, especially because there's definitely, you know, false negative rates and false positive rates in the interviewing process. But there's also so many opportunities that it's bound—in a way, even if you don't do well in the interview this year, you can try every six months, you can try every year, and there's so many of those opportunities that something's gonna land. It really only takes one.

Yeah, I thought that was actually a really nice piece of advice that you gave because you actually interviewed at Yelp twice?

Yeah.

Yes, people think like out—man, once I've you know failed a Facebook interview.

Yeah, it's because it's such a—you grow so much, and so much changes. I also didn't—I also interviewed at Google or interviewed for the Google internship and failed it and then got a callback for like a different program. And they like used my failed interview and what I didn't have to interview again.

So it's like a weird situation of like the— you know, that’s actually maybe a theme in my life is like this seemed like a failure at the time but it was actually not. I just framed it that way in my head.

And so like I want us to be mindful of how we frame our failures and like the narratives of our lives because they may not—they may not actually be that, like objectively speaking.

Right, I mean like you said, over a long enough time, friend. I think when you keep doing things, you keep getting up.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And yeah, just keep getting up. I know that—I mean that's really the story of it all, especially with creators.

So boy, at what point do you decide okay, yo, this has been cool. I want to move to a smaller startup.

So it was more—I definitely could have stayed at Yelp for a long time because I had like a lot of good people around me that were supporting me and stuff like that. My rate of growth, at least as I was perceiving it personally, was slowing down.

But it was more that this opportunity came up that was kind of, you know, not something that was in my purview, which was working at Patreon. I was like a dev— I was in India at like a wedding, and a friend of mine had just started working there and was like, hey, you should interview.

And I was like, oh wow, like should I? I don't know, like—because it had always been—I had been a fan of like my YouTube and tech career like very intertwined because I knew about Patreon because I’d been following Hank and John Green who were—you know, YouTubers who’ve been around since like the beginning.

And I’d been following them since a very early on in their YouTube careers. They had started something called Subbable that Patreon then acquired, and that’s how I was aware of Patreon.

So I was like, oh, I could be working in like—I could be working on stuff that they like care about, and that value proposition was like enough for me to at least interview.

Yeah, and so it was really my proximity to YouTube that inspired me to like make the change.

And then that—and I felt more confident in my technical skills because when I initially started out, I think I wanted to work at Google because I was afraid that I like couldn't hack it out of like a smaller startup, meaning that you wouldn't have mentors.

Yeah, or like that I didn't know enough. Like I knew—I did a lot of hackathons and stuff in college, and I had all these friends who were just like self-starters who really just—who like knew who could really just build something on their own, the full stack or whatever, and I didn't feel super confident in my skill set.

Like I wanted to work at a bigger company because I thought that I would learn patterns, I would develop a skill, like something that I could then work downward from and like know how things scale up for larger companies and then apply them, apply them to smaller companies.

But I had enough confidence in myself at that point.

Yeah, it's not necessarily a bad idea either. I mean, I heard you mention you got student debt when you graduated and I was—I didn't work at the big company.

Yeah, yeah— it's a different kind of pain.

Yeah, no, actually that's another good example. I think that there's a safety there. I think there's a lot of advice that's gonna say like, oh you might learn so much more at the startup.

And it's like maybe that's true, but I think you should be asking like, am I gonna learn the right stuff? Am I gonna learn good habits and good patterns or am I gonna be like trying to build something with like the fire, like the worry that the company is going to collapse on my shoulders?

And I'm gonna be doing that for like far less money. And if you've got, you know, your own personal finances—and take care of your dependents or you're helping out your family and stuff.

I think that the smart decision—yeah, I know that the smart decision for me was to work in a bigger company out of college and take care of all that because the OP—I mean, yeah. It was just like if I had student loans now, I wouldn't have been able to do the stuff that I was like able to do.

I mean it's also a complete mindset shift.

Yeah, as soon as you're in the black, you're like way more optimistic about things you could try out, and you're able to invest—now that many of your investing in student loans, you can now invest in your own like financial safety net.

'Cause like that was not something that I had, and so I needed to build that for myself before I could think about kind of like put on your oxygen mask before I like helping children or whatever.

Yeah, dude, I want to talk about this like—and related to creative confidence and risk aversion both.

Before we get there, sure, for sure, I want to talk about you switching from an individual contributor as an engineer.

Yeah, to manager.

Right, why did you want to do that?

So I always enjoyed the—I always enjoy the act of like engineering. I like making things, I like creative problem solving. But I had in the back of my head that like there were other ways for me to contribute, so I use more of my full skill set because I also had this background in college.

Like I was a teaching assistant and I like breaking down the problems, and I like the people aspects of the technical roles. And it wasn't that I felt better suited to that than anyone else, but it was more that I noticed that a lot of my—I noticed that it was rare that I cared about that stuff that that stuff excited me as much as the technical problems.

And in my career and in my life, I think about the rare combinations of skills that I have rather than the absolute like value of those rare abilities. And like if I can take this technical ability and I can also like spend a lot of time talking to people and thinking about like larger picture stuff and also career development and stuff like that, that's something that I'm curious about.

All that combined with the fact that I had a really good manager at Yelp who was like an inspiration for what a good management could do for a team, and that was like super cool to see. And I was like, wow, like it would be neat to like walk in that person’s footsteps or to try to model myself after that.

Right, well I think it's one of these things where you're studying it in school or on the side CS and you think, man, this is fun, but I don't want to completely live in the console.

Right.

And, yeah, I very much felt like that doing like hackathons and stuff on the side, you know. Like I was an English major.

Yeah, yeah. You know interacted with people.

Right, right. But it's a little scary to think about.

Yeah, I know that’s definitely a thing. Like in college, I lived that lifestyle, that sort of archetypal—you know, what's the kind word to use? But I like—I had my hood up, I was like in my terminal, I like used the—a cool Linux distribution or whatever keyboard.

Yeah. I didn’t quite switch to Dvorak as my keyboard, but yeah, people who were using Macs, for example—

Epheuse fun.

But yeah, like I lived that life a little bit, and I just found I felt that I could combine more.

All that's to say that I knew that I wanted to try it out, but then the opportunity presented itself and it was at Patreon where I had already been there for almost two years, and I had like a lot of trust and a lot of support from the people around me and in a pure circle of other like people in management. So I wasn't like flying completely solo. So it felt like the right environment to try it.

And then I, you know, I did it for almost a year, but the in—and leaving the tech industry was not a function of like not enjoying that role or not thinking.

Like I think that if I were to rejoin the tech industry now, I don't know what I would—whether or not I would go for like a leadership role or like an IC role.

Yeah, but I know that I definitely had more fuel in me for keeping going with management.

Interesting. Do you think the management experience has made you a better individual contributor? Because like now, that’s my understanding, is it’s just you—you're a one-man shop.

Has it improved, I don't know, your goal setting, your efficiency, any of that kind of stuff?

I think a lot about process, and I think that thinking about process and like operating efficiency is like a super valuable skill set to learn. That was another attractive thing about management; it's like it would be cool to learn the types of things that would make me a good manager, whether or not I use them as a manager in my career or I use them wherever I go next or with whatever I do next.

So yes, I do think about that. I think I value my time a lot more than I would have. I think I'm just more aware of time and more likely to spend money to solve a problem as like a business expense than I am to do it myself.

Even if like the part of me that like grew up poor and doesn't like spending money is thinking, oh no, this is gonna be a waste of money. I'm better at sort of arranging the pieces to go, no, no, no, this is like the right way.

It's, uh, yeah. Well, that's also—that's also a dangerous trap where you think I can do it better than anyone else; therefore I have to do this incredibly time-intensive process.

That’s another thing that's like super valuable about management is like giving away and trust.

Like not being the person to actually write the code in a lot of situations is a super valuable exercise because you have to delegate, and you have to trust, and you have to know that your—if the whole thing doesn't rest on you.

I think that that's like a useful skill for anybody to have.

Yeah, no, I love that. I'm not much a fan of business books, but there's one called “The E-Myth.”

I don't know if you're aware.

No, it's one of in my opinion the few good ones. It could be summarized in like a couple pages. It's like most people who are say like an engineer want to go out and do their own thing because they’re like, “Oh man, I won't have to deal with the [ __ ] of the company life,” etc., etc.

And in doing so, they don't really realize that like running your own business is mostly not writing code, it’s writing sales and all that.

Yeah, yeah.

And the big takeaway is you need to spend more time working on your business, not in your business.

And that's what you learn when you start managing people, right? Like then you can abstract it, you can get better at that.

Yeah, I think that's honestly what I go through a lot now with YouTube, is that a lot of the time I’m spending—it’s not necessarily on creating content. It's about—it's on like essentially management tasks and not like the IC work.

And I do draw a lot of parallels between like making videos and software engineering—this to me, it all like scratches the same itch of just like making something, like bringing something into existence.

My, you know, Adobe Premiere setup feels a lot like my them setup where I've got like JK, you know, L and whatever to like move things around.

And yet, yeah, I definitely agree with that.

Okay, and so what was the—was it just like okay, I can monetize my channel to a certain amount? I can make the jump? Or was there a particular moment that made you want to fully break from Patreon?

So I mentioned before that I’m like a very risk-averse person, so it took me a while to think of doing YouTube stuff full-time as a clean break. I think I had a bunch of contingency plans in my head of like well maybe I'll work part-time, or maybe I'll do this, or maybe I'll do that.

And it took a while to say no, I need to do this clean break thing because otherwise I'm never going to grow and I'm going—it's possible that I don't even invest as much as I can in this creative endeavor because I am afraid I'm trying to hold on to two things.

There wasn’t necessarily a threshold that I necessarily hit monetarily.

Yeah, it was more that I had spent about a year at that point juggling—that were—in some ways, I’m amazed that I was able to do like my regular job and also YouTube because I would like wake up at 6 a.m. and like write or like work on a video, and then like the benefit of the tech industry is that like you could go into work at like 10 or even 11 and it's not like weird.

Yeah.

And so I would try to use that to my advantage. So I would wake up like hyper early and then like kind of work two jobs, yeah, a few jobs essentially.

And I can't do that now.

What?

Maybe which is maybe a good thing, like in my—to my head even, I don't know.

So even though it’s my—even though it’s my only job now, doing YouTube stuff, I can’t like harness that energy.

And you got soft—maybe it’s days much healthier.

Yeah, I think it's just—I think it's healthier because like the point that I'm always getting out of that is I hit like a breaking point; like this is no longer sustained, right?

‘Cause it's like I don't like see my friends or anything like that. I'm like just this working machine.

So because the other part of that was, I was also working weekends.

Yeah.

And while still just trying to figure out, like a lot of my YouTube stuff is like trying to figure things out with like what I want to even make rather than making stuff sometimes.

So I just spend a lot of time researching stuff or like in empty Word documents, and it's just like never feeling satisfied with like your output is like a really dangerous place.

Interesting. So was there any one particular moment where you're just like underwater on everything and it just broke?

Or—

Yeah, I think there is this time towards the end of last year where when I started managing, I made an agreement with myself not to do any IC work, and because I thought that was going to help me transition better, and I was just like doing a lot more coaching and stuff.

Because the benefit of switching into management, I had a company that I'd already been an IC at, so I had a lot of context on stuff, so I was able to use that to like not actually have to write the cut myself.

And then there was a period towards the end of the year where we had switched into doing work that required a lot of like back-end expertise, and our team loadout didn't have people who had that background at the company. Like a lot of people who were willing to learn, which was amazing. But like what we needed was like a back-end tech lead.

And that was like a role that I had held before, but we couldn't just like grab that person. Like it all takes time.

So I also started doing IC work again, and when I was like doing IC work and management work and making videos, I was like I can't keep doing this. This is the worst.

And so then—so what also happened—sort of at the same time was—it’s like YouTube started like blowing up.

Yeah.

And my YouTube had gone from a thing that like I could just like take a month off if I really needed to, to something where I had like 300 or 400 thousand subscribers and not overnight, but like over a month basically.

Which is insane growth.

Yeah, yeah, and it's like, I mean we can talk about that, but I was like well, there's like an opportunity here. Like what happens if I'm actually able to like put more into this?

Because at a certain point, I could—I was only making a video every like two weeks or a month, if that. And it was like things were still happening.

So I like really wanted to—I didn't want the ship to sail about me capitalizing on a little bit, and I still like—I don't—I’m not really a regrets person, but I'm like, oh yeah, I definitely felt like I left a lot on the table like in that time because I couldn't capitalize on the moment because I think that the moment has passed.

And now I'm like waiting for the next moment in terms of growth because I think that YouTube growth happens in like waves.

Well, I mean, based on my limited experience, it's like you get caught in the algorithm for whatever particular reason and it just goes.

Mm-hmm.

But then other times, it's really slow.

Yes, plodding along.

Yeah, yeah, no, I—that’s like— that’s a thing for sure. It's something that I've observed happening to a bunch of other channels where it almost feels like a storm in terms of if you look at the analytics, it's like, oh, you're suddenly gaining thousands of subscribers a day.

And then that—that's not happening for like—whereas like normally, maybe you're getting 500 or a thousand subscribers a day or 200 or something like that.

And yeah, that storm passes eventually.

And while it’s there, I do think that there's like—there's like ways to capitalize on it.

And I was like, okay, I don't know how long this moment's gonna last, but maybe, you know, maybe this is something I could do for more of my time.

So I started—I started thinking about it, like having conversations.

One conversation I had was with like Jack Conte, the CEO of Patreon. He’s always been like super supportive of me.

And so I have like an immense gratitude to him because I just remember having like 2,000 YouTube subscribers and like having a one-on-one with him just like about YouTube where I was just like, I don't know, like where the—everyone at work? Well, I think people were aware of me and another coworker had started our channels at the same time, and hers blipped kind of immediately.

So I think everyone was kind of aware that a couple of us were doing YouTube stuff, and I remember going to Jack and being like, I don't know what's going on. I feel like I'm making these like bangers, and like they’re just like—it's just not happening.

And we like made this—he went through this exercise of, you know, it's the beginning of the next year, you know, and what is the press release? Last year was your like perfect year. What is the press release for what happened?

And that's it. Well, I made these videos, I whatever, it’s like how many subscribers you have? What is your relationship with your fans? And going through that exercise was like—it just made me at ease about like whether or not I was on like the right track.

And I had a conversation—and so like that was just like I was just continuing to channel on, and I had a guy called Jack and told him that I was like thinking about potentially doing YouTube more, like more full-time.

And he was kind of like, you know, as a creator, you've got to—you've got to do this or—it was more like as a CEO, I don't want you to leave. But as a creator, you need to do this. You're gonna kick yourself if you like don’t seize this opportunity.

And, you know, but maybe there’s something we could—we could work out in the middle. And so we like worked on that for a bit, and it was like several months before I have it—like I eventually—I was initially planning to do something more part-time, but I eventually decided to yeah, to make the clean break.

But I tried to have the— the most seamless like transition out where I like stayed on for like—I put in essentially, I put in my like three months’ notice rather than like my like two weeks or whatever to like wrap up projects and finish things up.

And then after having those conversations, it like—this became more and more real.

I knew—I knew that I had saved enough money to give it a period of time. Like if I wanted to spend a year without having to worry about making money from YouTube, I would be able to do that because I had saved pretty aggressively after I paid off my student loans for something, I don't know what for.

Right, right.

But it's like for the—it capital—personal capital—like investing in yourself.

And so I'm like—yeah, front from that, it just became like okay, this is more feasible to take the leap and who knows how long it will last, right? I mean, it's tricky because obviously, YouTube's fickle.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think that the relationship between creators and entrepreneurs is very similar.

Yeah, just like oh, [ __ ]! Like now is the time to build this channel. Like I'm having like the early drips of users come in.

I don't have to jump on this right now. There's like a clear market opportunity here.

It's—I don't—tragically, my brain does like think about things in those terms often, so I have to pull myself back in just like making stuff that I, you know, want it want to.

So this is the next thing I wanted to talk about. So you mentioned it already, like the relationship with fans, and it's something that I'm always curious about with our channel, that I have a better job of like talking to the users, basically.

Right, right.

But then on the other hand, you're like—and you know I kind of want to make the stuff I want to make.

Yeah, and so how do you balance that?

Yeah, well, it's definitely not easy. I—and I take a lot from the fact that I've just witnessed a lot of user interviews and creator interviews when I was at Patreon and thinking about how, you know, random users relate to a product—a lot of people just—humans in general don't know what they want.

So—and that's like dismissive, but I want to like bring that back with like we don't know what we want, but at the same time what we are saying we want does mean something. It does like indicate, you know, maybe it's a problem - like in the user experience world, you're trying to like get at the underlying problem that someone's having so you can address that.

And that's kind of how I try to take the criticism when I'm thinking about it. I like YouTube comment and turn my feelings sometimes by saying like, yeah, yeah.

But I mean, I'm not gonna—I’m not gonna lie about that.

So I'm not perfect at this. But in terms of how I let it inform the content, I do a lot of like reach outs and asking people what they want to see, but I don't take it as like requests or who do reach out to all right.

I'll like do a poll on like the YouTube community tab or I'll ask—I'll tweet something or I'll post something on in the Instagram question-and-answer thing, which it should—I wish it was easier to explore the answers from that.

But—and I use that as like a sense of, you know, taking the pulse on things. But you also have to qualify that with like—couch it in, you know, this is the five percent of my audience that actually follows me on social media, or this is the percentage of people who will actually say something.

And so you've got to use that as like one data point, but then you're also looking at your actual metrics when and then you are, you know, where you want to take things because no one would—it's kind of like in the tech world, or I guess I'm in product world, there's just thought— but you like can’t iterate yourself to a product vision.

Yeah, I’ve heard this before.

It's like these people are just like A/B testing and reaching some like local maximum.

Exactly, that's exactly how I like think about it where I'm like—it's—you can find those—there's local extremes, but not know that there’s like this, you know, right.

That's not a full run maximum.

And so you've got to be—you still got to have your vision.

And yeah, and so like that's—that's a real thing.

So it's like there's no amount of listening. Listening to people is extremely important, but I also don't know if like—the—there's no amount of listening to people that ultimately like makes you successful.

It's just like a piece—it's like an important piece of the puzzle because you don't want to be out of touch. Like you have to know how your stuff is being received if you were making stuff for people to enjoy.

Yeah, because I—as much as I like the concept of like I made this thing, I don't care how you feel about it, usually people are making something to be enjoyed by people or further message to be received.

And you do have to have—you have to have some idea of whether or not that's happening.

Yeah, and so you can turn into Kanye if you're like—

You turn into like 2019 Kanye if you like don't really care what people think, and you're just like going off your own ego.

So it's a delicate balance, but I try to—I try to look at everything in like a beautiful soup.

Yeah, was there any point where you realized it like you're—because you haven't put out that many videos—like 70 videos, so it's not that many.

It was like for people who don’t pay attention to YouTubers, that's nothing.

Yeah, exactly, inside.

Yeah, no for sure.

Yeah, I mean it’s do great work.

You add a—for example.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it's like, ah, well, go ahead with your question.

Well, my question was was there any particular learning where things really started to click for you, when it really started to grow? Was it adopting the mentality of going all in? Was it a certain stylistic change?

Was—obviously the tech videos did well for you.

Yeah, I think the first thing that I figured out worked were tech videos.

And so then my channel became me doing stuff that I wanted to do, and then when the numbers would start to die down, I would like make a tech video.

And what bothered me is that like that's like maybe the most confident I've ever felt in video ideas and like how things will do because I could—I made a video called like “Why You Shouldn't Be a Software Engineer,” and I made it in preparation and made a video about me getting braces and talking about like the journey of that because I knew that like that would like pop up the—the impressions or whatever.

And then that video like did so, so well, and it's like something that I spent so little time on.

And like that taught me a lot about how like the effort that you put in doesn’t—it doesn’t mean anything for the quality. It doesn’t mean anything for how it will be received.

And also like, yeah, you just can’t judge—I think me as a person, and I think a lot of people have like just—I'll just talk about myself. I have like a completely whacked out idea of how I value my own work and my output.

Okay, and—and it's lessons like that—there's tons of lessons on my channel of like how I'm completely out of touch with that.

But well, I was saying something about the tech video or was there a moment that I felt like I figured it out?

Yeah, I think no, except for the fact that I knew that cat videos did better than non-tech videos.

So I was like throw tech videos in there to like sort of tentpole the other content while it's like you—'cause now if you look at your videos, like there are some tech videos still, but the lion's share of them are not.

And like, yeah, not that many channels do that and not that many companies think like, okay, we're gonna have like this product for this audience and then this product for this audience.

And I'm like the overlap might not be the same.

Yeah, in my mind, there was a thread that connected all of that stuff.

Yeah, and I still think there is a thread that connects all that stuff, but a lot of— a lot of what dictates what does well and what doesn't is like the click-through rate on the—the thing.

And if—if you see a through line between, you know, I made a video called “The Worst Software Engineering Advice I've Ever Seen,” and it was like my first foray into the commentary genre because I was really enjoying watching those videos on YouTube.

And the reason I was—the reason I made that video is because I was like okay, I know that people like tech videos from this channel, and I really like commentary videos.

So let me make a tech commentary video that I can then pivot hopefully into just commentary videos because I wanted to get people used to like that format for me so then I could like remove the tech.

But what I, you know, misjudged at the time—this I don't think ended up mattering a whole great deal, but like what I misjudged at the time was if the click-through on—even though at the end of that software engineering advice video, I talked about this channel called 5 Minute Crafts.

When I actually made a video about 5 Minute Crafts, no one clicked on it.

And that's fine, but it's an indication of audience expectation and like the story that you're telling to the audience and the value that that audience gets from your channel.

So I found out that there are just a lot of people—the value that they got from my channel was strongly correlated with like me talking about tech because I wanted to give this like information from tech.

And so if that value prop wasn't in the—wasn't immediately obvious, then they—they wouldn't click on it.

And so like that was a— that was like the takeaway from that moment.

Yeah, yeah, it's tricky, man. There's so many weird things that you can do, like just depending on title.

And at the end of the day, like, you know, just keep pushing it out.

It's, yeah, no, for sure, for sure.

Yeah, I guess the point of all of that and of learning all that was to like develop— I did have a content strategy of like how am I—I realized that, you know, you can’t—you're not really—what's the phrase? Like you can't choose what you're famous for or whatever.

And I made some tech videos because they were getting the most traction, but then it like kind of got away from me.

And even though my channel wasn't a tech channel to me, it was like a tech channel to other people.

Totally!

And it's like I've like run the numbers—at like no point did my channel have more than 50% tech videos, but because it—in like—'cause in my head, I was like they were the thing.

But in now to this day of my seventy videos, like twenty of them are tech videos, but the—the thing that resonated with the first like bigger audience was that.

And so that's what it was to them, and so when I made stuff outside of that, I had to have like stronger hypotheses about the other people that I was reaching and like how people are converting across the different styles.

Yeah, I mean I think this is like why—I mean in many ways because humans are so good at rationalizing things, they just say, okay, fine.

Yeah, you see it happen with products all the time.

Yeah, and like in many ways, it's great, right? Provided it's not harming—

Yeah.

The world in the right way, but I think it's hard when you when you view yourself maybe more in like the artist category.

Sure, yeah, I think—yeah, what I guess, you know, the big— a big moment where I was like oh no this is not what I'm going for for me on my channel was it like on one of my videos, they were saying like, oh, great information, but I really wish like it didn't have all the comedy sketches, and it's like oh no.

You look—you come to the wrong place!

Like I'm actually only talking about that information. So of it—like if someone will watch me like try to be funny, it's my main critique of a lot of like tech, you know, whatever, like sub-communities where it's all like upload based.

They’re just like there’s not a lot of joy.

Yeah, it pushes people out.

Yeah, yeah! And I think that in tech is something that I'm still like—I still want to talk about, but I'm—I don’t have a lot of energy for it in this moat—in this current like moment, and I haven't figured out what I want my voice to be there.

Yeah, because I eventually made a second channel for tech stuff, and I had just haven't really posted on it, but like my first video that I posted did well, so I could tell that like the audience is like stuff they were good.

I watched this!

Yes! Like, and then you did the AMA, which is funny.

Oh!

Yeah, and like I accidentally made that live video public, and I have an edited version of that for an actual post, but then I was just like all right, maybe, whatever.

But yeah, it's like I want to get back to that, but I just like haven't—I don’t have my [ __ ] together essentially.

And it's also fair when you're like, hey listen, I've expressed these certain ideas. Like I know that many people might want to hear the same thing over and over again.

Yeah, like that's not really fair.

Yeah, yeah!

And I think that I'm sure I can do like some sort of advice or QA type thing, but it's just like not where my attention is right now.

And so a lot of what I talk about is like a function of where my attention is, which is great.

Yeah!

So you did get a bunch of questions, some tech-related from—

Oh, yeah!

And that's totally chill.

So one question I really liked was from Nathan Alabach.

So you know he runs the Stinkies Twitter account?

Oh, yeah!

I don't even— is it the Stinkums Twitter account?

Good—it’s a great example of like the what brand Twitter has turned into. It’s kind of like the anti-brand Twitter, too.

It looks like the Moon Pie Twitter!

Yeah, exactly!

It's great. I made a couple of videos about brand Twitter, and I met Nathan through that on the internet, and we've kept in touch.

And I—yeah, great guy.

That's cool.

Okay, yeah, I'm very much digging mesh on rrah.

Yes, so his question is: Are content creators responsible in any capacity for their audiences?

I think that's a really good question, and I think the answer is absolutely yes, in a big capacity.

Maybe not 100% responsible because like if someone who—like you get this with PewDiePie. Like he's so big.

Yeah!

And it's like if anyone does anything bad in his name, it's like what is his responsibility to that?

And I think that he does have, you know, a responsibility because I think that there’s a power.

Mm-hmm.

You know, he’s not solely responsible for these people because they’re free-thinking individuals, but when you have that power dynamic and yeah, when you—when you have that power dynamic, there are going to be people who are doing things for you or for your to get your attention or to benefit from your brand or your name or whatever.

And I think the best I can do in that situation is to try to call out when things don't seem like right to me.

Like if someone—if someone like says something mean in my name or something, I feel a responsibility to call that out.

And to try to like look within myself is like why a person who acted that way enjoys my—over my content, you know what I mean?

And then—and then make, you know, whatever changes are necessary.

I've been lucky enough that like I haven't run into this, but I think you see it a lot with these like big influencers.

So the one that comes to mind always is like Rogan.

Yeah!

Just like at this point, or PewDiePie, right? Like they're making something, and because of their actions, like maybe their action in a certain interview—

It's like not preparing a lot.

Yeah, so therefore you're like somewhat responsible for misinforming millions of people.

Right, right!

Oh yeah, I mean I think that creators should be—that I think that we all feel a great sense of responsibility—that's really what I’m trying to get at.

Right, I don't want to call out anyone in particular, but I just think that like when you have a platform and you have influence over people, it's not fair that you get all the benefits of that without any of the conferences.

And so, you know, when—if with influence or marketing, I think I have a problem with is when people are selling products that could be actively harmful to their audiences to like make a quick buck.

That's like, you know—I’ve seen brand offers now where I get stressed out over like trying to look into like whether or not the company is like something that I could support, and I think that that's right.

I think that we should feel like a little more pain there and not just like, oh yes, I'm the check. Pay me a bunch of money.

Well, I mean, like even more abstractly, you know you're kind of in the business of consuming people's attention.

Yeah!

And yeah, it's like a little complicated there.

Yeah, absolutely!

And I feel like there is a trust that is built between the audience and the creator.

Like I want people to know that I am thinking about like what I'm saying, how I'm saying it, what I'm promoting, the type of behavior like in terms of products or behaviors that I'm promoting.

What I'm calling out, like I think that a lot of times what I choose to talk about specifically is the result of a lot of thought and like how is this going to be perceived? Am I punching down?

Yeah!

Is—just like, you know, I think it's a thing that, yeah, we should all be when we're using—when we're responsible for people’s attention, we should, you know, not take that lightly.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely!

And it can be deceptive because you see your thumbnails and you're like, ah, this is just some like YouTube stuff.

Yeah, totally!

And that's like kind of the game that you play.

Yeah!

Yeah, we haven't gone down that path yet.

Yeah, I mean, it's tricky. I mean, for me, the most is that, you know, I've made videos that are called like this is the worst channel on YouTube, where that’s like hyperbole, for sure.

But at the same time, like if you come in for that and then you stick around and then you see like the actual statement that you’re trying to make, then it's like I don't feel too bad about that.

That's fine!

You’re not as like negative as your titles would make you see. That's actually fascinating to me as well.

I’ve been experimenting with how to—you know, like a Mr. Beast, familiar with Mr. Beast?

No, I don't know.

I don't know.

So he’s a huge YouTuber, one of the biggest YouTubers right now, who’s doing a lot of what he does, like you know, gives away a bunch of money to like a homeless person or like he like puts ten hundred million Orbeez in his friend’s backyard.

Like these giant stunts that involve like a lot of money.

Casey Neistat just had him on doing an interview. It’s like maybe a good intro to him, but he's given away like— you know he's got like 18 million subscribers now, he’s like given away like two million dollars or something.

And it's fascinating because one of the things that he says is that, you know, a lot of people think negativity—you need negativity for for clicks, but you can also do clickbait with positivity.

I'm still trying to figure out how to like because I think I'm a pretty like optimistic, positive, and kind of cheesy person, and I'm sure I try—I'm trying to figure out how to translate that.

But I haven't quite gotten there yet.

Yeah, I mean, that 'cause like that angle can also be off-putting because like, oh, Jarvis is just like virtue signaling here, right?

And it's like, it's like no, no, no, it's like let's just be like—let's just try to be real here.

And negativity is just like an attention-grabber, but a lot of people do when you frame something like that, do walk away with a negative perception or the wrong perception.

And, you know, going back to the responsibility point, there have been situations where people are like, oh, we have to do this to like get back at this person, and I was like, no, like that's not how we— that's not how we operate here, you know?

And I try to like whenever I've seen that happen—which hasn't been much, I—I try to say no.

Like we use our words and we use like sort of well-thought-out criticism as like our, you know, in ammunition because I don't want people to go, you know, harass anybody.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point.

All right, Taylor asks, in what way do you think content creation can benefit one's career in the tech industry?

Like I find a lot of similarities between creating content and making software.

Like you’re drawing—you’ve got plenty of point B. You want to like get to this end via this means, and you just swap out the means of like a video or like a piece of software.

So exercising that in different mediums is ultimately gonna help you like think about ways to solve problems.

You’ll apply, you know, something that you learned—I applied a lot of what I've learned in software to making videos.

And in terms of like how, I don't know—you navigate your timeline or—I don't know, even other stuff, but there's another way of like that it helps.

I think where you are able to build like a personal brand, you know?

But that’s tricky, though, right? That’s tricky!

I think the question is—I mean, you can cut it multiple ways, yeah!

But like that visibility is both great until it isn’t for young people.

Or—and like do you even want this content to be related at all to tech?

I think that's another thing to be—

Yes! I see people asking about it all the time.

Yeah, and you're like, yeah, well maybe I don't want to talk about my work-related stuff.

Yeah!

Yeah, and so like, you know, if your videos were just like people smashing pies in your face, like that's awesome, but I feel like that's not necessarily beneficial or detrimental.

Yeah, but in another way that it could help if you are like—if you want to make content that is around tech, then if you're teaching something, obviously like that will— you'll understand things better when you have to frame it towards an audience that like doesn't understand the thing.

Yeah!

Yeah, that was something that I learned from being like a teaching assistant where I was like, let's talk about, you know, depth-first search or whatever.

Let’s talk about Dijkstra’s algorithm and then like working from, you know, completely no understanding to understanding you get a much better understanding of it yourself of like the ins and outs.

That’s like what really drew me into your software videos because I was like, oh, he’s trying to help people out.

And not— I mean like obviously you are advancing your, you know, personal brand or whatever, but like for the most part, it's not like making something that's fun and helping people out.

Yeah, and I think like to this question, like you know, content creation benefiting your career.

Like I think most people would read that and think like, oh I should write like Medium posts like everyone else.

Yeah!

And that's actually not where the games come from.

Yeah, yeah, it’s funny!

Yeah, I don’t—I never even thought about my tech videos as benefiting my tech career 'cause I wasn't like—it really was just coming from a point of like I want to make some YouTube videos.

I wanna like cut my teeth in like this process, and also here's some information that I just like have— I know about.

Yeah, here it is, here it is to you.

And also I think that when I see people struggling with stuff that I’ve struggled with or I think like I’ve thought of like I’ve gone through and realized like it wasn't as big of a deal as I thought.

And I’m like oh my god, let me save you some anxiety!

Yeah, yeah.

I'm so pro like accessible role models, and that's why I like very much dig these channels.

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome!

All right, so I want to talk about a couple more things.

So one thing I want to talk about is your podcast that you started in your teenager.

Oh, yeah! That's a thing I haven't listened to.

Is that so online somewhere?

Uh, kind of. I've put snippets in videos, I saw those.

But yeah, other than that, not so much.

Okay, because that's like OG podcasting.

Yeah, that was a 2006-2007.

My co-host of that podcast, we are actually starting a new podcast.

And our first episode is a little bit talking about like how— like, like has clips from that podcast in it.

Yeah, I got into podcast from the same thing that I got into like software from.

And whenever I get into something, I’m like, oh, I want to do that. That's usually what it is.

And so it's like whenever I find something that's like super cool, I'm like, oh, I like that, I want to do that.

Anything I've ever learned well has been because I want to make the thing.

Yeah.

Anything I’ve learned poorly has been like because like you need to learn this.

Yeah!

I find that so much now where I'm wanting to learn about so many things that I should have learned in high school or whatever about history or something where I'm like—I just like wasn't the right medium or I like wasn't super jazzed.

I almost feel like my brain has changed and like how I want to absorb information, but maybe it's just like the stakes of everything that have changed, and I'm less stressed out about getting the grade and more interested in just like learning things.

Yes! Learning for fun!

Also not having to learn seven things at once.

Yeah!

I'm different, sounds like broken as well.

That's a good point!

But yeah, how old?

You know I’m 26.

27?

27 years old.

Could crush high school!

Yes!

Let me put me back in, coach!

Also, like you do comedy stuff too!

So someone, Octopus Blues asks, what lessons did improv teach you, and what would you recommend other people do it?

I recommend taking like one improv class to everybody. Improv taught me a lot about like team dynamics. I, you know, performed with a team in San Francisco for about a year doing like a weekly show or bi-weekly or whatever.

And just like the relationships you build and like improv is all about not being the star of the show and about like setting up your teammates for slam dunks.

And that is a lot—I took a lot from that with management, where it’s like how do I make sure that my team is able to like—how do I sort of set them up so that they look really awesome?

And there's like a lot of satisfaction in that way—getting somebody a promotion or whatever feels a lot like, you know, calling back to somebody's joke from like the first beat or whatever.

And allowing them to like knock it down.

And improv helps you a lot with like getting out of your comfort zone and feeling accepted—knowing that what you're afraid of typically is not rational.

Even even though like if you feel it so, it's like very real, but when you put it out there, you realize people are accepting.

Like improv is an accepting place where you can just like be like I don't know if this is gonna land, but I’m just going to say it, and people are—they don't ridicule you for it.

So it's a very safe environment so if you just feel more comfortable, yeah, there’s like a lot— I think that that can be learned from improv.

I think it gets thrown under the bus in many ways, and it’s like kind of cheeseball, it’s great punchline.

Yeah, yeah.

But like no, your point's great.

Like just take one. There’s no downside to taking one.

Go, yes!

Yeah, and there's even places where you can do like a drop-in class like for, you know, a Saturday afternoon and in Games in San Francisco does that.

It's like 15 bucks, three-hour class—get in, get out, meet a bunch of new people.

It's—it’s cool!

Yeah!

All right, so my last question is predictions of what—is it predictions of both like YouTube creators and then content creation in general in the next handful of years?

Ooh, interesting!

So wait—prediction of like where the—like where is the industry going? Like what things are gonna get traction? Obviously you can't know.

Yeah, I don’t know.

I think—I think that TikTok is going to produce some people, some more traditional creators.

I think there are people who are doing really interesting stuff on that platform, but there's a lot of noise—or I feel mean even calling it noise, but there's a lot of what people make fun of TikTok for also there.

Yeah, so I think that that will be the next like thing where people are like, oh you know, YouTuber is kind of a—is a word that is used to describe like Logan Pauls of the world.

Yeah!

Where it's like kind of—it has a negative connotation.

And I hope that that will change in the future.

I hope that YouTube becomes a more supportive place for creators of all kinds where they're not like constantly fighting against monetization and stability because it's a very—as it stands today, it can be a very unstable thing for a lot of people and oftentimes not even related to the algorithmic changes.

But more like how the—the loop between like advertisers and YouTube and stuff—

Yeah, and stuff work!

I think, I hope that there's just a—like traditional media, in a lot of ways, to me feels like it has— it is the way it is because of gatekeepers.

Like it's kind of whenever there’s like an incumbent and then somebody new coming in, there's all these like—there's all this energy towards keeping the incumbent in power.

And that’s what I feel with—that's kind of how I feel about YouTube and traditional media.

Like it’s interesting to me that like Liza Koshy is doing, you know, double there on Nickelodeon.

It's like, like, oh she has like the biggest audience and could be reaching the most people, but no, no, here’s the thing, though.

From a personal standpoint, like I totally get like wanting to be challenged and wanting to try new things and like there’s like—so like I'm actually happy for her and like whatever she wants to do in her career.

But when people value—when people have a hierarchy of like, oh, this is just better than this.

Yeah!

That’s like TV was in that situation with movies.

The same way TV and movies were in that exact same situation!

So, this is—and all this, yeah!

And then it flips and say this always seems to be happening like repeating itself.

So I hope that there's less of that and more people jumping—you see like a lot of traditional media people going on YouTube.

I hope to see more of that.

I know that in a respect way to the platform, 'cause I know that people like look—you know like Will Smith or whatever.

But I think that Will Smith is like an interesting YouTube, like, entity.

Yeah!

I think it’s hilarious!

Yeah! I think that I want more people who are—like investing in their own sort of thing rather than just straight-up television being the—being like dominating on YouTube.

Like investing in the platform itself I think is a valuable thing for all creators.

I could be wrong about that, but, but blurring those lines—making sure that there're still avenues for up-and-coming people is something that I want to see.

I want to see something done about people who have an unlimited amount of resources to pump into YouTube.

Like that kind of it seems like you could just buy success on YouTube if you're a company that just—like wants to just copy something that like it has some sort of popularity.

And then you just like take all the soul out of it.

I—yes and no, because then you get like the problem of finding the right host.

And like there's something about—like you talk about your tech videos too, right?

Yeah!

The through line is you!

In the same thing with like Marques—

Yeah, yeah too.

It's like, you don’t really like paper clips, and people are into it.

Right!

No, that's totally true!

And I think that that is a great—like YouTube—well, I think that's a thing that cross the internet, but like that's a great thing that YouTube does have.

But when I look at content farms, is more where I feel less good about it.

Like these videos where like CGP Grey or somebody will make a video that's an interesting essay on a topic, and then some channel will like remake that video but worse, but just to like capitalize on like all of it.

But they can do that daily or three times a day and make a bunch of money off of it because it’s a business, you know?

They just like pump in—it’s an investment, almost.

So that's like a bummer.

It just like adds a bunch of noise to YouTube that is not gonna—it's not something you can actually prevent.

But I would—yeah, I don’t know.

I would just like to see less of that is more, yeah.

I've seen—I would like to see less things that are obviously content farms like wildly successful and like dominating like YouTube.

But we'll see.

Yeah!

All right, man, thanks for coming in.

Thank you for having me!