This week we discuss the origin story of the podcast. Kris and Brandon share how they came to know Toran and what trouble has come of it since. Along the way, Toran genuinely highlights the unique characteristics of both Brandon and Kris that convinced him this trio had something special to offer.
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Toran Billups - 00:04 - You're listening to Developing Fatigue. Today on the show. I got my man Kris Van Houten. What's up Kris
Kris Van Houten - 00:11 - Not too much, man. how are you doing
Toran Billups - 00:14 - Killing it, man. And I got my man down in Tennessee Brandon Williamss what's up, man
Brandon Williams - 00:19 - In the dream every day and day
Toran Billups - 00:22 - Today is a very special episode is actually the origin story of Developing Fatigue. I wanted to kind of kick off the show with some light introductions and then we'll kind of talk about how I got to know these guys and why we're doing the show. So I'll start off with Kris I got to know Kris fairly recently but I thought Kris could give himself a light introduction and maybe explain Kris how you get to know me and what good and bad has happened since then if any
Kris Van Houten - 00:53 - I'll try to leave some of the bad out. Yes so I met Toran. Let's see. Almost two years ago to the day we started working together at a financial services company and he got he actually was pitched to me by H.R. like hey nice guy Toran Billups and I'm like yeah I'm actually reading one of his blog posts right now and I'm like oh yeah he works here. I was like No way. And so you know for me of course I'm like star struck by the student I've never met before or he's a have only seen blog post in his little avatar pop up on GitHub constantly and on all kinds of stack overflow posts about testing. But yes like super excited I'll be working at the same company as this dude and then. Long story short I got hired at this company and found out that Toran and I will be working on the same team and so I was very intimidated I'm like man, this fire guy have to be fired because I and I suck
Kris Van Houten - 01:53 - And but it ended up being like a really cool situation because you know Toran and I got to become really good friends and just over the next 14 months set to work together before he went off to his next gig. You know him and I started to develop a really good relationship will you get a friendship to where you know even after he left the company. Him and I would still check in on a regular basis
Kris Van Houten - 02:17 - And I remember I was walking along the Animas River in Durango Colorado when he called me up one day and he was like hey I think we should start a podcast. You interested. I'm like that's a stupid question. Of course I'm interested and so T.L.D.R. about a month and a half later we start recording and it's this fancy podcast
Kris Van Houten - 02:42 - You know today is Developing Fatigue. And so that's the very abbreviated version of how Toran and I became Toran and I
Toran Billups - 02:51 - Love it man. I mean I should call out here. Kris being humble not given a deep dive on his background I kind of wanted to mention quick why I did reach out. Of course Kris is a great dude. I think one of the best developers I know personally but I also had a particular skill set I was interested in on the show which is one different than myself. I think Kris is much more of a accessibility person. He thinks more about markup styling and CSS as obviously the javascript developer also but I thought he could bring to the show things that I don't often have at the forefront of my mind. And he also has sort of a unique journey into software development and I know Kris you don't come from a CS background or you don't have a master's in CS or anything. So tell us just briefly a little bit about how you got into the game and maybe I can help that as part of my sales pitch on why you're the best candidate for the show right
Kris Van Houten - 03:49 - Yeah yeah. So I'll try to keep this as short as possible because it can get lengthy
Kris Van Houten - 03:53 - Long story short we ended up moving from California to Ohio about seven years ago and we were my wife and I were pregnant with her second child and the job that I ended up taking in Ohio was basically like an entry level job as a web site designer for one of the shops that turns out like 350 websites a year with only like three developers on staff and so was doing tons of work getting very little pay and it basically got to the point where we were getting paid. I was being paid so little my wife is staying home with the kids that there was no money for food. There was no money you know to do anything to. We were quite literally using lawn chairs as our furniture in our living room. And it's got to that point right like something needs a change. So I figured since I'm already doing this website design gig maybe I can start leveling up my skills there and start learning how to code more advanced things. And at this time working exclusively in PHP before the days of less and sass and all that fun stuff
Kris Van Houten - 05:00 - And so yeah long story short I started staying up late nights learning how to code and learning how to make some basic services applications and ended up getting. I had a review with my boss that job and he asked how much I wanted to make it within the next or what were I saw myself in five years. And I told him where I'd like to be salary wise because my mind was so focused on like I need to make more money. And I told him how much I wanted to make in five years and he said Yep that's not going to happen here. We're just not set up to pay people that much money. And so I was like OK that means I need to go find something else. And through. A series of interviews I was able to get hired on at a local startup out there in Cincinnati Ohio which gave me like my first big break
Kris Van Houten - 05:47 - My first big pay raise and took me to the point where my family and I were dependent upon government aid. We didn't need that like we were able to provide and paraphrase insurance paid for all her own groceries. You know I was the sole provider for my family was just a huge moment of pride for me. And you know from there I went on to learn technologies like Amber, Node obviously CSS Preprocessors and kind of jumping from company to company over the last few years through a couple different jobs and ending up where I am now in financial services. You know I've come to acquire a big passion for Clean Code CSS working across different jobs for frameworks. And you know obviously accessibility has become a big passion of mine over the last couple years. And I think that's the shortest version of story that I can make for people with debt. But yeah like that that's the very paraphrase version of how I got to where I am today
Toran Billups - 06:47 - Yeah I want to zoom in on that because I think that show that shows or highlights the reason that I want to join the show is it really brought out something very genuine in you as a person. Friends of mine from previous jobs that know me we talk about sort of the human side of programming and I think of course you and Brandon both have this more than most folks that I meet. And so that was why I was really excited to get you on the show. I think you bring something that I don't hear on other tech podcasts a lot of other shows aren't anything that I relate to. But your story and I think your abilities your interests your passions as well as your dedication to be a provider for your family are things that I'd like to hear more about on podcasts so that's why you're here of course representing
Toran Billups - 07:29 - And thanks for coming on the show and I guess helping me make a fool of myself
Kris Van Houten - 07:35 - Thanks for having me. And I'm happy to be here
Toran Billups - 07:37 - And let's kick it off over to Brandon here and give him some love. I'll let Brendan tell you how I met him of course. But I do briefly want to mention one thing that got me excited about Brandon is through my entire career. I worked with a lot of programmers and I can say hands down I have never worked with a programmer who has actually worked as hard as Brandon and in fact most times when I start a new job I sort of have this real quiet time with myself before that first day on the job and say I'm going to do it right this time I'm going to do a Brandon that I'm going to work really hard this time. And so Brandon I mean in all truth many definitely influenced me in that way. And the days that I don't feel like I'm getting much done I challenge myself to do better because of you. So you inspire me in that way from a hardwork perspective because I know you live it everyday. So let's hear it man how we get together
Brandon Williams - 08:27 - Well thanks man. So we got we got connected because we went to the same school in Iowa and I was I was looking for a new job and I said oh Toran Toran used to work there. I'm going to reach out to them and kind of get some information on that company and as I apply an interview there. So I reached out to them I said Hey man what can you tell me about this place. He's like hey that's kind of cool you're looking for a new job. You should apply where I'm actually working right now said really I can work at the same place Toran Billups kind of like Kris. So that I had seen Toran present at a local Code camp and I thought man he's you know one of those guys that worked at this really cool company in town he was presenting at Code camp
Brandon Williams - 09:23 - I was really new in my in my journey of software craftsman and I was what maybe a year year and a half two years into it. Somewhere in there. And so he just made a really big impression on me. You know he's he's up there he's presenting. And I'm thinking that's going to be me one day. I know. And I don't know what I need to do yet to get there but I'm going to get there. So for Toran to tell me how you can apply where I'm at. like if I get to work towards that I'm going to work with like rockstars like everybody there's got to be like a rockstar. So I was like OK how do I apply. Where do I go anyways ended up ended up doing pretty well at the interview I guess they hired me so
Toran Billups - 10:11 - Know so well that I think I walked out when you came in to do the pairin
Brandon Williams - 10:13 - and gave some lame excuse about being sick or something. But no it was it was pretty cool like you know that was. Those are very formative years for me as I learned about TDD as I learned about true software craftsmanship and quality code. And so that was really fun. And we worked together then from for quite a while I'm trying to think how many years I was about 3 3 years or so. I think it was through a couple of different gigs and then we parted ways. But we've always kept in touch and back and forth and and kind of like Kris you know Toran said Hey so I'm thinking about doing this podcast. What do you think it was like. Anything with Toran. Let's do it. So sign me up. Not sure not sure where I contribute because I moved from the world of developer into the world of operations now and so I'm more of a systems engineer now. I can relate because I did some of that JavaScript stuff but man 3 years out of JavaScript and I'm I'm ancient I'm the old neck beard and JavaScript I'm like. Back in my day I wrote Node 0.10
Kris Van Houten - 10:13 - You still would afford for this though right
Brandon Williams - 10:13 - Yeah exactly
Toran Billups - 11:36 - He's not kidding. Node 0.10 that was his last. No. All seriousness I wanted to point that out. Actually that's the reason of course as to on a technical note that I wanted to include you on the show. Brandon. Obviously you're a hard working guy smart guy did some JavaScript and stuff that's great but I loved the journey and I think it's really unique. You were really deep into programming like as a software engineer building software products and I worked with you on those teams and then you slowly transition over to this operations role which you know you introduced me to this new acronym SRE site reliability engineer is a job title. If folks are unaware of it and you're sort of progressed from programmer over to those operations role but with automation and so I thought you could maybe speak a little bit about the journey from development in particular over to this operations role like where did you want to do this. Because that's actually what I thought was most interesting about your story is motivation and ultimately how you got there
Brandon Williams - 12:36 - Yeah. Thanks for bringing up that sore subject Toran. So yeah I mean throughout my career I was always somewhat interested in how how does application or how does the code get built. How does it get deployed you know. Everywhere I went I was always just kind of curious about that and it always piqued my interest but I never thought too much about it was just like oh that's kind of fun to do over here on the side we build it once and then it kind of works right. I don't think there was much more to it and I thought as you know it was fun to see how that stuff works because I like to I just like to know the full process. I really I'm interested in you know from the browser I can I can do bug in the browser and see what the JavaScript's doing
Brandon Williams - 13:17 - I see what it's doing on the back and I know what it's doing on the on the server side like I'm just very curious and wanted somebody you know one of my mentors said full systems thinker. So thinking about the whole system as a whole so that's always interested me but I kind of came into the world of operations of DevOps kicking and screaming. There was a need on our team. And I said well I guess I'll step into that. You know I thought it was going to be short term. I kind of begrudgingly stepped into that and did it for about three months before I realized. Why am I. Why do I just hate doing this every single day for the last three months. Like I'm I'm just dreading it. I don't really want to do it. I think it's almost I hate to say this but I almost thought it was below me like I just want to be writing business features
Brandon Williams - 14:08 - I want to be writing software code. And then I started realizing that it's just code all the way down all your system programs like GREP and OCC and they're all just C programs somebody wrote those and then as I started to realize that I'm like oh there's a whole new world of software down here on the systems side. I started looking at it through a new light and realized that I actually like this stuff. I like doing it to us. I like doing systems learning about net scripts and upstart scripts and system D scripts and learning the Bash being a Bash "ninja" per se. And I had a really good couple of mentors that guided me and helped me understand all the terrible things about Bash and why we should never do them but it has been really gone. So that's that's kind of my journey. I mean like you guys said like we kind of mentioned I did JavaScript
Brandon Williams - 15:05 - I did back in programming and then I moved into operations and I really found my passion and I liked the new problems that we have in building and deploying softwar
Toran Billups - 15:16 - Yeah that's what I love about you guys on the show is that I feel like we all compose really well together which is probably the biggest life lesson I've learned working on different teams of different companies as you see a lot of places. You know they want to hire sort of the same person they give H.R. the same requirements. They try and find the same general shape of an engineer and I'm sort of the opposite these days where I would hire you know if I was a millionaire right now and I had a product idea hire you guys to go build it with me. And of course we all do different things we all like doing different things
Toran Billups - 15:48 - But I think that diversity in thought and the way we solve problems as a result would make the product better. So that's part of the reason that you guys are obviously on the podcast I think you all bring very diverse perspectives and if anything I've learned that I overlook everything because of my super laser focus on whatever I'm into right now which at this time is different than what you guys are into so I think folks will find checking out our show is that you know we zoom in on hard skills occasionally but we're also sort of a soft like cast where we speak about topics that we bumped into over our many years in the industry and we hope that you enjoy connecting with us. Every week we're kind of doing this show in a season basis so kind of like Netflix we're gonna cut a season out of time and we'll sort of adjust between those seasons. So it also helps us not overcommit so that our wives and kids can see us occasionally. So but we're going to try and do probably 10 different recordings. The middle part of this year and just see generally how people react to that. If folks are enjoying listening along with us we'll probably cut or start cutting season 2 later this year. So Brandon and Kris thanks for joining me today and hopefully folks enjoy the podcasts. Thanks guys
Brandon Williams - 15:48 - Thanks
Kris Van Houten - 15:48 - Take care