Brett

[00:00:00 ] Brett: [00:00:00 ] This week’s guest is Jesse Atkinson, a software engineer at credit karma, and a return guests to Ben since about 2018. How’s it going? Jessie

[00:00:09 ]Jesse: [00:00:09 ] Uh, it’s going really good. Uh, I mean, relatively speaking state of the world of interesting right now, but it’s going well. Good.

[00:00:17 ] Brett: [00:00:17 ] standard response. These days is a really good considering. So you’re working at credit karma now. Uh, what, what kind of stuff are you doing there?

[00:00:28 ]Jesse: [00:00:28 ] Yeah. I’ve been, um, my kind of like my history and I might’ve went over this a little bit on the last one. So sorry if you, this is repeat for you, but yeah, I started like in 2010 doing real old school web. Design like taking Photoshop, designing what a website would look into Photoshop document, adding up the assets, turning that into HTML and CSS and, you know, um, and I, and I, I do have a college degree, but [00:01:00 ] I joke that my, uh, know bachelor in computer is mostly used this.

[00:01:05 ] Like it’s mostly self-taught because what I learned was like, uh, you know, How to do Pearl and how to do like PHP. And I didn’t end up using any of that. And it was very outdated anyways. And so I, even though I have a degree, I largely consider myself self taught, uh, and moved into web design and web design, and naturally grew into what we have now, or like things like Spotify, half discord, half, they actually run our quote unquote web pages, but they’re full on web apps.

[00:01:37 ] So if you. We’re a front end web designer, web developer, over the past decade, you’ve naturally grown into probably warning, many different JavaScript frameworks. And, uh, every year it feels, it feels like you’re never off the treadmill. You’re never off the sort of mouse wheel of learning. And so I’ve [00:02:00 ] been doing that for a while and I got, um, really interested in functional programming.

[00:02:07 ] And really interested in just, uh, anytime I get really comfortable in what I’m doing. Um, I’m like, well now I’m bored. I’m not learning anymore. And so I really wanted to dive into functional programming and that kind of led me to Scala, which is one of the Kings of, I guess, that world right now, um, very math centric kind of community, uh, And completely scared me.

[00:02:34 ] I had never dealt with anything Java or the JVM, uh, that world just terrified me. And so I started looking for jobs in that space and, uh, really dove, headlong into it and have been there something like 16 months. And, uh, you know, I F I feel like I’m pretty, pretty good at it. Now I actually [00:03:00 ] teach the. Class now with the, at the, uh, at credit karma, like I teach the like new hire class for learning Scala and like here’s an intro to Scala and I’ve so clearly I’ve done something right there, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a radical shift from front end for sure.

[00:03:18 ]Brett: [00:03:18 ] Great. You decided you wanted to learn not just a new language, but an entire new kind of paradigm of programming. So you will. I immediately looked for a job.

[00:03:29 ]Jesse: [00:03:29 ] SI sort of, uh, like I was doing it on the side. I’m very bad at, uh, I have the rare and radical belief, at least in Silicon Valley world, that 40 hours a week is a lot. Um, I think that’s a lot of time personally. I don’t, I’m not, I don’t rise and grind. I’m not a hustler. Uh, you know, maybe it’s my. Well, I was raised Midwestern and you know, my dad, mum, both just worked [00:04:00 ] simple, nice nine to five jobs and, and whatever.

[00:04:03 ] I had a nice life. Um, and so I’ve always really struggled. I’ve never been the guy to work all day and then come home and like crack open the latest coding book or like work on my side project or whatever. Um, I mean, you’re a perfect example of somebody who, uh, I mean, part of our friendship is like me discovering it blog and kind of being in awe of and jealous of how productive you were and all this tooling.

[00:04:32 ] And, and, you know, literally as we talk, I’m looking at marked right now, like I have a marked open, you know, and so I was always very jealous of that, but I, I personally have struggled to. Do that in my free time. And so it’s always been, I need to, I need to learn on the job because there’s no way like 9:00 PM on a Tuesday.

[00:04:50 ] I’m going to be like, all right, let me sit down and like learn Scala now. Like when it has nothing to do with my day job, it’s just not going to happen.

[00:04:57 ] Brett: [00:04:57 ] So did you apply for a [00:05:00 ] job like that? Do they not like w w w the times I’ve interviewed at places like Google, they make you do like live coding tests. And you have to like, prove that you understand at least the, like, they didn’t care so much if I knew a particular framework, but I had to demonstrate competency with a language.

[00:05:20 ] Uh, did you have to, did you have to learn enough to get through an interview process?

[00:05:25 ]Jesse: [00:05:25 ] No, because so most places I’ve interviewed now. So when I had been forcing myself to learn to a small degree, but, um, when I interviewed, you know, they’re like, Oh, pick whatever language you. Or comfortable in, and then you kind of have to solve the, the sort of coding riddle that they put in front of you.

[00:05:46 ] Um, and in this particular case, there were, you know, Hey, we have an opening over here and it was more, it was in JavaScripts or now everybody’s using TypeScript, but whatever, same difference. Um, and then, then make [00:06:00 ] also, but you’re more interested in this other job. And I was like, yes. And they’re like, well, I kind of had to talk to the hiring manager and be like, Hey, I’m a fast Horner.

[00:06:06 ] I promise all. Oh, I won’t suck. I promise. Uh, you know, so they, so they liked me. I passed the interview. Um, but yeah, I did kind of have to sell them a little bit and it worked out and, uh, I don’t know, but yeah, it’s,

[00:06:20 ] Brett: [00:06:20 ] really cool, dude.

[00:06:21 ] Jesse: [00:06:21 ] it’s going on.

[00:06:22 ] Brett: [00:06:22 ] I really,

[00:06:23 ] Jesse: [00:06:23 ] Thanks.

[00:06:24 ]Brett: [00:06:24 ] like, I appreciate first the, uh, the more laid back approach to Silicon Valley that is. That is admirable in my opinion, but the ability to get the job in order to learn something, I, I can respect that. That’s really cool.

[00:06:40 ]Jesse: [00:06:40 ] Thanks. Yeah. I, I don’t, uh, I guess, I don’t know. This sounds so cheesy. I just, I’m always going to be a student. I don’t like, I t