The Laravel Podcast

Matt Stauffer:
All right, welcome back to Laravel podcast season seven. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer, CEO of Tighten. And in this season, I'm joined every episode by a member of the Laravel team. And today I'm talking with my friend Leah Thompson, DevRel engineer at Laravel. Leah, can you say hi and share a little bit about what you do at Laravel?

Leah Thompson:
Yeah, hi, my name is LeahThompson, like Matt said. I am a DevRel Engineer at Laravel. So I am on the DevRel team, but I work kinda as like a marketing engineer. So I mainly build out our marketing websites. So I've built out the updated Laracon US site, the Nightwatch marketing pages, the Forge new website, blog community and Learn websites. So shipped a lot in the like seven, eight months I've been there.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice, okay. Yeah, very short amount of time, yeah.

Leah Thompson:
And then also speaking at conferences and doing kind of general dev rel things, connecting with the community.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, so I have a million questions about what you do here, but I first want to talk about your story to getting here. And you know that I ask everybody this in the podcast, but I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into yours because of your involvement in a lot of the of public communities around people who saying, hey, I'm trying to do a career change, you know, and a lot of those folks know you. So just imagine there's a story there to be pulled out. So can you tell us what was the story of you kind of getting your job at Laravel in the first place?

Leah Thompson:
Yeah, so I guess going back to how I even got into tech, so I don't have a traditional background. I don't have a degree in computer science. I actually have a degree in mathematics. I have a, yeah, a Bachelor's of Science in mathematics from the University of Florida. So that's kind of a degree that sets you up for grad school in math. So it's all proof-based. So a lot of it's the same math you would take if you're majoring in comp sci, but it's.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
the proofs of it, you know? Like I'm not doing like linear algebra in programming. I'm doing like a proof to show that you can, I don't know. I can't remember some of the stuff from college. My brain like got rid of it, but that you can do like the matrices, multiplication and all stuff like that. So that is what I did. I did take a couple or two programming courses in college. I took one in C and one in C++.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
The one in C was so bad, I did not touch programming for like four years after. Yeah, I was like, I'm too dumb for this. I can't do it. I'm not touching this thing. So I didn't do it for four years. I graduated during COVID. So I wanted to do something more like, yeah, I wanna do some more like data analytics or applied math, but I ended up going into teaching because COVID shut down a lot of the jobs I was going for and they always need math teachers in Florida, which is where I was and in general.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Matt Stauffer:
He said, never again.

Matt Stauffer:
Me too.

Leah Thompson:
But so I taught high school geometry. So it was like mainly 10th and 11th graders as a 23 year old straight out of college with no background for teaching, right? So I'd only, my first ever job was as a math tutor. So I did have that experience and I loved math. So I was able to kind of break down the concepts easily. So I had that, but I didn't have anything with like classroom, like management or like knowing how to,

Matt Stauffer: 02:55.181)
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
deal with any of that, like any of the behavioral stuff. I didn't know about IEPs, any of that. So I got thrown into the deep end. Yeah, got thrown into the deep end.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. And like you said, you're dealing with people who are six years younger than you and they probably don't even notice the difference. You're like, great.

Leah Thompson:
Yeah, they're like, my older sister's your age. And I'm like, great. That makes me feel so good. I'm like, you just listen to me. So I did that for a year and a half. It was a lot. It wasn't really what I wanted to do. And then also like you deal with a lot of like politics in the sense of like you have your admin, you have to do it a certain way. Then I was teaching, my last school I was teaching algebra one and geometry, which are both state tested. So it's like a lot of pressure on you for your kids to get certain grades and stuff like that. And it's just, it felt like.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
my success was dependent on how they did that I didn't really have control over. Like you can teach them, but you can't make someone do well. So I didn't like that. So I wanted out. And I ended up actually quitting due to health issues, but I quit in December of 2021. And in January of 2022, I started a free online bootcamp to learn full stack web development because I was trying to find a way to get into more applied math or something like that.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Leah Thompson:
I was thinking about going back to get my master's for statistics, but my husband, when I was majoring for math, he was majoring in computer science. So he ended up getting a job as a web developer doing front end actually. And he was like, Leah, why don't you try this? Let's try to see if there's like boot camps or stuff you can do. And I found like this Reddit post about a free boot camp called a hundred devs. Cause that like post about it blew up on Reddit. So was like, why don't I try this? It's starting in a month. I'll see if I like it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
If I don't, it's free, so no harm, and then I'll go to get my masters. But I tried it and I fell in love with it. And during doing this is when I also started posting on Twitter. So I had like 20 followers on Twitter before this. So I started posting on Twitter as I was learning web development. It was a full JavaScript stack. So was MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. So just JavaScript, no PHP. And I did that. So from January to November, I focused on that.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

Leah Thompson:
And during that I started streaming on Twitch also as I was learning, building out projects, posting about the projects on Twitter, just doing a bunch of stuff like that, a little bit of freelancing. And I got my first job in tech in November of that same year as an email developer. So very, very different from what I do now. So I started out email development, mainly doing front end stuff, doing like JavaScript, but a lot of HTML.

Matt Stauffer:
That's awesome. That's great.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah.

Leah Thompson:
I did that for a while and then last year I ended up doing more work for an agency, which I got hired to be a full-stack developer there. So getting into more web development again. And during that, when I started there, it was mainly just JavaScript. So on the backend, we were using Next.js and Node.js and the front end using React. Within like a month of me starting there, they rewrote the backend to be Laravel and PHP. So they were like, yeah, yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Really? Huh.

Leah Thompson:
completely pivoted, because I was like, okay, I'll get Next.js experience here and that will help me at my next job, because a lot of enterprise companies and stuff are using Next.js now. The company I actually was an email developer for, they were using Next.js on the backend. So was like, okay, I'll get that experience. Within a month, they're like, nope, Laravel PHP. I'm like, okay, I guess, yeah, I guess I'm using Laravel. I'd been friends with Alexander Six for a while and he...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Wow. I can figure that out.

Leah Thompson:
kept talking about Laravel, so was like, okay, I need to try it eventually. But I was like, okay, no, I have to. So I started doing the Laravel Bootcamp, like the old Laravel Bootcamp that was on their website to learn a little bit of Laravel, because I was mainly doing front end stuff for work, but since we were going to use on the back, and I was like, might as well pick it up. And I applied for a scholarship through Larabelles to go to Laracon US last year, because I was like, okay, if I'm learning Laravel, I might as well apply and we'll just see what happens. It's like, I'm never going to win.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Leah Thompson:
Like you just applied to stuff, you're like, I'm not gonna win this. I won it. And I'm like, oh crap. I got it like a week before and I'm like, crap, I guess I have to go to Dallas? Like I guess I'm going. And I was nervous because all my experience, like my two, two and a half years of experience as a programmer was all on JavaScript. Like I'm gonna go, these people are gonna hate me. They're gonna be like, why is this JavaScript girl here? Like she doesn't know PHP. And I went and everyone was so nice. Like I met you, you were so nice.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
I felt like I was just adopted by people. Like everyone was like coming up, wanting to meet me, so excited that I was getting into the community. So I fell in love with the community and that's why I started like tweeting about Laravel afterwards. Like I fully bought into it after it. And again, this is like, I'm not hired at Laravel at this point. Like I'm just in love with it. I started rebuilding. Like I had this kind of a hundred hours project I built through the bootcamp I learned or the bootcamp I did to learn web development.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah.

Leah Thompson:
And I rebuilt that project. I started rebuilding it using Laravel and Reverb and all of that. And I was posting about it I got followed by Taylor and Joe Tannenbaum and a bunch of cool people on the Laravel team. And I'm like, they're following me and I'm just building this dumb little side project, you know? And people asked me to be on podcasts to talk about Laravel and I started streaming on Twitch mainly using Laravel and my projects. And that kind of just led to me thinking, you know what, I would really love to do this. I would love to work at Laravel as a dev rel because I'm talking, I can talk nonstop about it just for fun, ya know, why not get paid to do it? Cause it reunited my love for building, my love for like building projects outside of work and just for programming in general. So it's like, I think working there would be like the perfect job for me. So I reached out to Taylor and I like DMed him. I'm just like, hey, are you guys hiring for dev rels or is there anything I can do to eventually like work there as a dev rel? Cause I would love to work here.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah.

Leah Thompson:
and he asked for proof of my content. I sent this whole list, spent a long time on it, and he connected me to Hank, who is head of marketing. And so I got in talk with Hank, and so a few months we talked on and off until a position opened up, and here I am.

Matt Stauffer:
Here you are. Oh, that's awesome. So thank you so much for talking so much. I know I told you I was like, I'm going to ask you so many questions and I still have so many questions for you. So you ended up in the position. Was it, it dev rel engineer from day one?

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm. No, so actually it is a marketing engineer. And well, I'm a dev rel engineer now, right? But the position was for a marketing engineer. So it's for someone to build out the marketing websites. So that was like the title I agreed to at first on the dev rel team. And then it's kind of like shifted a bit since then. And now I'm doing more dev rel stuff. Like I've spoken at six conferences this year.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Leah Thompson:
I'm going to be speaking at more next year and I think like it You should see my face on YouTube or YouTube eventually like stuff like that.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, very cool. So again, so many questions, but before I get to them, one of the first things I love to talk about is people's progression. Once you get to Laravel, what's your progression through the projects you're working on? And it sounds like what you shared was the majority of your initial work was being a marketing engineer, building out marketing sites. How much did you get to bring your own set of opinions for how to do this? And how much was it sort of like, well, this is the tech stack we use and you can implement it. Like, did you get to bring in your passion projects or your favorite way of doing things at the beginning?

Leah Thompson:
I think the funny thing about my position is like, think at Laravel in general, right? If you get hired for an engineering position, like on the engineering team, you're on a team of people. Like if you're on the Cloud team or the Night Watch team, know, mine was like, here, you are our only marketing engineer on the dev rel team. So Leah, you need to build out this full website. You have like a week, two weeks to do it. Go forth. It's like, go forth child and build this website.

Matt Stauffer:
Here you go.

Leah Thompson:
could kind of pick what I was gonna use. mean, of course I'm not just gonna be like, we're not using Laravel, we're using Next.js, you know, like we're using Laravel. A lot of times it was like picking the right tool for the job. Like if I wanna build something fast, I realized I'm just gonna build it using Blade most of the time. Some of the websites we built were like CMS sites. I'm sorry, I'm moving my camera. So for those, I kind of was able to like play around with what we're gonna use for it. Like what works best, what...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
do I have some pain points with and we have to shift for. So I was able to be kind of opinionated about it. Some of the things, some of the like bigger projects, like I'd say with like Nightwatch or Forge, where I am working like with those designers and stuff, it's like being opinionated, but also taking in other people's opinions and like going with what makes sense for the project, you know? But the ones that are like learn, blog, community, the ones that are like solely from the DevRel marketing team, I could kind of.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, totally.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Have you so you mentioned that kind of when you're trying to go faster, you're to use blade, but you have now built so many of these sites. Have you landed on like a dream, whether it's a stack or a workflow for building these or you're like, hey, look, I have been paid to build these at the biggest, you know, most reputable company in our niche. And here's the things I've learned. Here's the three things I've learned, you know, like a clickbait kind of article. But are there any things where you're like, I have discovered in doing so that I must have this or I must never do this or anything that's kind of really just stood out to you?

Leah Thompson:
I feel I feel like definitely yes, but then trying to think of those things right on the spot. It's like no, I think my Laracon US talk and Laracon AU talk kind of wrap up What I've learned are good ways like break down the designs I'm given because sometimes like you're given the design our designers are amazing at Laravel so sometimes it can be intense to see that and it's like god I have to build this and like a week so just like breaking it down and first thinking like okay

Matt Stauffer:
Of yeah, no worries.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
What components do I need to build out for this? Like definitely starting with structure. Cause I think whenever I first was getting into development sometimes, especially for emails too, emails are just like one file and done. So it's kind of like build it out and then you could refactor. For this, you're not gonna just build out a whole file of like all this crap. Like you need to figure out what components you need, start with it kind of like broken up. The scaffolding really sets the tone for the project. So like doing our scaffolding, starting with layouts. Cause I think like first,

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
first project like Laracon US or so, we didn't have like a specific like layout we were using. And so then we were copying a lot of the padding stuff over and over. So it's like starting with like a solid layout, just building up, like starting scaffolding, building up from there, then doing your components, using your layout and stuff like that, just keeping it modularized or I'll say in like broken up and like smaller components, you know, that is like a big thing. And then I just like,

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
starting with like bringing in fonts, then working up from there. I can't remember all the steps from my talk. I still have to refine my Laracon AU Talk.

Matt Stauffer:
We'll link it to show notes. Yeah, no, it takes, I just gave a talk that I blast gave like a year and a half ago and it takes a little while to read, because it was your whole life for a little while, right? And then it's time to give it again. You're like, it's not in there anymore.

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm.

No, it's like a week before it's always like, what is the talk? And then it's like, you asked me three days before and I just have the whole script like in my head. Like I can just go on it, but I'm not there yet.

Matt Stauffer:
Yep, 100%. Yeah, you're not there. You still got a couple weeks. So as I think about kind of the world of what you're doing there.

That sounds very marketing engineer, but you're also a dev rel engineer. So you mentioned that one of the pieces of being a dev rel engineer is speaking at conferences. Are there other aspects of, and I know that probably different dev rel engineers at Laravel have different chunks, but there are other aspects of your responsibilities that you're either excited about having just started or looking forward to, or you're still trying to define, like what else is dev rel-y about your work?

Leah Thompson:
I'm looking forward to more of the like getting into more of the content site i'd say because Josh and Christoph do a lot of the like youtube and stuff like that like that is they're kind of like day to day and I've been more of building out the websites or maintaining the websites and then going to speak at conferences so I'd say getting to do more with the youtube content or even with the live streams because I know josh has been doing some live streams for like the

Leah Thompson:
forget what they call them, but kind of the office hours, I guess. Like the Laravel office hours and doing more stuff like that, because I really enjoyed streaming on Twitch and stuff. I would just do it for fun. But lately, I've just been so busy I haven't been able to. So being able to like do more of that while also balancing the engineering work and still going to actual in-person events. Because last year I only went to two conferences.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
And those are my first ever two. I hadn't gone to any before that. Yes. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Wow.

Really? I said wow because I'm like, that's way less than you normally do, right? Really? Okay.

Leah Thompson:
Yeah, I had never gone before that and I hadn't spoken at any conferences until this year and I never spoken at a meetup, anything. It was just, bam, I'm gonna start speaking at conferences. Yeah, and I was like, I'm gonna apply to some, I'll get rejected. No, was accepted to all of them except one. So I learned that the hard way. But I had a lot of fun doing it and I've realized I really enjoyed that, like getting out into the community and getting to like...

Matt Stauffer:
Straight into it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yep.

Leah Thompson:
connect with people, meet like people IRL that you've talked to for like two years. And it really just makes me wanna go out and build more and gives me like ideas for other stuff like to create content about. So I still wanna do that part of like a dev relationship engineer, but I want to like dive a little bit more into the online content as well.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So one of things I want to talk about is kind of your journey into getting a job because right now getting a job in programming is not easy, right? You have enough friends who you know who are going through that just like I do where it's just sort of like completely capable, completely compelling people who are brilliant and talented and there's just no roles for them. And it is weird because I see tons of roles but that's just not a good fit for the people I know who are looking. So there's some kind of mismatch where maybe it's entry level roles are not available right now, whatever. But you were able to make what was functionally a career switch, degree in mathematics, experience teaching, and now you're a programmer. And you did it through a bootcamp, which I think is a story we heard a lot pre-pandemic. And then as soon as pandemic hits, and especially 2022 when all of the apprenticeship programs and FANG and stuff like that all got shut down, people starting doing career switches, coming out of boot camps and trying to get a job, it's been a really unlikely scenario.

Now granted, your first job post-boost camp, I think, did you say it was 2021, 2022?

Leah Thompson:
November, 2022.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, so you might have gotten in right the last second, but still, I think you still know a lot of people from 100 devs and stuff like that. Is there anything that you think that your story could share with people who are still in that scenario, who are still job hunting, who are trying to do career changes, who maybe just did a boot camp, something like that, where you can say, well, you know what? Like, I'm not saying this would work for everybody, but this is a part of my story that's kind of like interesting and maybe more people could have an experience like this, whether it's something you did or something that you were given the opportunity to.

Leah Thompson:
I would say learning in public and building in public, like being on Twitter, even streaming on Twitch, some people might not like streaming and it might not work for them, but for me it really worked where I was able to like show people, hey, this is me building it and they were able to see my thought process and I had people offer me like referrals through just me streaming on Twitch. And I actually, all three jobs that I've gotten in tech

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
have been through social media, have been through Twitter or Twitch, just people offering me referrals. I have had job offers just from clicking apply on LinkedIn, which I know people are like, don't click apply on LinkedIn, you have to network in. No, I went through a really long job interview process this year, from January to March. I think I had 60, I applied over 60 something jobs, I think I had at least 20, 30 interviews, and I mean that's like.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Leah Thompson:
interview one, interview two, interview three with like companies. I was interviewing with up to like six or seven companies at one time. And I had a really long process with one company. It was not Laravel. I've had people ask me that because of how the timing was. It was not Laravel. Laravel's interview process was great. Not the crazy one I was talking about. But I got like a job offer from that job as well. So I've gotten job offers from like companies just by clicking apply on LinkedIn. So I would say do that, but I'd say like you're more likely to get the best jobs by networking.

Matt Stauffer:
Good. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
and by like going to conferences and connecting with people or by posting on Twitter, I would say if you are building in public though, be genuine. Like don't just go on there and just be like, here's what I built. Like do go on there and be like, here's what I built, but also show your personality because you want people to connect with you as a person because they're more likely to go, okay, I really wanna work with this person. So it's like this other person might have like more technical skills than you, but if they really like you as a person, I think you would be a good fit.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
for their team, you're getting the job. So I would say that's really big part.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, I say that all the time with a hiring perspective and you know, the caveats for anybody who hasn't heard my conversation elsewhere, you have to be careful about culture fit and the ways it can kind of reinforce your biases and everything like that. But even if you were trying to adjust for all of those things, there is just an element of, give me a capable programmer who's a jerk or someone who's still learning, but I see a lot of potential in them as a person and I want to see them succeed. And I can imagine they're going to be a good fit in our company. I'm just like,

Yeah, I'm going let you learn while you're a good person who we're happy to have around versus this other person who nobody wants to talk to, but can do the job today. So yeah, there's definitely something to be said there. And I do love that building in public shows people your capacity as a builder now, your ability to learn and grow and just how you interact with difficulty or how you interact with, you know, social settings. There's so many things that are valuable in a job setting that you can learn by watching somebody build in public. So big fan. I love that.

Okay, so we talked about DevRel. We talked about the fact that a decent amount of your stuff is speaking. So let's ask that same question from a speaking perspective. Let's say somebody is following along and saying, oh my gosh, you went from never having spoken to speaking at five conferences in a row in one year. What's your secret?

Leah Thompson:
Man, I guess my secret is to basically push yourself off the cliff is what it feels like. It's like, I was terrified. I know people can see me doing all these things and be like, yeah, she can do them, but I can't do that. She's doing them, she's great at public speaking, she's not scared. No, I have social anxiety. My first time going to Laracon US last year, I walked in, it was my first ever tech conference, I walked in, I got really scared and I hid behind a trash can.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
for the first 15 minutes. Because I panicked when I saw the people. So no, I get terrified to do these things, but just doing them, just putting yourself out there, I feel like, has, I don't know, led to where I am today. If I just stayed nervous to even apply for my first ever talk, I wouldn't be on my sixth conference talk now. I don't know if I ever would have taken that plunge, you know? You just have to start applying. I'd say when you're trying to think of talks to give,

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
think of something that's interesting to you. So the way I thought of like one of my talk ideas, which is using React with Inertia JS, it's because when I was at a conference last year, I was talking to JavaScript developers, because it was a mainly JavaScript conference and no one knew what Inertia was. Like if I was saying my tech stack was like, RILT, react inertia, Laravel and Tailwind, they're like, what's inertia? And so I kept having to answer that question. I was like, that would be a good talk. Like especially to give a JavaScript conferences because a lot of JavaScript devs,

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
or anyone outside of the Laravel sphere, they don't really know what inertia is. And inertia is a super useful tool, so that would be a good talk. So anything like that where you feel like you're having to explain it or you just think it's really interesting, those would make good talk ideas. And then once you have the talk idea, it's just finding conferences you think that talk would be a good fit for and just applying for it. When it comes to the actual, I don't know, how do you speak at conferences? How do you get through the talk on stage?

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
I would say especially when you're starting planning it out really helps. Like obviously you have to have your slides and stuff, but writing a full script, writing a full script, putting those in your speaker notes, I would say, so my first few talks weren't live coding. And so I was able to like have my speaker notes. At this point, I feel like I kind of wing it because my last few talks like did not really have a full script for them, did not have speaker notes because I'm live coding and I just,

Matt Stauffer:
Interesting.

Leah Thompson:
I like have, it's kinda like Aaron Francis, like how he does talks, I think, where he has like the main talking points and then he just goes off of those and just like talks, I guess, like he would normally explain them. And that's how I've started giving my talks. But whenever I started, I had them like fully written out, like full, full speaker notes that I kinda didn't stray from. I had my slides, I like had everything practiced. Like I ran through my talks like.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Leah Thompson:
eight different times, I'd say, and I would record myself and then listen back to them. I'd put them on YouTube Unlisted and send them to my husband and my friends and make them listen to them. I would, I think my first ever talk, Roxy, who you know, Roxy was there at that conference, and I made her and our other friend Richard come up to my hotel room and I made them watch my talk at least two times in person. So just doing stuff like that because then if you have, especially a person in front of you who's listening to the talk before you give it to other people, you feel.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
better that it doesn't sound dumb, you know? And like, you're able to, as you give the talk, you're able to see like, what feels natural? What should I change? What can I do better about it? And if you're really scared of public speaking, maybe you get up there, you give a talk, you hate it. If that's case, then don't feel like you have to do it again. But for me, I got up there. I was super nervous before. I got up there and I had so much fun. And then afterwards I'm like, wow, I really like this, which is good, because I had like four other conferences lined up. So it was gonna be really bad if I hated it, I know.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. I hope I like it. Yep. That's great. Well, I like the idea of writing out because I, you know, so I've done video courses, I've done talks, and I've tried everything from no speaker notes at all to fully, you know, fully written out scripts for both contexts. And I've found that when I end up giving a talk or giving a video straight from a script, then it's too kind of rigid. But when I write the script and then

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
delete the script and then give myself bullet points, I am more confident in what I'm saying than if I never wrote the script in the first place, which I kind of didn't think of as an idea, but it's like the both of those things you gave as advice pieces, which is writing out the script and practicing with people. Are you defining what you want to be said? And then you can go back from there. And if you were like, that's what I want to be said, but I can riff in this area or I can kind of vamp in this area, whatever. Sure. But that's it's sort of like you, you can't choose to break the rules until you learn them. I think they say that a lot in like cooking and other things. It's like

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
You gotta learn what the perfect, you know, completely well done talk is. And then if you decide to give yourself smaller pieces to remind you of where to go, and then you can kind of change the way you're seeing it cool. But there's something different between that and just saying, here's my bullet point notes, and I hope I can give a talk off the bullet point notes, which A, you know, you can have a bullet point note and imagine in your head what it's gonna sound like, but until you actually have to say those words out loud

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
you might not discover, god, that's really awkward, or I need the supporting piece of information in a link somewhere, or whatever else it ends up being. So, big fan of lots of practicing, and I don't think people talk enough about the value of writing a thing about the whole way through, even if you're not actually gonna read it straight off the script. That's cool.

Leah Thompson:
I think a lot of people too, like the more you give them, the more like you're not just going off the script, you know, like you said. Like I kind of, that's kind of how I write my talks now. Like I write a script, then I make my slides with that script and kind of like figure out the coding demos and stuff from it. And then I start recording myself saying it and I kind of just like go. I don't look at the script, I just record myself, I just figure out the talk. But it's like having that...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
So like a lot of people who are experienced, don't, I don't think have to have the script anymore. So I don't think they put it in their advice to people who are starting out where it's so like me starting out, I didn't really know I needed the script, which my first ever talk was like five minutes. So that was fine. But then once I started doing my 30 minute ones, I'm like, no, I need a script or else I'm not gonna know what the heck to say. And I, yeah, that's why I would tell people like write a script, at least for your first talk, write a script is really good practice. So you don't just like.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
feel like you're reading off your slides or like you look at it and you're like, okay, well here's this point. I'm supposed to spend like five minutes on this, but I have nothing else to say because I've forgotten everything.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So you mentioned how one of the things that's been valuable to you is just kind of like posting your life on Twitter and streaming and stuff like that on Twitch. So I think Twitter, we have had many conversations as a community about what it looks like to share what you're working on building in public, but very few about streaming. I think streaming is something that is still kind of like the realm and the domain of the few and the crazy in the world of programming. I haven't streamed in like a decade and back then programming wasn't even an option on Twitch. It was just sort of like other I think and so it's been really cool watching the rise of like professional streamers who are way more capable than I could ever be like, you know Prime and all them but if someone were just like I asked you with someone who was trying to get a job with some someone's trying to start speaking somebody wanted to Stream on Twitch and they've never done it before or they're an old man and haven't done it in a decade what Obviously, you don't have to talk about like the technical details obs or whatever but just from a perspective of like deciding what you're streaming

and getting a followership and streaming stuff like that. Like, can you talk a little bit about like if somebody really wants to do streaming, where should they get started?

Leah Thompson:
So I'm trying to think of like deciding what to stream I guess for me because I had like started using Twitter to Build in public and for whenever I was like trying to change careers. I didn't have a job. So like career changing was my life, you know I became one of those people who's like Programming like all day every day like I'd be up to like two in the morning doing leak code and stuff And I'm not saying to do that because that was a little crazy and I did burn out really bad. Especially afterwards trying to balance that with working a full-time job in tech.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
do not recommend. But I would say if you have something like you do all the time and you enjoy doing, then that would be a good thing to stream. Like people even stream crocheting and like making crafts, you know? They stream art if you really like drawing. I would say anything that you really enjoy doing, you're able to be more engaging about, you know, because you love doing it and people like seeing you do things that you enjoy. Like that's a big part, I would say. So I would say start streaming that or trying to like...

Matt Stauffer:
That's good.

Leah Thompson:
create streams for that. But when you're trying to get a platform on there, you're trying to get viewers, I would say leverage any other social media you might have. So like I had Twitter, think I had, I think I had like 3,000 followers on Twitter at the time. So I posted about it, like even before my first ever stream. I was like, hey, I'm gonna start streaming, here's my channel. So before my first stream, I already had like 100 followers just by people.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
on Twitter who went to follow me and then I posted like in advance I posted like hey I'm gonna be on tomorrow at this specific time here's the link for my channel and then whenever I went live I posted the live notification on Twitter so like again I was already like getting people to go to it before I started streaming and then I posted whenever I was live and then people went and joined and then afterwards I posted like a little recap like here's the project we built on stream because I was like

pretty new to programming. Like I started streaming on Twitch like three months after starting 100 devs. So I was still at just, I just started JavaScript. Cause mainly it was HTML, CSS in beginning, just started JavaScript. So I was doing like little, little projects on stream. So I was able to build that whole project in like four hours or so. So it was like one stream, I built the project and then I would tweet about it or I would do like a code wars or leak code problem. And then I would tweet about it and like be like, here's my solution or here's how I solved it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
So again, like, cause that's already what I was doing on Twitter was taught like learning in public, talking about what I did that day for programming. But now I was kind of tying it in with my streams. So through that, I was able to get like a lot of people from Twitter onto my streams. But then building the audience and stuff like through Twitch, I would say the more you stream, the more people will kind of like organically see your streams, especially if you have like so many viewers. Like I think my first stream, I had like 20 something viewers.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
because of just like from Twitter. But then I started streaming more and as I would get chats, like obviously I talk a lot as this podcast is proof, but I would read every single chat. So I'd always try to read every single chat, try to answer, help people. And as I was like working through the problems and stuff, I would also talk out loud and explain my thought process. So trying to make it like as engaging as possible. And I noticed people just kept showing up like the same people.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Leah Thompson:
would show up and they were kind of building friendships with them. And that just helps you, I don't know, like if you're able to connect with your viewers and they're more likely to come back and that helps build your kind of audience. And then also going on to other streamers on their streams, like not to promote your own, but just to become friends with them. You know, cause if you're doing this, you're on it a lot, then it makes sense to go and befriend other streamers, be in their chat. And then they might rate you, you can rate them, which is like bringing your audience to them.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Leah Thompson:
or them bringing their audience to you whenever they end their stream. And that helps, like you're kind of like combining your audience. Like, so you're able to get some of theirs, they're able to get some of yours. I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but basically, like, I don't know, just making friends with other streamers, which is more like able to build your network through the specific platform. Like I built my...

Matt Stauffer:
No, it's great. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
like friendship network through Twitch. So I'm friends with people who are streamers, which helps you also get different advice. Cause maybe they had other things work for them that I didn't think about and I could do that. Just, I don't know, stuff like that. I know that might seem like a lot of work for just one platform, but if you like streaming, then it's something that's fun to do. Like it's not something I went into and I'm like, I'm going to build my audience and I'm going to get so many viewers on Twitch. Like I was just like, let me just try this. And I really liked it and it ended up being

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
fully worth it for me. So it's just stuff I kind of organically started doing.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I mean, that's great. I mean, your first piece of advice was do something that you like and then have a camera on while you're doing it. So the idea that that's true both for the thing that you're doing, but also do Twitch streaming if you like streaming and if you don't, then it's probably not for you. Do conference speaking unless you don't like conference speaking, in which case it's not for you. You know, like there is definitely a benefit.

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
to those things because we've just talked about how doing those things have helped you in career. But that doesn't mean that someone who doesn't like those things therefore just has to muscle through and do them. There's other ways to get a career other than those things. So that's helpful.

Leah Thompson:
And I don't know if it's worth it. If like you're trying to do it and you're like, I'm going to do this just so I can get a job. It like might not be worth it, you know, because you're putting a lot of stakes on it already. Like some, some people start streaming. like, I'm going to stream games and I'm going to be just like this like huge streamer on Twitch. And it's like, chances of that happening as someone who is a math major, very, very low, you know? Like if you've done probability theory, you know, very low. So I wouldn't go into it

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, pretty low. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
thinking that, but go into it thinking like, can I make friends doing this? Can I make friends doing this? Can I get opportunities doing this? Like I even got, JetBrains last year had given me a free all product license for like a year just from me streaming. Like I was streaming using PHP Storm, they showed up and they're like, here you go. Like just really cool things can happen to you. Like I've met really cool friends doing it. Like I seriously made like over 10 something.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
like close friends just from streaming on Twitch. Connected with people at like big companies and tech by doing it, which like that wasn't my goal, which is a point. Like that wasn't my goal, but things can happen through you doing it. But if you're just going in like, I'm getting a job through this and you're probably gonna hate it, you know, cause you're putting a lot on it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're not enjoying doing the thing. And if the thing does not provide that specific benefit, then now you regret the time versus you're just sort of like, look, I'm having a good time either way. it's got cool things coming from it. Great. But I was just having good time either way. So that's awesome. Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
Yeah, cause this is a lot of time like, cause I feel like too you're more likely to get a bigger audience and stuff if you're doing longer streams. That's not saying like it's guaranteed, but my, whenever I started streaming, I streamed a lot to begin with and I would stream for like eight something hours at a time. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Wow, you said longer and I was like, yeah, like if you did two hours or something, eight hour streams?

Leah Thompson:
I've and I've done a 24 hour stream before I've done I did an accidental 12 hour stream once because I got so sucked into the project that was doing them like I'm gonna finish this and it was 12 hours. Yeah, and I would stream at night. It would be like 8 a.m. And my husband be waking up and he's like Leah did you go to bed or he's like look in the doorway and I'm still just on twitch and he's like go to bed.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. And you just look up you're like, my god. Wow, I don't think I've ever streamed longer than two hours in my life. Eight hours is crazy.

Matt Stauffer:
huh. That's awesome. That's so cool. I literally I literally did not know. That's fun.

Leah Thompson:
That was like 2022 me before my first ever job in tech and now I haven't streamed in like 8-10 months because of life.

Matt Stauffer:
Streaming when you have a day job is tough like I don't know how Nuno does it I honestly don't but hopefully like you said some of your job is going to be able to be coming back in a video and getting paid to stream is a way to do it so okay so.

Obviously don't answer this in a way that would threaten your relationship with Laravel or anything. But is this your dream job or are you trying to head somewhere else five years down there? Not not some other company but like in terms of responsibility set you're like, you know What I'd really like to be doing day to day is this but this is you know Or is it sort of like I don't know man having a great time right now and we'll see where it goes

Leah Thompson:
I wasn't laughing at the question, I was laughing because this was like, no, this is not my dream job, like saying that.

Matt Stauffer:
It sucks, I hate it.

Leah Thompson:
But no, this is definitely my dream job. And this is my first ever DevRel adjacent job too, right? My other jobs before this were as an email developer. And when I was working as an email developer, it was at a e-commerce company, like a really big one that had like five, six different brands under it. And I was one of the only two email developers. So, pure development, my next job was a full set developer at an agency, full development. So I was basically doing dev rel stuff for fun, know, like building on public and doing streams, like building a community. I was just kind of doing it for fun and realized like, hey, I like this and I'm able to leverage my teaching background by doing this. So being at Laravel, I've gotten to kind of lean more into that, you know, even though I am still doing a lot of coding, which.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah.

Leah Thompson:
I was kind of scared to go into DevRel because I thought I wouldn't be able to code because DevRel's different at all different companies. So some companies, you're more just marketing. So you're trying to sell their products, you know, which doesn't feel genuine. You basically just feel like they're a salesperson. I was like, I don't want to do that. Like, and I don't want to not code because that would be like losing a limb. Like I love to code and solve technical problems. And here I'm able to do that. Like I code pretty much every single day, unless I'm like at conferences.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Leah Thompson:
Even though at Laracon US, I was coding the whole time in the hallways and everything and then had to give my talk. But I'm able to really leverage that. So I'm able to code every day still, which I enjoy and solve hard problems and build cool things like our Learn website, which is really cool to work on. But then I'm also able to speak at conferences and go to conferences like as my job. So I don't have to use PTO because it's part of my job. Like I'm going, I get to hang out with my friends and like

Matt Stauffer:
That's awesome.

Leah Thompson:
be the community and I am doing my job by doing it but it's something that I truly enjoy, you know, like it feeds back into my like want to build things and like keep talking about Laravel. So it's just been really nice like actually getting to try like DevRel which I was curious about and realized that I do enjoy it because I'm still able to code and I'm able to.

use my teaching background. So it doesn't feel like me teaching was just like a waste, you know? It's like I'm able, even when I give talks at conferences, like it feels like I'm getting the parts I really enjoyed about teaching back. So I feel like I'm able to really grow as a developer here, because I also get a lot of freedom in the stuff I build and I get to, I don't know, try different things coding wise, but also I get a lot of like feedback. I guess, no.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, totally.

Leah Thompson:
I was like, I thought of the perfect word and then I lost it right away. But then also getting to like dive into dev rel stuff and eventually do content. So it's been the perfect mix for me, I feel like. And going forward, this will help me if I do want other dev rel positions or stuff like that, but I am very, very happy where I'm at. I talk about Laravel all the time, so.

Matt Stauffer:
Love it.

Matt Stauffer: 4
Yeah. And that's why it's like, can imagine working at Laravel is the dream, regardless of what the role is there. OK, so I have one last question before we have to wrap. And you can just tell me if you can answer this. But you mentioned Laravel Learn a few times. And Learn is, of the ones you've built, the least marketing site and the most actual functional application. How involved were you in the back end? And if you were involved, are you allowed to share kind of what tooling you built for structuring the CMS for the courses? Or is it sort of like secret sauce?

Leah Thompson:
I don't think it's secret sauce if it is, guess, forgive me. We're using, so like the website, like I fully built out the website, like the whole thing. Chris helped some and then I think Josh helped some too. Usually it's like we'd have a site, like Leah go build this and then like as we're getting close to deadline something, Chris and Josh would dive in to help too. I know Josh and Christoph like did the course for it, but I focused on building out the full website.

So for the CMS portion of it, we're using the same thing we are for the blog and community, which is we're using Filament basically to have like the admin panel and do that side of things. So we're using filament and then besides that, it is just Laravel on the backend and then Blade. And there is a little bit of LiveWire because since Josh did help with like the blog and with community, he had to bring in LiveWire. So we are using some LiveWire.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, got it.

Leah Thompson:
I don't know, I don't think Learn has any live art on it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I I figured JavaScript probably is at least light involved in the video player, but I should have looked at it ahead of time. I was like, there's not a lot of.

Leah Thompson:
Mm-hmm. We do have, sorry, do have AlpineJS and we're using mux for the video stuff. So video player, we're using mux. Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, got it. So they kind of handle a lot of that already. Nice. Okay. Cool. Well, like I said, we're about at time, but is before we wrap, there anything you wanted to talk about we didn't get a chance to cover today?

Leah Thompson:
Man, I don't think so.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Well, I really, really appreciate you spending some time, especially when it's like there's a lot of people from a different different walks of life that might have something to benefit as they try to become a speaker, as they try to become a streamer, as they try to get a job, you know, as an inter-career change. So thank you so much for sharing your different experiences and advice there. And I really hope it helps some people out.

Leah Thompson:
Thank you, I hope so too. And also, I guess showing that even if you don't have a ton of experience in Laravel PHP, like even if you're newer, don't feel like you can't get a role using it, like still just go out there, talk about it if you enjoy using it and you never know what'll happen.

Matt Stauffer:
I love it. Well, thank you for joining us and for the rest of you, we'll see you next time.