#166 From broke musician to working dev. How college drop-out Ryan Furrer taught himself to program
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If you're not comparing yourself to yourself, then you're doing it wrong. In my opinion, like compare yourself to who you were yesterday, a week ago, last month, a year ago, uh,

And that's going to be your best metric for how you're progressing. Are you always going to progress in a linear fashion? No, I haven't. And I'm no expert. That's my biggest thing is I want to come off and I hope no one thinks like, oh, here's Ryan. He's this great big guy. It's like, dude, no, I struggled. And I struggled to learn. And I'm somehow making it. Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast, your source for raw, unedited interviews with developers. This week we're talking with Ryan Furrer.

He's a front end engineer working on tools that help companies monitor their buildings for energy usage.

Ryan dropped out of college and worked as a musician and a violin instructor before spending five years teaching himself how to code, working freelance, and ultimately landing developer jobs. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out of the box, then extend resources

replace and break boundaries with code. Learn more at wickstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support Free Code Camp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org.

For this week's musical intro, with yours truly, on the drums, guitar, bass, and keys, we're going back to 1990 with the Nintendo Entertainment System game Little Nemo Dream Master. ♪

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Ryan, welcome to the show. Quincy, thank you. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, man. Seriously, stoked when you reached out about it.

Yeah, yeah, dude. You're precisely the kind of person I want to have on here because not only do you have technical expertise that is relatively recently acquired over the past six, seven years, but you also have just an interesting life journey that's brought you where you are today. We're going to hear about that. But one thing I want to start out with is you have a very interesting take about learning front-end engineering, and that is that people should start with Astro before they learn React. Right.

Yeah. You're a react developer who works with react every day and you're encouraging people to instead go and start with this other framework. Yeah. I mean, my data, my main job is getting paid to work with react. Um, but I do recommend people start with Astro for, um, a couple of good reasons.

For those of you that don't know, Astro is a, I want to say relatively new framework, but it's really gotten a lot of love in the last few years. But Astro is a great framework for content heavy sites. So sites that are mainly static, think a portfolio or a blog site or e-commerce. The best part about Astro is that if you need features that things like react or view the interactivity that they offer, you can also put that into your Astro site.

However, the pros of it are that it tends to lead to faster page loads. It's less JavaScript being shipped to the user because it's server-side rendered unless you tell it otherwise.

So the reason that I recommend people start with Astro is purely because it's a much more familiar syntax than jumping into React and JSX. I remember booting on my first React project and just being overwhelmed. Going from someone who was just building HTML, CSS, and maybe a script.js file to something with node modules and all these folders and not knowing what was what, it was really overwhelming. And then on top of that, having to learn JavaScript

I mean, when I started learning, like, React lifecycle stuff was still a thing, and now we have hooks, and, you know, React has evolved a lot over the years for me. But when I jumped into Astro, things just started to click a lot easier. And like I said, I think that has to do with the syntax that you're writing in. It is so much more similar to HTML that it's just one less learning curve that you have to do. But you get to see a lot of the pros of working with a framework after that.

Yeah. And I mean, the main pro of working with a framework is just the heavy lifting that it does for you. The established kind of patterns that you can follow convention over configuration, right? Like you don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel every time you need to implement something that is relatively mundane, like, you know, a form field or, you know, something like that. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, some of our site does not need to be interactive. And where Astro sort of like, you know, you have that off the bat. I'm sorry, React has that off the bat, whereas with Astro, you do have to opt into it. And you can opt into it, like I said, by using multiple other libraries or frameworks of your choice. You can use React, Vue, Svelte, and a few others. But at its core, it just feels like building with HTML version, you know, like an enhanced version of HTML, I should say.

Yeah. That's why I really grew to it. Yeah. So it's kind of like an expanded HTML five. Cause HTML five does include some kind of like JavaScript ish things. And then last time I worked with it, like you can do quite a bit that you could never do before, you know, I don't know, 2010 or something when HTML five came out. But so you're still working with like,

a relatively simple kind of like series of libraries to get things done. And so it's a little easier to wrap your head around it. Yeah, exactly right. And I think it's just less overhead to worry about and get stressed about learning because realistically you can just, so for example, in Astro, you have layouts just like you do in, you know, you can react or next JS definitely does. You have, can build components very easily using it in a dot Astro file and you write it basically just like,

The difference being that you do have the option to add extra things. What I really enjoy about Astro is that you can put in, for example, per component styles.

And similar to Vue, right? You have the template, and then you can have the script, and you can have this style tag underneath it. So in this, it'll be scoped only to that component if you want to. To me, it's a better way of building that you can iterate on as you go and say, oh, I learned this new part of Astro. Now I can incorporate this. Whereas with React, it feels like I have to learn all this stuff at the gate before I can really start building with it.

And that's what I like about it. So there's less upfront learning, essentially, with Astro. Yeah. And I just want... We're talking a lot... We're singing the praises of Astro, but neither of us are associated with the project or anything. This isn't sponsored by them. It's an open source project. But I think that is telling that you work with React all the time, and here you are encouraging people to pick up this other framework first and...

And so you can see it as training wheels for react, but like, are there a lot of production apps that are just like, they suck with Astro. You're seeing it more and more these days. It's becoming more and more adopted. I think it's got, you said 50,000 get hub stars before we start, which is amazing. I used it for my,

current portfolio. I'm using it for my new version, which is coming out within the next week or so. And I actually just got a new client with it, which is awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm getting paid to work in something really, really enjoys is great. But yeah, I think like,

you'd be a fool not to try it because let's face it like it made things it made it easier for me to start working in react things in astro made sense and then so i could like i crawled in astro so i could walk and react for example awesome well uh i am thrilled to say that free cooking does have a course we published last year i think or uh like astro is relatively new like the first i guess uh

like beta release or the one that I released was like 2022 or something, which is very new in a JavaScript world. Um, and we have a course taught by James Q quick, who's been on the free code camp podcast. Uh, he has, he's got a pretty comprehensive course. I've linked that in the show notes and, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm hyped to learn more about it myself. Uh, you're really the first person who's

uh, told me how awesome it is. And like, it was kind of flying under my radar. So, uh, now, now I'm going to be, uh, looking out for it and opportunities to use it for projects. Yeah. You mentioned that, uh, the, yeah, you mentioned that you got a new freelance client. Congratulations. You're working part time as a, uh, front end engineer at a company that is doing, uh,

like monitoring buildings, right? Like you're writing software that people use to look for, you know, potential structural issues, you know, monitor energy usage buildings consumed like something like 30 or 40% of energy in the country. So this is like a, it's a lot of energy and a lot of money spent on, especially when you get like a skyscraper. I mean, these things are so energy inefficient. It's crazy. They have so much surface area. They're just like hemorrhaging heat.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cold is getting it is really hard to, but anyway, this is not a structural engineering podcast and I will refrain from talking out of my side of my area of expertise other than say, this is like a big problem and there's a tremendous amount of money to be saved in using good software to monitor your tools. And you know, I can only imagine in like the seventies and eighties and before that, like how much money was lost to waste because people had no insight into their buildings. So I could only imagine that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You know, it's cool. I think like the Internet of Things, like all the I mean, for your home, you could go and buy a ton of things. And basically this is taking those those bits of hardware. And what I'm doing, for example, is I'm combining it into a UI that makes it user friendly for the employees to, you know, make their rounds or make their checks or whatever it is. Whereas the back end individuals are working with this sort of niche platform.

called SkySpark. And so they are the ones building the APIs, which connect it all. And then I'm just taking that API and connecting it to the front end. Okay, awesome. So you're doing, you're kind of gluing like stuff. You're talking to the API and you don't necessarily need to interact directly with databases. And you don't have to like, you have that abstraction layer. And as long as you understand the,

how to get the information you need from the API and push the information you have to the API. You're that's, that's like the very definition of being like a front end dev is not necessarily having to pierce that veil of abstraction.

Yeah, yeah. And I don't want to do that. I like working on the front end. I like working with stuff that I tangibly can see and update. I like the creativity side of it as well. Like I'm definitely more on the design and front end side of things than the functional side of things. But that's always a part of it that I'm always trying to get better at.

Well, I can tell you there are a lot of people out there who work on the back end that have no interest in working on the front end. So it's a very synergistic relationship between front end and devs like PB and J peanut butter and jelly. Right. So, um,

I'm very interested in hearing about your background because you do not have a traditional, yeah, I studied CS at Yale and blah, blah, blah, and worked, you know, did these internships. No, you were like a broke musician, essentially, teaching people to make ends meet. And you dropped out of college.

Maybe you can walk us through your journey. And, of course, you started learning to code much later in life. Like you were probably like, what, 25-ish? 28. 28. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, about 28 years old, 29. Yeah.

Yeah, and I realize for people that are in their 40s or 50s, like I'm in my 40s, like it can sound like, oh, 28, is that old now? No, we're not saying that. But we are saying that like the definition of a traditional learner in higher education is somebody 25 and under. Anybody over 25 is technically a nontraditional learner, and they did not know.

necessarily take the straight narrow path to having a fruitful career that is advertised by the universities, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, if I went back to school now, you know, the young kids would be looking at me like, why is this weird old guy here? So I totally feel like I'm old in this context. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, maybe you can talk about like, so you grew up in Long Island, New York, just giant island that makes Manhattan very tiny. By comparison, a ton of people live out there. It's one of the five boroughs, I guess. You have to take the ferry to get there. They don't have like the train to get there yet. There is a train to get here. Thankfully, that's how I get into in and out of New York City. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. There's a couple of bridges as well. You might be thinking of Coney Island. Yeah.

Which is very small. I think in a Coney Island. Yeah. I saw this movie, like Working Girl. It's like a 1980s movie. And she has to ride the ferry because they haven't built like this. Anyway. Sorry. My New York geography is abysmally bad. But I do go periodically. And I try to figure it out. It's a very complicated area. It is. So you grew up over there. And one of the things we're going to talk about is you live with your parents. Yes. Yeah. Unfortunately. But fortunate at the same time.

Yeah. And, uh, like, did you grow up in that house or did you grow up in a different house? Yeah, I was born and raised in an apartment. Uh, and then we moved into another house about 20 minutes away. And when I entered high school is when my parents bought the house that I'm currently in with them. Okay. That is really intriguing to me. Cause like,

A lot of people go back to kind of like their childhood or high school house. And there's like this emotional continuity, like George Michael famously composed last Christmas, the greatest Christmas song of all time. Yeah. Uh,

he composed that in his childhood bedroom on like a drum machine during a vacation. He like the song that came to him and he composed the entire thing from whole cloth. And, uh, we all hear it many, many times every holiday season, right. As a result. And I always think like that, that kind of childhood high school bedroom, uh, like, uh,

There's like an emotional resonance there. Yeah, there would be if I was in my old bedroom. So I guess we could talk about that. But long story short, we had transformed the top. So it's a high ranch for those of you that don't know. It's a split level. So you walk in at the base level and you go up six stairs or down six stairs. And each one is its own floor. So the top half was where all the bedrooms were. The top half about five years ago was transformed into an apartment.

um, for those of us, like, you know, the kids. Right. Um, so right now my sister and her husband live up there. Um, and so I'm not in my old, that's their bedroom now. So I'm in a room that was this tiny little office. That was my mom and dad's space to store extra stuff. And, uh, now I've got two desks and a fold out bed. Cause that's, that's, that's the situation I'm in right now. You know? Yeah. Well, I mean, you live in a dense, expensive part of the world. And, uh, I mean, what you said about like your sister, like,

There used to be this big stigma about moving back home. Like, oh, you failed if you have to move back home. But like I, I moved back home after university. Uh, um, and my wife and I lived there for, you know, several months while we were like trying to figure out what to do next. Uh, cause we were, we were coming back from overseas and I get the time, like a lot of my friends were like, oh, you're living with your parents. Like I felt that stigma. Do you feel that stigma today when you talk to people is that, does that still exist?

Not in today's world. I think it was more of a mental thing for me. Personally, it was coming from me because I didn't want to. I got a taste of not living in the same house as my parents, and I'm thankful that they made the space for me to be able to do so. Not everyone can fall back on parents like that or people –

But yeah, no, the thing about most, I mean, people understand and that's the most people understand, especially people that are aware of, you know, the cost of living in a lot of places. Long Island's not cheap. It's not New York City or San Francisco expensive, but it's not cheap. In fact, I remember looking at houses if this was, you know, a few years ago.

The average house is like 700 grand and it's something that needs a hundred grand worth of work to be put into it. And it's not a glamorous home. So, you know, it's very unrealistic, especially for the salaries that the Long Island companies seem to be paying out here. Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough. I'm excited to hear about your career progression, but let's go back to college. Yeah. You have been, how long have you been playing the violin?

So I've been playing violin and viola, God, since I was eight years old, and I'm going to be 34 this year, so it's quite, it's been a long time. Music was my first passion. It's funny, I started playing for two weeks before, two weeks during the summer before school started in fourth grade, and that's when you start playing your instrument, and after those two weeks I was able to play Mary Had a Little Lamb with my eyes closed, and

You know, when you're a kid, you think, oh, I'm good with, I'm good at this. I'm going to keep doing it. It wasn't a passion then, but I knew music went in my family's blood. My grandfather on my mother's side was a, was a big musician. And even my dad, apparently his, his dad had perfect pitch. So he would just pick up his trombone and start playing along with whatever was on the radio. So I knew it was in my blood.

Yeah, so I started playing viola actually in fourth grade. As you learn viola, you end up basically learning violin. They're very similar. And in 10th grade is when I started playing professionally, playing at weddings in the area, playing at musicals in the area. Through the years, I continued to do that. It was my whole life. So I went to school for it, and I went to three different schools. I did not graduate at either one of them, though.

That was to my own doing, but dropping out was my own thought and idea. I was very deliberate about that, I think, or I know, actually. So I went to school for music education and performance at CUNY. I'm not CUNY. SUNY POSTHAM. This is as far north as Southern University of New York.

Just State University of New York because it is as far north as you can get. I mean, I was 30 minutes from the Canadian border near Ontario. Yeah. So public university or state school. State school. Yeah, which is a public university. It's just not like a fancy research university. Yeah. Right? Usually. When it says state, it's probably not as prestigious as the ones that don't say state in the name. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So if you went there.

You went there, you studied music performance, music education, and you said you attended three different schools. So maybe you can walk us through your college journey because a lot of people are probably listening to this, especially if they're here in the US, and they're thinking, wow, that sounds like a lot of debt. Oh, yeah. It is. That's why I choose to leave after the third one. So I was there for one and a half years. And so due to my own doing, undoing, I should say, I...

failed out of the music school itself and you could still attend the actual school. I was just not enrolled as a music student for that last half year that I was there. How do you fail out of music school? Because it's really stupid looking back on it, but I don't mind being totally open.

Basically, there was something called Viola Studio, which is you meet with your teacher once a week. You have a private lesson, and then you meet during the week with all the students, and you perform in front of one another.

This teacher, though, decided to sign extra projects on top of that, and I just didn't do those things because I was young and naive and stupid. And so I spent a year there in the music program. I spent another half year there trying to figure out what I was going to do, and that's when I left that school. So this was the winter of 2010 was my last semester there. I took one semester off. So then in fall of 2011, I started up at a local county school.

So again, public, which was fine. And going there, I was in the music program. I aced it because I already knew the stuff from previous education. But going there kind of humbled me a lot. I will say, like, being a musician, I was always a big fish in a small pond. And that's not me tooting my own horn. It's just that I was a good violist. And a violist is kind of rare in the scene. You have a lot of violinists. You have a lot of cellists. You don't have a lot of violists.

And so going to that county school, I realized like, wow, you get a lot of what you put into it. So it was a good life lesson for me. And I spent two years there. And then I went to a city school. CUNY is City University of New York. Okay. So from State University of New York to City University of New York. Yep. Yeah, exactly right. And so I spent a year there. I aced my entrance exams. However, I think this comes...

from greed from the schools in that because I aced my entrance exams, but they did not take any of my previous music credits. They did not let me test out of any classes. So I was starting over after already going to school for three and a half years. Yeah. That's crazy. Like the interoperability. I mean, these are...

Public universities in the same state. They're serving the same taxpayers and zero interoperability, like literally zero, like no credit credits transferred for studying the same exact subject. The music stuff wouldn't transfer the gen ed stuff would. Okay. Well, that's good. But I guess they had their own like professors who were like, Oh, we're better at teaching this than them. So we just, maybe it's tribalism. I don't know, man, maybe you're right. Maybe it's just like, Hey, we, we need to get more, you know, people enrolled for longer. Yeah.

And this is the way we can do it by denying them transfer credit. Yeah, it's pretty wild. It was a kind of common thing that I heard in the music community at the time, because even though every school is teaching you music theory in basically the same way, you know, that's how they wanted to do things. But it was a five year program for your bachelor's there for music.

And, um, I spent a year there and I enjoyed it. I, I, it was my best year academically. It was my best year as a musician. I like, I, I worked my, my behind off and, and, um, I loved every minute of it. And except at the end of the year, you know, I mean, your final as a musician is performing. So you have to be able to perform a selection of pieces in front of a panel and everything.

And I said, I can't keep doing this. Like they're not letting me test out. They're not letting me move forward. Like it's time. So I looked at the pile of debt that I had forming from 2009 when I started college. Yeah. How much debt did you ultimately have at the peak? I think it was like 85 grand. 85 grand. And you were, how old were you? 21 at the time. Yeah. 21 when I left college. 21 year old carrying 85 grand in non-dischargeable clothes.

student loan debt from state university. You're going to the cheapest places you can go. Yup. Yup. That's freaking crazy to me. That's crazy. It's out of control. It is. And, and, and anybody listening to this, if you've like heard me talk at all, I always encourage people to go to school, but this is ridiculous. I'm not like an anti, uh, Ivy, like anti ivory tower, anti, you know, like I'm, I'm pro formal education, but like there is something seriously wrong here. Yeah.

yeah yeah well they allowed you to get 85k in in debt that's that's a lot of time okay and now fast forward today i know you still got one more school you want to talk about right no no that was the three schools that's the third one okay good yeah uh okay so fast forward to today if you don't mind me asking again i know this is a sensitive question and you're and this is a public podcast how much do you still have today in school debt none

None. Oh, okay. Great. Congratulations, dude. Yeah. Like how much did you ultimately have to pay when you factor in interest and everything like that? Um, it was like, I think one 15 and I was as aggressive as that could be. I live with my parents. I only didn't live with my parents for two years, I think since I've turned 18, you know,

So it was just very aggressive. And listen, I wasn't perfect the entire time. Like, dude, I started 18. I got a credit card. I missed my credit. Like, I wasn't a smart individual, but it was just more of my skills. It's basically a rite of passage in the United States that you're going to get credit cards in the mail, and you're going to be like, hey, what are these?

I love the movie Bill and Ted where they're like at the end, like the princesses from the medieval times, like they transported to the future. This is not a major spoiler, but they have for like a 40 year old movie. But they're like, oh, you know, George Carlin took us to the mall and introduced us to these things called credit cards. They got like all this stuff like that. They bought at the mall. Like no idea of the ramifications. That's like the typical 18 year old.

experience barreling into adulthood and getting ready to lick the boot of the debt collectors for the rest of their lives. That's exactly right. For many years. Many, many years. Yeah, you know, my parents didn't teach us financially. It's not something that you learned in school and put in public school. You used to have home ec. You used to have some teaching on that, but that has been stripped away.

In favor of making sure people have really high math and, and reading scores. I mean, that's all people care about now. That's all. It is all they care about. That's why you have the regulated exams to get into colleges. Right? Yeah. I mean, like anyway, I'll get on my own, but we won't, but, but stuff here in the U S is pretty screwed up on many fronts, but, but like education, like,

What it does is absurd. It is a crime. And I will say, if you go to California, they have an excellent community college system. And it's like the world's best community college system. And it's run very efficiently. Yeah.

And a lot of people give California flack for like not being efficient. But when you look at the community college system, it's excellent. So if my kids ever want to go to college, which I'm going to encourage them to, but like, I'll probably just have my wife move out to California for a while, move back to California, get residency there. And then my kids can go to community college. And it's like very reasonable. If you're doing amazing, it's the way it should be, especially like a county led school. I feel like I think,

Um, that's, that's actually what I meant to say after mine is you get into it, what you put, you get out of it, what you put into it. And it was a really humbling thing for me. And I said, wow, I wish I learned this sooner. I wish I came here first than going to off to a four year school. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you had a very costly lesson very early in your adult life with both the credit cards and with the student debt. Um, and like many people, you did not finish university. Um,

How would you describe your relationship looking back? What do you feel when you look back on that entire college experience? Oh, man. It's funny that you ask that now because I feel like the answer would have been different a couple of years ago before I really started getting deep into coding and stuff. But I think at the end of the day, I am almost happy I didn't become a public school teacher. And that stinks to say because I love teaching.

Um, but the path that it led me to was performing, uh, locally, you know, in the tri-state area, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey. Um, I managed a couple of music stores and I taught privately. I had a pretty well budding private lesson studio, a collection of students. And I don't think I would have done that if I didn't, um, drop out of school. So pros and cons like everything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe you can walk us through your career progression from dropping out. Obviously, you've got, you know, you said a budding studio of students under your tutelage. Like, how does that economy work? Maybe you can walk us through that. Like, are you teaching them, like, once a week? Like, approximately how much per half hour, hour are you making? Like, let's create, like, our own little video game, like, visual novel here where you're dropped into, you know...

2015 New York Long Island. And you've got a bunch of like parents that want their kids to learn classical music. And then you probably also have intrinsically motivated kids, but you probably also have a lot of people that are pushed by their parents into like classical music. This is a huge thing abroad, especially in China. People are obsessed with showcasing like they're like classical music is like on its last day.

here in the united states but in china it's never been stronger people love you know like playing chopin and stuff like that right like maybe you can talk about that that economy and what it was like being a music yeah a private music teacher yeah um it came from word of mouth number one and so that's going to be like a lot of almost trade skills right like you know

You move into a new area and you ask your neighbors what plumbers they go to or mechanics, right? And so music education and private teaching is very similar to that. But, you know, like I mentioned before, I was a big fish in a small pond. And that sort of came to my aid because over the years of performing with these people, well, now the people that I did go to school with are all music teachers. And guess what music teachers need? A list of private teachers to offer those students lessons, right?

Um, and so that's really where you use a network of like other music teachers that didn't necessarily have bandwidth. That was your main source of referral. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's kind of looked down upon for school teachers to then offer private student lessons, private lessons to their own students in their district.

And so that's what I did. It worked out really well. It also helped that I was working. Like I said, I managed two different music stores, one of which was this job was 45 minutes from my house, from my parents' house. But I started off there as a private music teacher. And when I dropped out of school, I said to the manager, I was like, listen, like, thank you for everything you've done here. I'm going to have to leave to find a full time job because of what's going on.

Just letting you know now. And so they said, okay, well, do you want to work here in the meantime while you're looking elsewhere? And so I was just doing general store stuff, helping people coming in, restocking shelves, whatever. And when I announced that, hey, I got the job offer at Best Buy for a full-time whatever sales floor position,

The manager at that point said, what do I need to do to keep you here as an assistant manager full time? I was like, okay, you know, this, this and that. I want to make this amount of money and I want to keep my private students. So already there, I was working over 40 hours a week between the teaching and the assistant management. And then I had my own private studio on the side and performing on the side. And it all came from word of mouth more often than not.

But to go into the finances part of it, I think at the time I was making $13.50 an hour, assistant manager, $13.50 an hour. Private teaching myself, I was charging $45 an hour or $25 for a half hour.

Um, which isn't bad. I mean, let's face it. Like I, it was cash money that I was making at least privately. Um, the other store, the store job was a W2 employee. So I didn't have to worry about things on that end. And, um, it was, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work though. I mean, I was working seven days a week. I was working, like I said, 40 plus hours at the music store, um,

And that didn't stop. That didn't stop from 2013 until 2019, I think, 2018. So it was, you know, what happened in 2018? So you transitioned careers kind of and and followed another, you know, like this is a job description that many people haven't heard of. But like it's it's called like a buyer. You're like a professional shopper.

Yeah, literally. I would get a shopping list and they say, go buy these parts. Go buy these things. So I guess to talk to that real quickly, in 2018, I think it was, or no, it was late 2018, early 2019, I just got burnt out, man. I was tired of working. The

The gig scene was kind of drying up because my friends were moving out of Long Island. And I didn't push myself early on to get into the New York City performance scene. I think I could have made it, actually, had I done so. But I didn't. And I just got burnt down and said, you know what? I think it's time. Let me at least just take a break. And so at that in 2019, I was working part time at a how do I describe them?

They were a company that made websites for restaurants and also offered social media management. So I was doing that. I wasn't coding, but I was building like a, with a, what you see is what you get editor. And yeah, whizzy wig. Yeah, exactly. Right. And, and, and, you know, doing basic social media stuff. I didn't like it, but it was a job and it was more than what I got paid previously, which is wild to think about. But music was out of my life for the first time ever, ever. And, and I didn't think of it much then, but,

However, I'll tell you that a year later, I picked up my viola for the first time and I cried playing. Like, just because it was this huge emotional thing for me. But what got me out of that then... You put it completely down for a year. Yeah. So it was like a full transition. Like, this era of my life is over. Yeah, it was weird. Did you literally put it into a case and just close it and stow it somewhere? Yeah, I stowed it in my closet. I didn't touch it. I didn't look at it. And...

It was the weirdest thing because it was not just like a job for me. It was a passion and a lifelong thing. And it was an emotional outlet as well. Like my thing was playing very romantic era pieces and emotional pieces. And like, if, when I got into an argument with my parents, when I was younger, I would go pick up my instrument, like, because that was my outlet for things.

I don't think I realized at the time what it would do to me to sort of stop doing that. But the burnout led to that. The burnout, I didn't even think about it. I was just like, I just need to stop. I need to stop working so much and so hard and trying and begging, you know, because it's not just that, but it's the students rescheduling. It's who's dropping out. It's trying to find more kids. It's a lot. It's a lot on one person. And to do that for five or six years, I just, I didn't know how to manage things better, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about that, that interregnum where you're just working part-time designing WYSIWYG sites. And if you can talk about like the buyer, cause I want to build up to you like learning the code properly. Yeah.

And I'm very excited to talk about that. And for everybody listening to Ryan's story, don't worry. We're going to cover all that. I hope I'm always trying to strike a balance between having the right amount of detail and, and nuance, like, like that vignette of you closing, closing the lid on the Viola and, and then picking it back up like that. That is tasty morsels for me. Cause I just want to learn more about you. And I think other people want to learn. It's really,

learning about other people is also kind of helping learn about ourselves through comparing contrast and, uh, similar life experiences and also divergences. And there've been a lot of divergences here that I'm excited to explore as well. But, uh, what,

What were you doing? How did you get that job developing those sites? And how did that serve as a precursor for actually learning the code? You're exactly right that it did act as a precursor. I got the job because my brother, my twin brother, who was also a musician, who also dropped out of school and is now also looking into following my footsteps in the programming world. But he got the job. Is he an identical twin?

he is fraternal that we look and sound very similar. You both have beards. Yeah. You have like very similar looks. Yeah. I was actually like looking at some pictures on your Twitter. I wasn't sure which one was you. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. People don't know people actually for a while. Cause I was live streaming for a good amount of time last year. And so people just think he's, you know, he's me, but a few people have met us both in person and they can attest that there are two of us. Yeah. Um, very cool. He got the job and,

And I said, oh, that job pays more than what my current job does. And it seems fun. Let me go do that. And so just because of that, I was able to get the job. And I didn't love the social media side of things. I'm not the most active on anything but Twitter. And even there, I'm not super active these days because I'm trying to focus in on work more. But they built their own what you see is what you get editor. And it was focused solely on restaurants. And so a lot of the work was like, hey,

can you update this button? Can you add our new menu items to the online menu? And it was very impressive, like in hindsight, what they built, but I didn't do any actual coding. The furthest I got was when I started looking at

problems that I couldn't solve with that editor. And I said, oh, but I can inject custom CSS or I can inject custom HTML here and there. And so I said, oh, and then one of the devs introduced me to CodePen. And I was like, oh, this is so cool. Like there's this whole side of people sharing things they built and just it's a place I can test these things out and then go ahead and just put into the customer page.

And so that kind of sparked my interest again. And it was something that I had always wanted to learn, but I never had the time to because I was busy with music. That was my one, one thing always and forever. And so again, like I was there and I was like, Oh, I'd love to start learning to code again one day. But then the opportunity, I wasn't making the money that I wanted to be making or needed to be making on Long Island. I mean, at that point I was making $18 an hour, I think. So yeah,

A jump up from what I was previously, but that still only equals $36,000 a year, which on Long Island is nothing. And then the opportunity came up at my friend was working at this government subcontractor. And he said, hey, let's try to get you in here again. Because this wasn't the first time I applied for this buyer job. They kept being stringent on, oh, we want someone with a degree or blah, blah, blah. Because it's not an entry-level position. But finally, they gave me a shot.

So, again, I luckily got in there because of someone I knew was able to speak for me and blah, blah, blah.

Um, March 16th, 2020 was my first day in the office. March 16th, 2020 is also when New York state was like, Hey, everyone's got to go home. Everyone's got to leave, uh, leave the office because of the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it was wild. I was like, am I going to lose this job now? Like I just signed onto this, like what's going to happen. This wasn't a company that did remote work previously. Like I think one or two employees did for, because you know, special reasons or whatever. Um,

um it was wild and so we there's two locations out on long island of this company um there were now there's only one but so we drove from one to the other so i can get my vpn access card and make sure i was good to go there and then i was learning remotely this whole new field and career and processes and software and it was a thing and at this point this entire yeah

This entire office experience, like you think like anybody who's listening to this, who's had like a first day of the office at a new job in a new field, you're just going to think about like all those little moments like, oh, there's the copier machine. Oh, I can get coffee over here. Oh, you know, like I need to be careful not to go into this room because they have meetings there. Oh yeah. And like you associate people with this, the physical space. Right. And so you're walking around and like,

Um, you know, there's usually like some sort of office manager at the front desk that you talk to and you, so you, that's the, usually the easiest person to build rapport with because they're like, you see them every morning extroverted. Yeah. And then like, and you're gradually kind of like mapping out the train and you, all of this context got reduced to nothing.

a two dimensional display and you're looking at a screen all day and all your interactions are through this rectangle. Yeah. It was a thing to learn all of this. Think I'm really thankful for my friend. Will. Um, I knew him in high school and so we just stayed friends from then. And, uh, he, we would jump on discord like for four hours a day and just work together and he would show me the way. And without that, I would not have succeeded the way that I did there. Um,

Um, but the job didn't put him up to that. That was purely a him knowing, I know you're not going to make it if we don't do this kind of thing. And so I'm forever grateful for that. Um, I will say though, my success there, um, kind of made me a poster child for when we did start returning to the office. Um, we were forced in there pretty early on because we were government subcontractors and, um,

uh, you know, they're like, Oh, you're essential. It's like, dude, I'm a buyer. I don't need to be in person, but sure. Like tell, tell yourself I'm not the one manufacturing these goods or assembling them online. They're essential. I'm not, but whatever. Um, you're just basically making purchase orders and stuff like deciding what needs to be bought and then dealing with the invoices and stuff.

Yeah, I would literally just get a shopping list and it would say, hey, we need five. Let's just say, for example, five screws of this type of metal that meet this mill spec and a spec meaning it needs to meet these requirements to be used in this context. The thing that with my buying job versus you can get a buyer job anywhere. You can go to Dell and buy components and stuff for them. You can go to Estee Lauder or like another clothing company and buy cloth or whatever fabrics they need, textiles they need.

I was buying electronic components. The company that I worked for manufactured radar and telecommunications equipment that went into helicopters and planes. Cool. Like very cool stuff. Um,

But I was like, you know, very high standards and specification. I mean, you mentioned screws. Like, how do you get to a hundred dollar screw? We have this entire chain of custody in terms of like knowing exactly where the minerals were mined and exactly how things were machined and exactly like how things were tempered. And like if the helicopter flies out of the air and they determine that it was that screw, they know exactly where.

whom to sue that's why things are so damn expensive yeah you got fighter jets that are like literally 30 million dollars and stuff i mean look at the boeing incidents last year like i mean like billion dollars worth of lawsuits yeah and that's because people were cutting corners on what materials they were using for different things so i understand the importance behind it all and it's you know i guess thankfully like my job was pretty straightforward in the sense that like

It was already set up who we went to for these things, and it was a matter, though, of learning how to negotiate, learning how to work with cross-functional teams. I was working with engineering and planning and project managers because I needed to know some things. I needed to know more of it, and maybe I could work with different project managers to say, hey, we're buying this part. I know you use it in these builds. What do you have coming up? So it was a really just encompassing job, and it's not something that I –

necessarily, but within six months of doing it, I knew it was not a career for me and it wasn't a career for me. I'm sorry. Go about like, you've got this new career and you could stay in that job, right? Like you, like you said, everybody needs a buyer. Every big corporation needs to go and acquire different inputs to, to make their outputs essentially physical items. Right. And, and,

You could have just stayed in this and like a lot of people check out and they're like not that passionate about their job. They're like, it's cool if I don't really like my eight to five, that's only like a quarter of my 168 hours a week. And I will say like, I feel very strongly if you've got a family you're supporting or if you are just going through a stressful period in your life and you just don't have the energy to retrain and transition to a new job, that is totally chill. Like,

Never feel like me or Ryan or anybody else is telling you, you have to do this. No, if you can make ends meet, it's totally fine to rest at a kind of like a plateau for a while. Eventually you are going to want to move on. You're not going to want to just eat your career for like 40 years. If you can magically retire, I don't know anybody who's retiring other than like people that have like, yeah, like people that got extremely lucky with like the stock option lottery and stuff like that. But, but like, let's say hypothetically,

No.

And yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. So when I was at my previous job, like I said before that, it kind of sparked the coding programming thing again. So I think it was 2019 when I just started looking at how to learn it. And I did it relatively unsuccessfully. I mean, I tried different things. I tried...

Treehouse. I tried Codecademy. I looked at Free Code Camp. And, you know, nothing really stuck because I wasn't really focused because it was like, I'm making more money than ever right now. Like, whatever. I also had a new relationship in 2018. So 2018 and 19 was like the honeymoon phase and everything was exciting. And so...

back then when I said, Oh, this is not something I want to do forever. My, my thoughts went back to web development or coding in general. Right. Um, I started with front end web development as my area of focus. And then I moved all over the place for like a year. Um, I went from there to AWS cloud architecture, um, looked at just cloud engineering in general. I think I looked at backend and then eventually finally I came back on front end engineering. Um,

and the reason why honestly is a couple of things. I think I mentioned, I enjoy working on tangible stuff, stuff. So as not tangible in the sense that I'm actually touching it because you're not, but I can see what I'm building. I think that's a huge thing for me, but the creativity side of it, like I very much enjoy the design part of code. Like I love CSS and people think I'm, people have told me straight up, like they looked at me like I have three heads when I say that. Um,

But I really enjoy working with CSS, and I love the idea of building stuff out. And so this very front of front end stuff is where I sort of found my niche. And that's what kept me interested in it to the point where I was reading, you know, reading anything and everything I could on just building cool things with CSS. There's a lot of people out there that do more impressive things, but I'm always looking to learn more from them.

Yeah. Yeah. CSS artist who my head on maybe a year ago, she does amazing art, like photorealistic, you know, gadgets and stuff that are all divs. I know. I see it. I'm like, I can't do that. But I can show you how good looking I am. That'd be like the person who can, you know, play, you know, like the most

notes or something on viola, right? It's kind of like taking practical to an extreme. And it is an art form. And it's an endeavor. And the reward is kind of like accomplishment itself. I agree. In terms of practical remunerative work that you can be doing, though, there's something to be said for just being more practical and kind of reaching a good enough... It's the Pareto 80-20 principle. If you're 80% of the way there,

The rest of the 20% is going to take you like 80% more time or something like that, right? Yeah. So there are practical trade-offs to learning a tool well enough to be able to wield it and then moving on and not just – because otherwise you're just going to become like a specialist in a very specific set of tools, whereas you could become like a much more well-rounded full-stack engineer if you're learning lots of different frameworks and you're getting –

Good skills. Like there's the argument of like the T shaped individual who has a broad base of skills and then an area of relative specialization. But you can't just be like that vertical line and still work for the most part, unless you're in like some very specific field. Yeah, I agree. I think for me, it was just like finally focused on that and saying like, this is what I want to do. And knowing that, and I think identifying that is it's okay. That's not going to take,

A week. It's okay that it took a year. You know, I think the set really interesting thing to me though, is that every year since then, I've thought I'm putting in as much work as possible towards getting a job in the field.

And every year I keep proving myself wrong that I can work harder and I can do more where I've, I've burnt out. And it's something that I did in my musical career. It's something that I have done numerous times, learning to code and working towards getting a job. It's not easy to do when you're, it's not, it's not easy to, first of all, learn a whole new career. You're learning multiple new languages. I was balancing full-time work. Like I said, a relationship. I,

met this girl in 2018 and ended up getting engaged. We got married. Like that's a whole thing on its other, other side of things. And then, you know, you're balancing the rest of life. I, I've said it before. I give parents so many, so much props. I,

I don't know how y'all do it because like, I don't have kids. I don't plan on having kids. And I'm still just like, so thankful that I have my time. And I think that's the biggest difference is I think I would make a good dad, but I like having my time. I don't know how you do it though, man. Mega props to you and all the, all the, all the, all the other parents out there.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, all I can say about it is like, is there plenty of people in the world? The world is not going to run out of people anytime soon. So yeah, like it, it, it's a, it's a trade off. But like,

I've been, you know, very fortunate in that, like my kids have been really well behaved. My wife's done a great job of doing probably like 80% of the parenting. Um, so, uh, but, but yeah, like, uh, I, I, I second that sentiment. Like parents are dealing with additional dimensions of difficulty that, uh,

you know, you opt into for the most part, or if, you know, a lot of people have kids early on in life before they've really figured things out before they've really planned. Um, and that is not necessarily like fully opted into because I believe, and I'm sure I'm not the only person, this is not a psychology or science show, but I believe that up until you're like 25, you're still kind of learning. And, uh, you can make a lot of mistakes that haunt you like, uh, racking up a whole lot of debt.

or racking up bad habits or, you know, getting somebody pregnant or becoming pregnant yourself. And like things get complicated very quickly, right? So, you know, I'm interested in learning more about like

this honeymoon period and how you navigated it and how you managed to not completely burn out because obviously you're still doing it right now, but you've gone through, you said, several phases of burnout. So maybe we can move on to the next era of your life and talk about that transition. The many transitions you've experienced over the last two or three years. You wrote this excellent blog post, which is like a no-holds-barred, just soul-bearing blog post. And I want to start by just complimenting

You know, your willingness to do this. I cannot imagine it would be easy to talk about these things. These are hard things to talk about and you've done it. And, uh, uh, you know, I salute you and I commend you and, you know, should similar misfortune ever befall me. I, I,

Pray that I will have some similar temperament and be able to talk about it and not just collapse into a weeping pile. I'll tell you, I wanted to quite a bit. So I'll jump right into that. Yeah. You know, we mentioned I'm living back at my parents and that's because December, I remember the date, December 16th, 2023, I learned that my wife was having an affair. We were married for two years together for, I think,

Well, 2018, I said. So, you know, five, six years before that. And that rocked my whole world to its core. I mean, through the time that I was learning to code, she had continued to be supportive and everything like that. And that's all I had to think. I mean, side note, I was also like, you know, doing hardcore World of Warcraft raiding for the early part of our relationship as well, while I was also balancing full-time work and learning to code. So that was a whole other thing. But yeah, so once I found that out,

Like I said, December 2023, it was basically like, that's it. And we had been living in a house. We rented a house about 15 minutes away from my parents' place. And I stayed there until...

March 2024 just because it was like hey my parents have Thankfully allowed me to move back in But they needed time to get the space up and go but like my room is a 10 by 12 foot room That was their office slash like storage room. So, you know, they've had to make changes for that before I even asked them though I went to my job and I asked about working room fully remotely because I had friends willing to put me up in their homes and

Um, one in Texas, one up, uh, in upstate New York, the other in Chicago or outside of Chicago, I should say. And they, you know, I can't, I can't think my friends enough for that. Unfortunately, my job said no, because it wasn't, neither of the places were a strategic, uh, in strategic alignment with them basically saying, yeah, no, we don't have any suppliers or any real value for you to be in those places. So we're going to say, no, you can't. Um, yeah, so that was rough.

In January 2024 was my first tech conference. I won a ticket to attend that conference in Austin. There was two of them occurring at the time. There was one in Wisconsin, one in Austin. And that was probably the best thing for me at the time. I mean, like, I had already been putting more and more time and more of myself into the development world, but I haven't really entered the community. And so...

I attended that conference and I was open with people there too. Like, I think part of it was just cause it was so new for me. And so I was so raw. Um, but I think that unlocked something in me that I would just wanted to be myself and I wanted to be, um,

And I didn't want to hide behind bullshit. And I'm sorry if I can't curse on here. You're going to have to edit that out. No, it doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. But that conference opened up a lot of things for me and the point where I was like, oh, my God, I felt like I belonged in a place for the first time since I left music. I hadn't had that feeling, but I found my people.

And to this day, still, I talk with these people pretty, I mean, some, some every day, um, which is pretty amazing. And these are friends now that I can call them. And, um, that's an awful lot of good things for me navigating this last year, though, a lot of good has come up, come in this last year and obviously a lot of bad and a lot of loss for me. Like I've been in therapy before the divorce and I've been in therapy since, um, I'm,

For the record, I've been on an antidepressant since 2021, I think. And it just... I feel like I didn't have a choice but to keep pushing forward. Now, the good part is that, oh, all of a sudden I have all this time to myself where I can devote to this craft. I think the bad part of it, though, is because with all this newfound time, I burned out last year. I took on...

I partook in the Dallas Software Developers cohort last March, I think it was, or April. I was working on deals for devs with James Q. Quick. And I was also had just joined this apprenticeship gridiron survivor led by Shashi Lowe. And for little old me to do all this while still working full time, while managing the divorce, while managing the life change of moving back into my parents' place, which I

I had to do because I don't make enough money to live in my own apartment here on Long Island. Like it was a lot, man. It was a lot. And I think I recognized that it was a lot at the time, but I just kept saying yes to things. And honestly, I probably said yes in a way to distract myself. But I also said yes because I didn't want to say no to any opportunities. Right.

That conference opened up this community to me, and I embraced it with full open arms. I started live streaming afterwards. I got more active with everyone. And because of Chris Nowicki, I asked James Quick if I could work on deals for devs with him. And before I knew it, I had a call with James Quick, this person who I idolized, right?

I was approached by Shashi for joining grid iron, like I mentioned, which was an amazing opportunity. How could I say no to that? How could I say no to that? But it was just a long, long year. And again, a lot of goods came with this year, but I battled burnout probably two or three times last year. Yeah. When, well, I'm thrilled that you made it through. I can only imagine what that period must feel like you wanting to take maximum advantage of the opportunities that are opening up. And at the same time,

You're just exhausted, it sounds like. Yeah, a little emotional exhaustion to the max. It took a lot out of me. I think back on it, and again, this was only a year ago, so it's still very fresh in the scheme of things. I don't have any advice other than take the time that you need if anyone has to go through shit like that, which sucks, but it's part of life, unfortunately. It's something that I never thought I would have to...

deal with and and experience and i don't want anyone to but if you do like just take time for yourself seek help you know therapy is great um i remember leaving the house that night because i came from my parents house when i found out and i called my best friend and um you know there was another he's living in texas there's nothing he could physically do for me in the moment you know but if you don't have a support network that or if you don't think you have a support network i'm sure you actually do somewhere um so don't be afraid to lean on those people

Yeah. Thanks for that advice. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you manage to strike the balance? I mean, you're talking about potentially burning out. You're doing all these projects. Of course, we haven't talked about how you, you got your more recent clients and ultimately your job. I do want to get into that, but like, how did you identify that you were about to burn out? And did you actually cross over the line to where you did like properly burn out and, and,

Yeah.

Yeah. Between being in the outside, the world run by nature, lorded over by the sun and the inside, which is completely like artificial, like adapted to human form and human comfort and all that. And like transitioning between the two. That's kind of how I thought of it just in the moment. I hope that's not like a silly analogy. No, I get it where you're coming from. Yeah. I think for me, like I realized it because I was feeling like,

More and more pressure, but less and less feel like doing the things that I wanted. Like I wanted to do these things, but I could not bring myself to do it. And some might say, oh, that's depression or that's that. But in the moment I knew it was purely because I was so tired of a lot of things. Right. But communication was how I got on the other side of it.

Um, you know, and it was a huge learning experience. I mean, for James, for James and deals for devs, it was never like a real expectation that I would do things, but it was more of like a, Hey, I need some time because I'm doing these other things. Um, for grid iron, it was, I'm going to still be here and I'll be present, but like, I need to focus on this cohort. This cohort was only six weeks long. So that was my main focus. And so for the cohort, um,

And, you know, I reached out to the team and the team lead was thankfully, Yoon is fantastic. And I got the opportunity to meet her last year. Yeah. So this is the Commit Your Code conference. Yes. The Commit Your Code conference. Here in Plano, Texas. Yes. I was thrilled to come and shout out to everybody who participated in that event. And I want to personally thank, as I've already done many times, Danny Thompson, who's a

just this amazing pillar of the developer like learning to code community if you want to consider people transitioning careers and working as developers and uh yeah they raised a lot of money for saint jude's uh and the uh the hospital system and they raised a lot of money for free code camp uh so that was a huge charitable gift that they gave uh yeah danny's a powerhouse

Danny's a powerhouse. And actually, well, that's who helped coordinate the cohort I was in. Dallas Software Developers is the name of the meetup he runs. And they run this cohort at least once a year, typically. And I only got into the cohort because I met Danny at that conference, right?

I noticed his tweet about the cohort. And I said, oh, I did not realize it was open to remote people. And he DM'd me and he goes, listen, I can get you in, but I need to know now. And it was like 1130 at night. And so I was like, I'm going to sleep on this and I will get back to him tomorrow morning. And I woke up and I'm like, I can't say no. So that's the other thing is the feeling that I can't say no to things. It's not because I feel like someone's going to get mad at me if I say no, but it's more of taking advantage of those opportunities and

that come up. I don't think I'm special. I think that I'm just able to, I was put in a place where I could meet people at that conference. And it just, like I said, I took full advantage of it and it opened up all these doors for me. And so it was communication that I think got me through it and understanding from other individuals. Cause let's face it. I think everyone in tech has got, has felt burnout before. But the things that I did personally to sort of help myself through it, besides communicating with the teams and,

um, was being kind to myself, which is something I really struggle with. You could ask my therapist, but like, it's something that I've never been good at. Um, I sort of have this, uh, black and white mentality, black or white mentality with myself that I really struggle with. And, and that's something that I've been continuing to work on to change, like, especially respect the time that you have. If you're someone that's learning to code and you're, whether you're working full time or not, um,

Or you're managing a relationship or kids or whatever else is going on in your life. Learning to code is not all you have going on. And it's really of finding that balance. And it's going to take time. It's going to take trial and tribulations. But I think I'm finally getting there after last year. And I'm doing that in a couple of ways. One is setting myself quarterly goals and aiming to take off one week of extraneous coding per month. Per quarter, I should say.

One week of extraneous coding. So let's say hypothetically, it's approximately, you know, 12 weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, technically it's slightly more than that. 13 weeks. But you're trying to take off that 13th week, essentially like in terms of like, okay, like look at how much I got here. If I can increase by a factor of, you know, one over 12, the rate at which I get things done.

Is that what you're talking about in terms of approving your proficiency as a developer? Yeah, and doing everything. I mean, like, for example, I have my own podcast that I'm trying to fit within those 12 – fit the recordings within those 12 weeks so that way I have the 13th off. My own projects, like I will work on five to six days a week, you know,

Always taking one day off. Like I try to strive for that every week. But that last week, that 13th week, I'm not touching it because I need to reset. I need to give myself time to relax and rejuvenate and things like that. It's inspired by, I don't know if you've ever heard of think weeks that Bill Gates takes. I'm not in the, I'm not in a fortunate place to, he takes off a week of work and just goes to a cabin alone and reads. And he sort of does this for inspiration, supposedly, allegedly, but,

I can't do that, but what I can do at least is give myself more time to do those rejuvenating activities, whether it's playing video games or reading or going for more walks or a hike or whatever, seeing friends that maybe I don't

Get to do as much as I want. And it's purely because I'm still in this phase of learning and building and getting better. Right. I think there, I think there's a point where I'll be like, okay, I can actually take like a longer, longer exterior extended period of rest. But for now that's where I'm at. And it's so far it's working well for me.

Yeah. Well, like let's talk about your progression a little bit. So, uh, I mean, earlier you mentioned like, uh, you learned from the development, uh, just kind of like on a need to know basis, kind of like as the opportunity presented itself, Oh, I can insert some custom HTML or CSS into this, you know, CMS that I'm working with or something like that. And then it just progressed from there and you're building stuff on code pan and you're actively like, you know, to,

studying and learning new skills and acquiring them. And then, uh, now of course you're working as a software engineer. So like maybe you could talk about that, that skill progression and the development and, uh,

How you knew that you were going in the right direction? Because I think a lot of people listening to this, especially their earlier in their career, they don't necessarily know like, okay, am I actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing? And my short answer is just read Quincy Larson's book, you know, Google learn the code book. It's free. Um, you know, but, but like, well,

Let's say they've already done that or they don't want to do that because they want your perspective and not mine. Okay, how do you know that you're heading in the right direction? And was there a lot of ambiguity there or did you find some kind of North Star that you could follow? Oh, man, this is a multi-part answer. Number one, if you're not having fun, I don't think you're doing the right thing. I think learning to code should be fun. And not all of it is, but if you're not having fun with at least like

80% of what you're currently learning is getting better at JavaScript or React hooks fun for me? No, but it's because it's not where my brain thrives, right? Like I've said before, I'm so much in the design and creative side of things, whereas the logical and functional side of things is not my cup of tea. I want it to be. But that end product for me, that dopamine hit when it gets working, oh my God, I celebrate. Like I tear all clap at laugh for myself, you know?

I'm learning about my path though. I just started building websites. Like I learned HTML and CSS and I started building websites. In fact, I have all except for the first version of my portfolio site available to see on my current site, Ryan furrow.com. And I do that because they're not impressive. I do it because I can, it's,

a very clear indication of where my skills have come and how far. Yes. It's amazing. So, so first of all, I want to say like, this is like, as out has been, however, approach music. Like I am not a skilled musician by any means. I'm an okay bass player, but I pretty much suck at everything else. Uh, but I put myself out there.

I create the musical intros for each episode. Love it. And I also put them on my personal YouTube where nobody watches them. But basically, it's just like the one-minute covers of different video game soundtracks. I love it. I just mentioned it to my brother. I'm like, this is great that he does it. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, and I suck. Like, I really sucked.

six months ago when I started like, okay, it's not just bass. I'm going to add all the other instruments and, and put my, be the man in the arena. Right. Yeah. But, but if you, if I, when I go back and I look at the old ones, I can see how bad I sucked and I can see the newer ones. And my daughter, she came up and she said, you know, daddy, I think this is the least bad one you've done. Leave it to kids.

Yeah. So it's kind of like not only is it an accountability thing every week and all that stuff, but it is to serve to me a reminder. Like I'm not trying to hide that I suck. Yeah. I'm trying to get better and I can look back and appreciate how much I've gotten better and hopefully other people will care to do the same. I mean a lot of people are just going to say, oh, this guy sucks. Why is he playing? Get out of here. There's always going to be like some heckler or people –

booing and, and that's okay. Uh, it gives me a little bit of thicker skin, which everybody can benefit from too. Uh, but, but like, like, like I, I genuinely admire the fact that you leave that stuff up there. You don't try to hide. You don't try to pretend that you just emerged fully formed. Oh my God. There was, there was this long kind of messy process, uh,

of you being in the proverbial cocoon. For like a week, I would just create a new HTML file so I can learn Flexbox or HTML and CSS. I want to learn how to make a navigation on a homepage. I use Flexbox for that. I still use it to this day. I think most people probably do. I had to do it with repetition because it wasn't sticking otherwise. And that probably came from my musician days. But if you're not comparing yourself to yourself...

then you're doing it wrong. In my opinion, like compare yourself to who you were yesterday, a week ago, last month, a year ago. Um,

And that's going to be your best metric for how you're progressing. Are you always going to progress in a linear fashion? No, I haven't. And I'm no expert. Like I, that's my biggest thing is I want to come off and I hope no one thinks like, Oh, here's Ryan. He's this great big guy. Like, dude, no, I struggled and I struggled to learn and I'm somehow making it. I've given two talks. Now people come to me asking for my, my thoughts and assistance on their website design or whatever it is. Like,

I'm not here because I'm an expert. I think I'm just here because I've talked about it and talked out loud and shown what I'm doing. Like, you know, I think that's the best thing you could do for you. You know, you asked about how you know you're moving in the right direction. Seek others' thoughts. I took part in an accountability group that someone was running Joe Previtt

I don't think at the time he had to pay for anything. He was toying with that idea, but it was just this idea, this group of people who we said, okay, in X amount of weeks, we want to build this. And we did accountability check-ins, you know, every day or every week of like, this is what I've done. This is what I want to do. And to this day, I'm still doing similar things with other people, um,

I have all these friends that are more experienced developers than me that I can go to for questions. I'm in Discord with them. I'm on Twitter with them, whatever it is. And now I have, I didn't go out there seeking mentors. I have people that I've naturally grown, like built authentic relationship with that I can now call my mentors. And that to me is astounding because who are these people that are actually invested in me succeeding? You know, like that's pretty wild to me.

Yeah. Yeah. So seeking people out and comparing yourself to yourself and not to anybody else, it doesn't really make sense to compare yourself to other people. Like a lot of people are like, Oh, Mark Zuckerberg was like this amazing genius who built all this stuff. Well, we'll set aside all the other issues with Mark Zuckerberg. And we'll just talk about this, this like myth of the self-made brilliant coder. Um, but what a lot of people neglect about him is that he was extremely wealthy as a kid. And then he had private programming tutors from like,

you know, middle school, high school and stuff like that. And that, and that set him up for success. He was able to get into Harvard, which is not just like, um, you know, who, you know, there is a high bar to clear and that is, you know, a notable accomplishment, but you know, like, like everybody's journey is going to look different. Yeah. Right. Um, and the only person whom you can really compare yourself is to your past self in my degree. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think this was like really actionable advice. What you just said. Thanks. I think like doing it is a good thing. You don't have to broadcast it. Like I do. Um, if you want to great again, you can go see them. They're not pretty, but there are a lot more people out there who are doing what we're saying and who are not necessarily leaving artifacts of the learning out there in the public for people to stumble upon them. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know, I don't want to be criticized for,

I've got enough stuff going on. I'm a busy person. I'm trying to get all this stuff done. I don't want some random heckler jeering at me, uh, in the comment section or something like that. Right. Like, or, or somebody tweeting like, Hey, check out this amateur, you know, like that might happen. Yeah.

especially if you're a woman, frankly, like that sort of stuff happens all the time to women. Uh, it's, it's certainly less, you know, as guys, we're certainly less likely to have to endure that, but we still have to endure it sometimes. Yeah. And, um, I totally do not ever fault somebody for not wanting to,

Learn in public. But if you are willing to learn in public and you're willing to put yourself out there, there are rewards to be reaped in the form of just reputational advantage. Like people know who Ryan Furrer is because he's got a podcast and he's putting himself out there. He's going to conferences and people don't necessarily know who, you know, who's

dev three Oh five or something is, um, right. Because they're like, what have they done? That's in the public. Like you, you can't Google them and find anything. They don't, there's no public record of their learning. Uh, and, and that is something that some employers, like a lot of employers are just using their applicant tracking systems and their web forms and all that stuff. And, and like, this may not help you get a job at those places, but if you're going and you're actually interviewing with like a, and

engineering manager or like a CTO at like a midsize company or something like that, like under 500 people, there's a decent chance that they are going to bother Googling you and like trying to learn a little bit more about you and seeing these artifacts of your learning. Oh, even back like three years ago, he was working on this stuff or, you know, like, like it does show that this is not like some wild hair, uh,

this is like a persistent desire of yours to gain excellence in this field and that you are committed because I will tell you, man, like 2011, 2012, when I was learning to code and when I got my first developer job, so many people from like wall street and lawyers, like everybody's like, ah, I can make more money as a dev than I can make on wall street. I'm going to go move to Silicon Valley. I'm going to do this and stuff like that. And like a lot of them were successful and a lot of them probably did make decent developers, but yeah,

you know, like that's a lot less compelling. Yeah.

If you're an employer, like, oh, okay. So you want to work here because you can make more money. Yes. Then, oh, you actually like what you do. You actually care. You've been publishing all this stuff. Like, I mean, like if I were a hiring man and I am, I mean, I managed like 30 plus people on the free cocaine team. And that's certainly like something I look for. Granted, nobody's coming to work at free cocaine for the money. We're a charity, but, but, but, you know, like we do actually pay, we have like jobs and stuff. Right. So, so I guess what I'm trying to say is,

if you're willing to put yourself out there, it is, you know, a feather in your cap. Yeah. I think like I can talk to a few opportunities too. That's come of it because of that. Um, number one, because I had been conversing with, um,

just you know talking responding to their tweets um paulina vercell i was like then sort of i feel like given the opportunity to give a talk at their vercell new york city meetup um and because cap the uh director of community or community manager there like their person dropped out their community person dropped out and she dm'd me along with like i think five other people hey our person dropped out do you want to give a talk and this was sunday night the meetup was wednesday night and

I said yes before I had a talk to give. I was like, I'm not passing up this opportunity. Why did it come up? Because Cap and I had discussed before about looking for a productivity app. And I had been in her DMs talking about the app we were using. Or because I tweeted and I commented on Pauline's tweets because I aligned with them. I'm not doing it just to... That's the biggest thing, too, is I'm not doing it just to be in these people's point of view. I'm doing it because I...

I genuinely care. You know what I mean? I think that's the biggest thing is, is if you just put yourself out there, whether it's what you're building or interacting with the community, it'll help. I cannot speak highly enough of it. I think I start, I didn't start coding on stream because I was afraid. I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to start doing something I'm uncomfortable with and I don't know. And I'm going to look like an idiot.

No, instead people were helping me on stream. That's amazing. Where else can you go and have... Listen, my viewers weren't great. They were between 8 and 16, maybe 20 people occasionally. But where else can you go? That's not bad at all. The average Twitch streamer probably has like two people watching. If they're lucky, maybe their mom. I got very fortunate at the beginning, to be honest. Nate Codes was streaming a lot after that conference. And I think he raided my channel. And all of a sudden, within like two weeks, I hit...

Like it was, it was very lucky. But speaking of luck, like that's where I want to go with this was like, create your own luck. It luck is not something that we innately have. It's not something that just happens. It's,

You can increase your luck and create your own luck by doing those things to put you out in the spotlight. It's not always comfortable. I think the only reason I'm quote unquote comfortable with it is because of my performance days. So I have that to lean on. When I gave my talk, I was a little bit nervous. You know, I'm in this feeling. I felt like a little bit of a fraud. I'm talking in front of New York City developers and Vercel employees about design systems and

Who am I? I barely have a job in this field. But guess what? I did it, and I got a lot of praise, and a lot of people enjoyed it. So this, again, is not me touting. It's just saying put yourself out there, make those genuine connections, and eventually I hope for you that something will come of it. It's not a straightforward path whatsoever.

Yeah, I mean, it's telling to me like a lot of the people you've mentioned from your 110 square foot room that you're in, which it's like I think it's like 13 meters for for people that don't deal in square feet. It's not a lot of space. A lot of things you're saying from over there.

The people you're talking about, like I know Cap. She's done courses on the Free Code Camp channel. She's an awesome teacher. Of course, Joe Previte has been on the Free Code Camp podcast back in 2019. And Shashi Lowe, I'm going to have him on the show in a couple weeks. So a lot of these people, they're known quantities. And they made a point to be known quantities, to put themselves out there, right? And for every Cap, there's probably...

hundreds of devs that are just working at some big company and like nobody necessarily knows who they are. Maybe they are, have like an academic paper that they published in grad school or something like that. Maybe, uh, they, they have a personal blog that they don't really heavily publicize, but they'll do like periodic updates on that and stuff like that. And that is totally cool. There's nothing wrong. We're not saying you have to become like an influencer in the technology space or anything like that. But,

But there are rewards to putting yourself out there, I guess. To belabor the point that we've been talking about the last 10 minutes. But we've come up with lots of examples of why that matters and why that helps. So I'm not trying to sell our audience on necessarily doing anything they don't feel comfortable with. But there are rewards to be reaped should you figure out a way to put yourself slightly past the threshold of comfort.

Yeah, and to go to your point that you don't have to if you're not comfortable, you don't. There's plenty of people that succeed without it. There's plenty of people that succeeded before Twitter was a thing, right? I just had an interview with a company, and the interviewer was one of three devs, the lead front-end engineer there. Or I'm sorry, one of the three front-end engineers. It's a startup. I couldn't find anything on him, anything. I didn't see a personal website. I didn't see anything outside of his LinkedIn, which was no post, no nothing, right?

Yeah, here he is working at a startup in New York City or San Francisco. They have two locations. He's doing it. So, like, again, you don't have to if you're not comfortable with it. It's just what's worked for me personally. I talk with people that don't even have LinkedIn profiles, but I do think that they're doing it on hard mode. I do think that they're like – I agree with that. It's like fighting with one arm behind your back. And you don't necessarily have to play the social media game, but I do recommend having a personal website. Yeah.

Yeah, me too. Having some sort of web presence, unless you're like, I can understand if you've been stalked before or had people dox you for various reasons or something like that. But in general, I think it is beneficial to do that. So anyway, I want to move on a little bit from that point that I think we've very repetitively made there. Hammered. Yeah. I mean, both you and I are reaping the reward of essentially doing what we do.

what we've done in terms of putting ourselves out there. And I want to talk a little bit about your, your day to day as a dev. So my understanding is you're working part time and you're also juggling some freelance clients. And what's your path getting freelance clients first? And then that kind of like gave you the reputation and the skills that you needed to get, to get the job. A little bit of yes, a little bit of no. So my freelance clients have started in 2020. Unfortunately, well,

I have two now. Before this one just started, I had one because the other two businesses just didn't keep up. And that's fine. That happens. So they were all WordPress or Shopify sites. And, you know, it was just like asset management because I had those previous skills from other fields, you know. But a lot of that

CMS website development and doing some more custom stuff for them. So I've had this one client since 2020. Like I said, this other client came up to me or I got because guess who referred me to them? James quick.

Why did James refer me to them? Because they wanted Astro work. How did James know that I do Astro work? I mean, my friends jokingly call me like an Astro shill, but because I've publicized stuff about it, I've talked about it. I literally gave a talk about it. And James felt like a confident in me and seeing my skills from working with him on deals for devs that I could do the work. So I'm very fortunate on that front.

As far as me getting this part-time agency contract gig, again, how did I get it? Nick Taylor...

who is at... What's the name of his company now? Palmaria, I believe. Nick Taylor was previously at OpenSauced, and he and I had just talked to each other. Brian Douglas' company. Yes, yeah. And we got to know each other because of Twitter. I would jump in on his Twitch stream. He would jump in on mine. He eventually had me on his...

live stream sort of podcast I had on my mind. So like we had this not reciprocal relationship, but you know, just a relationship. And he said, Hey, I know you're still looking for work. Would you be interested in, in, in this job? I'm more than happy to refer you. And I think a week later, you know, I had an offer from the owner, which was great. So it's, I hate to say it, but it kind of goes back to people seeing that I could at least do the work. You don't have to be on social media necessarily to do open source work.

but it helps that I met these people via social media, you know? Yeah. I mean, there, there's definitely rewards to be made there. And, and,

It's not that big a thing. Like, I mean, obviously I speak from a position of privilege because like I built this audience like 10 years ago, 12 years ago or something. Uh, and, and I, I distinctly remember having 200 followers for like the first year or two. I was on Twitter. I'm not, by the way, I don't think Twitter is the best place to go for this. Twitter's like on fire. Yeah. I barely go there anymore. I answered my DMS, uh, and I can't like, uh,

I tweet, but, but like, I think wherever you want to go, whether that's just creating short tutorial, like Twitch seems to be a good place to go. If you have a lot of time and a lot of energy, like that has definitely, it's, it's not a lot of effort. Even if it feels like you're exerting yourself in like a way that feels uncomfortable to you. Like a lot of people can consider themselves introverts and it takes effort.

There's activation energy associated with going on and posting anything and having to worry about the replies and stuff like that. But yeah, there's a lot of merit to actually doing that. Yeah.

So you essentially have leveraged your network that you built up over the years, and that has been a huge way that you've gotten ins. What is your day-to-day like now? Do you work remotely? I work fully remotely currently. I'm very thankful for that. It's been a nice break after leaving my office job. And actually, yeah, let me just iterate that. Because I got this part-time role that pays –

I'll be frank with you. I make $60 an hour. It's contract work, so it's by the hour at a minimum of 20 hours a week. It puts me a little bit less than what I was taking home for my previous government contract job where I was a buyer. I was making $70,000 a year there. So I'm taking home a little bit less. Yes, I don't have the benefits that come along with it. But for me, the fact that I am working at a minimum of half the amount of time

meaning that i'm getting paid to code which is number one a huge thing for me number two it means i have more time to study and learn and i'm doing it all from home for me it was just too good to not commit to um but i'm also in a very fortunate place that i am living at my parents place paying a very minimal amount of rent and you know i'm not basically it's like okay let me wait till i get a full-time job and hopefully i can move out eventually you know

So I'm sorry, my day to day. Basically, the way this agency works is it's certainly lacking some organization that's for certain. And they know that because they told me that straight up. And it's something they're working on. You're able to implement some of that organization. Are you able to step in and kind of help shape organization?

the structure that you work within? I would like to, I actually, I had started using linear to sort of track the tasks that I was working on and I was planning to present it to the team as an Avenue linear. For those of you that don't know is it's a project and task management app that is very much directed at developers. It can sync up with your GitHub and,

If you choose to, you can create – you can just do issues via linear or you can create like a two-way communication where issues on GitHub get pulled into linear and vice versa. Very beautiful piece of software that I do enjoy using. But we had a sort of group-wide meeting and it's like, okay, great. Now we're moving on to using GitHub projects. And we have Slack now. We didn't have a –

an instant messenger for the team, which was probably kind of wild to me in 2025. We were just communicating via email and text messages, like literal phone number, text messages. So it was a little bit challenging at first. It's getting better. I will say, and I've said this before, that this first job is not what I expected. And what I've heard from people that I've said that to is your first job is never what you expect. But I'm very thankful that I have it.

Yeah. Um, well, I mean, you're working as a professional dove. I just want to emphasize that. Like, yeah, you have no formal training. You have some ancillarily related work experience. You have some freelance clients and you have self-taught to get where you are today. And you're making, uh, like probably more than like 98% of the people on earth do on an hourly basis. I would warrant I'm, uh, you know, uh,

I'm probably making 60 to 80 grand a year if I keep up at 20 hours a week which

And that's 20 hours a week. That's 1,000 hours a week, 60. Yeah. I mean, and you can only increase that as you gain more experience, as you decide to work more hours if you want to. I like your kind of diversified portfolio of different work you're doing. Of course, you could always – if you feel like refreshed enough, you could always reenter the music world potentially and just teach for fun and still make money off that. Yeah.

But like, I mean, you've got a tremendous range of options and, uh,

It's, I mean, it sounds like the world's really open for you considering just how dark things were a year ago. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's, I mean, going to, so Quincy and I met at the commit your code conference that we referenced earlier on led by Danny Thompson and a few others. And it was an amazing experience. And for me, that conference was kind of a, God, it last year was almost poetic in the way that it started in the way that it ended, because I could, again, comparing myself to myself,

I, and I said this to Danny at the conference. And I said, I'm looking at myself from where I started this year at a conference in Texas, meeting all these new people and being so small. Right. I felt small. I was nobody. And that was me. Right. And then in December, I went to knowing a ton of people, people were coming up to me that I didn't know that listen to my small, but new podcast that I was enjoying doing. And I'm like,

Who am I? Like, when did this happen? You know, and it was very, like I said, almost poetic moment that that just resonated a lot with me. And then for like you to say this year in January, I started getting officially paid as a dev. I mean, I will say I had a little bit of a delayed celebration because it wasn't what I imagined all this time. You know, over the five years of working towards it, five, six, seven, almost years of working towards it.

I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to get a full-time gig and it's going to be great and whatever. And it wasn't that. Except I had a friend point out to me like, you have every reason to celebrate. I'm like, you're absolutely right. And that's when the celebrations really happened, you know? It wasn't an easy thing. I'm not done by any means, by any stretch of the word. But it's great getting paid to do it. And like I said, now I have this new client that's working with a

software that I love, you know, and enjoy working with. It's just a really refreshing year. That's for sure.

Yeah, man. Well, uh, that is a perfect note to end on just how things are turned around for you, how you've turned things around for yourself and taken the initiative and, uh, just overcome these setbacks. And, uh, I love your humility and you, you know, the, you're very circumspect thinking about how like, this is really just the beginning and there's a lot more, uh, ambiguity ahead. There's a lot more hard work ahead. Um,

but, uh, I mean, it definitely got me fired up and, um, I'm going to be one of many, many people cheering you on as you continue to expand your skills. And I just want to say like everybody out there listening to the free code camp podcast, um, you know, who, who's in the middle of such a transition. I realized that like, you know, maybe half of the audience is like working devs and half of the audience is people that want to work as a dev, um, hang in there. And, uh,

you're going to hear a lot of noise, doom, gloom. Don't, don't give up and just keep pushing. Obviously there's the silent evidence. Like we don't know about the many, many people who tried to pursue a path like yours, Ryan, who gave up. And one of the old, you know, hackneyed, you know, adages about giving up is like,

you never know how far you are or how close you got before you gave up. Right. And, and I often think like lots of inflection points in my own journey to try to learn software where I could have given up. And thankfully I didn't. I mean, like I always like to joke that I gave up learning the code several times, but I kept coming back to it. And you know, I, I, I get the vibe that you probably had lots of days where you're just like, Oh, I feel like I accomplished nothing.

I remember just completely screwing up my development environment and not being able to get like the C libraries to load properly. And I couldn't even do anything. And I felt completely powerless, like a total imposter. Um, and, uh, you know, got a good night's sleep and came back and eventually you got it working. Yeah. Like, yeah, I think that, that, um,

Keeping up and continuing going is one of the hardest things you can do. And I'm not a miracle thing. And I think that's what I keep coming back to. It was like, my path was very windy and not easy. And there's going to be more difficult ones of mine. And I just hope that anyone that's listening that wants to do this, like,

Please just keep going. Don't deny yourself happiness in the end because it's difficult right now. If you need to take a break, I think that's the biggest thing. You could go ahead and look at my GitHub contributions, dude. Like, they're miserable. And that isn't everything, but at least it's a sign of, like, what you're pushing, right? I don't think it's an actual metric you should hold yourself against. But like you said, like, there's times where you stop and you start again. I think that's what's the best thing is that you can keep coming back to it.

Yeah, 100%. Well, Ryan, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm going to encourage everybody to check out your podcast, which I've linked in the show notes. And I just don't be a stranger. I'm excited to hear how things progress for you over these coming years. And again, I just want to congratulate you on a proper start to this career that you worked for five years to make happen. Five years. It's a long freaking time. Like assuming people live to be like 80, that's,

It's a long time. I appreciate it. It's a lot of time to be working on something where you didn't know. Maybe recently you knew or you felt confident that you would be able to make it work. But I'm sure there were many years where it wasn't clear. Oh, yeah. It's still not clear. Like I said in that interview the other day,

I got word that I wasn't going to move on. It's life. I'm going to keep going. But I appreciate the kind words. It's honestly an honor to be here with you and talking to you. Like I said, you're one of the legends of software engineering and web development. And the fact that I'm here having this conversation with you, it's awesome. Thanks for your kind words. I'm just...

Normal guy who puts his pants on one leg at a time. Seriously, though, I feel very honored to have you, and that means a lot to me. And I'm going to be, if I feel down, like I get stuck on something later, I'm just going to go and replay that little clip. There you go. Ryan believes in me. We all need someone to believe in us, I think, and that's the most important thing.

Right on. Well, everybody tuning in until next week. Happy coding. Cheers, everyone. Thank you.