Independent taste testing

Ryan Burgess
Welcome to the first episode of 2018 of the front end Happy Hour podcast. It's great to be back in the new year. This is episode 49. In today's episode, we have two guests, Shirley Wu and Amy Wibowo to talk with us about freelancing. Surely and Amy, can you give us brief introductions of who you are, what you do and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages? Amy? You may as well start.

Amy Wibowo
Sure. Hi, everyone. I am a I guess it's hard to describe what I do think we I write scenes about how computers work. I enjoy programming and design and illustration. And just in general making stuff favorite Happy Hour beverage. I'm fond of Drambuie.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. That's a first Yeah. That's a trim buoy. Yeah,

Brian Holt
I have no idea what that is.

Amy Wibowo
Um, I only know what it is. Because back when I used to travel a lot for business. I saw it in a Thai business. airport lounge and I was like, What is this? I'll try it and like the screen.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. I'm gonna look for that one. Now.

Brian Holt
Look for it.

Ryan Burgess
Alright, Shirley you've been on this your third episode, you may as well give us a brief introduction of who you are, what you do, and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages.

Shirley Wu
But thank you so much for having me back on the first episode of the year. That's awesome. So hi, I'm Shirley. I am a freelance data visualization designer and developer I believe that's the new title I've given myself. Because there's like, No,

Brian Holt
you should promote yourself. Oh, yeah, you did a good job.

Shirley Wu
This was a really long title and senior, just the head of senior head of freelance data visualization. And yeah, so like, what that sounds like I freelance and I do, I do data visualization. And this is my third time on the show. And I finally finally have whiskey, which is amazing. So there's like two choices right in front of me. And notice that they're also right in front of me and those purposes. So I actually don't know like, what's gonna happen if I come here on the fourth or fifth time,

Ryan Burgess
like, oh, there's gonna be so much with like a table full of whiskey. You'll you'll have a barrel to yourself. You know, it's

Brian Holt
fun do fountains. Oh,

Ryan Burgess
can we just make that that sounds awesome. A whiskey fondue.

Shirley Wu
We and then and then like there's a sippy straw coming out for everybody. Scorpion.

Stacy London
Scorpion fondue?

Ryan Burgess
Yes. Let's go around the table and give introductions of today's panelists. Augustus you want to start it off?

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, sure. I'm Augustus Yuan, front end engineer at Evernote.

Brian Holt
I'm Brian Hall, and I don't know what I do at Microsoft.

Derrick Showers
So nothing new there. I'm Derek showers Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn.

Stacy London
Stacy London front

Jem Young
end engineer at Atlassian. Jem Young Senior Software Engineer at Netflix.

Ryan Burgess
I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. And each episode, the front end Happy Hour podcast. We'd like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all on the podcast, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is on track on track. So if anyone on the podcast probably going to be Brian says the word contract. We will all take a drink. All right, well, let's get right into it. What are the benefits of freelancing next to probably not wearing pants like that's that's a pretty good one.

Shirley Wu
I wear pajama bottoms. First one that comes to mind immediately is the free part of freelancing. Like, I didn't actually realize this until about a year in when my freelancing kind of started to stabilize, and I was getting a good stream of clients. And then I realized how amazing is that there's nobody scheduling things onto my calendar without my permission. Like it's such a small thing. But like, it blew my mind how amazing that felt and also not having to, like, you know, no matter how great my boss was having to be like, Hey, can I take blah, blah blah off because I want to go to blah, blah, blah, which I did a lot. But just being like, oh, there's this thing that I want to go to like I'm just gonna book a ticket right now. That that's the greatest part. For me.

Amy Wibowo
My favorite part of being self employed is being able to go to brunch during the weekdays to places that normally have lines.

Brian Holt
Yeah, that's the best reason

Ryan Burgess
and then if you do it as a business lunch or brunch, sorry, you can expense it right. Tax right We can meet Yeah. Guys are smart. I

Shirley Wu
noticed that all of our lunches.

Ryan Burgess
You talked about something business. I mean, you're both working in tech. You could be writing a zine about the work that Shirley's doing. Like, that's great. She the wife mentors me. There you go. Fair. I think one of my favorite things I did freelancing for it was years ago. And I mean, even sometimes I've done work outside of my full time job, but even a good year and a half, I did just like freelance contract work. Cheers. Yeah, there's the one thing I liked about it was just working. Whenever if I woke up in the middle of the night at like, four in the morning, I was like, I can't sleep, I would just go work for a bit, and then, you know, be done for the rest of the day, and like, be done really early. And no one's really gonna question you, your work still got done. And I like that you didn't have to show that you were in the office or anything like that, which is pretty cool.

Jem Young
I would think I've been freelance, like YouTube professionally, but back in the day, I ran a computer repair business, you know, totally not relevant to today. But I think the benefit was saying no to people, like I actually got there. So I'm not gonna do it. Like, I'm busy I got.

Ryan Burgess
So you want to know how I handled that sometimes when I didn't want to necessarily say No, I just threw out like a really high price for what I would charge. Because it was like, I would maybe do that for this price. Sometimes that bit me in the ass, though, because it took a number that was it was out there enough that I was like, Okay, I don't really want to do this work. But I guess if I got paid that much. I'm okay with it. And so yeah, sometimes it was like, oh, no, that's way too expensive. I got well, that's my, you know, hourly rate or whatever, because you can just make that shit up.

Stacy London
It seems like one of the benefits could be that. And I've never I've never freelanced. So I've always had some sort of company employing me at all times, like in my entire career. But watching my husband, Josh, like freelance for quite some time was was the ability to like, just say, like, say no, like, I don't actually want to do that work. And sometimes that's hard, because like, you need to, like pay your bills. And so like, you're weighing that against, like saying no, but yeah, to Yeah, to say, I don't, this work is not my specialty, or to be specialized. I

Ryan Burgess
think that's, that's pretty cool.

Stacy London
I want to specialize in this particular part of the stack, I want to be well known for it, I want to be focused all my time on that. And you can do that. And sometimes at your work, maybe you're not allowed to do that. Or you can't,

Ryan Burgess
you might have to be doing backend work or something like surely you've focused on data visualization, that is your specialty. That's what you want to work on. So if someone comes to you, it's like, I want this like WordPress site, you're like, Nope, don't want to do that.

Shirley Wu
Yeah. And even within that, I actually go even more specifically niche, like, I think over the I've been freelancing for the past year and a half. And over the past year and a half, I've done like some projects, where I figured out the kind of things I enjoy and don't enjoy. So nowadays, I realized that I very much enjoy doing visualizations of very specific datasets and kind of like weaving the story around that. So then, um, if somebody comes to me with something, like, unless it's a really interesting project, unless somebody comes to me, like, you know, like, outside of that, then I'll say thank you. No, thank you. And this is the reason why so like, I'll usually usually turn them down that way. And just kind of like being like, this is what I want to focus on. And, and usually, I'll be like, but here's my friend that does this. If you're interested. Yeah. That's

Ryan Burgess
good, too. So you're referring someone? Yeah.

Brian Holt
Nice. So kind of flipped it on the head. Like, I had, I never freelance full time, but I moonlighted. So like I took freelance jobs, like Yeah, unemployment. And I always had a hard time saying no, like, um, or at least I was, I don't know if I have any more. I think I give less shits. These days. I think my natural inclination is be a bit of a people pleaser, right? Like, if you asked me to do something, I want that thing to get done for you. And so I took a bunch of jobs that in reality I didn't want to do. Speaking of WordPress installations, I've done a lot of same. Yeah, like I think as a freelance engineer, you end up doing that like or at least you end up being asked to do that a lot. And so to me, that was a difficulty it was a skill set that I had to develop or just gained the ability to give less shits.

Derrick Showers
You asked you Mr. Good. Cool. Feedback is

Shirley Wu
I actually wanted to add even more to the same no part and I actually feel like I'm some of the best projects I've gotten are big Because I said no to something else, like, there were two projects in particular when I was just starting out. And they were really great nice, like potential clients. And they were like, willing to pay what I wanted. And they were really flexible. But then I'm like, either I wasn't interested in the project, or it wasn't going to be like it didn't align with my goals. And then, because I said no to those, and it actually then a few days later, a few weeks later, the really big opportunities came around. And I had the time to do that, like so the first time I said, No, thank you a few days later, I actually got contacted by the putting, which is who I did my Hamilton visualization for

Brian Holt
pause. If you have not seen Shirley's Hamilton thing, stop the podcast and go. If you're driving, pull over the car, stop in the middle of the freeway, and just pull it up and look at it. It's one of the most amazing things I've oh my gosh, Brian, Oh, wow. Fantastic.

Shirley Wu
Thank you so much. But the second time around, I said, No, thank you. And then Google News labs came knocking on the door like a few days later, and those are like projects I would never have been able to take if I had say yes to those. And those are two of the projects that have made the biggest impact on my freelance and kind of like legitimized my freelancing. How did

Ryan Burgess
both of you get into freelancing, freelancing or working on your own, I should say,

Amy Wibowo
um, so I got into freelancing because I left a full time job to start writing these scenes about computers, and anything that has education in it, like doesn't pay as well as a full time programming job. So I was finding that I would have to like, supplement my income if I wanted to keep living in San Francisco by doing freelance.

Ryan Burgess
Work, living in San Francisco is a tough one.

Shirley Wu
Have we talked about Amy's Bubblesort scenes? Like, we should actually,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, we kind of you said you work on creating designs, but they're pretty impressive, like, give us a little history of what made you start creating.

Amy Wibowo
Thank you. Um, so I guess the inspiration came a really long time ago, I loved reading like science and engineering books growing up. But I also thought that they were really dry. We never had enough illustrations. And like, when I was younger, I like resolved to at some point, write a more interesting science reference. And when I was in college, I was like, learning a lot more about computer science. But I felt like I wasn't good enough at drawing to match my like, how I imagined these books would be drawn. But then XKCD came out. And I was like, doesn't matter how you draw? Yeah, so I worked as an engineer full time for many years. And then when I was ready for something different, I was like, Oh, I remember that idea I had a long time ago, maybe it's, it's time to do that.

Ryan Burgess
That's really cool. Yeah, and you sell them online? Where can people find them?

Amy Wibowo
Um, bubblesort.io. Awesome. I

Ryan Burgess
love the name. That's a good domain. It is,

Brian Holt
why did I not think of that.

Shirley Wu
So I guess, how I started freelancing was about a year and a half ago, the version that I usually tell is that, um, I was kind of nearing two and a half years at my previous job, and it was a great like job with a great project I was working on, but it was starting to kind of become more stable. So then, I like, it wasn't as exciting as when I first joined. And like, you know, it was building things from the ground up. And, and, like, I just needed something new. That's the version I usually tell, there is a flip side to it, which is that I had a manager that I like, could not get along with for about a year, and it was getting really horrible. And I was starting to look at other options. And so that's actually how I started looking out. And then my friends to my friends were freelancing at the time and freelance was like something I always always wanted to try, because it just sounded so cool. But like, I was like, I there's no way I can do the like, you know, like non stable income. And then they like kind of, you know, still was like, sat me down and was like, Hey, here's like all the logistics that you need to here's like, how you apply for an LLC. Here's how you open up a bank account. Here's like my accountant, I can refer you. I'm curious how much you should be charging about and like how you can deal with clients how you invoice like they literally just kind of like went through it with me. And it was amazing. And that was after I had that in mind. I was like, okay, so it's not as scary or daunting as I thought it'd be. And that's kind of like and then I think two months later, I kind of made the decision. Like I made the decision and two days later I like was like yep, I'm I'ma handing in my notice. And I went.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome.

Stacy London
So this is like, a little personal, but I know. So like the the idea to do that in San Francisco to me seems slightly terrifying. It was one that's because I come from the Midwest and from the in the Midwest, and in Milwaukee in particular. I understand this, you can, like, absolutely terrified. Yeah. So like it. Even in Milwaukee, like, we were just like, you know, like, Oh, Josh, is like freelancing is this is this gonna work? And you know, rent there is extremely cheap, the cost of living is very low. And even then it was like, Oh, do we have to we have

Brian Holt
to pay rent and money's actually

Shirley Wu
pretty nice.

Stacy London
So that, you know, like, you're like, oh, do I have all this backup money. But so I think about that here. I think about that in San Francisco, that idea of like, having a backup plan, or like some sort of, like, cushioning is a much bigger deal. Like, rent is really crazy. So to have cushioning to say, like, if I do this, and it's not immediately successful, like, did you think about that and try and plan that out? Or you're just like?

Shirley Wu
Yeah, well, Sue, I mean, I had a good amount of savings. Just because like, on my first company had already IP owed and I have stock options in the FSA. Me. So in that sense, I knew I was financially that I could, I could do it for a while and still be fine. That's awesome. Um, but the weird thing about it was like the first half a year that I did it, it was so stressful, because that money that I had in savings, I had, like, for the past few years thought of it as money that's not mine that I will not take, or like, I will not touch, right. And that's like, I had to shift like, I was in a constant mode of Oh, my God, I'm going broke. Oh, my God, I'm going broke. Oh my god, there's nothing in my bank account. And I had to, like, shift my mindset to be like, No, you're right. Like, there's like some money in there that you can like, dig into. But even then, I'm for I remember, I did my taxes and the latter half of 2016. I made $20,000. And that's pre tax. That's like my full revenue I dug into, like my savings. Not as badly as I thought, but like, still kind of hurt. Um, it was really stressful. Like, I stress, it was so stressful. Um, I, I think my favorite phrase from that time is I did not know that stress is stress came in so many different flavors. Because I'd be like, stressed, because I was like, I'd be like, Oh my God, there's no clients coming in. And then next second, I'd be like, stressed because too many of them came in at once and like, be stressed, I have no more money, and then I'd be like, stress is there's so there was so much that happened. Um, but I think I'm still in extremely lucky position that I had the financial stability to start out with.

Stacy London
Yeah, some few months of padding at least. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds

Ryan Burgess
like that's probably important to to actually have, like, because you're not going to just be able to be like, alright, I quit my job. And now like, cuz you need that ramp up time to find work and

Brian Holt
quit and then immediately panic, right? Oh, wait, did

Augustus Yuan
not last very long. I guess again. Yeah, actually, I'm curious, like, looking back, would you have tried to like, stay at your job longer, and then try to settle into like a freelancing kind of vibe.

Shirley Wu
So I think I actually have thought about that a lot. And I think that's definitely what smarter people would have done. And like, for example, like my friend Nadi, like she, like, you know, actually did part time at her job for a while before she started freelancing. So she, like, kind of got her clients in order and kind of like got, and what's cool. Yeah, she's like, she's so she's got her stuff put together and she's like, super spotty. Seems like, oh, yeah, she's like, the far better. Man, so she like, you know, and then so when she started full time, freelancing, like, everything was quite smooth for her. Um, so I like have thought to myself, like, should I have done that? And the, and the answer at the end of the day is, my personality is such that once I've decided on something, I need to go full throttle towards it. And so if I had made that decision, but like, decided to stay part time, I would have been so unhappy. And like, it was a job I liked. But then I would have slowly gotten more and more miserable. And I didn't want that. And not to say that I would have gotten more miserable because of the job but more miserable because I have made a decision and I couldn't put all of my time into it.

Augustus Yuan
contract so you can drink so

Jem Young
you went from freelance to owning your own business, right?

Amy Wibowo
Yeah, so now the money that I used to make from freelancing comes from designing apparel instead, you're asking if the apparel is related to the Yes, yes. Um, so they're, they're sold on the same site. And there are programming jokes, programming puns. So they're related in that they're both about programming. And they're like, cute.

Ryan Burgess
Very cool. Yeah. And the illustrations are very cute. So

Augustus Yuan
yeah, I see this bite me, a normal pig might get a

Amy Wibowo
girl's backing cart, the backend card says bite me in binary.

Shirley Wu
That's a bit more aggressive. Wait, Sue, because somebody can see this that's listening. I'm uh, I'm wearing the good girl bomber jacket. And it's got embroidery of my handle, which I don't know, if I wanted to, like, walk around with something that says x y Wu. Yeah,

Brian Holt
someone is definitely gonna misinterpret, but it is still very cool. It

Amy Wibowo
makes me really happy that I think half of the people who got embroidery on it have their name and half have their GitHub handle.

Brian Holt
That's pretty. That's, it's awesome. I really like

Ryan Burgess
it when you're freelancing. Amy, and then Shirley, how do you find new clients? Like, what do you do to find new clients?

Shirley Wu
So so I'll answer a little bit first. Um, so for my clients, I'm really lucky that all of my clients have been inbound. And so they contacted me, and they have, they contact me with very specific projects, usually, and then we go from there and talk about it. Um, but and that's, that's very, this is very much purposeful on my part, because what I've noticed what I noticed earlier on, um, and I don't know if this is actually, what's the word, if this is true for all freelancing, but what I noticed for me is that I have much more success signing a contract chairs, when the client has a very specific project in mind, because usually, that means that they have a timeline and a budget set aside for it. Because the budget part I found is the most important in terms of getting that client

Brian Holt
to see the money parts

Shirley Wu
are very important, they have to have it like they have to have it. Because I've actually also had so many people contact me and be like, oh, like your work is really cool. We want to work with you. And I'm like cool things like, and then as soon but then what happens is, as soon as I tell them my rate, they're like, oh, nevermind. And because like, if they don't have something specific in mind, it doesn't make sense for them to try and justify how much I cost. And so that's something I learned early on, which means that like if I tried to do some outbound marketing, and it's to reach out to clients that don't have a specific project in mind, that might not know like, that they want a data visualization for their product or for marketing or something. And it means that I have to do a lot of upfront work to kind of try and figure out a project that makes sense for them. And that, like, I feel like there are fields where that's pretty easy to do. And to like, you know, like if you're a fitness instructor, and you're like, oh, like an hour free on me like and then you get like a new client that way or something. I can't just be like I'm making you visualization for you.

Ryan Burgess
First one's free. So go

Shirley Wu
do that. That's why like, I spend a lot of my time kind of working on side projects that I find fun, and then I put that out there and that's my kind of like marketing. And then I also do kind of talks and then that's how people find me.

Ryan Burgess
And you come on podcast. Yeah, and I come on this

Shirley Wu
I actually have people with telling me like they found me like they'll like join my twitch livestream and be like, I found you via a friend. Yeah,

Stacy London
really cool.

Brian Holt
We've been successful.

Ryan Burgess
We got surely some. So yes, let's actually get back to even managing like your own business. I think that's like a whole nother thing is like freelancing. You know, you're dealing with clients, but also managing your own business. Amy, like you're dealing with products and people purchasing. How much does that differ from your freelance work?

Amy Wibowo
Um, so one thing that I realized is different about freelancing versus having an online store is when I'm freelancing, I have to answer to one person my contact at that company, and when I have an online store, and like hundreds of people have bought my things I have to answer to 100 people

Brian Holt
100 bosses, better

Jem Young
mini boss with so how do you both deal with difficult clients? Because I think that's something other than Like the fear of not getting paid regularly, it's just so nasty to do something you're like, That's ridiculous.

Ryan Burgess
Because we all deal with the difficult manager, they now have to deal with difficult. Yeah, very,

Brian Holt
very difficult managers. Extremely difficult. I walked into that, I'm looking at Ryan Burgess.

Ryan Burgess
But so now you like surely you left? Mainly, you said, you dealt with a difficult manager. But now you're you can deal with difficult clients. How do you both deal with that?

Shirley Wu
I actually don't know if I'm just completely oblivious, or like, I've just been lucky. But I actually think I've had, oh, I think I think I have a very revisionist memory where I wipe out all the bad experiences from my head. So I wanted to say that I have had pretty good experiences with all of my clients,

Augustus Yuan
I guess, how would you deal with if one came, like if I just came with like?

Brian Holt
How would you deal with the customer.

Shirley Wu
Um, so actually, um, I very recently read this great book called work for money designed for love. And it's this kind of short book compiled by a designer who's been a freelance designer for the past decade. And he runs a website, I think, with a similar, like, one logo lover or something. And so he like, compiled all of the questions he usually got. And like, also, like, kind of advice he got from various other people into this one book. And one of the things that he said is, like, one of the chapters is don't be afraid to fire your client. Um, and so I think, maybe

Brian Holt
get rid of the contract. Get rid of the contract.

Ryan Burgess
Or the contract. Yeah, get rid of, or have a

Brian Holt
contract. Just wanted to drink? Surely, that was fine.

Shirley Wu
So I think, um, yeah, overall, I don't think I've had that many difficult clients. Like maybe I don't think I even had to chase clients that much for payment. Um, but yeah. And I always, yeah, there's always a contract. I usually sign

Brian Holt
cheers, cheers.

Shirley Wu
But yeah, that one book, had really great advice about like, if the, you know, client is getting worse and worse and worse. And it's actually better to just fire that client. And instead of having to deal with that headache, so I've thankfully not had to do that just yet. I think one of the best advice I got when I was first starting was like, and this was in the context of signing contracts. Like, how do you prevent getting screwed over or not getting paid and stuff? And the best advice was, don't work with assholes.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. I mean, I think it's sometimes hard to know that they're assholes. So I have actually been in a situation where I had to fire the client, or basically just quit the project. And I had to leave money on the table. The guy was just like, withholding funds. And it got to the point where I remember having to do a little bit of work to get a little bit more of the money, but not all of the money. And then I just ended up leaving the rest on the table, I kind of knew that that was gonna happen. And so I cut my losses. I was like, I can't work with this person anymore. And, you know, it wasn't a little bit of money. It was, you know, a few $1,000. But it was just not going to be worth being held, you know, to working with that person. Yeah, exactly. So, unfortunately, at that point, I didn't realize he was an asshole to work for. So I don't think you always know. But at that point, I feel like I to this day, I made the right choice. It wasn't worth going through the hell of you know, just for an extra couple 1000 It kind of sucked because it was my it was worth it. I'd already done so it wasn't like the project wasn't done and that I needed to finish it to get the rest it was literally hours that I done and billed for but he withheld and I was okay with that. So I just quit the project.

Brian Holt
I do have, I think good piece of advice for this shows laughing maybe I don't I think the first one is just like having a relationship with a lawyer, like involve lawyers that you know, the early processes lay processes, like lawyer up quote unquote, sooner rather than later, right? Like if someone's if it's going south quickly, like involve a lawyer like it might be a little bit offensive to the person who's like look like this is real money to me. I think the second thing which I can't remember who told me this, but anyway, never give a discounted rate. Either work for free or work for full price. Because it's free. You can tell them to fuck off and if it's full price they can tell you to fuck off.

Ryan Burgess
That's Yeah, but if it's not in between or it just doesn't feel right.

Brian Holt
And then you you end up getting fucked, right? Yeah, you end up doing work for less money and you get upset by it. Right. Yeah.

Augustus Yuan
And almost sets like a precedent like, yeah, potentially.

Ryan Burgess
What I like how surely you'd mentioned that you don't necessarily move on the rate. Like, I think, you know, you've had clients say, Oh, wow, I didn't expect that much me you didn't move on that. And I think that's a good habit to be in. Because if you discount the rate, yeah, now you're decreasing your value. Yeah. And so maybe Augustus, you did that for him. And then he tells me, and I'll be like, Well, you did it for Augustus at that price. And then you're kind of stuck in this vicious cycle of always doing it less. Brian tear appointed the lawyer. One thing that I always fear is do even in that case, where I had to just cut my losses, is it worth having to hire a lawyer at that point? Because it's going to cost me money to hire a lawyer or have on retainer? And is it worth it at that point, usually don't

Brian Holt
have to retain them. Like we're not big enough to require retainer, right. But maybe that's a wrong turn. So ask them Yeah, usually that consultation is free, right? It's like I have this situation isn't worth pursuing them. Like, if you have a lawyer that you halfway trust will say like, this is worth going after them and trying to get that money back. Or this is worth just fucking drop it on.

Derrick Showers
So, you know, I since I've not done a lot of freelance, I guess my question would be how do you just have a guy or girl as a lawyer,

Ryan Burgess
Brian, brother,

Derrick Showers
I know you. Like I mean,

Brian Holt
that was my best quality. Apparently,

Derrick Showers
this is a this is a serious question. Because like, whenever I do freelance work, I you know, I one of the things that's intimidating to me is like figuring out the contract and like figuring out like, even if I'm not sure, yeah. Good. Yeah. Cheers. Now we're classifying. Yeah.

Stacy London
I like, Amy. Yeah, like you like running a business like that. That's a whole other level than freelance, like.

Amy Wibowo
So I've had to do the same thing that surely talked about a fire in my clients, where I just tell people like, if you're not happy, like, feel free to return it and give you a refund, because sometimes, like it's not worth the trouble,

Ryan Burgess
their expectations are too high that you're never going to be able to meet at that point, that kind of feeling right?

Amy Wibowo
Or like them getting upset at things that are not really in my control. I have people who say my package got lost in the mail, can you help me? And that's like, not my realm. Or someone who bought a digital zine who said, I tried to print out this digital zine and the formatting is weird. So I had to put up a disclaimer on the website, if your digital zine or if you buy a digital zine, I can't be responsible for how it looks when it's printed. Because if you can't read it in a PDF viewer, then like, talk to me, but if you can't print it, I can't help you.

Ryan Burgess
That's fair. Yeah. Because you're actually changing the format of what you purchase at that point.

Amy Wibowo
Totally. And for these people, I, I at first had trouble telling them, we're dealing with them as customers, and trying to be sympathetic to them, because I didn't want to tell them sorry, because it wasn't my fault. And my partner told me, you can be sorry about their situation. So you can say I'm so sorry, that happened. And like in like sincere apologies, I don't like to say I'm so sorry. That happened. I like to say I'm so sorry, I did that. But when it's not my fault, like in the case of the printer, then I can just say, I'm so sorry, that happened. I'm also so sorry that that's not something that I can fix for you. Right?

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. I mean, you're not going to travel to their house to help them. That's a tough one.

Amy Wibowo
Right? So apologizing for the situation, while also telling them that I'm sorry, that I can't help is, like, that's

Ryan Burgess
really good advice. Just even just even in that little bit of wording difference. And like so if it was an email response, or message or even on the phone or whatever, just that little bit of wording changed a lot of what you said, which is pretty amazing. Just to think about it, you're not taking responsibility, that's your fault. You are sorry that they're having this pain because yeah, they're, they're your customer, and so you do feel bad for them. But there's not much you can do at that point.

Derrick Showers
This is something that I pre pre Tech, I was in hospitality, and it's the same type of thing, right? Like ever, like, just constantly, you're just getting yelled at about shit that is every 100% of the things is out of your control, you know, but it's so personal. That's the thing that that makes that kind of thing hard in a situation. Totally.

Amy Wibowo
And if I if I do do something wrong, like I sent someone the wrong size of shirt than I do say, I'm so sorry that

Ryan Burgess
you were like, I will own up to that and no, I like that. Most interested. Surely you mentioned a little bit about how you promote yourself and that you've gotten you'll go to conferences and speak at them. You You know you're on podcasts, you're on your on live stream, all these different things to kind of help promote and build your brand. I'm interested to hear Amy as well, like, what do you both do to kind of get more exposure? Like, I think those are some great ideas. But are there other ways that you're out there promoting building new client base? How do you get your work noticed and that people are purchasing on your site, things like that,

Shirley Wu
we were actually talking about this earlier about building a brand. And but I think for me, it's mostly that the most powerful is still just my portfolio. And that's portfolio of either client work. So at first, it was just portfolio of personal projects that I like, just had a lot of fun doing. And then that and because it's, it's not, like, it's not just, you know, personal projects I did, because I thought I will get more clients that way. It's like a personal project I sincerely enjoy doing, which means that people found me through that wanting me to do similar things. And so like, not only was able to do something fun that I liked, it's now there's a positive reinforcement of clients finding me to do this thing that I enjoy in this like kind of format that I enjoy. And then because of that, then I can now put on client projects that like are in, in kind of, like in the topics I enjoy or in the format I enjoy. And so first and foremost, my portfolio. And I think that's actually been the number one thing about getting me clients. Um, other than that, I think I just like do things because I enjoy them, like I enjoy coming on this podcast, because it's really fun drinking with you. And I go to conferences, and mostly because I love traveling to other places and kind of like checking out the tech scene there. Or I'm kind of like going around and like exploring the place, I do the Twitch live stream because I got really lonely by myself in my own apartment, freelancing. And I need a human interaction. And I also I think we were Amy and I were talking about this earlier also about how now that I'm freelancing. I don't have somebody mentoring me, like I don't have a manager good or bad telling me that I'm like, you know, doing the things where like, or people to pair program with or code review me. And that's why I started Twitch live streaming, because I wanted that kind of like feedback. So I guess it's like, at the end of the day, and whatever you decide to do to promote yourself, like, don't just do it, because it's to promote you and your work. Do it because you enjoy it or do it because there's like something like, figure out what's important, like if the if you are trying to do freelancing, and like figure out first of all, like what you're trying to freelance in, and then I'm what makes you happy about what you're trying to freelance in and kind of like figure out what you want to be known as, and like just kind of figure out yourself like a soul search. And then do I want to figure myself, yeah, it's a lifelong process, and then just do things that fits in there. And that I think is, I mean, people like find that genuine people find that relatable, but also you just have like a funner life.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think that's good advice, Amy thing, anything to add?

Amy Wibowo
I totally agree with surely about like, sticking to the avenues that you feel more most comfortable with. I was at a conference that had a workshop about doing email newsletters. But the person said at the beginning, like only do an email newsletter if you're excited about it, and if that's where you feel like you're not natural voice is but if you're you feel like your natural voices, like through Twitter or Facebook, because they all have like slightly different tones. Just pick the one that feels best for you. Because it's gonna come across better.

Ryan Burgess
I like that a lot. Because yeah, I think even like you touched on the social media aspect is there are there's reasons why there are different platforms and because they are just subtly different, and they do fit people differently. And I like that a lot.

Amy Wibowo
Yeah, I guess I feel the most comfortable on Twitter. And also, incidentally, like, looking at all of my tracking. That's where from all social media, that's where my visitors mostly come from.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. So it's like really fits well for that. Yeah.

Shirley Wu
You have really cute tweets too.

Ryan Burgess
Because that's her passion coming through, right? Like, it's not like, I have to send this newsletter. It's like, I like this tweet. I'm gonna send this out. I liked your point about almost like almost feeling a little isolated. I think that to me is one thing that I found a big disadvantage of freelancing is that I was when I was doing contract work cheers tears is I found that I was very isolated and got you know, it was nice I could just like work alone and get a bunch of work done no interruptions, but I felt like I was feeling really isolated. So I kind of like and yet you didn't have someone to pair program with and all that kind of aspect. So I kind of like that you've added Twitch to the mix to kind of combat that so that you can still continue to do that. One thing I always wish I did was work in more of like a coffee shop or something just to get out of my spot. Like I had a permanent office and desk in my apartment. But there's no one there. I mean, I have my dog to hang out with. But he slept all the time.

Brian Holt
We love Chico, but he's

Ryan Burgess
grumpy at time. So yeah.

Brian Holt
Today was my first day working from home. Yeah, it's, it's lonely. It is. Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
no, it's a hard thing to deal with. And I think one thing I wish I did was almost go to more of a shared workspace, which to be honest, I think there's more options than like, this is years ago that I was doing this. And there wasn't all the options that are available. Like we had Aaron from work come work from, like, that's a perfect example where that's a site dedicated to finding places to go work from like, that's amazing. That stuff didn't exist. And so I was always at home, and it does get lonely. Yeah.

Shirley Wu
And it's funny because like, my first few months, like I was on such a budget, I didn't even have like money to like, I didn't even let myself have money to go to cafes, right? Like, nowadays, if I feel a bit lonely, or if I like feel unproductive, I'll go to a cafe. And it's funny, because somebody was like, oh, yeah, there's a website called rainy cafe.com. Basically, record like Brian's looking at me like I'm really pathetic.

Brian Holt
No, I'm looking at. I need

Ryan Burgess
to do this tomorrow. Like he has to work from home tomorrow. So he's probably

Stacy London
Kapha tivity I think it's called it's like some silly app that just says background noise.

Shirley Wu
Yeah, so it's like reading cafe.com It's like this loop of like, just indistinct chatter of a cafe, which I'm pretty sure it's a

Brian Holt
surround sound. Yeah.

Shirley Wu
I think they have like background Cafe Music and background rain. So if you get extremely

Derrick Showers
depressing I like how they elegantly try to justify to a moderate level of noise enhances creativity compared to both low and high level of

Brian Holt
noise. No, there's research around it like white noise. Oh, yeah.

Derrick Showers
There's a source here. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Brian Holt
There's at least is Brian Hall Yes, all right.

Ryan Burgess
But at long periods Yeah. Like I think that's the difference is like you are I mean, Jem my work with you. You're you're in the office some days and some days I work from home. And I think that's a good balance. I think when you try it for months on end, or you know, I think I did it about a year and a half. It I couldn't do it anymore. It I think that's what

Derrick Showers
I really thought to me. I really think it depends on the person too. And yes, nowadays, like I've talked to some people that have done it for years and love it. Yeah. And then I talked to somebody some people have done it for a month and they're like the it's lonely and I have

Brian Holt
no one day

Derrick Showers
Microsoft, you can come to the LinkedIn office, your desk is still open

Shirley Wu
let's try everything cafe.

Ryan Burgess
Actually, I think that's a great idea is like even just meeting up with people that you know, I mean, you guys do, Amy and surely do. Like that's a great idea is like getting out to meet with others that are doing this. I think that's actually a great way to handle that. So I think that's good advice. So now you can add Brian to the list.

Shirley Wu
Yeah, definitely Bay Area freelance, remote workers,

Brian Holt
freelance lonely,

Stacy London
brunch.

Shirley Wu
Lonely people.

Ryan Burgess
literally pick all the places like Amy said, all the ones that have a big lineups and go, well guess what? We're going to go on Tuesday. At like 11 o'clock.

Derrick Showers
Every brunch spot in San Francisco, right? Yes, you're right. And if they don't have a line, then there's something wrong.

Ryan Burgess
I got to ask me, What's the best place to go to for brunch in San Francisco

Amy Wibowo
sharing with you? So I had brunch places that I like, that I'll share with people but my most favorite ones I keep so I like

Ryan Burgess
it. So keep that shit on the DL. I like it. All right.

Brian Holt
I approve. But I'm also upset.

Shirley Wu
Can you tell us off air? Can you tell me off air?

Amy Wibowo
There's one place that I only go to with my partner and no. Oh, okay. I can tell you number two. Okay. Wow.

Derrick Showers
I love it. Number two. Number one place that you would tell people. Ciao,

Ryan Burgess
ciao, ciao. Yeah, Park, ciao.

Amy Wibowo
I usually go to the church. Okay, oh, okay,

Jem Young
I am not a fan of chat really. I've been there a few times. I used to live there. And it's okay. I do

Shirley Wu
want to say this before I forget, which was your point about, um, how you love the days you work from home. And they felt exactly the same way until I went freelance, which was like, now that I've been doing it for like a year and a half, it's ruining, it's taking away the special because like, when you work from home, that's a special moment, right? Like, you're like, Oh, I love my house, like, I can stare at like the trees outside. And it's like, so relaxing. Like, nobody's gonna be like, You're bothering me, like, it's a special day in a special moment. But then, like, if you do this every single day, it takes the specialist out of it. And now I'm like, I hate my place. I mean, not that strong de Bello bit. And I was talking about I've been like, seriously considering like, yeah, getting and studio space, or like renting out a desk or like, somewhere that like, makes a distinction between, like, where I work and where I live. And that's like, also, yeah, that's, that's yeah, that's like a I think people talk about that a lot of like, it was great for a while, and I tend to be the kind of person where I like work, like what I do for work I enjoy doing anyways, but like, I think it just when I'm at home, and then like, instead of working, I start just like rolling around in bed and like, I think that's where I now I'm like, Okay, I need I need to the distinctions important.

Brian Holt
Yeah, like some structure to it. Right? Like, I need to go to my workplace. Yeah.

Jem Young
So I was gonna ask you both that, like, how do you stay motivated? So

Augustus Yuan
I was also gonna create, it seems like Yeah, yeah, cuz freelancing seems very self driven.

Ryan Burgess
Absolutely. You're not you don't have someone else working with you.

Brian Holt
We're all lazy pieces.

Jem Young
Like, there's no, there's no like Product to Ship. And the team's gonna be like, good job you did like and, you know, it goes up.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, if the clients happy they pay you, which

Shirley Wu
there's, there's a client that you have to answer.

Jem Young
But they're not gonna say like, oh, wow, that's amazing. I mean, they might, but they might just be like, Here's your money.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, because they've agreed you've agreed to do the work you delivered. Great, right? You delivered your product to whatever they've purchased. They've delivered, they're happy, hopefully.

Amy Wibowo
So I was telling Charlie earlier today about how like, I'm used to having a manager to like, give me encouragement, someone who I can talk to you if I'm stuck. So I recently gave myself a manager in the form of like a business

Ryan Burgess
coach. Awesome. No. And how did you go about finding a business coach? just googling? Oh, nice. Yeah. And you're successful? Was it the first tried? Or do you have to try multiple people? Or do you actually,

Amy Wibowo
I got lucky. Yeah. But yeah, so I talked to her about, like, marketing strategies I'm thinking about and get her feedback. When I'm proud about something, I tell her and she's like, great job. She kind of like cheers me on. And I know that like, when working for a company, the manager is supposed to be there to kind of like, help you get unstuck, to help you prioritize, but sometimes it feels like they're divided between you and the company, like the company's priorities and like also helping you grow somewhere in the middle. Yeah. But this person is just committed to helping me

Ryan Burgess
like literally, that's their job. Like they Yeah, they don't care about there's no business side of things. It's just for you.

Amy Wibowo
Yeah, so it's like one of the best decisions I made Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, like that idea. I'd never even thought of that. But that's actually amazing. How often do you meet with them? Every other week? Is it just to like a Google Hangout Skype call? Or is it do you meet in person in person? Very cool. Awesome. Is it in brunch? Like they're just gonna stalk me from now on, like, we're going for Jemmy yell profile that you're checking.

Jem Young
I tried hiring Brian as a business coach for me. But he just told me I suck every

Brian Holt
week. That wasn't motivating. That was your that was your bad. Yeah, I think I know where you I think I know where you went wrong.

Ryan Burgess
Jem, here's some feedback for you. That was a poor choice.

Derrick Showers
We all know where you went wrong.

Ryan Burgess
So any other advice for people who want to stay motivated on what they're doing?

Shirley Wu
Yeah. So for motivation, I'm, I think I'm, I go through kind of like cycles. So I go through like cycles of like, high productivity because I really, really like what I'm doing. And then and then I go through, like, days or weeks where I'm just rolling around in bed, like reading books or reading manga and like, that's all I do. Um, but I think I think the end of the day, it's kind of like if you've chosen this lifestyle of freelancing. It comes with all of the great things that we talked about in the beginning, but It also comes with like all of these not so great things of like stress or like, you know, if you don't work, then you don't get money. Like, those are very harsh realities. And so I have to like, it's a great lifestyle, but only because I've figured out all of the things that I enjoy, that like kind of keeps me going. And it's kind of like, at the end of the day, I'm doing this because there are projects out there that I love. And I want to kind of, like, I want to, I want to learn and want to work on these projects. And then I want to kind of also figure out the things that I'm interested in. And that just keeps driving me forward. And so that's part of the answer. The other half is like, I feel like Twitter actually really motive like it's it's a motivation, but not in the greatest way possible. In Animoto, it's a distraction and a motivation where I feel like now that people I don't know, it's like this weird, like, people are following me. So I feel like I should show them the things I'm working on. Which means I need to be working on something.

Brian Holt
I mean, that's great.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think that's a it's a good way to hold yourself accountable is that you're you're relying on people, all your followers to hold you accountable. Yeah. And there will be people

Shirley Wu
will be like, have friends be like, surely that blog post that you said you do? It's been six months. Like there'll be people

Brian Holt
brunch,

Ryan Burgess
waiting for where are you at Maria? Brunch? Amy, Where? Where?

Brian Holt
This is how Amy gets like 17 stalkers.

Shirley Wu
Yeah, there will also be people that are like truly is there is are you finishing data sketches? There's like three more months? Like, are you gonna get that shit done? And I'll be like, yes, yes, I am.

Ryan Burgess
I'm sorry. Like that you have a public manager? That is basically what you have. That is great. So one last question. Like I think we've we've established that it is very hard to take the plunge into freelance. I'm sure there are a lot of our listeners that are I think are interested probably in taking that plunge. What advice would you give them to either starting their own business or starting freelance work? Like what's the best advice that you can give?

Shirley Wu
I think first and foremost, make sure that you have that financial freedom. And because when I went into it, I knew that freelance was going to be hard. But I think even then, I had underestimated how hard it was going to be, as in like, at that time, I had a little bit of inbound emails. And I thought that that would translate to like a steady stream of clients, it clearly did not. And so the biggest biggest thing is be prepared for like, unless you're a superstar, which, if you're naughty Burma you are. But unless you're a naughty Burma or somebody equivalent, be prepared for it to be hard at the beginning until you can establish your portfolio until you can like establish like a client list or regular kind of. And until and however that however long that could be like weeks or months, or I think it took me a good three, four or five months and have the financial buffer for that. I think that's the most important thing.

Ryan Burgess
Amy, anything to add.

Amy Wibowo
On the same vein is like me hiring my manager and that or me hiring a coach and that being a great decision. Hiring people that have strengths that you don't have, like I also started off feeling really worried about whether I would be good at business and finance stuff. So getting an accountant was another decision. That was a huge help for me, someone that would help me budget every month. Getting the coach Yeah, so finding people that have strengths that you don't have and not being afraid to ask for their help. And something that my business coach told me like freelancing is a risk. But my business coach said that relying on something that your heart isn't in as your way of earning money is also a risk. So like, if you want to be a freelancer, like it's going to be a risk, but doing something that your heart's not in is also a risk.

Ryan Burgess
I like that that's a fair point. I also like what you said is offloading to other specialists that probably frees you up to focus on exactly what you want to do and what you're truly passionate about. Well, before we end the episode, we'd like to share pics that we've found interesting and want to share with our listeners Augustus you want to start it off.

Augustus Yuan
So my first thing Is this kind of Smog Free tower? So in China, there's this huge issue with smog. And this designer kind of came conceptualized on this air purifier where it's just this gigantic tower that takes in the smog. And I thought was really cool. That's really cool. Yeah. But what I thought was really cool is he even thought of how like they would kind of finance it, which is he would take the particles from the smog and create this jewelry so that the people could like, contribute, and like kind of feel like they're making it like they're being part of the solution for like addressing this issue. So I thought, I think just like that kind of wine. I think that's really cool. So yeah. And then the other thing is, I think Addy as Osmani. He posted this thing about the speedometer. There's like a link, there's like an update speed speed on our 2.0 and just helps benchmark web application. So I thought it was pretty cool.

Jem Young
My only feedback against that is that to do is not a good benchmark for web. Like it's just not what people bill. I don't have to have something but yeah, sorry.

Augustus Yuan
No. I did not even look at it that far into it. I was just like this looks

Stacy London
pretty cool ever to do to look into it.

Ryan Burgess
Ryan, what do you have for us?

Brian Holt
All right, I got a bunch of pigs. So buckle up

Ryan Burgess
with a bang.

Brian Holt
My first one is from a friend of the pod Sarah Dresner. She's releasing a four part series on how to do serverless with stripe payments on CSS tricks. So check that shit out. Number two is again if you're driving Stop the car. You need to look at Shirley Wu's post on homelessness.

Shirley Wu
In the guardian. Yeah.

Brian Holt
That shit was phenomenal.

Shirley Wu
Surely and naughty, naughty? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Brian Holt
Beyond the article just in itself into its writing being really, really phenomenal. Like it hits home extra hard because of all of the data visualizations that they put into that. So it's pretty next level.

Brian Holt
Thank you. I mean, it was it was amazing. My next one is tomorrow from today, which by the time that you hear this because Ryan Burgess has piece of shit for free, all the shit that we pay him

Ryan Burgess
came in booze. Anyway.

Brian Holt
Burke Holland is starting a YouTube series tomorrow about it's called five questions. And he just asked a bunch of really amazing developers five questions. And so tomorrow they're releasing an episode with Dan Abramoff or the jewel of JavaScript development. So check, I like I watched it today. It's super charming, because they're both charming people. So yeah. Check that

Ryan Burgess
out. Awesome. Amy, what do you have for us?

Amy Wibowo
So I recently decided to only read books by women of color. So I recommend that because everything I've read so far has been super amazing. That the book that I read most recently is called the hate you give. And it's by a female black author from Mississippi. She writes this wire novel about a teenager who witnesses a police shooting, really profound book and relevant because yesterday was MLK Day.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, very cool. Derek, what do you have?

Derrick Showers
So I recently, over the holidays, traveled to New York. And I wanted to mention this amazing restaurant that I went to it's some reasonably has one Michelin star was actually the first Michelin star restaurant I went to so maybe, I don't know, but the it's called the Gramercy in New York and I thought it was I heard actually heard about it on a podcast because of like their specialty with beef, but they had the wagyu meatloaf there. And it was amazing. It's also the first time I tried we've talked about this earlier off the air, I tried truffles, they had truffles, and it wasn't like a million dollars. So it was yeah, it was a really good restaurant. So I recommend that if you're ever in New York, and my second pick is I don't normally pick the Netflix shows because there's plenty of people that do this podcast, but I'm going to pick one because I just watched it yesterday and I thought it was amazing. The new Letterman series and I actually really was never a huge I mean, was not a fan but wasn't a huge fan of Letterman when he was on but I actually thought so so that the first episode was with Obama and just the level of professionalism and the level of quality on the interview. On both parts on Letterman and on Obama was just, I thought one of the best interview I've ever seen and it was it was not not that this podcast is political but you know what the political that is going on now. You know, I think it takes somebody with a really high standard of professionalism to stay professional and stay and stay even somewhat objective in today's climate and would

Brian Holt
you say presidential presidential

Derrick Showers
I highly recommend that episode or that show if you get a chance

Ryan Burgess
and Letterman's beard,

Derrick Showers
and yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Stacy, what do you have for us?

Stacy London
All right. Had to pick someone to expand it to three. The first pick is going to be Amy's get a girl jacket and a girl. Get it girl. I have to I work for ever for Atlassian I work on a product called BitBucket. That book is powered by Git. Yeah. So it was very awesome to me to see like that kind of targeted focus to like, to women to say like you can do this, like you can learn you can learn this stuff and you can contribute and you can make a difference. And so I appreciate that. Very cool. Yeah, so and then second pick. My music pick. As always, I was having me to pick change the paradigm by Astra they're from Toronto,

Brian Holt
Austria.

Ryan Burgess
Well done.

Stacy London
That right, appreciate that. And then my third pick is World of Tomorrow, episode two by Don Hertzfeld, the it's called the burden of other people's thoughts on he makes amazing shorts. They're animated. They're kind of in the Sci Fi category. They're brilliant. And if you ever watched them, the sort of the sort of like, change your mind about how you think about little kids, he records his niece in her stream of consciousness thought and then maps that up to like, what it's like to be an adult and think about consciousness and living. And it's, it's pretty brilliant and beautiful. So

Jem Young
oh, I've seen that. It's on Netflix. It is. I don't I didn't notice Episode Two.

Stacy London
Episode Two is just really since you have to pay for it kind of like individually. But it's worth seeing.

Jem Young
It's worth seeing. It's like 15 minutes or so. But it's just yeah, it's really a

Ryan Burgess
very cool. Jam. What do you have for us,

Jem Young
I have three picks minor slightly tech tool, and slightly not. First one is a bit called Code problems. It is techie delight, calm. But they just have kind of a list of random tech problems like this one is looking at right now construct the longest Palindrome by shuffling or deleting characters from a string, which sounds hard. But if you look at the code, it's in some of the C++ but it's not bad. Actually. It's one of those like, sounds hard when you get to a whiteboard. If you reason about the problem. It's not that bad. Those are always interesting. My second pick is it's a plugin. Well, it's a website, but it's called Babel time travel. And essentially shows like how Babel compiles things over time in different steps, which is, it's really enlightening, because you just paste your own code and like, see what Babel is doing. So by the time you get to the end, that were garbage, you know exactly what happened, which everybody should do and so forth, and resue who's also a maintainer on Babel who's a really great guy he's amazing. I feel bad I don't contribute enough to he's always like Yeah, well you look at this I'm like yeah, don't ever do I feel bad but he's a great guy. Ah, and my third pick contribute to babble attributed babble or just like say thanks to any open source person to say thanks like it's free. doesn't cost anything. My third pick is the start of a new series for me. I'm going to call it a valley silicon it is a just a little piece instead of shower thoughts which I used to do it was just random thoughts on the shower thoughts

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I'm gonna shower now the gems in replace this. This is

Jem Young
this is better it is technology or things that are just so absurd, that only really, really rich, privileged people. Or it's just like highlighting the absurdity of Silicon Valley sometimes I hope I don't have my first pick is a it is a robotic suitcase called a callow robot. It is a suitcase that will self balance, kind of like a Segway and follow you around the airport.

Ryan Burgess
I feel like I saw that and Gizmodo.

Jem Young
Yeah, yeah. will

Brian Holt
not fly now. Oh, awesome. So you can't even take it, you cannot check it.

Jem Young
It's just one of these ideas that you're just like, how did this get that far? Like, hey, people, investors thought this was worth seeking millions of dollars who were real problem to solve. It's just

Ryan Burgess
like, what's the user base? What is the user base? It's like Valley Silicon

Ryan Burgess
Valley. Hey, Charlie, what do you have for us?

Shirley Wu
I also have three. And so the first one is I want to go Stacy and say, please check out Amy and Bubblesort scenes. And just like On top of the good girl shirts and jackets, there's also all these super cute punny enamel pins. And that's like what I kind of first fall in love with. But on top of that, the reason why Amy is an inspiration to me is because I actually read her blog post a few years back called coding like a girl. And, and that was the first time and I kind of grew up more towards a tomboy. I did investment banking, a little bit like in like, for internships, and then I went into software. And it's always been like very male dominated industries. And I always felt like I had to dress more like a male and I had to act more masculine. And I think Amy's blog posts, um, was the first time it's kind of like about how it's okay to like, be a woman in technology and code and embrace that femininity. And like, I always feel like I've been ashamed of like, my, like, for cute things in my life for feminine things, and pink. And that was the first time I read it. And I was like, Oh, that's okay. And I've now gone fully in the other direction, where I'm like, pink things, and cute things are great. But, um, please read it. I think it's, it's amazing read, um, it's one of those kind of reads that like fundamentally shifted my way of thinking about myself. And that's where I became a diehard like Sailor Mercury, Amy Phan. So that's number one. And number two is, um, one of my favorite conferences, open this camp is going to be in Paris this year in, I believe, May, and there will be very, very, sadly not be able to make it because I'll be in Japan. But which is, um, I'll be living in Japan for consolation prize. Oh, yeah. And my boyfriend will be there with me. So like, it's not that bad. We'll probably be in Hokkaido. But, um, it's an amazing conference, especially if you're into data visualization, tried to get into it, and check it out. Because apparently the venue is right by the apple Eiffel Tower. And so that's my number two. And number three is this movie called it's a Japanese movie called Camino Gnawa. And, and the English name is call your name. Um, and it was kind of advertised as the first Japanese animation movie to I think, either top like, either hit the same box office record as a Studio Ghibli movie, or like even maybe top eight or something. And I just bought the DVD for it. And I have watched it like when it was in theaters. Brilliant, beautiful. Like if anything like if for how beautiful it is. Go for the color and design inspiration but also go for the story. And I was left breathless. And so if you're especially if you're into like anime kind of thing. Oh, yeah. Coming on that Wow, your name? Um, it's on DVD on Amazon now. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. All right. Well, I think most people had three picks. I have two picks. I have one that actually kind of follows a pic on a previous episode, I shared a GitHub page that I had started pulling together a bunch of conference links. There's actually an amazing site that Kim goulbourne has started it's called comfort Cal. It's like really well done and she has a so many great lists of conferences, and the design is amazing on the site. So I highly recommend checking that one out. And then I am so happy that no one else stole this pic Black Mirror Season Four on Netflix. Oh my God is so amazing. Just finished that one not too long ago. I mean, Black Mirror in general is an awesome show. Don't start on Season One. Episode one though. It's yeah, not not. It's a bit. It's a bit weird. All right, before the end of the episode, I want to thank Shirley and Amy for joining us on today's episode. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to have guests. Thank you so much. Thank you. Where can people get in touch with you?

Amy Wibowo
Um, my handle is Sailor HG for all the Internet things. And then my website is bubblesort.io

Shirley Wu
And as always, I am s x y Wu on all of the domains. Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
I love the brand and you guys have logged on lock. Thank you all for listening to today's episode. Make sure to subscribe to this front end Happy Hour podcast on wherever you listen to podcasts on and follow us on Twitter at @frontendhh any last words

Jem Young
we just legal in California