Sips of Wisdom: Interview with Shaundai Person

Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a brand new episode of the front end Happy Hour podcast. This is our new part series of interviews with people that we are calling sips of wisdom. My third guest is Shaw day, person which Shawn day and I have known each other for years now. So happy to have you on you've been a guest on front end happy hour. You and I've worked together at Netflix for years. We're on my team, all great things. So I'm really excited to talk with you about your career. Shawn day, but without further ado, let's do introductions of who you are, what you do, and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages. I'm

Shaundai Person
so excited to be here and so excited to talk to you. So thanks for having me. I am Shawn day person, Senior Software Engineer at Netflix, like Ryan mentioned, I'm on the productivity team as a UI engineer, and I work on internal dev tooling. Basically, productivity is what it sounds like. I help to reduce friction for other Netflix engineers and make it easier for them to do their jobs. My favorite Happy Hour beverage is a good bourbon, but I'm kind of a sucker for Jack Daniels and Diet Coke. That's usually what I order. But uncle nearest. Uncle nearest is, if anybody asks me, because it sounds kind of cheap, but if anybody asks me, uncle nearest is my my favorite whiskey these days. I

Ryan Burgess
don't know if I've tried that one. Chanda, I'm gonna have to try that. I don't think I have. And I also, I kind of appreciate your like, here's my, like, lowbrow kind of like, I just need a drink kind of thing. And then here's my, like, you know, it's a little bit better of a choice. And that's what I'm going to tell people. I respect that,

Shaundai Person
right? Like, if I'm if I'm like, oh, you know, I had a crazy night, and they're like, Oh, what did you drink? I'm like, uncle, nearest, usually Diet Coke. And

Ryan Burgess
that's fair, and also nobody should judge you on your drink, even though, as you said it, I was like, oh, man, no, no.

Shaundai Person
I know, I know you have strong whiskey opinions.

Ryan Burgess
I do, but it's funny is like, I haven't been drinking as much, like, in the past year or two. And it's like, but whiskey is still a choice for me. I'm like, yeah, it's still, I still appreciate my like nice whiskeys. And you know, I can't hate on any of them. They're all good, all

Shaundai Person
good. Yes, absolutely. If it's whiskey, it's it's for me, I

Ryan Burgess
like that. All right. Well, Shawn day, I figured, you know, I love your career. Actually, it's just been an interesting journey, because you started out not as your first career as a front end engineer. And so I want to start there. Is like, what made you decide, I guess, well, let's talk about what you were doing before being a front end engineer. But then you know what made you decide to take the leap and change careers? That's a scary thing to do. And so I just want to kind of start there. Yeah,

Shaundai Person
it is a scary thing to do, and so my previous career was in sales. And what made it scarier were a couple things. So of course, any career switch, it comes with risk, but I was a new parent at the time, and sales was the safe choice for me, because it was a career that I was in from the beginning after I graduated from undergrad, my degree was in business undergrad, and I got into sales because of it was from the encouragement of one of my entrepreneurship professors. So my major was entrepreneurship, and they encouraged me to get into sales because that's the best way to understand what it's like to run a business, learn to negotiate, learn to work with people, and all of the skills that I had been practicing for over a decade were in sales. So even though a lot of people feel like sales is risky, and it is, for me, it was a safe choice because I had been doing it for so long, and I had been successful with it, and then also again, to add to that, I was a new parent, and so I wanted to give my son a stable life. And to me, engineering was a bet, you know, like it wasn't something that I had ever had any familiarity with. I didn't even know how to interview for it, and I didn't know how to dress for it. I'm used to wearing, like, you know, the business suits and things. This stuff

Ryan Burgess
was not part of it, too.

Shaundai Person
That was one thing I was side note. I was very excited about being able to wear T shirts. And that was when I got my first engineering job. The first thing I did was I went out and I, like, bought T shirts, which now is silly, because all I wear is, like, swag shirts, pretty much. So the reason why I decided to get into engineering was and Hindsight is 2020. I look back at a lot of points in my life, and I'm like, I should have known. I should have seen that. And I can always look back and. I figure out little glimpses of every sales job that I've had where I really took to the technical side, like one of my first jobs, sales jobs was selling a platform. It was a I was selling to engineers. It's a platform called MATLAB, and Simulink, the company's called MathWorks. It's a mathematical computation software, and then Simulink is simulation of dynamic systems. So like, basically anything that moves and thinks finance. It could be from financial planning, like big computations of that to like planes, rocket ships. So NASA was my engineer. I mean, sorry, NASA was my customer, so I was selling to literal rocket scientists. And what I found was so interesting was how varied the applications of the same language could be the same technical language. There were some engineers who were using the software to build rocket ships to get us onto the moon. And then there were other ones who were working with farmers to figure out the appropriate combination of chemicals to make the largest oranges on farms. And I was like, wow, this is, like, it's so cool. Like, you're not stuck with one thing, you know, sales, it's, it's different every day, because you're dealing with different people. But it's not that like, it's not that varied. So anyway, I would see, like, little glimpses of things, like I would always take to the technical side of things. But it wasn't until I decided to pursue my passions for entrepreneurship, and I just quit the workforce that it really hit me. Because I was starting a website, and it was a website powered by Shopify. I thought that the most interesting aspect of running a business to me would be the negotiating the deals and going from door to door, like selling and stuff, because that was what I was used to, and that was what I was good at. What I loved the most was actually learning liquid, which is Shopify as Ruby based language to customize my site and add little widgets so that I could do marketing automation in the way that I wanted to, or to put little banners on my site so that my customers could know about big sales. Or I could increase sales by taking what I knew about the customer and applying that to the way that the website was set up, or the things that I put in front of the people who visited my site. So I felt like engineering ended up being this perfect combination, especially front end engineering, this perfect combination of all of the stuff that I was interested in working with customers, all of that negotiation, all that people skills, as well as the technology and like the fascination with all of the different applications that you could have with just like, lines of code. So it started out as a hobby, and again, I was like, in sales. So I was like, this is a risky thing. I can't, like, switch careers. And I was already, like, three degrees deep in over a decade, deep into a sales career. So I was like, I can't just switch, especially not with the kid. So I gave myself a half an hour every day to practice coding. I loved it so much. I would find myself up to one and two in the morning every day, just because I would just get so lost, like I would get in this, you know, the, what's it called? The, not the focus mode, but the Oh, flow state. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. So I would get in this flow state, and then I would look up, and it's like, two in the morning, and I would have to be up in a couple hours to drop off my son at daycare. And I was like, I wonder if engineers make money, make good money. I don't. I didn't know that. And so I looked it up, and I was like, oh, okay, so maybe I should, maybe I should pursue this career. It's pretty comparable copper bullet sales,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, I love all that. Like, I love the journey to it. I think hearing you talk about it too is like, yeah, that hindsight things like, there's always little signals. But I don't know it's really hard for us to see those little signals in the moment, or maybe it just takes a bunch of those little signals to go, yeah. Shawn day, jump into this. Like, you should do this for a career, but all those other factors, being a parent or or just leaving what you know is so difficult, like it really, truly is, and so I'm amazed at you for doing it. Like, just all those factors, it's so much easier to be like, it would be cool to go do that, but like, I can't do that like that. That's too much, that's too risky. So it's cool that you did it and now, like, you are an engineer and doing that full time, and so that's really

Shaundai Person
cool, yeah. And I, you know, I think back, because a lot of people are like, well, people will ask me about my journey, and they'll be like, I want to do what you did, but I can't do it for XYZ reason. I had so many excuses too, you know, and I had so many different reasons. It wasn't because, again, there were multiple instances that I can look back on, and I can be like, Yeah, I should have known at that time. But I think I let, I let myself be led by all of those excuses that I could have made, like, this is a. Career for me, because I don't see anybody who looks like me in the field, or because I'm already this much, I've already spent this much time in the in my current field, and I can't do this, or because I'm a parent and all that, and I don't fault people for also falling victim, I guess, to those excuses, because it change is hard. It's really hard when your life is on the line and all of the things that you've worked so hard to build up are at stake. Like, that's at risk. I can't really say why I like, I think I waited to make the leap until it like I had nothing to lose, really. So I spent a lot of time preparing for it and getting myself ready so that even if I failed at getting into engineering, I wasn't losing everything. So to give more context to what I mean by that, is, I didn't just up and quit my job and then just go to a boot camp. I didn't have that ability to do that. I still had bills to pay. I still had my my mouth to feed and my son's mouth to feed. So I didn't have that opportunity to do that, and so boot camp wasn't for me. I didn't have a bunch of extra money, because daycare is expensive. I didn't have a bunch of extra money to one not have any income, but also to put into a boot camp. So I needed to find a way to learn to code that didn't cost a lot of money. Turns out, very lucky in engineering that there's a lot of free resources and a lot of low cost resources to learn to code. So I use Codecademy, which is like $150 at the time for six months, and I just like stretched as much as I cut out of that listen to podcasts, like front and happy hour is like, how we met. Yeah, so listening to podcasts, and I would spend all of the time that I wasn't either with my son or at work, learning to code. I cut out a lot of stuff. Funny story that I'm thinking about just this second is, like, one of the things that I cut out was Netflix, because I was like, I can't watch movies anymore, like, and now I'm here,

Ryan Burgess
right? Yeah? And then it's like, hell yeah, mix, maybe I should renew that subscription to, you know, see what I'm building.

Shaundai Person
I'm definitely watching bridgerton Now, but like, for that time, I had paused my my Netflix subscription for a little bit. So yeah, and if you're listening, you don't have to pause your Netflix subscription. Just keep on. Keep on, keep your Netflix but yeah, so I was very intentional about the way that I did things. And I again, I didn't leave my job, and I leveraged. I tried to find ways to take all of the things that I was already doing and figure out how to combine my life with the my current life, or the life that I was current my life, my current life at the time, with the life that I wanted. So combining parenting with with learning to code my pin tweet is an example of a tool that I built because I was learning to code. Everything that I was building as I was learning to code was stuff that was feeding into the things that I wanted to do as a parent. I wanted to teach my son to read early, so I built a tool that helped him to learn his letters and the letter sounds. And I built a lot of tools like that. Built some tools for my son. So I'm combining those two things my work with sales and wanting to get a job I was big on, I still am big on networking and building up my network and meeting more people. I made it a goal of mine for everybody on the engineering team at my company that I was selling at to know me. I wanted every all of the engineers to know me, know my name and know my capabilities, and know that I was looking to get into engineering. So I was having these coffee chats, lunch chats with them, learning more about engineering, showing them my code, but also like building my internal network in sales as well. So just finding little ways that I could combine things without putting myself at risk by quitting my job or putting a bunch of money into something that I didn't know how it was going to turn out. So yeah, yeah, I that would be my advice to anybody. I

Ryan Burgess
mean, there's so much good advice. I think the biggest thing I take about is, like, making your intentions known. I think that's what I take away from. The big thing there too is like, not only were you networking and likely getting advice from engineers at the company, which is amazing, but I think just knowing that, like, Hey, she wants to do this right? Like, and at some point in time, someone's going to be hiring for a new role, or they're like, Yeah, we're we're opening this position. And it's like, why not talk to Shawn day about that? Like she might want this or, you know, I think that that, to me, is always one of the best things to do is put your intentions out there, because you really don't know how it will come back or not. I say that with so many things and advice for even people who are like, I want to be a manager. I'm like, Cool. Like, especially if it's an internal. The company. It's not that simple, right? Like, it's not just like, oh, you can just dive into it. It's, it's somewhat of a career change too. Like, it's like, you kind of go from, you know, being a good engineer, to like, oh yeah, now you're a manager. It's a different story. And that resonated with me too, where it's like, yeah, if you say your intention, like, I eventually want to do that and get advice from people. How do you do that? And so I love that you took that, that reproach,

Shaundai Person
yeah, and I heard this as another objection for people, because I think it's scary, and this was one of the big fears of mine, is like if my sales colleagues and if my customers as a salesperson, if they find out that I want to switch careers. What are they going to think of me? Are they going to think that I'm less dedicated to my job or less dedicated to their account? You know, are they going like, is the world going to end? And that's a it's a real fear. And I do have a friend who is currently in a position in government, and she's like, I really can't let them find out that I want to switch, because it's there's this whole hierarchy and like, things are just different than they are in tech. Completely understandable. So my advice to that is, and again, this was a fear of mine. This is why I started Twitter, because I all of my customers and all of my colleagues were on LinkedIn, and I was like, I can't talk about it on LinkedIn, because I don't, you know, this is not, this is not my I need to go where nobody knows me. So I started a Twitter account and it No, nobody's following me, but I just need to get it out of my system. I just need to talk about it. And so I was just using hashtags. I eventually built this amazing network of tech folks, because all I was talking about was tech and family. And family and stuff like that. So I naturally built this network of people where I could talk about it safely. And so that was one great thing. Another thing was like, when I was talking to my colleagues, I did find out from one colleague, he was like, you don't have to keep it a secret. Like you can go ahead and tell everybody, like it's just a fear in your head. And I was like, Okay, well, this is great, but before we had that conversation, I was like, I'm just going to talk about it as a hobby. I'm not going to tell people that I want to move into that because also it tends to put a lot of pressure on people. And I know you've experienced this too at Netflix, where sometimes people will come to you and say, okay, hey, I'm trying to get into engineering, and it kind of puts this responsibility on you as the receiver of that information, because they're expecting you to be like, offer them some help, or offer them some Advice. And I didn't, I didn't want to put that, that pressure on people. So like me telling them it was a hobby, actually helped to open up the conversation so that there was less pressure on them on their end, to feel like, now I have to have this responsibility of helping you figure out how to get in there or refer you to the company or something like that. And it's more of just like, oh, let's just have a cool conversation about hobbies. Like, yeah, I love it too. And, you know, this is what I would do, and it keeps it light, and then that's a great way to build your network so that it's not you instantly coming off as somebody who's, like, needy. It changes the whole dynamic of the conver conversation in the beginning. So I would say, just talk about it as a hobby. Even if it is your intention, you don't have to say it. Say that it's your intention. Just like, tell everybody, but tell everybody that it's just a fun thing that you that you like to do for new I like

Ryan Burgess
all that. Like, it's like, it's just, like, kind of dancing around some of those fears that you have, right? Like, where it's it could be taken poorly, or people start to worry that, oh, Shawn days, his head's not in the game on sales anymore. She's gonna balance ship, which, honestly, you might, and that's okay, like it, but I hear you is like, people treat you differently, and I like your approach, where you're like, that's, I think that was some, like, sales tactics coming in there. Like, it was like, I'm not gonna oversell myself. I want to, you know, build this network, and it's like, this will come back. I like that. Some smart thinking.

Shaundai Person
There's always sales. And everything that I do, I can't get it out of it. I

Ryan Burgess
mean, you and I've worked together. I've seen you grow in your career, you know, starting out fairly early as an engineer, and, yeah, I will say that you're the way you show up. It just, it's amazing, like, I see those skills come out, like the sales skills make you a better engineer. Like they're they're so disconnected in some ways, like from the Oh, technical piece of it, but they're not in the sense of how you're able to describe things and articulate like the work that you're doing, or make it understandable for others like you teach things. I see you do it like I've seen you do it in the team, but then even just publicly on Twitter or now on Tiktok, talk to which I'm enjoying your Tiktok videos, which, how did that start? Like, how did. Talks. Videos start. That's a That's

Shaundai Person
a good question. Um, so I've been wanting to do more videos and more content. And as you know, I want I learn by teaching. And so the spirit of my YouTube that I'm eventually going to really put some effort into is going to be a place where I teach things in shorter format, unless I work as I go into it that conference talks, which is how I've been teaching traditionally for for the past, you know, a couple years. So I needed okay when I have an idea, I usually go. We talked about this a little before the podcast, but I go from zero to 100 and I'll get very we talked about gardening before we started recording books. So I will overwhelm myself with all the possibilities and all the things. And so the first thing I did when I said I was gonna really put effort into this YouTube was I built this list probably of 50 something different topics that I was gonna talk about in YouTube videos. Each of them could have been their own 10 minute videos. Then I got completely overwhelmed, and I was like, Okay, well, not knowing YouTube anymore, so I decided to shorten it down and get out of my normal habit of going crazy with things. And I was like, let me start shorter videos, and let's just do low stakes little tiktoks. Even that was kind of overwhelming for me, because I put so much thought and effort into what it needed to entail. And I was talking with one of my friends. She has done a lot of her name is Josie. She's a Java engineer, and she's, she's done a lot of tiktoks, and, like, really great fun tiktoks. She was like, just act like you're talking to yourself. I and I talk to yourself, I am I. And I was like, Oh, I because I talked to myself a lot. So I was like, I can just get started. So I hit record, and then I just start talking about something, my three minutes to five minutes, sometimes even less than that. And it's been a great way to at least get started some ideas. And then I've also been posting my tiktoks to YouTube. So it's kind of so this is to answer your question in a much more succinct way. This is the start of a bigger YouTube channel that I eventually want to put some energy into when time allows.

Ryan Burgess
I love that too. It's like, it kind of reminds me of your approach to coding, right? It's like, you, you, you're just getting these like little snippets of like information and trying it like, it's like building things for your son to learn. It's like you're learning how to code at the same time. Well, same thing with video to it. It's not, it's not just record yourself like and you can do that, but then you start to learn certain things that like land better. It's a storytelling it's like, how's the quality, what's the lighting like? You can go down rabbit holes for days on all of that, your audio, all that kind of stuff. I love it though too, because there was one video early on, and I can't remember the topic, and I remember commenting on it specifically, because you shook the phone and it, you know, and it was like, but it was exactly what needed to happen. It was like, really hitting home on the words that you were saying. It was like, listen here, and it was, it was so good. And it's like things like that. It's like, how do you take like your video from just like I'm sitting in front of my phone and recording myself to like being more interactive? And it was, like, really cool to see that. So I love it. I'm excited for the Shawn day YouTube channel. I will absolutely be a subscriber to that.

Shaundai Person
Thank you. Thank you. I Yeah, I do remember, and that's really good feedback. So thank you for that. First Person has given me face to face feedback on that, that video in particular, but really in general. But I remember that video that was about management, actually. And if you want to be an being a manager is a skill that or, sorry, it's a field that requires people skills. So that was, that was what I was saying. But, yeah, I really appreciate that feedback and your early endorsement to the YouTube page. But like you said, there is so much stuff that you can go into, and it is, it's overwhelming. Because I, like I said, I like to overdo things, and I there's just so so many aspects of it that you can do, and it never ends. So I was like, All right, I just got to take it little by little, step by step, and dip my toe in the water.

Ryan Burgess
No, I love that. I think any time to like advice people have like for creating content like you see it lots is like, it's just do it right? Like, you're gonna put out stuff that's terrible at the start. I cringe when people listen to the first front end happy hour episode and. Mainly because it was like we were trying to figure out, like, audio, right? Like we literally sat around a table, like, you know, not thinking about it at all, having a bunch of alcoholic beverages and sticking one mic in front of the, you know, in the middle of the table for all of us. And there was probably, like, six of us, I think, and, you know, we're cheersing glasses and everything like that. And people like, man, that's that's so hard on the ears and and all those things. And I'm like, Yeah, that was good feedback. But like, I could have agonized over everything and, like, worried about, I don't know audio, I don't know how to do all these things, but I look back on those and just love failing fast, right? Like, it's like putting something out there and just like learning, and it sucks, like, kind of when you hear people like, this is terrible, your audio shit, and it's like, All right, cool. How do I fix that? And how do I get better at that? And you acquire these skills just by doing. And I love that. Yeah,

Shaundai Person
that was one big thing that I still carry with me from when we worked together at Netflix, was you were really pushing folks to not be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect. It'll get there eventually. But just start out with something, you know, start out with a small MVP, put it in front of folks, and then you'll you'll get the feedback. You'll hear people tell you if it's good, if it's bad, they'll tell you what you need to work on and then you can iterate. So it just really has to start with that small little effort, and then you continue to be consistent and build from there

Ryan Burgess
totally, like, that big list of videos for YouTube scared you, and you're like, I can't do this. And it's understandably, it's like building an application. When you're like, I gotta do all these things. It's like, well, can you put something out there to just see if there's traction and get feedback from your users? Like, that's also probably what led me to Netflix in the first place was the AB testing culture, because I love the iteration and just being like, does this work? Does this not? It doesn't have to be perfect to get a signal now to make it better and refine it over time. Yes, you want it to be really like quality, but like that first little bit, it's like, just get a signal and figure this thing out and learn as you go. Versus like, Let's go spend six months building this feature and then release it, and then you get, like, all the feedback, and then it didn't work, and it was like, you might have spent all this time. It's like, iterate fast, like, learn really quickly, right,

Shaundai Person
right? Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's going to be scary No matter what, right? But it's like, it's less demoralizing, if less demoralizing if you have spent just a little bit of time. You started with the idea you put some planning into it, very, you know, intentional planning into it. But then you started with this MVP, and then people give you the feedback that you're inevitably gonna get. They give you the signal. And then you can shift directions, versus you put six months of resources, time, folks, money, whatever it is, and ideas, into this one thing, and then you get the signal that, like, you were on the wrong path three months ago, so you know, and now you're like, I really wasted my time, so I like your strategy a lot better. And this is very inspiring, because now I can go into the weekend too with the thought that my Youtube, it doesn't it? Like, I really need to just go out and do it. Like, this is what I'm hearing right now, is that I need to just do it. This is a good reminder.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, it's tough too, because it's, like you said, too. It's like, finding the time, like you want to also make sure that you have the dedicated time. Those types of things are are tough, right? But I think like, getting the cadence that you're getting even on Tiktok, where you're like, oh, I can do this. And like, you know you're starting there. And I think that makes a ton of sense. So that's, that's cool. So, yeah, you've been at Netflix for what, like, three years

Shaundai Person
now, almost three years. Yeah, almost Yeah, yeah. Wow. Three months, yeah. Three months away, September 1 ish, or Seventh, Seventh, around that time, early September, will be three years. Wow, it

Ryan Burgess
just feels like so long. I'm like, holy, it's been three years, you know, like, so, yeah, three years. Like, what's, what's, what's been good? What have you liked about working in productivity, engineering, you know, what are some of the challenges you face, too?

Shaundai Person
So there's a lot that's good. I really like the I like the culture. And this is very broad, so I'll condense what I'm trying to say. So one of the big things that I noticed that is unlike any other company that I've ever been to is that on day one, Netflix, everybody that you work with trusts you to be smart, and they any other company that I've been to, it's like you have this very clear, defined role and set of responsibilities, and you stay within those lines. You never go. Of those lines. And if you ever, like, are thinking about thinking about something else, you got to ask for permission. You got to ask for permission to think those thoughts at Netflix. It's like, I equate it to like a village, right? So you have this, this village of people who all have all these skills that they've built from just their time being alive and, you know, existing and having families and hobbies and stuff like that, school and everything, and they just know what to do, and they're operating their own little households and shops and things like that, and there's no money. You just barter, and you're like, Okay, well, who do I go to for good shoes. Okay, I'll go over to the cobbler for good shoes. And then when you enter the village, that is Netflix, you come in, and then they're like, Well, what do you what do you do? What are you good at? What are you interested in? And you're like, well, anything, anything. Yeah, you can do anything. And so they're like, Okay, well, why don't you bring XYZ to the table? And because we need something like that, like but also we're like, trying to build this village, so it has to apply to the village. So you have the ability to bring in your full self, your your full set of skills, and as long as you're doing what's in the best interest of the company, like you understand what, and people just trust you to have the best interest of Netflix at heart, as long as you're doing that, you have the ability to weigh in on big decisions. You have the ability to bring up that this is not going the right way, like I think we should change directions a little bit, or I think this would be more valuable to our customers. I'm gonna go validate that, and then I'm gonna bring you back XYZ metric that shows that we could serve our customers better in this way. I'm going to start this project. I need some resources, like, Can we do this? Yes, you know, like, and it's all just in the best interest of Netflix. And I found that by not being confined to that one little box with my subset of, like, roles and responsibilities that I can't go out of. I've had this basically limitless ability to just grow and grow and grow and, like, figure out where my ceiling is. And I haven't. I haven't hit that like I still feel like every day I'm growing learning more, I found that the people who don't thrive as well or don't feel the same as I do are the people who like to have those type of restrictions. And that's totally fine, you know, if you're the type of person who likes to, you know, have order and have your role defined for you and that kind of thing, then Netflix probably isn't for you. But I find that it fits really well with the type of personality that I have in the way that I like to learn and grow. So that's one really great thing about working here. I also love the productivity team itself, because it's important to me to know my customer. And what better way to know your customer than to be your own customer? And a lot of the the problems that we're solving are problems that we've just noticed because we're going through our day to day work. It's like, how could we make our lives easier? How could we reduce friction in our working lives on or onboarding or things like that? And so I have the opportunity to just like, practice the or use the use the tools. We call it dog fooding. Use the tools that I am building. Test them out before bringing them to the customer, and then it gives me a better understanding of how to create value for my customers and build better tools. So that's great. What are some of the challenges about working with at Netflix? That's hard because I think, um, this challenge isn't unique to Netflix. Um, I think it's across the board. Is in general, it can, I'm, I'm learning things for the for the first time, like communication is sometimes a challenge. I don't know if it's like a me thing. It might very well be a me thing, or it might just be something, but learning to communicate with folks in different cross functional teams and different areas of the org, making sure that you're planning engineering efforts, like, for example, estimating, estimating the time that it's going to take to finish an engineering task is it's, it's always a challenge, but also being able to figure out how much time to account For the designer to do their designs the back end, to shape the data and give it to you in a way that will make the you know, give you everything that you need to build the UI, and then incorporate your estimates within all that. It's really hard and then, like you were talking about the building this. Small MVP and then iterating on it. It's hard to get everybody on board with that. It's hard to get myself on board with that sometimes, because it's like, the type of personalities that get hired into Netflix are people who are used to being high achievers, right? They're used to putting something out into the world that is, like, really pleasant to look at and really functional, really solid. So it's, it's hard to get somebody like that who is used to high, uh, performing at a high level, to put out something that's kind of kind of shitty, you know, like in the beginning, and to iterate on it. People want to hold on to things. And they, they, they put their own, not egos, but they put their own kind of, sometimes, their engine, their personal self worth, into the results of a project. And they, myself included, don't like to hear that you're calling their baby ugly, like or, you know, this needs work, or this needs that, and it's not like, really hard, strong opinions, like, you know, I'm not going to introduce this to you because I don't want you to say it's bad. It's just more like, sometimes I notice that my again, myself included, as well as my colleagues, we spend a lot of time trying to perfect things or to plan things just to make sure that that first pass is perfect. And it's a hard thing to get yourself out of. It's a hard thing to get your colleagues out of. But there are so many reasons why it's good when you're able to do it well, there's so many reasons why, why it's good, and you save so much time in later stages by getting everybody involved in the decision making process, the iteration process, and getting people on board with just, like, incremental let's just do the MVP. Let's just do the shitty version of it first, and then let's make it better later.

Ryan Burgess
I love that, though it's like, even like saying how there is that challenging aspect, because it is easier said than done. I think that it's like, the more senior you get as an engineer, do you start to realize that where are the right trade offs that need to be happening? And some of those are, it's not like you're throwing out quality or you're not putting out your best work, but you're making trade offs where you're like, Yeah, that could have been better, or that could be a little more buttoned up, whatever it is. But does it move the needle right? Like, is this like today, especially with developer productivity, it's like, is this going to help someone, you know, make their job 20% easier? Right? Now, ship it. And it's like, could it? Could it be like, a lot more polish? Yeah, how much are you getting out of that polish, right? Like, is it gonna be like, Oh, wow. Now it's like, 50% more performant for them. Like, it's like, no, it's probably squeezing nothing. Like, it's not like, that last little bit is probably not doing a ton. You can still do that because, like, you know, you still want things to look and feel good. It's like, those little extra polishes do help the matter. But I think it's like, if you sit on it for so long, it's like, that's tough. Like, it's like, then you're like, that person is not 20% more productive. They're waiting for your said tool. And it's like, I don't know. I also think, like with internal teams, you have a lot more freedom, right? Like, you have a little more leeway to maybe piss your customers off a bit, where they're like, Ah, this is broken. You're like, oh, I will go fix that. Versus, like, the actual Netflix product in in production, where there's paying customers and things like that, that there's a higher bar to that. And so there's, there is that, like, a little bit more. I'm like, you have this freedom that, like, yes, engineer Johnny on Team X is like, Shawn day, you broke this. It's like, you're like, Ah, I'm so sorry. I will go fix that. Like, it's not the end of the world, but it's tough. Like, I love that you kind of painted that other side of the picture where it's like, it's hard to internalize that you're like, oh, then I'm a shitty engineer, because I broke that. It feels, it feels bad. It

Shaundai Person
does, it does, right? And then it's like, a different level of embarrassment too, because, like, Okay, you, you, maybe, you, you introduce a bug in prod, and you work for a, like, an external customer, right? Like, let's say I work on the Netflix app. It's the the streaming app, right? And there's a bug, and, you know, people notice it, right? They're not necessarily real people to me, because I don't have to look at them. I'm not in customer service. Like they can, they can go be upset. And, you know, somebody got yelled at, but it wasn't me, right? If I'm internal tooling, I'm, again, I have this pride that, you know, as a high performing engineer, and then I have the engineer that, like, works on the sister team, saying, oh, Shonda, you introduced this bug into code. And I'm like, Oh, now I look like a bad engineer. Now I get to see your face every day. And you know that I made this silly mistake, you know, I forgot to account for the null state, and you know, I brought down prod, and so now I look like a silly like, engineer who's incapable. So it's a different level. And I completely I get it. I get it on both sides, because I've done external customer engineering work as well as now internal. But I know it's, I can't really make excuses for. It's just, it's a pride thing. I

Ryan Burgess
don't even hear you making excuses. I think you're just calling out what, how the feeling is, and like, it's, you know, you can try and explain away, like, I can explain away for you being like, no, Shawn day, it's like, that person's gonna completely forget that you forgot that null state. They're gonna go on about their business to completely forget. But it's like, it doesn't matter you're still internalizing that and worrying about it. It's like, that's normal, and that's like, you can't explain that away. But it is funny when you said about, like, when Netflix is down, you know, like, go on Twitter, it's like, people freak out. And I'll never forget it was, I can't remember it was a couple years in that I was at Netflix and, you know, working on the actual Netflix streaming app. There was obviously times where it was stressful, like that. And I'll never forget the one engineer on my team brought down, I think it was just the web application for Netflix on a sat on a Saturday night though, you know, it was like, you know, and that's really funny. I don't judge that engineer at all, zero, 0% even though I still remember that story, but it was like that was a team effort of, like, it doesn't matter who made the mistake. It's like it was a mistake that we made that we should have, like, thought more clearly about, you know, maybe not even pushing on a Saturday night, probably a good idea. But even then, it was like there was a couple things that we we missed, that we now learn from. And so I think it's okay to make those mistakes. It just sucks when it's like, you know, millions of users can see your your stuff live,

Shaundai Person
right, right? And a public company, people are tweeting about it. That's horrific. But yeah, like you said, you don't fault, you don't fault that engineer for it. It's like, it's a funny story, but you you remember it, and you'll laugh about it, and that's it. They remember it, that engineer probably remembers it way different, but they're laughing about it as well.

Ryan Burgess
And they did, like we just kind of all kind of laughed about that and just kind of moved on it. You know, we got it back up. It was fine, I guess. You know, before we end the episode. Shawn day, I would love to just hear you've given so many pieces of advice already in this episode, but if you were to leave our listeners with, maybe it's newer career devs or people who are like, I'm in a sales job, or I'm working X, Y and Z career, and I want to move into engineering. What advice would you leave them with? Ooh,

Shaundai Person
yes, so many pieces of advice. But I think that I strongly believe that anybody who wants to do something and really puts their mind to it in a strategic way thinks about it, I think that you can do it. I and I think that there's a place if you want to come into engineering, I think there's a place for you here, no matter what your age is, no matter what your background is, if you have the interest, you can do it, and that there is a use for the skills that you already have in the engineering world, like we talked about my sales skills, it's I'm using them every day, every moment of every day I'm using my sales skills now, I didn't abandon those and I didn't lose those years of my time. In fact, I think that they contributed to my ability to be successful in the engineering field. So I feel like, if you can think about it, your story is not going to look like mine. It's going to be your own unique story. Think about how you can combine the things that you're already doing, the stuff that you already know how to do, your experiences, interests. Think about how you can combine that with engineering, like I gave a few examples of combining sales and engineering, networking and engineering, parenting and engineering, there are skills that no matter what you've done, no matter if you're a volunteer, no matter if you're a new grad, a current student, a and a six year old child, you have skills that you can bring to the table. Just give it some thought. Talk to people, and again, low stakes, talking to people. Don't you know, will you be my mentor them on the first meeting? But talk to people. Be curious, learn and figure out where those connections are, and that's the best way to get started.

Ryan Burgess
I love that. I love that. And honestly, I'll double down just backing up your sales background on like, Yes, I said that. It showed up well. But even interviewing, when you were interviewing like, that was a selling point for me. I was like, she's bringing this unique perspective. And, you know, it's clear, it's there, and it's like, that is. Going to bring something different to the table for our team. You know, the technical skills Absolutely, obviously important, right? Is like, can you actually build and do your job? But I get excited about all these additional skill sets that you can add to a team that do just kind of bring new perspectives and just ways in which you create something and I mean, time and time again, like, that's a selling point, so don't hide that either. That you're like, I'm a second career. It's like, No, that's a good thing, right,

Shaundai Person
right? Yes, I love that. Don't hide it. Don't hide it. Like, talk, talk about, like, lean into that. That is your superpower. That is not your weakness, I guess. Yeah, not your kryptonite, yeah.

Ryan Burgess
No, totally. Shawn day, this is so good. I mean, I loved catching up with you. It's been a while. You know, obviously be working together. It's, it's, I miss working with you. So thank you for joining me on here. Where can people get in touch with you? If they're looking to connect with you?

Shaundai Person
Yes, you can find me always on Twitter, at Shawn day, I'll spell it, S, H, A, U, N, D, A, I, I'm very active on Twitter. My you can check me out on LinkedIn. I'm the only shaunde person in the world, so you'll find me and also building a workshop with epic web on TypeScript that will hopefully be completed by the end of this year, but you can find out updates. TS for js.com, t, s, f, O, R, J, s.com, if you're interested in learning TypeScript for enterprise, orgs,

Ryan Burgess
awesome. I mean, I've seen you teach a lot of TypeScript, and so yes, I will even without seeing it. No, it's good, and you should probably go check that out. Thank you so much. Shawn day, it was a pleasure, as always, for you listening. Front End Happy Hour listeners. You know where to find us on whatever you like, to subscribe to check us out on YouTube. If you haven't. We are publishing more and more on YouTube. We now have Tiktok, too. Shawn day, we are we are publishing on Tiktok, not as good as Shawn day's videos, but like we're slowly getting there. You're

Shaundai Person
amazing. It's been great. I follow you. I.