Coding Influencers - Ms Brandy Morgan

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today, we are talking to Miss Brandy Morgan from Instagram. And this episode is part of a special series where we went out and found the most influential developers around. And she is one of the most motivated engineers I have ever met. A Google keynote speaker, and she's using her platform to promote clean coding principles. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:27) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast. Brandy.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:00:40) Hey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:41) What up, buddy?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:00:43) How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) Fantastic. How are you doing?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:00:46) I am doing well on this beautiful Monday.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:49) Right. Where are you at?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:00:50) I am in Winter Park, Florida.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:52) I used to live there. I used to live in Baldwin Park.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:00:55) Oh, I go running there all the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:57) It's so nice, right? It's beautiful. The big beautiful lake, little sushi restaurant. Don't remember the name of it, but I loved it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:05) So we had Cody Blonde on the show last week.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:01:09) Oh, nice. I am friends with her through social.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:14) Oh, that's how you guys met?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:01:16) Yeah. We met on Instagram, and we did a couple collaborations on there. And then we did a collaboration on YouTube that is still waiting to be published.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:29) Oh, are you guys just editing it?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:01:31) No. It's edited. It's just a matter of publishing it. It'll be later this week, actually, or next week that I'm going to put it out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:38) How often are you putting out content?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:01:41) On YouTube, weekly. And I just started a new position, and so I will actually be doing a lot more content on other profiles. And Instagram, I put out content daily on there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:58) What's your new position that you started?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:02:01) So I went from being a full stack developer at a startup. I just recently quit there in December, like, beginning of December. And I will be working with my husband with his company, and my title is a growth strategist engineer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:19) A growth strategist engineer.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:02:22) Yeah. That's a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:23) I love it, though, right? Because that's what everything now, everyone's super growth. Are you a fan of Gary V?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:02:32) In doses. Small doses. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:35) Do you have to take it just a little bit at a time?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:02:38) I think he has a great message, and I love what he's about. But, yeah, I think, you know, it's like you know what he's going to say, but I am a fan of him. I like his message.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:51) He's definitely repetitive, right? Because it's like those real simple things that you have to say over and over and over and over. And, basically, I think he's just going to keep repeating himself until the whole world hears him.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:03:02) No, which is great because it's the things that people don't do. You know? And so I think what he's doing and what he's building is awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:11) I agree. No. I really. And it's working, though, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:14) Because it's getting huge. How did you get into. So you write code, right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:03:19) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:20) Yeah. Because I see on the Instagram, it at least looks like you write code. I think I even, I'm pulling from my memory here, but I think I see in some React code. I'm not sure. Is that right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:03:30) Yeah. So I, it's more, I suppose I'm like a JavaScript developer. I say full stack because it sounds cooler. But for the most part, I would do like JavaScript on the front end and then Node on the back end, which is essentially JavaScript. But, yeah.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:03:46) So the company I just left, I was doing React Native. I built out their mobile app for them for about nine months. And my husband's company, we build SaaS applications or SaaS products, specifically targeting SaaS companies. And the majority of what we use is React. And we can pretty much, you could, we could figure out how to do anything, but we usually offer React.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:13) Are you building web apps for them? Or?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:04:16) Yeah. I mean, I have built web apps. I mean, currently, right now with my position, I am doing a little different approach to, like, I'm doing like inbound sales or in, I think, or inbound marketing, I guess, is what you would call it. And I have a background in marketing, and that's how I got into programming. And so the goal is to create really good content.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:42) Mhmm.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:04:43) And teach people how the development process works and how you can build cool things. And then I'm actually going to be building like products, Chrome extensions, free tools, as a part of, like, you know, lead generation, like, how to get people actually to utilize us. That makes sense?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:05) Well, that's really neat. Yeah. So it's great that you are working in the sales pipeline in marketing and, but you also have an understanding of what it takes to build the product.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:05:16) Yeah. It comes in handy a lot. So I started off in marketing about four years ago, and I worked at a mobile software development company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I helped run like a really large mobile conference. And in doing that, I did like everything from logistics to getting sponsors, getting speakers, planning everything.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:05:42) And then the only thing I really couldn't do was build the mobile app for the actual event. And so that's what sparked my interest into development. And I started doing HTML, JavaScript, and worked really closely with the CSIO there. And he was like, just if you're going to do it, jump all in. And so that's kind of what I did.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:05) Wow. So you just jumped right in, and you just taught yourself some programming. Did you use any sort of education, or did you rely on your husband, or how did you get your knowledge?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:06:16) I mean, all of that, but I did, I went to Full Sail.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:20) So I...

(Brandy Morgan at 00:06:21) Yep. I moved down to Florida like right away and just started going to classes there and utilized every moment I could be in there because the people there are very, well, like, they're there to help you. And if you utilize it, it'll do a lot for you, kind of like most things. And then I was there, and then I got an internship pretty quickly while I was there. And I interned for about nine months before I graduated, and I was writing production code for this company.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:06:52) And then they hired me like right out of graduation. And so I was programming there for about a year after.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:59) That's where you, that's like in your Instagram profile, it says you hustle harder than Jay-Z. I love that. I love it. Because it sounds like you definitely hustle. You're over there doing some conference stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:10) You're learning. You're like, alright, I want some information. You run down to Florida. You go Full Sail. You're like, alright, give me a job now. Now you got a job. You're this full stack but not really JavaScript engineer, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:20) And, I mean, any of the engineers, they should have some understanding of the full stack, right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:07:25) Oh, for sure. I mean, like, at my first job, I was actually, I did a lot of PHP. And the very first project I was on was like a C# project. So it's like I am, like, I feel comfortable if I were given any type of project. Like, it's not necessarily a language or the framework.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:07:42) It's understanding how to problem solve correctly and how to problem solve in the best way to figure out the best solution for that particular problem. Does that make sense?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:52) Oh, that definitely makes sense. And then there's some principles that, you know, completely transcend the language that are great for every language too.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:08:01) Mhmm. And then, and there's people out there that it's like it comes to the point where, you know, programming is actually like a craft and an art form. And that's what it was like for when I was at the startup because I lived, eat, and breathed that application for nine months. And so it was really, I was actually really thankful to get out, like, to take a breath for a little bit, which is what I'm doing now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:26) And now you're taking a breath with your learning, learning the, dive deeper into the growth side of things.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:08:32) Yeah. I'm still utilizing my engineering and stuff because I still do stuff on the side and in the process of like mapping out actual applications that I can build for our company that we can actually, you know, have like other companies utilize, whether that's for free or whatever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:48) Oh, yes. So some free utility style apps that will help promote the business?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:08:53) Yep. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:54) Yep. And what's the name of the company?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:08:56) Built to Create.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:58) Built to Create. And who's involved with that?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:09:03) It is my husband, Josh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:05) Mhmm.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:09:06) And then his brother. So they're and we're all engineers. And we are in the process of looking to hire like a senior level developer as well. And we just recently actually did hire a sales guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:20) That's super important to a business, right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:09:23) Well, like, what we've been doing so far has been pretty, it's worked out pretty well. It's like by word of mouth and being well connected in the community, and the company that I left is actually a client of ours. So.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:37) Works out.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:09:38) Yeah. It does. So it's all about, it's kind of like, you know, if you're nice to people and you always present them with your best self and your best work, you don't really have anything to worry about because hopefully in the future, you'll be able to either reach out to them for work or referrals or case studies or anything like that. Just kind of like our mantra at our company is just we want everybody to win. So whether that's somebody that, like, we got reached out to to help build some Unity games for the Super Bowl.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:10:08) And Jeremy, the other developer, he is a Unity developer, but it was just the timeline was too short, and so we weren't able to do it. But what Josh did was he referred the guy to several Unity developers in our area to, you know, still help that company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:26) Well, that's very, very interesting. So they're looking for Unity developers for the Super Bowl? Did I hear that right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:10:33) Yeah. Yep. I don't know exactly what it's going to be for, but there's going to be, like, I always should be saying this, but I think there's going to be like some games being, some company may be using these games for promotion or something along those lines. But, yeah, unfortunately, we weren't able to take on the project just because it was too large and too last minute. Always good to know your boundaries and when to say no to people, which is huge in our industry.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:10:58) Huge.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:59) Right? Because it's your reputation. And if you say you can deliver, then all the non-technical people are just like, they got it. They got it. They got it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:06) And then you go and you fail, and it's just like, oh, man. You hurt all those people that stood behind you, and that's never fun.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:11:14) No. It's not. Which is why it's so, it's so critical to be so, like, very upfront and very transparent with somebody that's going to be a potential client and really helping them understand the scope of a project. Because a lot of times when people come to the project, they may not be technically, you know, inclined to make decisions on things. And so it's, you know, your job as somebody who is technically proficient to walk them through what it takes, even if you're not going to be the person doing the work.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:11:44) You know, I still think like when people come to me with questions, I'm always willing to help them and to give them guidance and point them in the right direction. Because it sucks when you don't know something, and you just keep banging on doors, and nobody can really help you. And you're not even asking the right questions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:02) I fully agree with that. That's not a good thing. When I'm looking at your Instagram. A little bit distracted because I'm looking at the Instagram and your Instagram. And I see, I'm seeing like build armor, and I want to know more about that.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:12:16) The build armor. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:18) It looks like you're giving a talk to somebody. And like, I'm like looking at you here, it's like you're like a female Gary V programmer. Like, you got, you guys got motivational posts and stuff like that as well, you and your husband.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:12:30) For sure. Yeah. Yep. I'm all about motivating people. And the armor post, so I gave, I did the keynote at a Google Developers Conference in Central Florida a few months ago. And then I got asked to go to Dallas and do the same thing. And I gave a talk, kind of about it was like bringing your, it's like what did I call it? How to Launch Staging Into Production, which is like a technical thing. And it's about like bringing your side hustle, like, your side hustle into your full-time job.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:13:06) And the armor part was when you're told no or you fail interviews or you fail a class, because I failed, you know, I failed my first programming class in school. And I failed a Microsoft job interview. Like, all these sorts of things, instead of using them and being defeated and feeling like a failure, you have to use them to build armor because it's just setting you up to be better next time. Because every time you fail, you learn something or you should. Like, when I failed in school, I realized that I need to be more diligent with my time and be very intentional about the stuff that I'm learning and the questions that I'm asking.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:13:50) When I failed my Microsoft interview, I realized that confidence isn't everything. And you really need to, like if you're going in and presenting yourself as an expert, you better be an expert type thing. And after that, after that interview, it was five hours, and it was with some of the most intelligent people I've ever met. And at first, I felt super defeated that I didn't get the job. But then I realized, you know, after talking with them, the stuff that I needed to work on. And I wrote it down, and I was like, okay.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:14:26) So if I ever do want to go and apply again or even meet with them, these are the things that I need to do. So it's about, you know, building armor and just taking every failure for, taking it for what it is and then learning from it and just making sure that you don't dwell too much on it and find the positive in it. It's kind of just what it's about because I mean, everybody fails. We fail all the time. Like, we fail on a daily basis, especially in programming.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:14:51) We kind of just have to just take it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:53) Yeah. Well, it's not called green, green, repeat. It's called red, green, repeat. Refactor. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:59) So you were talking a little bit and you talk about from staging to production. You caught my ear there. What did you talk about in regards to that? I want to hear your thoughts on deploying from staging into production.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:15:10) Oh, like, actual staging to the production deploys? Well, I'm...

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:13) Sorry. Is that what you said your talk was about? I was...

(Brandy Morgan at 00:15:16) No. That was no. That was just an analogy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:21) Oh, no. No. I was just like, what? Did she have some awesome story about like failing staging to production? Because that's definitely the spot where failure is going to happen.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:15:29) Oh, I have a funny story. I had one of my first big projects. I was a lead—I was a lead and only developer on it. And this was, like, right when I started this job. It was my first job as a developer, and I deleted the entire production database. And I didn't—oh, yeah. I just looked at my computer in, like, utter disbelief that I did it.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:15:54) And I went to my mentor, and she was just like, "It's okay. Like, this happens to everybody." And she's like, "Yeah, retrace what you did." And then I was able to restore it. Thank goodness.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:16:05) But for that, like, five minutes, I thought I was—I was just burning up. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:10) What sort of infrastructure were you on? Were you on, like, AWS directly or, like, a Heroku? Or—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:16:15) AWS. And luckily, with all that sort of stuff, it saves it, you know, periodically.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:22) Yeah.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:16:23) And so you can easily just restore a backup.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:26) Are you on—and then—oh, sorry. Are you on the Snapchats? Call it the Snapchats.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:16:33) I used to be really big on Snapchat, but I'm honest—it's Miss Brandy Morgan.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:39) Are you more towards 20 or more towards 30?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:16:42) I'm right in the middle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:44) Right in the middle. Okay. So, yeah, for context, I'm 30. So we're close. And I've been hearing a lot of people talk about Snapchat and its growth, and they're all saying, you know, if you're a brand, you gotta be on Snapchat. And so I downloaded Snapchat and started using it with my wife because we have a little four-month-old baby. And so we're, like—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:16:57) Oh, nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:57) —we're snapping each other left and right. And there's, like, one or two other people that are close family friends or, like, family and friends of mine, and I'll snap with them, like, rarely. But I don't get Snapchat in the sense that, like, how brands are using it. And you, since you're going into growth and you know Snapchat, I think, better than me maybe, how do you leverage Snapchat, like, to find people you don't know? Because I think it's just for people you know.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:17:32) Not necessarily. So what's really cool—so if you have a brand, and this is something that I've done that I've grown my user base on Snapchat. I used to actually have, like, over a thousand people watching my Snapchats on a daily basis, but I switched my name. Like, I deleted that account and switched it, which is kind of dumb, but it is what it is. But what you can do on Snapchat is, you know, push out your Snapcode, like, on Instagram, Twitter. Do you have a Facebook page and tell people to follow you? And even if they don't follow—like, if that doesn't get them, you can do, like, a promotion-type thing, like a giveaway and say, "Hey, you know, go follow me on Snapchat. Go like my Facebook. Go like my last Instagram post, and then you'll be in a chance to get a giveaway." And that sort of gets you more followers on all of your accounts.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:18:20) And with Snapchat, you can have people do takeovers. So, like, for you, you have a Modern CTO brand, which is great. Which is something that you could actually do is have somebody—have a CTO take over your Snapchat channel. You just give them the login credentials and you can change them after they're done using it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:39) Right.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:18:40) But then they log in for 24 hours. They take over your Snapchat channel or for however many hours, and it's like a day in the life of a modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:48) But—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:18:49) And then what happens with that is all of their followers are then going to come to your channel because that person's taking over your channel. So there's a little marketing tip for you to use.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) Yeah. No, that's wonderful because I was trying to figure that out. Like, how are they using Snapchat when I just am sending pictures to my wife, like, back and forth?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:19:10) I mean, like, obviously, you can do that. But, I mean, for brands out there—and this is something that, you know, I've helped companies with—is if you're, like, a product and you are targeting a certain demographic, you need to find those influencers in that demographic and get them on your whatever platform it is, Instagram, Snapchat. Promote them, you know, have them take over your channel because everybody loves talking about themselves and everybody loves showing people what they're doing for the most part. Right? Especially the younger generation. People are—we're like a "me" generation.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:19:45) So when you offer somebody, "Hey, you wanna take over my channel for the day?" I guarantee people would say yes. And it's interesting to watch because then you promote that on your channels, they're promoting that on their channels. And that would actually be pretty cool because you would actually be looking at a modern CTO in the day in the life of what they're doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:04) Right. And that's what we do. It's actually really cool, you know, if you're geeky and nerdy and you like that stuff.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:20:11) Oh, and there is. I mean, look at the statistics on Instagram of how many, like, how big, like, the developer influencers are reaching. It's crazy the numbers of people that are out there. They're actually utilizing these platforms that are in the tech industry.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:28) I like—I love the—you and your husband, you know, do you both do the motivational thing? You both write code? Have you ever worked on a project together, written code on a project together?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:20:39) Yeah. So we just got married this past October.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:43) Oh, nice.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:20:44) And we worked—so when I—I worked at an agency, and then I was, like, in love with doing React Native and doing mobile-type stuff. And he was working at a startup. And so I actually got hired by that same startup to build their mobile application. And he was the one that built their web app with their CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:06) Very neat.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:21:07) Yep. So we worked together for, like, a little over a month, and it was absolutely a blast building stuff. And we actually—before that, we worked on a game together. So, yeah, we dabble in stuff like that together. We probably will in the future for, like, tools and stuff, but, yeah, I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:25) Has he ever rejected a pull request from you? And was it awkward?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:21:28) Oh, yeah. No, not at all. If a pull request gets approved the first time for me, it's like a miracle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:36) Aw.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:21:36) There's usually something. Because, I mean, you think about it. You're doing a pull request for—well, in my experience, they're pretty large tickets, so you're touching so many different files and probably multiple applications. And so if I did get it right on the first try—I think it happened once, actually—I would be surprised. The problem with me is I'm very quick. Again, I like to do things very, very, very fast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:59) Yeah. Patience isn't—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:22:01) Yes. Exactly. I'm working on patience. Patience and, like, attention to detail.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:05) Oh, it's hard with the patience when you get the Jay-Z hustle. Right? Because it's just like, "I'm on top of the world. Best rapper alive," you know? And then it's just like, "Hold on a second, you know? Let's see if Code Climate says you're the best."

(Brandy Morgan at 00:22:16) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:17) CircleCI says you fail.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:22:19) Well, Josh was telling me, like, he puts it in a good analogy. He says there's, like, two types of programmers. There are the ones—there are the architects, and then there's executors. And I'm definitely an executor, and he's more of an architect.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:34) How much experience does he have in writing code?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:22:37) Way more than me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:38) Way more than—I guess.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:22:39) I guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:40) Has he been doing it since he was, like, 13? Or—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:22:43) He's been doing it for a long time. I think he started when he was, like, six. Actually, maybe younger than that. He started in the .NET framework. His dad has been programming for, like, 25, 30 years in the .NET framework. So it kinda just runs in the family. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:59) That's how I learned. I learned from my—my dad would take me to work with him.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:23:03) Oh, it's awesome. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:04) And he'd teach me to write code. Yeah. There wasn't even, like, really Internet at the time, which is—it's so amazing because even though we're five years apart, the technology difference of five years is massive. Right? Because I didn't have—we didn't have, like, cell phones until the year I graduated high school.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:23:22) Oh, wow. Let's see. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:24) So no one had phones in school, but that five-year difference is really big when it comes to technology. Right? Because—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:23:30) I had a phone when, like, I was in middle school.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:32) See? Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting what five years will do. When you're posting your Instagram post, right, and that's clearly where you're the most active. Right? Over Snapchat, you find that Instagram has—your place. Looks like your hangout place.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:23:49) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:50) Now the age—what's the age of your audience? And what's, like, the comp—what does your audience look like? And I'll tell you, I was really interested because I started—I watched—I had another show right after Coding Blonde, but I flipped open the livestream for a minute or two. And I saw some, like, guys being tools, and I was like, "Oh, not cool." And I was like, that must suck for them. I guess they just ignore that. Right? And then, and so I was just kinda curious about what the makeup of your audience is. Is it 13-year-old females that wanna be programmers? Is it, like—a witch.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:24:25) No. My audience is actually 77% men.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:29) Yeah. That'll happen.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:24:30) Yep. In—

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:31) In the—in—the United—does it tell you about location?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:24:34) Yep. United States, then it goes India, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:40) That—you know, that's so interesting. That's my audience too.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:24:43) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:44) That's really how it goes. If you look at who listens to the podcast and stuff, that's about how it goes. Brazil's really always number two now. And then we get some Singapore in there too. Sometimes they bump up to number two. Now when you're planning your content, do you plan? Are you just like, "Oh, it's 2 PM. Let's do an Instagram post"?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:25:04) No. I plan it for the most part. Lately, I've been—like, I used to post a lot more, and then I sort of slowed down a little bit to make it a little more meaningful. It just depends. So—and I kind of go in spurts, but it's always planned. It's never like, "Oh, spur of the moment I'm gonna post something." It's usually pretty planned out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:24) Can I—I overstepped my balance? Can I—can I ask—first can I submit some content requests?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:25:31) Like what? Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:32) Yeah. Okay. I would like—so the heuristics that I learned as I got more involved, like, more mature in programming—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:25:41) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:41) —you know, started reading people like Martin Fowler and Sandi Metz and stuff like that. I wish I would have known those things kind of existed before. And so—may I—I would like to see influencers using their influence to create better programmers by making the habits that better programmers have attractive. So, for example, like, you know, tests are sexy. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:07) Because, like, nobody likes writing tests. It's like taking your vitamins. You know? Like, I would like to see—I would like to see positivity around the more difficult skills that the better programmers have so that the younger programmers kinda, like, see that and look up to and be like, "Oh, man. Yep. This person's writing tests. This person's not writing tests." And now we see Miss Brandy Morgan talk about writing tests. "All right. I guess this is the moment. This is the time I'm gonna start really getting into this." You know?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:26:36) No, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. We were actually just looking for, at the last company I was at, somebody that just literally was a QA engineer that just wrote tests because it's so hard to find.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:50) I'll show you some of the rocks to look under. Yeah. Did—yeah. I mean, engineers that are just writing tests, that's like—usually, they're going and doing it to, like, an application that didn't have tests. You'll have a big overhead to go apply tests to the latency or the older code. But yeah. So the sort of the heuristics about—and I'll—and I'll—and that's just a fancy word for, like, a way of doing things. But I'll send over, like, a list of them, maybe, like, you know, six or seven things that would be really, really good to promote because I'm always finding that in the developers that are coming to look for jobs, that I'm the one letting them know that these things exist. I'm, like, trying to hire for some of these skills, and they're not—it's not like a—it's not like a specific skill, per se, like a—like, knowing a language or knowing how to use a library or whatever. It's more of, like, an abstract concept of how to, like, structure your code in general, like, you know, the DRY, the don't repeat yourself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:50) Like, the DRY principle would be a good one to do.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:27:53) I'll just go out and talk about that. I've—yes. That's something so useful. I learned that from my old CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:58) Right? And wouldn't that be great for you to be, like, promoting in your channel so that these other programmers that you're influencing?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:28:04) And some of that stuff, you don't even think about. I love—I would love it if you would send me a list of that, actually. That's brilliant.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:09) I will, because I was—so I was like, "I'm gonna—you know, we got—we have Coding Blonde, you, we have Steph, and we have a couple other of the influencers on the show." And I was like, "I love these pictures. I love seeing the code. It's very artistic. Instagram's artistic." I just—I just wanna see, like, you know, on the screen, like, talk about DRY—like, you know, you put in the word doc, you know, "DRY principles" or something. Like, oh, that would just—it'd make me so happy.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:28:32) I will do it just for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:34) Oh, yeah. You know what? Right now, Brandy, right now, Brandy Morgan, we are changing the world.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:28:38) I know. We're gonna make better programmers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:41) Yeah. Because I sit here and I say, "Oh, I learned how to test from Sandi Metz. She's a female programmer that talks about bicycles a lot." And I learned how to really get into testing when I read her stuff because it was really logical. And, you know, you don't have to be the one to write the book on testing. You just have to be the one to say, "Go read Sandi Metz's book." You know? Right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:29:00) Yeah. It just sparked the idea with somebody.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:02) Have you ever had any really nasty projects that you had to rewrite, or most of the stuff that you did were things that you started fresh?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:29:09) Yeah. I mean, I was on a project with another developer. He was a senior level, and I was a junior at the time. And it was a new framework. I hadn't used it before. The deadline was—it was insane. It was like we had to build, like, three different apps in eight weeks, I think it was. And these were not, like, little apps. These were big apps. It was for a very big, large company. And I've put—I've actually done pictures of it on my Instagram. But—

(Brandy Morgan at 00:29:50) Not taking the time to read the docs as carefully as I needed to for the framework. I didn't understand that you could apply these React principles of being very modular with writing out these different components. And so I did have to go back and rewrite the whole thing and made it super modular based on his assessment of my code, which sucked. But in the end, I was actually so happy, and I was so excited that he showed that to me. And I felt like I had learned something so important, and I was so ecstatic about it.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:30:30) But yeah, that was kind of like that was probably the biggest thing I can remember because we were working until like two, three in the morning most nights on that project.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:41) You get the team all together drinking caffeine and whatnot?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:30:44) We did. We actually would stay. It was so funny. We stayed at the office until about 4 AM, and then they were flying me. I had to fly to New York City that next day for the application to be like their on-site tech lead.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:01) Oh, wow.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:31:03) And that was pressure because then I'm dealing with all these executives that do not understand programming or really anything tech related. And so that was, you know, having to make changes to the app while the app is in the hands of the users and pushing...

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:20) Yep.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:31:21) Pushing live. And it was very that was probably one of the most stressed. I loved it, though. I like high pressure situations, but it was very high pressure. It was a lot of fun, though. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:36) I had loaned out with this company where I was the lead on the project, and I was out in San Francisco. They were at a conference debuting the product, and we're sitting there having dinner the night before. And they just decided, oh, well, this one client's coming by the booth, and we have to have this very specific feature done for him. He's gonna be there at, you know, 10 AM. And it's, what, you know, 11 PM at night, and we're all having drinks and stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:03) They're like, Joel, you can whip that out really quick at like nine, right? And I'm like, I just, like, my face, my jaw just hit the floor. I was like, you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's like, you know, six, eight hours of work, this feature that I'm hearing about right now that needs to be done tomorrow morning at 10 AM. First time hearing about it. But I ended up just staying up the whole night in the hotel lobby and writing the code. It was amazing. But we got it done, and they were very, very pleased. And I slept and did not attend the conference.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:32:38) Oh, no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:40) Yeah. But it's like...

(Brandy Morgan at 00:32:40) Moments like that, they feel so good when you're done. You feel so accomplished.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:46) I did. They bought, this is right like the month the iPad came out. And they went down the street and bought me an iPad and came in and knocked on my door with some hotel room service at like two or three in the afternoon and an iPad. And they're just like, here we go. Thanks for staying up all night and taking care of that for us. And they got the client. So...

(Brandy Morgan at 00:33:06) Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. I like that. That's a great story.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:10) Oh yeah. I've, I am no stranger to like having to deal with last minute business needs that somebody is just like, oh, you're so good at what you do, Joel. That should just take you an hour. And I'm like, oh, okay. Thanks. Like, yep. Why don't you come show me exactly how I can do it in an hour? That would be very helpful. Alright. So with the, you have the influence. Brandy Morgan has the power on Instagram. You're focusing there instead of Snapchat. You're changing the world with your positivity, you and both Josh, who sounds like an excellent human. Right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:33:49) He's wonderful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:50) And you guys have your new business, and you picked up your previous employer as a client, which is honestly super fantastic. I'm very proud of that move. I love how you guys show love to everybody, and that's kind of like your motto for how you run your business because it will matter in twenty years. Right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:34:11) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:11) It matters today, but it will really matter in twenty years because I'll be like, oh yeah, Brandy Morgan, she's on my show like twenty years ago. She's totally Jay-Z baller status.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:34:19) Exactly. It's like I always say it'll be fun to see like where we're at in our business in even the next two years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:26) Yeah. And are you headquartered, so you're doing, do you have a physical location, or are you guys all remote in Orlando?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:34:31) At the moment, we are all remote. We have three of us here in Orlando, one in Dallas, but we're probably going to get office, like just coworking space somewhere here. And as we grow, we would just set up different coworking spaces in whichever cities we needed to. But for right now, we are kind of looking for a more remote culture. But that could really change because remote can be difficult, especially in the early days when you're trying to really get that camaraderie around a team and around an effort.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:05) I agree. It's also remote gets better as you pay a lot more. Right? So the remote people that you're paying like serious dollars to, they are a lot more stable and consistent than when you're trying to, you know, get started on a lean budget like any business should be doing. Right?

(Brandy Morgan at 00:35:25) Yeah. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:27) Well, I hope that we run into each other at a conference one of these days. We'll see each other, high five, talk some programming, or talk some, we'll talk some motivation and management. That's what we'll do.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:35:38) Let's do it. I like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:39) You seem like you're gonna kill it. You're gonna be like the Tony Robbins of pumping up people for programming, and I love it.

(Brandy Morgan at 00:35:48) Yeah. That's the goal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:56) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.