Ep. 14: Navigating Non-Tech to Tech: Bobby D's Journey in Engineering and Diversity Advocacy

We've got an absolute powerhouse episode for you this week on Big Tech Energy. Our special guest, Bobby D, brings almost two decades of tech expertise and an inspiring journey to the table. From building clusters for hurricane prediction to revolutionizing diversity at Twitter, his insights are a goldmine for anyone in the tech industry.

Let's dive into the 5 keys that you'll learn from this episode:

1. Diversity & Inclusion: Hear from Bobby D about his groundbreaking initiatives to support and welcome black engineers at Twitter, and the impact it had on the company.

2. Continuous Learning: Discover how Bobby D defied the odds, climbing the tech ladder without a college degree, and the importance of staying ahead in the ever-evolving tech field.

3. Emerging Technologies: Get the scoop on Bobby D's excitement for AI, blockchain, visual technology, and cloud computing, and why cybersecurity is more critical than ever.

4. Prompt Engineering: Bobby D breaks down the potential game-changer in the AI industry and the importance of positioning yourself for success.

5. Personal Growth: Learn about Bobby D's upcoming motivational book and gain insight into overcoming limitations to achieve your greatest potential.

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Transcript

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Take your notes, stay tuned, and soak up this big tech energy. Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Jared albritten of the big tech energy podcast, where we highlight all black excellence in tech. And I have an amazing, amazing guest, Bobby D, in the building, host of the tech Hustle podcast, and he has a dope, dope, dope bio that I'm not going to steal the thunder of. So, Bobby D, thanks for being on the show, and I'd love for you to introduce yourself to the audience. What's good? What's good? Jared, thank you for inviting me. As mentioned, my name is Bobby D. My real name is Bobby Dorless, but my friends call me Bobby D. So I hope when I see in the streets, you say, what's up? Now, a little bit about me. I've been in the field of technology engineering for almost 20 years now. Two decades. I started way back in 2002, and I just actually wrapped up a really cool career working at this social media company. I don't know if you know it. It's the one with the little blue bird. You ever heard of that one before? The blue bird? That sounds familiar. Is there, like, some famous billionaire that. Yeah, that guy bought Twitter, aka Elon Musk and low key. I was out there for a decade and actually got out before all that stuff went down. Definitely keeping my ears on the streets and understand how these things move. But my skill sets really focus on systems engineering, but also a software engineer. So I actually have two proficiencies that I actually able to really work at a high level. And one of the things that I also like to remind or tell people about in terms of my journey working at Twitter is I actually worked and was the team lead for what you can describe as, like, twitter's AWS or GCP or cloud platform. So we basically manage all of the cloud services that runs hundreds of thousands of computers all over the world. And I was a team lead there. Y'all didn't even know I was back there holding it long. Yeah, man, you're the glue holding it together for sure. That's good stuff, man. So when it comes to your role, a lot of people outside of tech might not be familiar with the site reliability engineer. For those that want to learn more about it, how would you describe that role? And then how'd you get started? Yeah, so site reliability engineering, just as it's described. Site reliability. So our main focus is keeping the site up. That's kind of like the punchline, right? But we are one of those group of engineers that know how majority of all of it works, from the hardware data center, operating systems applications, to actually the client applications on your device. And our role and responsibility is make sure that the user experience is maintained at the level that we agree upon, like 99.9% of the time. And the reason why I bring this up is that most people always think that Twitter and applications are up 100% of the time. They're never up 100%. There has to be some wiggle room for us to break things and so that we can actually iterate in the system. And that's one of the foundational things that site reliability engineers focus on is implementing practices around system design, software design, and also being that resource for if something breaks, we usually know how to fix it or help coordinate the efforts to fix it. The team that I worked on, we had site outages where all of Twitter went down. And I can recall a number of incidents where the person they're looking at or looking for is me. Right. And the whole world didn't even know about that. It was me that actually provided that support. I actually have a chapter in a book that I'm working on. The book is titled breaking Barriers my journey to top of Tech. And one of the chapters is called the world knows me, but you all don't know me yet, because I can recall one time in 2019 where the site was actually down and I was actually the engineer that typed in the command to fix it. And I told everybody, yo, turn on CNN real quick, and five minutes later, Twitter is back up and running. So it's like that type of endeavors that site reliability engineers have the responsibility to ensure that the site is up and also have the skill sets to kind of put it all together, leading efforts and so on and so forth. So my journey really, if we go all the way back. So I didn't start tech until about 2002. I'm a first generation haitian American. Big shout out to all my ieseas out there. I'm originally from down here in south Florida. I'm up in Palm beach, but I don't have a college degree. That's like, how in the world can you work at a company ten years and leading teams without a college degree? What that means is, if I can do it, you can definitely do it, too. And that's like, one thing that I wanted to emphasize with your listeners and anybody that tunes in. Now, without that, that means my route to the top. I had to take the scenic route. There was no elevator, there was no plug, there was no connect. I need to start at the bottom and work myself up and starting at the bottom actually really required me to do more customer service type support, like at the help desk, level two, application support, and then eventually moving into systems engineering. Now, once I made the shift into systems engineering, this is like designing computers in a way that we don't have failure in our environment. If one application is running on one computer, we have to design it away so that you have the application running in two places. So if one of them breaks, and that's kind of what systems engineering skill sets come into play, not just understanding systems, but understanding hardware, operating systems, kernels, new features, and then eventually iterating. So after I've developed that skills as a systems engineer, working at places like South Florida Water Management District, which is state, local government, and actually citrus systems right down the street right over here, I worked there for about two years, managing their data center infrastructure. And then I got the phone call. I got drafted at Twitter, and I was out in 2013. But I also developed more skills once I got to Twitter, not just around systems engineering, but software engineering. And soon as I did that, Jared changed the game for me, because now my mindset was automating myself out of a job. Like anything that I had to do, manual, any software that I had to manage. Automate, automate, automate. And learning that skill set really took me to that next level. And I built up that proficiency working in an environment like Twitter because I was learning from experts. Right. One thing that I like to remind people as they're learning, getting into this field is to be okay with reading other people's code to figure out how this stuff works. One of the biggest challenges my mentees have are trying to figure this stuff out, trying to learn. And we actually work in an industry where we play in a playground that everybody has access to. It's called GitHub. If you have access to GitHub, you have access to the source of so much code that you should be able to develop those skill sets, but you got to have that passion and interest to go develop it. I wish I had that starting back in 2002. Right? This is like the access to any type of information you have. And now with AI, which we'll talk about later, but it's just opening up for our people to really embrace this idea that you may not need a four year college degree, I'm not putting them down, but you still need some supplemental education, even afterwards, to continue to develop those skills. So that's how know started off at the bottom and worked my way up to being able to work at Twitter for a number of years. Yeah. One thing I don't want people to miss is one of the companies you worked for before Cisco wasn't a traditional tech company, but you had a tech role for sure. And that's something that I just want people that are outside of tech to understand that you can be at a non tech company and have a tech role. How were you able to acquire that role? Yeah. So that non tech role was actually state, local government working for the South Florida water management district. So if you're in South Florida, and I mean from maybe Okeechobee down to the keys, we have something called the lake right in the middle of the state. Right. But we need to be able to control the water flow, how much water we have out west, like the bellglade areas I'm talking about, know, coral Springs, those areas, like on the edge of the Everglades, is a organization that basically manages the water flow down in South Florida. And that organization, South Florida water Management District, needed to have computing resources to help statistical analysis on rainfall. So another thing that they do is also do predictions and hurricanes. So one thing that a lot of people don't know is that the prediction software runs on hyperscale clusters. It's not like just one computer that you put in a few numbers and it generates a map and says, hey, this is the direction of the hurricane and or the impact of how much water could flow or fall in the lake and what we would have to do with it. But you have to manage and build these large clusters to run these models. So that's where I actually came into play, where I actually built one of the first compute clusters for the South Florida water Management District. That is basically the workhorse behind doing those statistical modeling. I know it doesn't sound like a techie job where you're building something, where it's an app or building something where customers are going to log into. But just think of the skill sets that we bring to the table as helping with those type of decisions, using machine learning, computing power data to make decisions, and generating those in a way that executives can make those decisions. So that's kind of where it's not a techie, know, Citrix systems or Google or Facebook type thing or Twitter, but it's definitely an organization where I learned the most hands down. When I first got to the South Florida management district, I actually had two technical mentors that had a little difficulties, me being young, black, ambitious, very outgoing. And eventually, I worked them over, but they really just opened my minds up into how I can sharpen my skill sets around systems engineering and really start to help develop great systems that the state still uses now today. And that's outside of tech in the sense of the use case for it. Yeah, no, I'm glad you broke it down like that. Just to open people's minds up that you don't have to just go for the Google's and the Microsoft's, et cetera. Look at government, look at healthcare, look at all different kind of companies. Visa, Mastercard, they all have huge tech organizations and opportunities. If you're at a non tech company, look to see are there tech roles there? And if you can transfer us also real quick, I think you might have brought it up, but just in case you didn't, where did you learn your first initial skills to get you sharp enough to at least get that first job? Yeah. So I was one of those kids that my parents used to hate buying me toys because I was one of those kids that used to take things apart. I remember the first time I got a remote controlled car and it was wireless. I was like, how in the world? Last Christmas I got one that had a wire and this one had no wire. Let me take that. I found my dad's screwdriver, Phillips head flathead. I popped that thing open just to see what this light does and try to understand how this stuff works. That's like foundational to me in terms of what drove me to want to learn this stuff, because I want to know how it works. Like, how does our audio goes through this wire here into a computer? And it's generating. Right, like, I want to know. And that's like, mindset wise, something that I've carried since I was a child. When I graduated high school, I had one of those haitian families like, oh, you need to be a doctor, lawyer. You need to go do this. I was a c student, chasing girls, having fun, whatever. But I always knew that I had passion for technology and engineering, and those were not the things that I was passionate about. So I decided to go to a technical school, which was up in West Palm beach called Palm Beach Tech, or I'm sorry, Palm Beach, New England Tech. New England tech of the palm beaches. I apologize. And that school offered just a two year program focused on certifications. Because what I found out when I first got in is that everybody's trying to get into the industry at the same time, but how can I develop something that I can take to a job and say, hey, I have the skills quiz. Me, but I don't have a degree. But with the certification, it still gave me clout enough for me to have a real intellectual conversation. And then once I get in the conversation, all it is is just, I got to figure out how to get you where I got to go type stuff, right, because I've always been a talker. But the thing that really just catapulted my career is when I pursued a certification called the red hat certified engineer. Now, this certification is not just a test where you say a, b or c type stuff, but you actually have to show your work. The exam requires you to fix a computer. They give you a list that says, hey, these are the parameters you need to complete within an hour. If you complete them, thumbs up if you don't, try again. Right. And red hat really developed this test so that we in the industry can weed out people that actually really understand what's going on, so that we don't have to go through entry level type questions. We're going to really just talk to you about high level questions and with the certification that gives you that type of access. And that certification shot me right to the stars, because most companies, especially if they're Internet companies, are running on an operating system called Linux. One of the most common operating system is red hat or Sentos or Ubuntu. And at the time, I was really into Red Hat Linux. So that was the certification path that I pursued. And once I was able to put that two and two together, it just changed my opportunities and the doors opened up. College degree didn't even matter anymore, even when I went to work for Citrix. Yeah, man, I appreciate you breaking that down because, yeah, at the end of the day, if you don't have a college degree, there are paths to get into. Tech certifications are key, but just be intentional about the ones that you get. Find the role that you actually want. Find your. Why be curious? That's been a common thing across the guests for sure. What led them to their path is they had an extreme curiosity. And that curiosity shows like a deep level of interest, which will also propel you to be number one, effective at your interview, and then more effective once you get the job, because you're not just doing it for the tech money or for the tech cloud. Back in the day, there was no tech cloud, but the money was always good. Yeah, but at the end of the day, you got to have something bigger than just the money or the status to actually perform really well. For sure. You had skeptical, I guess, supervisors initially, that's going to happen and how you power through it is because you really wanted to learn and you really, really wanted to execute. You provided great results, which is how you got to where you are, for sure. There's a saying that I tell my mentees when I'm telling them about pursuing a passion. I know the bags are out there, but the key thing is if you pursue your passion, the bags will follow. And that's the thing that I have lived off of for a long time. And I'm not complaining about the bags that showed up at my house because the skill set that I've developed surpasses anything. And I actually have a line that I say in some talks that I give because I also speak on stage doing public speaking. And I like to remind people that the knowledge you gain is the real asset. That's the real asset. Any company you go to, that's the asset. The knowledge you learn, because they can't take it back when you leave. When I go to my next job, guess what? Oh, I remember when I did it over there. Guess what? That's the asset. So keep building up that as your asset and the money will follow, for sure. All right. And think of yourself as a brand, too, for sure. Yeah. You were at Twitter, but your brand is, you know, and wherever Bobby D goes, you get Bobby D's brand, and you also get your knowledge. Yes, sir. So don't feel like your company is your identity. Your identity is you. And how you show up within the organization is going to create opportunities in the future because people remember not what you say, but how you make them feel. And if you are somebody that made people feel less anxious because they knew you had the wheel as a site liability engineer, they go to another company. You can easily go there. I want to throw that out there as well. Yeah. But let's talk a little bit more about Twitter. All right. So you started Twitter in 2013 13? Yeah, I remember. Let's see. When did Black Twitter pop up? Black Twitter popped up. 2009. Yeah, black Twitter was already popping by the time I got to Twitter, but. Yeah, that was a magical time. I remember living in New York and when Twitter popped up and it was just like, man, I can see and hear what's going on everywhere. But, yeah, 2013 to 2022 23, what was your journey like? And then also, from a diversity inclusion standpoint, how did you fit in at Twitter? And then how did you work to help others that look like us feel comfortable fitting in and helping Twitter support our community? For sure. I really appreciate that question because one thing that most people don't know about being an employee at Twitter is the struggles that we really went through. When I started Twitter in 2013, I'm getting my first job. I'm Silicon Valley. My blinders are on. I don't care what's going on. Let me go show these cats what I'm worth, right? Because first of all, I came in a little lower than they thought. But after working there for a year, my blinders start coming off, and I'm like, yo, I don't see nobody that looks like me. Who do I talk to about where I got to get a haircut and the best restaurants, like, what moves? And I was like, dang, this is really scarce out here. And it didn't really impact me until I took those blinders off and really have control of what I'm working on. And now it's time for me to make this next level of impact. I can remember during that time that there was about five black engineers at most. Chris Coco, Robert Griffin is another dude, and then a few others, and that's it. But the key thing was that at that point in time, Twitter was making that evolution to embrace the idea of, our customers are driving the product. Why don't we have people that look like our customers, also developing the product? And we just ran with that. That's when an ERG group called Blackbirds. I'm not sure if you've heard of them. I have. But we basically reignited that in 2015, one of the founding members to reignite it. But big shout outs to that organization, because it made a deep imprint into what value system people of color brings to an organization, not just from flashy outside, but just internally in terms of knowledge and skill sets. And not only did we create a blackbirds, reignite the Blackbirds group for all Twitter engineers or all Twitter employees, but we also created a black engineering at Twitter Group so that we had a place for if you got hired as a black engineer or a person of color. We already knew. We were at the first orientation. We was over there waving you down. We was telling you to pull up and just giving you that feeling of welcome home type thing. It changed everybody's mind. I'll tell you a quick story. So the first two black interns that we hired at Twitter was a mission that we actually really was focused on, because the hiring pipeline, unfortunately, was just overflowed with the common group of individuals that pursue this field of technology and engineering. And myself and a few other black engineers were like, yo, we know we have the skill sets. You all just not looking in the right place. So they finally found two very bright black engineers to come into an internship program. And what we did was we devised a way for their first experience to be one that they will never forget. So once they got hired, they came in for their first day. Their first day consists of know to something called a flight school, learning how to write code, learning how to do the way we do it at Twitter, but also an opportunity for you to meet mentors and coaches, or ergs. So we set up a special lunch for them that they didn't even know. And I was one of those that was going to kind of find them in the lunchroom and say, hey, come and pull over and hang over here with us. So when I first, one thing about me, I'm a very extrovert. When I used to walk in the lunchroom, and I'm not trying to talk too much shit, but I'm a little talking shit. It's like high school time. You walk in, everybody's giving. Dapping you up and whatever. So when I pull up to the lunchroom and it's all open floor, everybody's whatever. And I see these two cats, and they look long, they look bewildered. They're like, oh, my God, what's going on? One of them is like six five, so he looks like he balls, so you can't miss him, right? And then my guy Chris Coco was like, yo, there they are. I was like, all right, I'm going to go get them. And I walk up to them, and one of them catches me. And I had my Miami heat hat on. I had my jordans on. I was looking clean, fresh, and then he was like, yo. And I was like, yo, what's good? And it was like. And I was like, yo, I'm Bobby d. He was like, you, Bobby d? I dapped him up, and soon as I dapped him up, his shoulders went from down, and I'm like, that's what I'm talking about. I heard there's another intern. Where's he at? Babetunde. There he is over there. Yo, what's up? Dap him up. And they gave each other that look like the nod, like, this is the dude changed their minds. And the key thing here is for them to feel welcome, for them to feel like they can flourish here. Their manager was one of our only black engineering managers that they reported to. We gave them a path for them to feel like they're home. And let me tell you what that opened up in terms of success. Intern to. Now, one of them is a principal engineer. Intern. Principal engineer. Right. Another one from intern to a CEO of his own company. Right? And it all starts off from that first engagement to let him know, hey, you got it. You're here. Don't worry about it. We got your back. We're all in the same slack room. What up? Type stuff, right? And just give him that vibe and that feeling. And it's something that over the years, I found out that making people feel like that actually allows them to be more creative. And the environment that I worked in, I couldn't work in an environment where I felt like an imposter because I wouldn't been able to excel. Right. Soon as I got into Twitter and they say, hey, be yourself. Wear your jordans, wear your hat. I remember interviewing and I said, don't wear a suit. I was like, oh, this might be the place for me type stuff. As soon as I got over there and I seen how they move, I was like, y'all really want me to be Bobby D, y'all? Sure. All right, then let's turn the knob up. And I just really was over there just changing people's mindsets, doing it. They didn't even know it was happening. So much so that when I finally left Twitter in about 2022, I couldn't count on the hands how many black engineers we had. I couldn't count on my hand how many black engineering managers we had. I couldn't count on how many hands we had in sales and marketing. It was like a movement that I was sitting back and I'm not a hands on because I like to sit back and watch it grow, plant seeds and watch it grow. It was one of the greatest work I've done and definitely going to be a chapter in my book for sure. But it can happen. As long as you are in the right position and you have the right spirit behind it, you definitely can help influence other people's lives and really change the mindsets of those that sit on the other side of the table that don't understand. Because one other thing that I like to also remind people is, like, whenever I got new managers or new people that got acquainted to me, there was no doubtedly an imprint that I left on them. So much so that you said when people go to another company, they want you to come along. You know how many people's been holl at me to come through, right? And it's just because of that mindset and being able to not just kill it at the keyboard, but also interpersonal skills and help people develop and be mindful of their biases. Why couldn't we hire that young black engineer? Oh, because they said this when we interviewed you. You didn't say that. And that's the type of things that I used to do all the time to just open up everybody's minds and who we can have come into our organization. And people flourish when you give them that opportunity. And I definitely saw the impact of blackbirds just on Twitter. Twitter spaces, things of that. Unfortunately, things happen. But to build that up and to have such an organization that does embrace diversity or whatever. So when it comes to, I guess, your career at Twitter or your career in general, what was the biggest thing that you feel made you successful and elevate from role to roll, tier to tier, beyond your interpersonal. Yeah, yeah. So one thing that I always like to tell just anybody that's interested in getting into this field is this stuff changes faster than you can learn it. What I mean by that is technology iterates and the iteration is we're going to make it better, we're going to make it simpler, we're going to stracked away all that hard stuff that you had to learn. We're going to make it even easier. All you need is a library or a framework, right? And as we're moving up the stack in terms of just those type of implementations we have in place, one of the key things I like to remind people is you need to love to learn. If you don't love to learn, this ain't the game for you. If you don't love to have an interest in figuring out how things work to the next level. That's what made me even more appealing to organizations, is that I would always take it to another level. I'm like, yeah, I know it does this, but let's figure out what else it does. Click that button and go deeper. Let's go deeper and find out what that. Because then that just broadens the scope of what you're able to talk on and be fluent on. And I do have scenarios where people do not love to learn. They say, hey, I'm always going to run and I'm going to say a system that's really old, a vax system. Vax is like as 400. You ever see those terminals where it's green and black and you go to, that's like an old Vax system. I remember I was working with somebody, it was like, vax is never going away. I'm always going to have a job. Five years later, yo, I need an opportunity. I was like, but you didn't want to learn any of this stuff. Now you're playing catch up because you didn't continue to iterate. You have to continue to iterate. Everything that I worked on five years ago is deprecated, gone. The next technology, I mean, look at what AI is doing. Imagine if you don't keep up with this, you're going to get left behind. Yeah, the train is leaving the track for sure. It's either going to get on the train or get left behind, like you said. So let's talk about that. In terms of what's next in tech, what are the new trends that you're really diving into? Really excited about. Yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. So technology is really like, it's amazing where we are because I tell stories about being a child that grew up in the 80s where cassette players used to be our technology. CD Roms, DVDs. Right. That era of time has long passed to where we are now, where I carry a computer in my pocket. It's not a phone, it's a computer. Right. And it's just continued to iterate and continue to evolve. So if I think of, like, technologies that is lit AI top of the list, blockchain. And I say blockchain, not the cryptocurrency, but I'm talking about blockchain to technology. And just a quick plug about that. The key thing about blockchain, the technology is that it's a distributed database that anybody can access anywhere in the world and anything that's written in it is, right. You don't have to question it. Right. And it makes it consistent. Soon as you have that technology and really take advantage of it, you're going to disrupt a lot of industries, from court systems to buying a home. What's the title company do? Guess what? You can do that now to recording grades. It's really just a system that if I had it years ago, I could have changed so many things. Right. And we're unfortunately getting caught up in the currency side of it rather than the technology. So that's why I'm focused on the technology. Another one that I think is really going to be popping is visual. I think the era that we live in, where we look at our phone is going to be evolved into. We're looking, our heads are always up in a parallel state. Now what is that? Either some lens, either some media ways of us being able to see things, but in general, I think that's a technology or a realm that's going to really blow up. I know that the headsets that meta makes and those different type of products, but they're still pivoting and going in a direction where I think like experiencing virtual reality and reality in the sense of once I put my lens on, this room could look totally different, but it's still a room. Right. And then I have access to all those things that I have on my device through this interface. So that's something that I'm also keeping an eye on. So those are the three main tech fields. And then, sorry, in cloud computing, anything in cloud computing from AWS, GCP, Azure, and just really devising a way, and this is kind of maybe even talking about a product I'm working on, is to unify the interface between all of these different providers because that's one of the challenges we have in our industry because it's just so much. Yeah. So if you all were wondering what industries, technologies and roles you should probably get into, check into those, and then obviously cybersecurity as well. For sure. Yeah. Security is not going to go anywhere. You need it regardless. It's always going to be there. If you're good at it, you'll always have a job. So, yeah, let's talk about AI a bit. When it comes to AI, what are you excited about and why is it so important for our listeners to really get into prompt engineering and understanding how to use AI for their day to day task or to know get their business to the next level? Yeah, you mentioned a role that I was actually on. IG and I seen somebody else mention it, I'm like, yes, you all saying the right words, prompt engineering. So a mentee asked me online. They were like, hey, software engineers are going to be gone in five years. What do we have to start doing? And I said two to three things. One is that we need to start being a test driven development organization, right? It's like we need to write tests that somebody, either an AI or a person, is going to write software to pass this test. So that's test driven development. The other one is prompt engineering. Our life experience is actually what the currency is going to be. Our ability to explain or ask a question in a way that the AI can interpret in terms of experience is going to be very valuable. Now, prompt engineering is basically structuring a way for you to have this AI understand the subject matter that you're talking about or answer a specific question, and it's based on a prompt. Now, how does prompt engineering change? The game is when I start to use your prompt and use my prompts, right? It's like, hey, Jared, what prompts do you use? Dang. You use these. How much are those prompts? That's where a new currency comes up. Your experience in creating your prompts, and now you're able to sell those. So when we're talking about where this industry is going in for prompt engineering, I know a lot of organizations are creating roles, but we as individuals, also need to position ourselves so that we can structure our knowledge in terms of the prompt engineering and making that an asset that we also sell out in terms of intellectual property or copywriting type stuff. I think that lane is opening up, so we should, in terms of our community, start familiarizing ourselves with these different technologies and getting ourselves positioned to be able to execute when the door opens. Yeah, man. So we could nerd out on technology all day, but I want to ask you about hashtag, the tech hustle. I appreciate you. Yeah, man. Tell me about the tech hustle community. What is it about? And if people tap into it, what will they? Sure. For sure. So, actually, one of our first encounters that we met each other was on Twitter spaces, where I was finally making a transition out of Twitter and really just trying to focus on a brand, a movement that reflects my mindset and what I feel like our community needs. The tech hustle is something that I've always wanted to spend some time and focus on community outreach, from doing mentoring, coaching, teaching webinars, and just trying to get this knowledge that I have out to our community as best as possible. So following along the hashtag, what you're going to find is the different type of engagements that I'm involved in, like speaking on podcasts as such, shout out to big tech energy, but also all over the world, because I travel and do speaking engagements, and it's more or less just a centralized place for us to congregate and really just get on this hustle. It's framing itself as a kind of like iterating from a community to a podcast to maybe even eventually a software company that really been manifesting that. And our first phase in terms of a podcast is just having an environment like this where we can really just talk some ish. I say some people that look like me understand, right? And that's what I want to do, is create a community so I can connect with the right people that are looking for this information. And that's what you're going to find by following along. Our podcast is three black engineers, myself and my cousin and my brother in law. Actually, all three of us are in tech, and we all been doing it for 20 plus years. And our goal here is just to more or less give everybody the feeling of how they can fill their abilities and uplift them and motivate them based on our stories and experiences that we have. Also to the side of that, in terms of just the brand, the tech hustle. I have a book that I'm working on, two books. One is called beyond or breaking the barriers, my journey to tech. Another motivational book that I have is you are greater than they could ever have imagined. And it's actually preference to be a TED talk and then evolving into a book, and then also have some materials around education wise, like, what's it mean to be an SRE, what skills you need to develop as software engineers? Like starting at the low level on just working up from operating systems to kernels, like really just giving you all the game as much as I can, a system design, talking about that stuff, understanding, caching, infrastructure and why do you need it and stuff like that. And just that's what's all compass in that community is that type of movement and that type of knowledge that we're trying to give. So, yeah, big ups. I appreciate you shouting us out and look forward to continuing to working with you. Absolutely, man. So when it comes to the book, the motivational one in particular, like big tech energy, obviously, there's play on words, but energy is a big thing for me in terms of how the people I know in the space that are black, that are killing in tech, they have a certain energy about them, like a mindset of solving problems, a mindset of adding value to people proactively adding value, the ability to think big. Also go deep and be curious. There's so many different things, but then it's also about how you deal with adversity, how you deal with layoffs, how you deal with crappy bosses, all kinds of stuff, right? People throwing you under the bus, whatever the case is, what can people get out of that book from the mindset perspective and what motivated you to write it? Yeah. So the book you're referring to is you are greater than they could ever have imagined. You are greater. So as you is capitalized and they are capitalized first we have focus on you is identifying and you appreciating you, your being here, your abilities, right. Looking inward before you look outwards. So I have a line that I say I want to believe in myself before I believe and beyond, right? Believe in myself before I believe, beyond me. And the key thing here is that me having self confidence, having this feeling like, yeah, I'm the only one in here and I'm killing it, I'm going to do it, right. And not feel anything less than that is really honing that in. And then the second part of that is they. So who is they? You are greater than they. You are greater than what your mom and dad can think of. You are greater than what your siblings ever think of. Your relatives, your teachers. You're greater than what your boss can even imagine. The owner of the company can't even imagine how great you are, right. It's really just embracing the idea that don't allow other people's inabilities to prevent you from achieving what you can achieve, right? Because mentors sometimes give you guidance, but if you don't have the right mentor, they can also be the ones that hold you back. Right? And those mentors or those people could be your family members, and you don't even know because they're afraid of something and you're fearless. Go and chase it. You are greater than they. And that's the line of, or the kind of connection point that I'm making inside of this book is like, really embracing how you can achieve great things. Because if I didn't believe in myself, I wouldn't be out in these streets doing this, right? If I didn't believe my impact could really change people's lives, because I've seen it happen before and I allow someone else's experience to influence mine, then you all wouldn't see me out here. So that's why this idea of this book is just more or less, number one, reflecting our community. Because I like to reflect. When I talk about me being a light, it's like I want my light to reflect back. So when I'm reflecting at you, I want to reflect back. That's why I'm out here shining so bright. You get what I'm saying? I get it. And in general, that's what that mindset of the book is really just uplifting our community. Awesome. And then the first book you mentioned remind me of the title. The first book is breaking the barriers. My journey to the top in tech. Got it. So what can readers expect when they read that? Yeah, that one's going to be like getting down to how it all started, right? We briefly talked about my journey from working at the help desk to becoming a systems engineer to eventually getting to Twitter, working as a site reliability engineer. Let me fill in all those blanks with the books and great stories, right? I'm somebody that enjoys speaking, so you can imagine that I can really get something going inside of a book, but it's really going to be able to start from journey. As a first generation haitian American growing up in this country, English is not my first language. My parents, shit, if they didn't come to this country, they wouldn't even have met because they were from two parts of different points in the island. And just ultimately taking you to the story where I'm at right now, pursuing the tech hustle and all the acclimates that I've achieved in the past. So it's like letting you know, like, yeah, you're going to be in rooms that you're the only one. I've been in there a number of times. And I'll tell you a quick story in the book. So I talk about getting over imposter syndrome and how I used to make it a funny thing because I had this incident that happened one time I was in a meeting, and it was a meeting of people that I didn't know and they weren't familiar with me. But the meeting wouldn't start until the engineer was in the room. I was in the room the whole time. I didn't understand what was going on. I'm like, hey, I'm ready to start the meeting. And the director says, hey, we're waiting for the engineer to get here. And I'm like, I've been here. Wow. And I'm like, what? It's talking about those type of stories and dealing with that and overcoming it. To the point that that same director, years later, came back and said that moment changed his life because he looked at me differently and he couldn't see what I was capable of doing. Hands down, those type of moments are things that I'll be bringing in the book and also, obviously, talking about tech, because I love talking about tech. Amazing. You got a lot of dope stuff coming on, man. I'm really glad we got a chance to chop it up and obviously document it for the sure. For sure. Yeah, man. So when it comes to what else is next for you? Yeah, what else do you want to highlight? Yeah. So what's next for me? So, actually, I got invited to speak on stage in London this year. Nice. So one thing that I enjoy doing, and this is another plug for motivational mindset rise, is writing down what you really want. So two years ago, if you go look at my journal, I used to write at the end of whatever I wrote for the day, what did I want to manifest? Speaking on stages around the world about my influence in tech. And I get to pull that off in June. So I actually spoke at this conference in New York a year ago, and it's called lead Dev. It's an organization or conference that's tailored for senior level engineers. So that's like staff and principal engineers, distinguished engineers. And the goal is for those type of tech leads to kind of get some influences and understanding how they can build their teams and make their more effective teams. So the talk that I'm giving in London is going to be called unmasking impostors by debugging doubt. And the key thing here is for us to know that collectively as a team, where we're putting too much burden on an individual to get over imposter syndrome. Let me show you how we did at Twitter. We flipped, and I said, yo, team, y'all know they don't know what that is. Let's talk about it even more. Let's dive more, let's get more. Let's make sure that they nod in their head like that rather than in their laptop trying to shy away. Right? It's just bringing out that imposter by debugging your doubt by us working as a collective team to create a space for you. So that's what I'm going to be talking about on stage. And then also, there's a company that I've done some partnership with is codepath.org. It's a nonprofit that provides supplemental education to underrepresented college students, really focusing on web security and more or less tech preparation. And I provide support in the career center. So if you sign up for codepath, you might actually get me on my calendar or get on my calendar. And we have one on one conversations about how to prepare. These are the type of questions we ask. These are why we ask these questions. And then we'll also do some webinars and coaching sessions for them, too. But codepath is definitely something I hope your audience get a chance to check out. And big shout outs to the career center out there. So that's kind of my focus. And I'm always doing other stuff. I mean, my list continues to go. I'm out here these next three years just trying to outreach, community outreach, mentoring, coaching, and then eventually I'll get back at the keyboard one day. You're making impact. And that's why I wanted you to be on the show, so that people could see your energy. It's got a hell of energy. I appreciate you. I appreciate that hustle. You already know. And the chain is out, too. Don't forget, kicks is fly, you know what I'm saying? For sure. And that's the thing. If you're looking at this podcast, just know that you can be authentically black, you can be authentically yourself, and just really focus on first being valuable, being irreplaceable. And once you're there, people will listen because you have that leverage. And also they see you and they believe that there's others like you out there because you're an example of excellence. I appreciate you, my brother. So before I wrap it up, I want you to just let the audience know all the different ways that they can follow you and stay in touch with you and purchase your books. All that jazz. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's easy to find us on the Internet, right? Doing a little quick query, but bobbydorlas.com, that's bobydorlus.com. Thetechhustle.com. So it's T-H-E. Thetechhustle.com. We'll throw it in the bottom, definitely. Spell it out for Spotify and everybody else. So, thetechustle.com. So it's T-H-E-T-E-C-H-U-S-T-L-U-L-E. Whatever the way it's actually spelled. Actually, I was going to do like Nipsey with the hustle with us s type stuff, but I was like, but anyways, those are the two mediums or two links that you can mostly find me on. I'm on IG, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. Obviously, I'm on Twitter. I mean, me and Twitter has some love hate relationship right now. I'm on blue sky now, so I'm over there holding it down. Me, too. But in general, you can always find me under Bobby D. Underscore fl, and I'll be out there. I'm trying to figure out how to get this stuff out. I mean, I'm one of those that sometimes I'm, like, looking at my followers and I'm like, dang, I only got 100. I got a massive story. I got some work to do. So I'm always working on this and continue to iterate. Just follow along, and I guarantee you won't be disappointed because I'm dropping gems. Can't be afraid to pick them up. Yeah. And that's one thing I want to emphasize to people. Don't get caught up in how many followers people have. Actually. Look at their LinkedIn, look at their substance. There's a lot of gems from folks that don't necessarily need to be out there. Care to be out there, but Bobby D. Definitely should be out there. So let's make sure you follow him. I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Holler, your boy is Bobby. And check out his podcast. You know what I'm saying? Definitely subscribe to the podcast and stay in tune with what they're doing over there for sure. I appreciate you, Jared. Well, thank you for coming on the. Show, my brother, always. And I want to thank all the audience for listening in and watching on YouTube, et cetera. Definitely make sure to share this episode with anybody in your network. A lot of inspiration, a lot of gems around different opportunities in tech, and also how to impact diversity and inclusion within any tech organization. Definitely make sure to subscribe to the channels, follow like, comment, share, you know, help that algorithm, and yeah, definitely tune into future episodes. If you want to get in touch with me in the future, you can go to big tech energy. All of my social medias, from LinkedIn to Twitter to Instagram to my Facebook groups, et cetera, they're all there. YouTube channel. But I also have an ebook that is completely free, 70 pages of my story, how I broke in, how I elevated and increased my salary to where I did and was able to make money, have work life balance, but also the mindset behind how I was successful, but also how I've seen others be successful with practical tips around job search, networking, resume guides, LinkedIn guides. So it's a free resource, my way of giving back. So check that out. It's at the top of mydirect me if you want to schedule one on one time with me. My calendly is in there as well and I have a passion project called blackhire.com. It's focused on the black freelance space. So if you're a black freelancer, go ahead and create a profile. And if you're looking for black freelancers, post that same role you post on upwork on black hire and get a new pipeline of candidates that can increase diversity or add to your community that you're trying to build. And yeah, let's get people jobs in whatever field in freelancing. And last thing I'll say is I'm partnered with a boot camp called Course Careers. Why I mess with them is because they have partner organizations that actually pay them whenever they hire you from the boot camp. So incentivizes them to make sure you are super trained up and prepared, even if you don't go with a partner. But then also it's not that expensive because of that set up. So if you use my code BTE 50, you can get $50 off. It's only 499. So after the code will be 449. They have payment plans, so only 150 down. And the reason I mess with them is because I heard so many stories like my guy Cyrus from Tech is the new black. But so many other people have gotten jobs in two weeks, seven weeks, three weeks, utilizing all the tips and strategies and network that they have within course careers. So definitely check that out. But also you can check out a bunch of other free resources. So if you want to go course careers, you can do that. But I have a ton of free sources. I coagulate in a community called tech careers. The link is in the direct me bigtechnergy. And it's broken down by categories. So tech resources, tech roles, startup funding, tech events, and I just throw everything that I get thrown in there. So if you hit me in the DMS, I'm just going to send you to tech careers because I don't have that much time, but I do have time to just make sure you guys have access. So definitely tap into that again. It's free, no subscription, nothing like that. So with that being said, thank you all for listening. I'm really excited to have folks like Bobby D and others. And the thing is, man, we got to just highlight black excellence. We got to support black excellence, and we also got to make sure we reach down to create more black excellence. So that being said, till next time, this is big tech Energy podcast. We're out. Thank you.