In this RedMonk conversation, Jason Torres, Community Evangelist at Torc, chats developer communities with Kate Holterhoff. They discuss the dynamics of attending tech conferences, the role of Torc in the tech community, the current hiring landscape for developers, the globalization of tech hiring, the impact of social media on career growth, and the significance of authenticity in online presence. The discussion also touches on the future of developer advocacy and the challenges faced in the tech industry today.
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Transcript
Kate Holterhoff (00:12)
Hello and welcome to this RedMonk conversation. My name is Kate Holterhoff, Senior Analyst at RedMonk. And with me today is Jason Torres, Community Manager at Torc. Jason, thanks so much for joining me on the MonkCast.
Jason Torres (00:23)
Hey, thanks for having me. It’s been a long time coming. We talked about it multiple times. We’re finally making it work. We’re here.
Kate Holterhoff (00:30)
I love that. I know, I know. I had a wild hair and started recording these live. And so I briefly considered doing a live episode at RenderATL. And thank goodness I didn’t do that because I was running the whole time. It was, utter chaos. So it’s all good. Doing things async, doing it afterwards that’s a good way to be. The stress levels go way down.
Jason Torres (00:55)
for sure, doing anything live with the unpredictability of like space or people around you, it just adds such unneeded stress to the whole process. What was your experience at Render Like this year? How many Renders have you been to?
Kate Holterhoff (01:12)
I have been a three now and it was good. So what I did a little different this year is I went to some of the Atlanta Tech Week events. So, and those were good too, but I would say.
Jason Torres (01:22)
Mmm.
Kate Holterhoff (01:25)
what wasn’t so good for me personally was like a full week of conferencing. I think I’m more of like a three-day conference or I think a week is too much. I need to just cut it down a little bit. So I learned a little bit about myself that that does not reflect on Render or Atlanta Tech Week, but on myself and my own ability to be social and enjoy the content in the way that it, you know, it should be enjoyed. So
Jason Torres (01:37)
Yeah.
Kate Holterhoff (01:53)
Let me throw that back at you. What was your Render experience?
Jason Torres (01:57)
Well to your point you definitely have to pace yourself but even with that being said I don’t think that anybody even pacing is capable of enduring like seven days five six seven days of just go go go because how do you maximize it it’s like you look at each day a little differently like I’m gonna set out to do this today but
Everything else is happening even just to get to the one thing you have engaged and interacted and just taken in It’s just such an energy drain. So I know Last year was my first Render. It was actually my first tech conference period And that was like I came out of the gates hard. I went to everything I was in everywhere. I was saying hi to everybody and for three days afterwards. I was a corpse
Kate Holterhoff (02:37)
Ha ha ha.
Jason Torres (02:49)
Like I just I couldn’t talk. I was so tired. So this year I did. I reflected on what the process was for me the year prior and did approach it a little bit differently. I was still super tired, but I still feel like I did maximize my time a little bit better. I had a very specific list of people that I wanted to make sure I engaged with or spent some time with. There were a few specific events I wanted to attend and that was it.
Kate Holterhoff (03:16)
I’m interested. We haven’t really talked about Torc. And Torc had a huge presence at Render this year. And, well, yeah, I mean, definitely. I guess let’s begin with talking about what Torc is. And what do you folks do?
Jason Torres (03:21)
I like hearing that.
Yeah.
Yeah. So at the end of the day, under the surface, we are a talent platform. We’re, we’re staffing. we approach it a little differently though, in the sense that we aren’t, we knowingly aren’t going to be able to place everybody on our platform. we now have, I think Taylor, who’s my boss, Taylor Desseyn, just posted that we’ve reached 2 million technologists on our platform in total. that’s people that have created profiles on our platform.
I can’t give everybody a job, right? Like I do not have enough clients that are providing opportunities for us to do that. And it would be unrealistic to think that we could. but we’re very transparent about that. And what we try to provide as a community and a resource for you to get tools to find a job. Maybe it’s, maybe it’s not on our profile, but you know, in our discord community, we’re offering workshops to learn.
how to build an agentic AI tool for yourself to add to your portfolio, or we have networking opportunities with other engineering leaders or people that are working that might have a job open up. We have a job listings channel right in our Discord server that we’re consistently putting open roles that we see on our socials where we know someone that we can connect other people to. So it’s not just about the job, it’s about providing
a community for people that are on the job hunt. And then even following up after that, you get a job, we want you to come back, like we want you to then support your friends in the community and be that that person that is just a contributing member and pay it forward, you know, because I feel like that’s what like, authentic organic community is. So we kind of position ourselves as a community first jobs platform at the end of the day. And that’s that’s kind of it. It
started with Taylor’s vision of how to grow this community. And when he came on board, I actually met him in person the first time last year at Render. We had a lot of good conversations. He saw what I was doing with my personal projects as far as the TechCommute and just putting myself out there and growing my own community that he saw.
of value to bringing me in to kind of drive a lot of the engagement for our community here. Because it’s again, it’s it’s about the jobs, but it’s more about the people, you know. And that’s what we we try to provide. So if that makes sense.
Kate Holterhoff (06:09)
Okay, yeah, it really does. And I’m so excited. I feel like you’ve given us an outline of things that I absolutely want to unpack during this conversation.
Jason Torres (06:18)
hell yeah.
Kate Holterhoff (06:19)
Yeah, so I mean first would be, where’s community today when it comes to the tech field? You know, the abysmal hiring situation right now, two would be around the fact that Taylor has, started this company, But then also, yeah, your background in the social media sphere and and what sort of advice that you can give us
Jason Torres (06:23)
Hmm.
Ugh.
Kate Holterhoff (06:39)
and the listeners about, how to do social media right. What does it mean to have a presence online today? a lot of things are changing. I know TechCommute, was very focused on X, which is a very polarizing platform these days. So maybe let’s start with hiring today. so Torc
Jason Torres (06:52)
Yeah. Sure.
Okay.
Kate Holterhoff (07:01)
it, at what stage are you looking for developers? Is this early career, late career, like, who are you trying to get on this platform?
Jason Torres (07:08)
Sure.
So we don’t really have a specific like demographic that we try to focus on because we do try to provide resources and opportunities for everybody. A lot of our clients will set specific parameters for their the person that they’re trying to hire, which you know is normal. We’re very transparent in the job descriptions that we post on the site for the actual like job listings. So
Kate Holterhoff (07:14)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Torres (07:36)
Yeah, but at the same time, we also do suggest that if you see a role on our page to apply if you’re interested, because the way we work, and this is again, kind of nuance that sets us apart from a lot of the other systems is we have a, use an AI tool to like optimize the matching, but we still have a human matching team. So
Kate Holterhoff (07:57)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Torres (08:00)
when you see a job that you want and you say that you’re interested, your profile will then get sent to one of our team members who will then vet you. So by the time you actually get to one of our clients, you’ve been through, I think like three rounds of interviews, whether it’s we do a technical, we do a behavioral, and then there’s usually one more somewhere in between there. But by the time you’ve reached the client, and this is also in a span of like two weeks max.
you’ve been completely vetted to ensure that you are the exact person for the role. So it benefits you knowing that you’re going into a position that you know you can do, but then we also given the client confidence that we’re giving them the exact person they’re looking for. but we streamline the hiring process as well. So, a potential candidate’s already been through three interviews by the time they get to them, which
is huge. A lot of people, a lot of companies don’t have the type of like departmental time to process that in an expedited fashion. it’s important for us to make sure that we’re allowing people that are entry level or people that are senior to get onto the platform because depending on how you interview, you know, and that’s why I think it’s kind of cool. An entry level person could interview very well and get a role that maybe was intended for somebody with more experience.
So that’s why I think those interviews that we have with our matching team can facilitate finding the right person, whether it’s an entry level or a senior. So I urge everybody, and again, it’s not just developers, we’re opening up a lot more product manager, engineering manager, scrum master type roles. So we’re leveraging the term technologist more as opposed to just a developer community.
Kate Holterhoff (09:33)
Okay.
Got it. And so these folks are contractors, or do they get paid like a salary through Torc?
Jason Torres (09:54)
Yeah, great question. So yes, they start as contractors in the job description. It usually does very transparently tell like a duration of the contract, but we also often do contract to hire. So a lot of the people end up getting placed full time after the contract. So I think also a good opportunity for some people to like maybe do a short term contract to see how a company is doing, or you could also do this.
Kate Holterhoff (10:10)
Hmm. Interesting.
Jason Torres (10:22)
in another contract or on the side if you’re just looking to supplement, but it could lead to multiple different opportunities for people.
Kate Holterhoff (10:29)
And what kind of companies do you work with? Who is doing this hiring? Are these like small startups? Is this large companies?
Jason Torres (10:35)
Yeah, it’s honestly all over. We’ve had smaller startups, two to three years startup companies to very large established, let’s see, a lot of insurance companies. I don’t want to say it was Progressive. I think it was like State Farm. We’ve had Wells Fargo come in and hire up a bunch of developers. We did just have a recent push for data engineers for a company called Blue Yonder, which is…
it’s some sort of data warehousing for larger infrastructure companies like your Walmart and stuff like that. So it’s again, kind of all over the board and depending on where our sales team lands with the clients, and this is not something that as the community side, we really have a lot of access to. It just depends on what the client ends up being and how we work out the contract on that end. So it’s been interesting because I’ve seen
tons of different roles come up and it’s like Java, .NET, QA roles, DevOps types roles. again, it’s just the whole gambit. We’ve had a bunch of Angular roles come up, Flutter devs, like mobile development. It really just depends.
Kate Holterhoff (11:45)
Okay. And I’ve talked to a few sort of hiring platforms at this point. A lot of them focus on overseas. So we talked a little bit about the demographic in terms of experience? Are most of these US based developers? I mean, that’s where Taylor is, that’s where you are. Or, yeah, what is the geographic breakdown?
Jason Torres (11:56)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, another fantastic question. I love this because I didn’t ask you to ask these ones. It’s it’s honestly global. We have multiple roles that have opened up over in India, and they’re looking for specific regions over there. We had a big push at the beginning of the year for some of our clients that were looking for developers and like the LATAM market. So that’s why we did spend a lot of time in q4 and q1 down there.
Kate Holterhoff (12:11)
I’ve only got fantastic questions.
Jason Torres (12:33)
growing that out, but it ebbs and flows. It honestly, again, it kind of depends on the clients. We have had multiple US based clients hire here. We’ve had them hiring over in India and Mexico and Brazil. So it’s, it’s really kind of all over the place. It’s really been fascinating to see where they’re coming to. And I know next year, there’s going to be a big push to expand more into Europe as well. So
We’re trying to provide resources for everybody. None of them are typically hybrid. So it’s usually all remote and in the job descriptions it does specifically say if they’re looking for someone in a like specific region or area But I don’t see that that often so
Kate Holterhoff (13:20)
so to be clear, the companies tend to be US based and they’re hiring. Okay. No, I, yeah, that’s fine. And so they are there is a sort of drive to get developers from other countries outside of the US. Okay. Okay. And have they talked about why that’s of interest? Because I know there’s a lot of challenges. For instance, in I believe Brazil, there’s buying a laptop is challenging because there’s like
Jason Torres (13:24)
yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, to be clear. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. yeah. Yeah.
Sure.
Kate Holterhoff (13:47)
taxes on it and fees and things. Like how are you dealing with that? Do you buy the laptop for these developers? And also what sort of salaries are they getting? Are you offering benefits? I want hear more about the globalization of our field.
Jason Torres (13:54)
wow.
Yeah
Yeah, no, I love that question so typically for the contractor positions because again most of these start as contractors This would be technically a 1099 here in in the states I believe I don’t know like the tax structures in some of the other countries, but I do know that usually because of wages a lot of the companies are looking in other areas because the
Kate Holterhoff (14:14)
Okay.
Jason Torres (14:29)
the price point of a very experienced developer in India, typically they’re able to get somebody with the same level of experience at a lower American rate, I guess would be how I would say it. So, you know, I think that that has been a push, but I think it also has a lot to do regionally with what a lot of the developers experiences are. Like I’ve done a lot of like
studying of the demographics of what regions or what countries work with certain types of frameworks and languages too. And that’s been something that’s been kind of interesting to me is I see tons of like .NET and Java developers in the Bangladesh area. So I think for somebody that’s targeting well, I would like someone that is a senior level
Kate Holterhoff (15:08)
Right, yeah.
Jason Torres (15:24)
with that type of a framework, they’re gonna have a better chance of finding the resources that they want there. I think it’s probably, I think it’s probably harder for companies again to vet a lot of this and this is why they look at companies like ours because we’re doing a lot of that research for them. And as we have our matching team reach out to these people,
I think that by the time they get through our matching teams, like research and doing the interviews, regardless of where they are, the client knows that they’re getting the best candidates. I think sometimes that’s where having a hiring team like we do and doing it this way.
is giving them the best resources from anywhere. then ultimately they’ll make the decision. But we know from all areas, because we’re basing it more on skill, because when they go through these vetting processes, like they’re all just developers, like vying for the same role. And I think honestly, it gives us a better opportunity to give the client more options to where
Kate Holterhoff (16:24)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Torres (16:33)
We’re giving them, again, like 10 developers that we’ve vetted through our system from all over. Ultimately, they’ll make the final decision, but we know that we’re providing these opportunities for as many people as possible. as far as like for Brazil, I know you mentioned the laptop too. We don’t usually provide any sort of equipment. I think that there’s an assumption once they’ve gotten through the vetting and they’ve done…
Kate Holterhoff (16:51)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Torres (17:01)
their profiles and set up their skills and stuff. A lot of them are already at least they have the equipment that they would need in order to do that. That’s interesting though. I never really thought about that. As far as like really no kidding. That’s interesting. I’ll have to look into that. I would love to be able to provide something like that. Like as far as for community and again that’s why
Kate Holterhoff (17:12)
Well, some of the other companies do, that’s what they offer, is buying gas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, that’s one of the services is that they provide the equipment. Yeah.
Jason Torres (17:29)
One of our biggest directives is like giving people more upskilling opportunities. And we do do do that free, just to be, to be involved. all you have to do is sign up on the platform and be a part of our discord community. And then you can come and do any of the workshops we do, any of the networking, any of the things that we can kind of give you as that added value, the value add for being in our community. Because, you know, and again,
with all the things that you just brought up. at the end of the day, like I said earlier, like we can’t provide jobs to all of these people out there, but if there’s something that they can take away from our community that could help them, then I think for me, like that’s, that’s the biggest thing. yeah, yeah.
Kate Holterhoff (18:20)
Okay.
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So I think what makes this an important thing to talk about today is not only the fact that we have this sort of post-ZIRP economy that a lot of developers are grappling with. we heard about a lot of folks getting laid off. It’s still happening. But also that AI is being blamed for a lot of this shift. Yes. And
Jason Torres (18:32)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kate Holterhoff (18:46)
I think what folks who are actually following this in a real way have noticed is that it’s offshoring that is really happening in a significant way. And so it’s interesting to hear that Torc is also seeing that. Is part of that movement. there’s a lot of companies that do this. Andela is one, remote.com Deel with two Es. So there’s a lot of…
Jason Torres (18:54)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kate Holterhoff (19:09)
players in this space. There’s a lot of momentum behind them. There’s a lot of folks who’ve been doing this for a long time. Off-shoring is not new. This is not revolutionary. But I think there’s a sleight of hand going on in our AI moment where the blame is being placed for the current hiring situation on culprits who are not truly responsible.
Jason Torres (19:11)
Yeah.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah, I totally agree. mean, AI is such an easy scapegoat. And that’s that’s the problem, though, is everybody just wants that easy out. They don’t want to, like, put the magnifying glass on the real issues and problems we see. We see a lot from the hiring side in the sense that now AI or these bots are also just dumping applicants into
job listings. So, so that’s been another problem, whereas like, you know, 100 actual humans will apply for a job. Now we have 100 plus we have 400 not real people applying for jobs. And, and how do you even parse through that as a, as a company as a hiring team, you know, again, getting inundated with just all of this stuff. And that’s where
Kate Holterhoff (19:57)
Yes, I’ve heard about that.
Jason Torres (20:25)
You know, again, for us, and it is a little bit tedious, I would imagine for our matching team, and we’re a small company, we did get purchased by Randstad, which is one of the largest global staffing companies in the world, to sort of oversee the technical arm of all of the stuff that they’re doing. But overall, Torc as a whole is a very small company. So like our matching team is only like eight or nine people. But we are vetting all of these.
And we’re personally like, they’re physically having conversations like this with the candidates. So the client knows that we’re helping them avoid that whole situation of dealing with the AI, dealing with the system, and bringing that human element back to it. I think at the end of the day, regardless of where AI comes into any, any technology or any industry, there always still has to be that human element. And I feel like that’s where we’re really like, kind of staying strong and like highlighting what we’re capable of doing because that’s how we’ve always done it.
Kate Holterhoff (21:29)
Yeah, and I like your emphasis on community and upskilling. I think that’s a really great way to differentiate yourself in this market. And I think it also speaks to what it is that developers are looking for and how to support the community at the same time that you’re, meeting these market needs. So let’s…
pivot to talk a bit about community because that again is your wheelhouse. That’s where you have a lot of expertise. And so, I introduced you with the term community manager, but on your LinkedIn, you are actually a little bit more what religious sounding you are a community evangelist. Yes. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jason.
Jason Torres (22:08)
Evangelist, yes.
And Jason.
Kate Holterhoff (22:17)
And so I want to hear about what is your sense of the state of, guess, DevRel community, all of this, talk to me about what you’re seeing in that particular domain.
Jason Torres (22:27)
Yeah, it’s interesting that you brought up DevRel too, because early on in many of the conversations that Taylor and I have had, he brought up that we’re kind of like DevRel for recruiting or like for the talent side. And I was like, yeah, I guess it is because we’re advocating, we’re out there doing the DevRel type stuff for a talent platform though. So it’s kind of a weird niche that we’re in.
You know, I think no matter what the product or the industry, anything, I mean, I don’t think it’s technology exclusive. Community is important. And I think for us, that’s what we’re trying to shine more of a light on. I think there’s a huge stigma to the talent side, to recruiting, to staffing. I think even coming into it, I think there’s this huge like
misunderstanding of like how this should be approached because of how it’s been done by some companies. Everybody gets the ick and we’re trying to take that away because I think there’s so much more to it. And I think with like that organic community approach where it’s just it’s just people that are out there supporting others. It’s just people out there helping others.
and then by the way, we also have some jobs if you’re interested, but that’s not ultimately the goal. And I think again, like we are, we are a company, right? We, we make money, our clients are, are where our, you know, profits come from, but we still want to help people. Like I can’t, and I keep, I know I keep saying this like ad nauseam at this point, but like, I know I can’t give everybody a job on our platform that, okay.
Like I’ve, I’ve come to terms with that. And I think the best way to move past that is just know that I can’t, but what I can do is still help everyone. And, and I think given the freedom that they’ve allowed us, are Taylor and my boss, his name’s Dave shout out to Dave Messinger who brought this whole team together. he understands the bigger vision that I think when people don’t have apprehension or have that.
associated to, they’re more interested in just being there to be a part of it. And that’s what we’re trying to grow. I don’t push an agenda as far as like, making sure you you do this or do that. Like we want you to just come across our platform, see the value in it like authentically. You know, we’re not salespeople. I think that’s where my issue with evangelism comes.
because if you think about how that term is typically used and even in religion where most commonly I think you see it like they are selling you on something. They’re selling you on a belief regardless of what it is. Non-denominational aside there’s a platform that they are trying to push or filibust or soapbox to you and I think we’re trying to just we’re doing the same but not
not in the sense that we want you to feel like you have to do something. We want to make you feel like you want to do it because you see the value in it. And I feel like lot of that term evangelist just, gives that kind of polarizing like opinion about it. And I just, I don’t like it. That’s why I like manager. I like community manager.
but honestly, at the end of the day, I don’t necessarily think I need a title. Like I’m just, I’m just here to help people. So maybe that’s what it is. It’s like community helper or aid. because I think it’s more of a, a guiding stance or principle that we follow where again, I’m just, I’m trying to guide everyone to the value that we see in the community and then ancillary portion being, being the platform. So.
I think anybody that’s grown something like just organically without like having that agenda has done really well. I mean, I think you can see tons of value in companies that run communities and platforms in that way. But, you know, again, at the end of the day, this is still a business. So how do we balance that? And that’s, that’s, we struggle with that every day.
Kate Holterhoff (27:11)
Okay. I’m going to email Taylor and give him all these notes here. This is important feedback that he needs to hear. Yeah, we’re doing good work here. So I want to hear about how you ended up in this role. And a lot of it has to do with TechCommute. And so what is TechCommute?
Jason Torres (27:15)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So TechCommute is my like personal pod podcast. It started like you said earlier as a stream pretty much exclusively on Twitter. So I’ll I’ll rewind a little bit. I think it’s been two years now. Gosh I don’t even remember.
I started 100 devs. So I am a self-taught developer and I came from where I worked in the film industry for 15 years. And when COVID hit, I was like, okay, I need to find something to do. Um, and it was kind of poetic. Actually. I walked off my last film set on, I want to say it was like March 13th of whatever year COVID was. And it was like the next day was when everything in New York state shut down. So it was like,
kind of a weird like way to close that chapter. But I found a full time job at a like manufacturing plant here because it was one of the few places that was still hiring people during all of this. Because I needed to put I needed a plan and I realized I hated it. I absolutely did not like what I was doing. I had a buddy that is one of my neighbors. He worked at a company that was looking for some associate.
application engineers that were using Python and some C sharp to write programs for these like laser metrology systems. So I was like, okay, well, this seems kind of interesting. I like to like build stuff and tinker around. I did a couple of free code camp courses and then ended up on a 100Devs. And within like the first four classes of that,
Leon Noel says like you got to get out there. You got to get your network going Get on LinkedIn get on Twitter get on all the things and just start building in public and meeting everybody so that’s what I did and When I was driving home from work every day like I don’t know it was like 330 I would get out I would start a Twitter space and just hang out with people and like drive home
talk to people while we were doing it and then it started to kind of get a little bit of like an audience going and I was like okay this this is pretty cool I had a buddy that was also in 100Devs with me that would like come he was also a driver well I wasn’t a driver he was a driver for FedEx so he was in his van and I was in my car so that’s why we called it the TechCommute and that’s what it was for the first I don’t know
multiple, multiple weeks. And we were doing this like three, four times a week. And then as it sort of evolved, it started to turn into more of a consistent show. And we were bringing people in to kind of share their tech journeys, you know, because like mine’s very unique to yours and vice versa. But there’s somebody out there that can glean something from your story. And I wanted to like, try to share all these people’s journeys with everyone to
you know, show everyone that we’re at the end of the day, we are all the same. And sometimes it’s hard, like the journey’s hard. So hearing somebody else’s story could just be super inspiring for one person. All of that being said, I then met Taylor through Twitter and we started engaging and interacting and yada yada. And then we met at Render.
last year and that was kind of like you know again the IRL meet sort of solidifies all this relationship building you do online to see the person that you’ve been talking to this whole time is like the actual person and then a few months later it was like he’s moving to this new role he has an opening and this was something that I was always kind of positioning because I think at the end of the day I knew I didn’t want to be a full-time engineer
I like being able to build, I also know where my strengths are. And that’s more in the people side of things. So that’s where TechCommute kind of helped me build like more conversational skills and networking skills. And I mean, I’ve done several hundred of them now. So just again, like I never thought I would sit.
on streams like this and talk to people, now seeing the benefit that it brings to people, I’m very glad that I did.
Kate Holterhoff (32:06)
And what did you do in the film industry? What was your role?
Jason Torres (32:09)
I was a unit production manager. So for anybody that doesn’t know what that guy does, it is basically the liaison between the above and below the line of a budget. So you’re above the line is all your producers, your directors, all the important people. And then below the line is all of your crew. And the production manager usually is the one that is like kind of the boss between the two
Kate Holterhoff (32:13)
Wow.
Jason Torres (32:39)
kind of line items. So takes care of a lot and it sucked. Like I loved it. Like I can say I left that industry and I did, I did my dream job when I was growing up. I wanted to make movies and I did that. So I’ll always be able to like have that, but you know, it also like cost me a lot just like internally, I got very burned out. I missed tons of my kids, like life’s growing up.
Kate Holterhoff (32:45)
Yeah.
Jason Torres (33:09)
That was hard, like working 16 to 18 hour days because you’re the first person on set. And usually before you get to set, you have 20 things that you had to get ready for the day. And then you’re the last person to leave. And even when you leave, you get back to the hotel and you’re like, I have to make sure everything is ready for tomorrow. It’s, yeah, it was exhausting. But, you know, again, I did it. I loved it. It’s like a drug.
Like I miss it like every day if I was addicted anyway, I mean maybe not a bad example, but you know what I mean. Just yeah, but I still see like things that I’m doing now that I’m addicted to like this, like creating a community, like building this thing that people are like gaining something from has been super rewarding as well.
Kate Holterhoff (33:46)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Torres (34:07)
love when people will post things that they got a job or we just did a huge workshop with Hypermode and a bunch of people came in and they’ve built these tools using natural language model that Hypermode has set up. So they’re creating all these different applications and posting about it on socials. It’s like, I was able to provide that resource to people. it’s like, now that I’m in a position to be able to give back, like that’s really what community is for me. So.
Kate Holterhoff (34:36)
Yeah. man, that’s amazing. before we move on, though, so like with Hypermode, how does, were they, are they hiring engineers from you? Is that the nature of that relationship? Are you doing some sort of outreach now? Is it like, are you doing like influencer type work? I mean, Taylor’s an influencer. So yeah, what’s that about?
Jason Torres (34:43)
Yeah.
No.
Yeah, he very is. So
what I wanted to do when I came in and we started talking about like our, our kind of grand vision for community here was again, like providing resources to people. So Hypermode is not hiring. They’re not one of our clients, but what we decided to do was we wanted to align with companies to provide resources for our developers. We do have a.
Kate Holterhoff (35:14)
Okay.
Jason Torres (35:24)
pretty large demographic of entry level and even senior level who who don’t have access to certain tools or resources just every day or availability of certain things like a workshop where they can build a project that they can put on their portfolio or add to the resume or be able to talk about. So for me it was like okay this is what I see in
certain areas where there’s deficits. So let’s try to provide resources for people to fill in those blanks. So when they get into an interview and they’re asked about what their experience is with AI right now, they can specifically say in depth, like go into a deep explanation of what they just built using Hypermode. And if that gets them a job, like, that’s awesome. You know, because for again, for me, it’s like that
that paying it forward mindset. If I help one person, that one person can go and help two more people. So that’s what it is. We’re providing the workshops. We do panel streams where we’ll bring in a bunch of people just to like talk about the hiring process or AI or JavaScript, like just to get some conversations going and to give people insight.
We do a lot of in-person stuff as well because again, that just adds to what we’re doing online. Being available in the community is another way that we’ve kind of set ourselves apart from a lot of these staffing agencies because we are here directly implanted in the developer community. We’re at the conferences and doing the meetups. And we hosted a hackathon with DataStax a couple months ago.
Showing that we’re here to be a part of the community and not just like sell our platform has been a really important like value add and kind of way we’re approaching it. We did not get paid by Hypermode to like do anything with them. Like these are just like partnerships with us and the companies to like give to our communities.
Kate Holterhoff (37:40)
Okay. I like how you frame that. Now, if I was a cynic, and I am absolutely not, I am just all about positivity in this podcast, but if I were, it seems like there is an element of maybe baby ducking technology to
Jason Torres (37:48)
Ha
Love it.
Mm-hmm.
Kate Holterhoff (38:01)
I would say a community that we could characterize as vulnerable, which are folks looking for jobs in a very difficult market. So how would you respond to that maybe criticism of like, here you have a sort of captive audience who is depending on you, or at least very hopeful that you’re going to help them to get a job. And here’s a company that wants to
Jason Torres (38:07)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Kate Holterhoff (38:27)
you know, sell and have the attention of developers. Like I deal with companies all the time that are dying to get the attention of developers, many of them for junior developers especially because they don’t have preconceived ideas about what is good and what is bad, right? They’re prepared to learn. How would you respond to that? Am I being deeply unfair here?
Jason Torres (38:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, no, you’re not. And I think that the reason that you do have this thought process is because this is how the industry is. Like, I don’t think this is unfounded in any way. Like,
Kate Holterhoff (39:01)
I come by my cynicism honestly.
Jason Torres (39:06)
Sure, no, and I can appreciate that. mean, there’s a very specific reason that when I do go to conferences, I’ll just come up to your booth and say, I know you need my email. I just want to win these Legos. Let’s just do it, whatever. Because it is a business. These companies do need to hit their numbers. that’s, know, the industry has really put a focus on these KPIs and the MRR.
Kate Holterhoff (39:17)
Yes. Yes.
Jason Torres (39:33)
whatever the abbreviations are for all of these things that essentially are just people. Yeah, know, Hypermode came, it didn’t come to us, I went to them. And I think that that’s another big difference there is we’re structuring this to give value to our developer community, but also to Hypermode. Because I do hope and,
Kate Holterhoff (39:47)
Okay.
You’re right.
Jason Torres (40:03)
in no way can I push anything on either side of it but I do hope that it does lead to something for them. I hope that one person that came to any of the workshops refers this product to their their boss and they end up with some sort of an enterprise solution. That would be fantastic but that’s not you know it’s not what it was for. I want a junior developer
to be able to come in and play around with that tool to understand what’s out there. Like if that opens up more exploration for somebody in technology or introduces them potentially to a job. You know, we did have one guy that was in the workshop that was super familiar with some of the stuff that was going on and was asking a lot of great questions. you know, hopefully that
potentially leads him to more conversations. And again, like networking, when they think of a role that opens up and they’re like, who do we already know that could do something like this? They’re like, you know what? There was that really great developer that did that workshop that built this tool that was super familiar with how the data structures already were working with what we were doing. That’s where it kind of comes down to. I think you’re absolutely right though, like most.
Companies do want to get in front of developers, but I want them to come to our developers to show them their products. But at the end of the day, I, it’s, it’s the developers. It all comes down to choice, you know, like they make the choice to come and do the workshop. They make the choice to learn or not. They make the choice to reach out or not. You know, you can
Kate Holterhoff (41:42)
Yeah.
Jason Torres (41:55)
You can set any sort of information out there, but ultimately it’s the person that takes it in, then interprets it, however that will then do that. But I know for me, my ultimate goal is to bring it into our community so that our community can benefit, not for the company to necessarily gain. think it can work like, again, how we’re doing it, where it does benefit both sides, you know.
Hypermode was super excited with the amount of engagement in our workshops like our community the chat is wild people were building things and posting things so they’ve already seen like the positive and I think that they would also be if that’s all that came from it I think again just some exposure for the product was was beneficial to them so I don’t think you’re wrong and I think that there’s a whole like
other conversation to be had even about just like how developer advocacy and marketing and engineering and all these things when it comes to how tech is done now has changed.
Kate Holterhoff (43:08)
Well, thank you for entertaining my question. I do appreciate that. OK, so as we begin to wind down, I do want to just get your pulse on social media. So Twitter was deeply important to your career, to your own sort of growth as a developer. I’m interested in where you’re seeing,
the future of social media right now. I’ll say for RedMonk, we spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. It seems to have the greatest engagement with the community that we’re looking for, but we don’t play games in the sense of like, paying for followers, So I still have lots of questions about what, the savvy social media first influencers are doing behind the scenes. And, and frankly, there’s a lot of other platforms. I mean, we’re on Bluesky,
Jason Torres (43:33)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kate Holterhoff (43:55)
predominantly for political reasons. But a lot of the conversations around AI are still happening on X. And so, we do—as analysts, we do have to spend time over there just seeing what folks are saying. I mean, it’s part of the job, right? So, it’s a complicated time, So, I guess I’m interested in what you’re seeing, where you predict the future going. Talk to me about that.
Jason Torres (43:58)
Mm-hmm.
yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Sure. So just in full transparency, like I was off socials till I got back on hold. You know what? Now that we’re talking about it, I’m to look to see when I created my Twitter. Because I think it says on your profile, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. April 2023.
Kate Holterhoff (44:34)
Hahaha
Okay. I don’t know.
There you go.
Jason Torres (44:45)
So I had socials from my film days and I had a lot going on there. I think I had like 25 or 30,000 followers on stuff and I hated it because again like especially in the film industry where you’re paid to not be who you are.
Kate Holterhoff (45:03)
my God.
Jason Torres (45:14)
I felt very much a shell of who I actually was. And when I came to tech, I wanted to make sure that my like mission statement was what you see is what you get, where I’m the person that I am online that you would also meet in, in real life. So the way I approach social media now is that
I will never shill stuff that I don’t use. I won’t shill stuff period. Like if I like a product, I’ll talk about it, sure. But like, you know, you know what the posts look like. Like I never want to be what was the word again, an influencer, because I just, that doesn’t feel organic.
Like I think one thing that I got away from, especially when I left film was not being true to myself. So when I’m expressing an opinion, it’s it’s mine when I’m talking about something that’s mine. But there’s also a plus and minus to that where there I also have to kind of censor what I say because I don’t want to get involved in any sort of conversations about certain stuff.
because it’s not it’s not worth it to have something potentially be taken out of context or to you know, again, it’s this delicate balance that you fall into on the internet. I actually took this as a positive one time, Kelly Vaughn, who is a friend of mine, said because she and I, she and I were having a conversation about something and she was expressing something about
some comments that she had received on one of her, her posts. She had said to me, you know, I have no clue what your like beliefs or opinions are about anything. was like, good. Like that’s, I never want to fall or be understood in any sort of like, keep it keep it away from me. My goal is to be here as a value add for people period. Like just
be able to provide to the community and that’s that’s how I approach my social media. Mostly, it’s a 99 % of the time talking about like what we’re doing for people and that’s it. And I think that if you regardless of what your company you’re working for, what thing you’re trying to sell, as long as you’re like authentic to you, just you at the end of the day, will be able to
know that you were doing it for that the right reason. I just authenticity has been super important to me and I feel like now especially I’ve got like a sniff check where I just I don’t even try to like really engage with like that side of it. So I think for for people that are like trying to figure out how to like grow it or you know use it to leverage for certain things it’s like
build in public, like document everything that you’re doing. If you’re learning stuff, post about that because people are always interested and want to cheer for somebody that’s like trying to win, you know. So if you’re looking for the job and if you’re like trying to find it again, like post about it, have conversations and like, don’t be afraid to like tell people that you’re looking too, because that’s what the network’s for, right? Because again,
If somebody pays it forward for you, then it can be paid like that’s the butterfly effect. So that’s how I would approach it and make sure you’re posting consistently just about whatever, but don’t feel like the numbers matter either. They’ll grow and if they’re growing like authentically and you’re just like being real that sometimes it takes longer. So.
Kate Holterhoff (49:30)
Yeah, I love that advice. I’ve had Angela Andrews on here who also had that advice about learning in public. And that is exactly your journey. you are a testament to the fact that that can succeed. And here I am using biblical terminology again. So with that
Jason Torres (49:35)
Mmm. Yeah.
Ha
Kate Holterhoff (49:48)
Yeah, let’s go ahead and wrap up So you’ve mentioned a little bit about the socials that you use, but if folks want to hear more from you and your authentic voice, where would be the best place for them to connect with you?
Jason Torres (49:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I’m I’m very very vocal on LinkedIn and Twitter Twitter not so much and again, I just I I just don’t have time I have to figure out a better way to like I just got done sit saying all this great advice I’m like, I don’t even like do it anymore because it’s just tiring. It’s different when it’s part of your job I will say that but let LinkedIn and Twitter for sure. So we Yeah Do as I say not as I do
Kate Holterhoff (50:21)
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s okay to be aspirational with your advice. I think I don’t see any problem with that at all.
Yeah, 100%. Okay, so I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today, Jason. Again, my name is Kate Holterhoff, Senior Analyst at RedMonk. If you enjoyed this conversation, please like, subscribe, and review the MonkCast on your podcast platform of choice. If you’re watching us on RedMonk’s YouTube channel, please like, subscribe, and engage with us in the comments.
Jason Torres (50:36)
you as well.
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