Jason: There's this rush that comes.
Just by the act of learning it, that makes the effort to learn the thing worth it.
I used to joke that my role at Gatsby was human duct tape.
I think I got hired because I could do a little bit of everything
Eddie: Welcome to Episode 1 of the WebJoy podcast.
I'm your host Eddie.
In this podcast, we interview guests about their origin story and what
makes them excited and joyful to be part of the tech community.
I hope you enjoy today's episode.
"Play Until it Pays" with Jason Lengstorf
Thanks for joining us today, Jason.
I'm really excited to have you on
Jason: Thanks for inviting me.
Eddie: To start off, let's just talk about, who you are, what
you do, where you work, you know, brief introduction about yourself.
Jason: Sure.
I'm Jason Lengstorf.
I'm the VP of Developer Experience at Netlify and the host of Learn with Jason.
At Netlify Developer Experience is kind of how we interact with everything
around the product, across engineering, sales, marketing, community, uh, just
anywhere you might end up, we help.
Then on learn with Jason, I do pair programming with somebody from the
community a couple of times a week to, help people learn something new
in 90 minutes and they can kind of follow along as I build it live.
Eddie: Awesome.
That sounds really fun.
Um, yeah.
I guess developer experience is pretty different in a company that
literally exists for developers.
Jason: Yeah, I think when you're talking about developer tooling,
there's definitely more space for, the whole company is trying to
build a great developer experience.
That's the core value prop.
So the scope of what developer experience does I think expands or contracts based on
how much of your audience are developers.
I think we're seeing more and more of that at companies around the industry.
You know, hotels need developer experience teams because they have
APIs and, places that you would never expect it are actually in
need of a developer experience.
It's a very interesting industry to be part of right now.
Eddie: That's awesome.
That's really encouraging because I think for a long time
that wasn't as much in focus.
As developers, like great, there are people thinking about our needs
and for those who enjoy focusing on developer experience, it just means
there's that much more opportunity.
Jason: Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think, we've seen the world shift from, being online was a choice
to being online as a necessity.
I think, especially with the pandemic, we accelerated to the point where any
company in the world at this point needs to have some form of online presence.
And that means that there's a lot of work out there for developers, because
just about everybody who wants to make money needs to do some portion of that
online and that requires some help from developers, whether you're building
the tools that would let somebody build something without a developer,
like Wix or Squarespace, or these apps that are kind of like WYSIWYG builders
for folks, they need developers to work on those tools and then anybody
else who's building something custom.
They're going to have to either hire a contractor or hire
in-house developers to work on it.
A lot of opportunity out there for folks in the development space.
Eddie: That's awesome.
So how did you get involved in Developer Experience?
What's the short version of your story, how you got involved in tech and how this
is the area that you kind of ended up.
Jason: So I, have this, phrase that I repeat a lot, which is play until
it pays and the reason I say that is because that's been my whole career.
I started out as a musician and as I was making music, my band needed
t-shirts and we needed posters.
So I got into design and then we wanted to put those on our MySpace page.
So I figured out enough development to put the designs up on MySpace
and then I wanted to do more.
So I learned a little bit of a JavaScript, a little bit of flash
and started building websites.
And then, over the course of the band's tenure, I learned enough that
I was effectively running a small single client agency from my band.
I was just doing everything they needed online to function.
So when the band broke up, I decided I didn't want to start another band.
And instead I started a web development agency.
I went and found a few clients, built projects for them, found out what I
liked and what I didn't like ended up working in just about every role in there.
I was the sales person.
I was the manager.
I was the lead developer.
I was the designer, sometimes.
In all of those roles.
I got to learn a lot about what the things were that I enjoyed the most.
So when I sold the agency, I decided that I would pursue the
things that I had the most fun, doing, such a couple of contracts.
Then I went to IBM, worked as a front end architect, and then you know,
I liked a lot about the front-end architecture part and started
doing a lot of internal education there because that was fun for me.
We built some tools.
I wanted the other developers at IBM to learn how they worked and get
excited so that they would use them.
So I was doing internal developer advocacy without realizing
that was what I was doing.
Then saw an opportunity to do that externally and joined Gatsby as sort of,
as an engineer and sort of, I don't know.
I used to joke that my role at Gatsby was human duct tape.
I think I got hired because I could do a little bit of
everything and they would just.
You know, say, oh, there's a problem.
And I was like, I'll figure it out.
And then when I left Gatsby, I went to Netlify explicitly
in developer experience.
And uh, that's, you know, that's where I still am today.
Eddie: Awesome.
That's a fun, interesting journey.
I have to ask what kind of music did your band do?.
Jason: Just the most cliche, emo screamy, sad music.
Uh, this was in 2005.
We were a heavily touring screamo band.
And so we played shows with like, if, you know, from first to last, which is the
band that the lead singer became Scrillex.
We played a warp tour with Scrillex and we would open for
like the band that became 3 0 3.
Some of those guys were in a metal band called Gray Scale.
And we played shows with Gray Scale.
So I, you know, weird stuff like that.
There's like mainstream, like top 40.
And then there's the bands that like support the top 40.
And then there's the bands of the open for those bands.
We were that tier.
Eddie: Nice.
Hey, you gotta be somewhere right.
As long as you're doing something you're passionate about.
Jason: I mean, there's a reason I got into web dev and not into music.
Eddie: Fair enough.
Well, what kind of keeps you excited and interested in tech, right?
You've got into it, you've gone all this way, but why do you stay there
rather than transitioning on to something else that interests you?
Jason: The short answer is that I've somehow managed to make my job into
tinkering as a profession, through the expertise and experience the
network that I've been able to build.
My job is stuff like Learn with Jason and if you watch the show, I
pair with somebody in the community who is an expert on something.
I go in completely unprepared, ask all the beginner questions.
They walk me through building an app from scratch and I get to see how a tool works.
And there's a live chat that watches it.
They ask questions, we all joke around and laugh together.
And at the end of it, we've learned how to use a new tool.
We've introduced ourselves to another expert in the community, and we
had a really good time doing it.
Somehow I collect a paycheck from this, right?
It's very much that kind of experience of, I screwed around in this job and
just did whatever was fun for me for my whole career and at some point
I was able to get rid of all of the parts of the job that weren't fun.
And now I just get to be silly and tinker and play and that's the whole career.
So that's kind of what keeps me here.
Right?
If I were to leave maybe I'd go to culinary school cause I love to cook or
maybe I would try to be a writer because I like to write, but in all those places,
I'm not able to play because I have a lot of skills that I need to build.
So I wanna to do that stuff with no stakes.
I don't want to make that my job.
Because I have this very fun and playful job now.
Also my friends in the in the food industry they're not making tech salaries,
you know, writers aren't making tech salaries and I would be remiss not to say
like I'm in this industry for the money.
If I could make as much money doing other things, as I make in tech, I'd
probably have a harder decision to make, it's very rare that you can just
make the pile of money that a lot of people make in tech, in other places.
Eddie: No, for sure.
We are so fortunate to be, the vast majority of us doing things
that we find are fun and as you said, most of it is playing.
Of course you have bugs and different things that people
encounter that aren't fun.
But the vast majority is thinking of interesting things and figuring
out how to do it and problem solving and stuff that makes us tick.
We get paid.
Pretty handsomely to do it.
Compared to other industries, we make an amazing amount of money.
So it's a huge blessing.
Jason: Yeah.
I think this industry, like every industry I think has its challenges.
And I think there are a lot of things about tech that, that just drive me
up a wall and that I feel like why do we get in our own way so much?
But, I try to balance that against the fact that, the people who are able to work
in this industry just have mobility like this feels like the industry that when
we look back on, how did upward mobility work in the 2000s it's software, you got
into tech, and that was a way for you to go from nothing to wealthy, right?
I feel like we're going to have stories like that when we look at the history
books and just about everybody in this era is going to be involved in tech somehow.
Eddie: Yeah, that makes complete sense.
It's interesting, right?
Cause you've kind of made learning your job and that really sticks out
because as we were talking to prepare for this, we landed on the main thing
we wanted to talk about was lifelong learning and continuous improvement.
Of course you've made it a job, but, I guess for you, what does that mean?
To be a lifelong learner and to continually improve yourself.
Jason: Yeah.
So this is a good question and kind of a nuanced one.
So I'm going to start by, I guess, telling a story: when I was a
kid, I remember I had chores as a kid and I hated doing my chores.
And so I would always try to get out of doing them and, my dad
would just like, not let me slide.
(Laughing) He'd say go clean the garage.
And so I'd go up there and I would see if I could just wave the broom around the
garage and then he'd let me say I did it.
And he didn't let that slide.
So he'd go out and he'd look at the garage.
So he didn't do it.
Get back out there sweep the garage.
So I'd get back out there and I would see if maybe I can hide the dirt.
Right.
maybe I can put this dirt somewhere where he won't see
it and then he'd come back out.
And he said, no, look the dirt's over there.
You got to get the dirt out of the garage, you know?
And by this time I'm furious, I'm crying.
I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want, want to do this.
I just want to play my video game.
And he came out and he goes, look, you're going to have jobs like this, that
you have to get done your whole life.
And there are two ways that you can approach this.
You can be mad and be frustrated and be stuck, or you can learn how to do it well,
and you can do it right the first time, and then it's over and you can go back
and do the stuff that you wanted to do.
And this kind of stuck in my head, because what I realized was
that A work, doesn't go away.
You can either frustrate somebody into doing your work for you, or
you can do that work yourself.
And I think that, I have been the person who frustrates
somebody into doing work for me.
While it's nice to not do that work, it ends up making the
relationship hard over time.
So I don't want to be that person and I also don't like being bad at things.
So when I am learning a new skill, I started paying attention as a kid.
To what was it that helped me learn?
So not just the thing I was learning, but really trying to learn how to learn and
because I would think about, okay, so I learned this now, what made that click?
Okay.
So the next time I'm learning something, maybe I try it
like this and I taught myself.
How I learn personally, like what it is that makes things sticking in my
brain and or what makes a pattern work so that I can do it from muscle memory
or whatever that thing is so that I can learn quickly because then I am maybe
not great at a thing, but I'm at least not incapable of doing it, you know?
I can muddle my way through and do an okay job.
And because I spent a bunch of time learning how to learn.
At some point, learning became really fun for me.
So now if I walk into a painting class, like I can't paint, but if you show me how
to hold the brush and some of the strokes, I'm not going to make a masterpiece,
but I'm going to make something that at least looks like a painting.
And if you show me how to do yard work, I'm not gonna get
it a hundred percent right.
But I can figure out how to work those tools or how to plant
something or how to prune a bush.
I don't want to, but I can figure it out.
I like the experience of being able to walk into a situation and
learn a new recipe, learn how to use a new tool, learn a new piece
of tech, whatever that thing is.
There's this rush that comes.
Just by the act of learning it, that makes the effort to learn the thing worth it.
And what I've found for me at least is that effort of learning, being
something that is rewarding in itself helps me push through that
initial frustration of not being good at the thing I'm trying to learn.
So when I see that I'm breaking down a new skill into a list of steps and
processes and heuristics and things that I can use to help me learn more
quickly, I am focused on the skill of learning that I feel like I'm good at.
And that helps me offset the skill that I'm attempting to learn that I'm bad
at, because I feel like I'm doing a good job of progressing as a learner.
So it fills that initial gap that I feel like people have to get through
where you learn that there's a skill and then you try it and you're bad at it.
And you're like, I don't want to put the work in to get good at this.
But if I'm doing the thing that I feel like I'm good at, which is learning, then
I'm like, okay, how can I break this down?
How can I make this make sense to me?
And by the time I've gotten past that point, I'm at least
able to like complete the task.
You try to learn something like how to do origami or something and you get it
for you to just crumple up the paper and you will, you're like, ah, this
is, I'm never going to be good at this.
Right.
But if you can get to the point where, okay, I can make the
swan, like I can do the Swan.
Yeah.
And if I can do that, then I can do anything.
Right.
So the learning to learn polyfills that initial part.
It gets me to the: what's the 101 outcome of somebody who's gone through this skill
then it's fun then you're making progress.
You're not trying to get over the initial hump.
Eddie: I know this term is overused, but kind of the gamification of learning
in a way, and not a gimmicky way, but a lot of times you play game and there is
no ultimate value in that game, right?
The enjoyment, like I would play RPGs and a lot of times you need a certain
amount of levels to beat the boss.
So you'd literally go in circles and fight the same monsters over and over again.
And that isn't actually progression and it's like, there's something about
learning what to do, learning what not to do and finding the process.
I think the enjoyment rather than.
Hoping of course you'll get to a destination, but, enjoying
the process I guess, is really how you get to that end point.
Is that kind of accurate?
Jason: Yeah, I think there's definitely the enjoying the process.
And then I think there's also the other part of it is what makes
a skill fun is the flow state.
Being able to do something that you're competent at and it's like
when you're learning to play guitar, you pick up a guitar and you have to
think really hard about where your left hand is, where your fingers.
And then you have to think about where your right hand is and
which string am I going to push?
And then you like, plunk plunk plunk, and it kind of works, but now you don't have
mental capacity to think about rhythm.
You don't have mental capacity to think about feel.
You're just trying to make it make a sound.
And when you're really good, you just sit down and play.
You don't have to think about where your hands are.
You just know to make some noise.
Right.
When I code because I've been doing it for so long, I don't have to
think about what the syntax is.
I don't have to think about how a for-loop is structured.
I can just play and that is due to a ton of practice.
But when you get to a new skill, you can't get into that flow state.
You can't just sit down and play.
But because I I've learned how to learn.
And the process of learning is fun.
There's kind of a flow state in breaking down the thing I don't understand.
And that makes it fun enough that I'll push through.
Something that otherwise would be a complete slog.
I think the other part too is it's one of those things where you enjoy the process,
but you also can enjoy new processes more.
If you have adjacent relevant experience, like playing a piano is
not the same as playing a guitar.
But the experience of knowing what music notes are going to come
out in, what generally scales are and what generally chords are.
You can transfer a lot of that knowledge, even though you don't
have any of the mechanical skill.
And suddenly the gap is a little bit shorter.
And so one of the huge benefits of this, like learning as a hobby, just picking
things up for whatever reason is that it also means I'm inadvertently shortening
the gap on a lot of things that I want to learn, which again, I'm not good at
anything, but I can do a lot of things.
And it's really fun for me that if I walk into a thing you know, an
escape room or I'm playing a new board game or, somebody who's got a
challenging, word puzzle or whatever.
It is a logic game.
I've done enough things that are kind of similar to those things
that I'm not going to be fast.
I'm not going to set world records.
I'm not going to be the best at it, but I can at least pick it up and Kind of do it.
Then it's fun.
And then you're actually playing.
So I think there's this, sort of chain of wins, that gives you confidence and that
makes you willing to do the next thing.
Like every single skill you learn is somewhat transferable.
Because as soon as you've learned a thing, there are adjacent things that
you can now learn that would have been that much more challenging before.
You get the confidence of having learned a thing, the more things
you learn, how to do the less likely you are to look at something and
go, oh, well, I can never do that.
There's nothing that I look at and think, oh, well, I could never do that.
There's stuff that I'm not willing to do.
I'm not willing to get into like excellent physical condition
to take on a lot of skillsets.
I know that there's a very, very high probability that I will never
dunk a basketball, you know, it's stuff like hard skills or technical
skills or mental things like trying to solve puzzles or do technical work.
I know when I can figure out.
And that's not because I'm cocky.
It's because I have a chain of wins of having figured out other things
that are sort of in that space.
And over the course of my career, you know, you get a
chance to play a little bit.
Oh, okay.
I got to do a spreadsheet on this.
Okay.
I can.
The formula and that was hard, but I got to work.
I can make a spreadsheet.
Then later you're in databases like, oh, great.
Databases are kind of just complicated spreadsheets.
I can probably figure this out.
Then you get your working database it's a chain of wins and that gives
you confidence and makes it a little more fun and a little less likely to
be something that you just get stuck.
Eddie: So I think that's really useful because if someone, doesn't really
consider themselves to be a learner or they're intimidated by expanding or
continuing to learn in different things.
That means if they start with something really small and maybe something that's
close to, things that they already know, then that's like an easy stepping stone to
help spinning up those gears of learning.
Jason: Yeah and maybe another way to look at it too, is that it reframes
failure in a way that I think is for me, at least very empowering.
I look at anything that doesn't work, not as a failure or a limitation, but as
information on how to change it next time.
Well, I am annoyingly optimistic people.
Don't I think people think that I am like a character.
Right.
And they see me on my stream or they see me on Twitter and
they go, nobody's that positive.
But I really am.
And this is like, my partner finds this infuriating because whenever
stuff gets challenging, I'm like, okay, well, let's look at what's working.
And then this isn't that bad.
We can work this out.
We can make this work.
All right.
Here's what we're going to do differently.
And she's like, oh my God.
Do you ever just get mad?
(Laughing) and they're like I do, but when I get mad, I just get, I'm
like, okay, how can we fix it though?
And fixing it means doing a productive thing.
So let's think about next steps.
And here's what we know, and here's what we don't, how do we learn what we
don't so that we can get to the end and it becomes this process of learning.
And again, for me, that's, it's fun.
It turns it into a puzzle.
And so failure is just information.
All failure is temporary.
Now it's part of the learning loop.
And so the goal is to try something and see whether it works so that you can then
make a better informed decision next time.
Instead of what I think a trap that a lot of people fall into as well.
I got to learn enough.
I got to practice enough so that when I try, I don't fail.
Like failure is not an option.
And I don't know, I don't, I wouldn't have gotten very much done in my
career if I wasn't willing to screw up.
I would say my day is any given day is me screwing up 50% of the time
because I'm trying something and somebody's like that didn't work.
And I'm like, okay, well, what can we do instead?
I get so much information so fast and you get to change the
way that you approach things.
Instead of saying well, if I do like this, what could go wrong?
Okay, well, here's a hypothetical thing that could go wrong.
Let me rewrite the plan, but you never get any information.
You never meets reality.
So this is sort of one of the major things for me, I guess, is that
now failure is like part of it.
You just, you go yeah, let's go fail fast so that we can learn what to do
differently so that we can get to the win.
Eddie: Embrace failure as a catalyst for learning.
I love that.
Well, I know we're coming up on time.
As a community, we really love to support each other.
We love to hear what everyone's up to.
So we'd just like to know, is there anything that we can do to support you?
Anything that you're involved in or something you want to
give a shout out to that?
Jason: Yeah.
We're doing a lot of fun stuff over at Netlify.
If you are working in web development, we just launched, edge functions, which
gives you the ability to transform responses right there at the edge with a
surprisingly little amount of JavaScript.
We've got, serverless functions and stuff.
So if you're somebody who considers yourself to be a front-end developer, I
think you could actually pull off what people would call full-stack with just
the JavaScript knowledge you already have.
If you want to go try edge functions, serverless functions.
So I'd highly encourage people to go mess with that.
It's a lot of fun.
Then just come hang out with me on Learn with Jason.
I am always playing around.
We're always pair programming and it's a lot of fun.
so come watch that live.
That's on twitch jlengstorf is the username.
Eddie: Awesome.
That's perfect.
Two great things to check out.
I actually use Netlify for my website, so definitely big thumbs up on that.
If anyone's trying to figure out what they want to do with their
website Netlify is a great option.
And I haven't checked out the edge functions, so I'm going to have to
do that now, cause, that sounds fun.
Jason: Absolutely
Eddie: Thanks for joining.
Really appreciate it and have a great day.
Jason: All right.
Thanks Eddie.
Eddie: Thanks for joining us for Episode 1, "Play Until it
Pays" with Jason Lengstorf.
You can find out more about Jason, either on his website, jason.af
or his Twitter @jlengstorf.
You can find links to everything we talked about in this episode,
as well as links to Jason's website and Twitter in the show notes.
If you enjoyed this episode please consider rating and reviewing it in
your favorite podcast directory and following us on Twitter @WebJoyFM
Thank you and have a great day!