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So, so, so, so I thought I would bring something up and I had a couple of people ask me at the conference I've been recently because they asked me like what's what's your background like how did you end up in in doing what you do and I get emails like this as well yeah saying like oh sort of how did you get where you are and I the answer is usually dumb luck yes and that's that is kind of that is always how I reply and I think this is a tweet that I've mentioned on either the video series or the podcast before we do a podcast did you know we do a podcast there'll be a link we do yeah and my answer is always well it's like telling people like the numbers I used to win the lottery yeah and it's I don't I'm not convinced this might not be helpful to you at all yes so I guess we're going to talk about our backgrounds yeah and how we got where we were I have no shame well yeah and if you thought previous episodes of hdb 2 and 3 were entirely self-indulgent you don't seem nothing yet this is this is the big one all right I was born no I I think from looking at our team I'm more on the traditional side of how I started computer sciences did my bachelor's started masters wait wait so you did computer science before your bachelor's or um what what what yeah I had interests I did the odd language here and there and I was at high school um yeah formally or just a no just like I'll just talk because it was not useful not useful the computer science class or computer classes that we had were not useful to me and I already but you did have computer classes we did right but that was more like I feel like I'm having to really dig for this information that's not what I wanted to talk about oh sorry okay what do you want I'll tell you what you just talk what you want to talk about no I'll I'll sit back and you let me know when I'm allowed to come in and ask you some questions well I thought I'm more visually because I did in fact actually study computer sciences which I know of people on our team actually did not or I know a couple of people even also did not you are one example because you did not say that you studied multimedia oh that's very well what could be better than media but multi-media multi-vitamin juice I'm on bit of a juice on multi-vitamin juice that's what I'm that's what I'm going for yeah and uh you still ended up here regrettably that is I think that goes back to what we're saying about dumb luck that is like so many people like I work here uh at google that sort of prides itself with like hiring the best people I'm like I'm not and I'm sitting alongside people who went to prestigious universities like Oxford Cambridge types and that does make me feel like it's the um or would you call it the imposter syndrome it gets that going but then on the other side I'm like ha you had to do a hard university course and I cheated I got here somehow but okay you did that's pretty much what I think is worth pointing out that especially web development or anything a lot of software engineering is so internet centric that you can find anything you want on the internet and teach it yourself if you want to yeah yeah yeah like the formal degrees are good I don't want to say that studying computer science wasn't useful like I learned things definitely things that I'm necessarily using nowadays in the web job that I have are you sure okay not often there's some things I am using so when we I think we spoke about before that I like that you come from that you're much better at the low level stuff than I am and I I always thought that I put that down to like you did a lower level of course like you did a course like what compilers were involved in and I did a course that had VRML and Adobe director or like uh there was macromedia at the time I guess right and flash like my course was predominantly flash I mean yeah I did have a course on compilers but I think I know more low level stuff because that what my first job was about also why did you pick to do a computer science degree then what was your because I didn't know any better like it seems like the obvious choice I enjoyed math and people when I said I enjoy computer I want to do computer science to keep people like do you know it's love math right and I'm like well I kind of enjoy math so I'm okay with that okay so and then I just studied computer sciences and not I didn't enjoy everything in there like some courses I did not enjoy they were just really outdated or not relevant to my interest so it's interesting in my multimedia course it was the the same story was was true I say it was predominantly flash but we did have some web courses the were actually courses that I I was always interested in the the computing side that got you to something visual really quickly right so I like on my Amiga deluxe paint was my thing I loved it like making animations I thought I was going to be a designer because that's what I really loved interesting there's a small problem with that rubbish at it right seriously bad have you seen our prox intro prox intro is beautiful don't mess with the prox intro but yes you see you see where things went wrong um so so yeah so it was when I kind of went on to the the pc and the web like the web was really I was like I'm it's the shortest exactly you can have right yeah do a thing see a thing it's great and I was like I want to make that and then I found this button called view source but I was like when I worked with executables or used executables in the past I was like it felt there was I couldn't figure out how to get there and that's what drove me because what I asked whenever somebody said he is a programmer or whatever I was like how do I make exe files right that was drove me because I wanted to understand because what I did I opened the exe files in notepad and changed the strings that I saw and sometimes it would still run and sometimes it wouldn't the and only later I figured out it only kept working if the string was the exact same length as before yes yes so we did uh so this is the thing I guess the difference between you is you looked at the exe file and went I'm going to do that whereas I went I can't know this this is impossible I can do it now but at the time I was like no and then the web just gave me the easy answer to how this was done and that was it was it took surprisingly long because people will like the people I asked were trying to give I guess I was fairly young I must have been like 10 or something when I was trying to do this and when I said like how how do I make exe and they were trying to give me oh no don't do that here's programming use excel and I'm like that's that's not programming I mean I know what they were getting at right like it's reactive programming and you do formulas and we're like but I want exe files yes I always thought for me that the it was the exe file and the screensaver which are kind of pretty much the same thing I later learned that was like the who this is this magic behind those files yes on the file editing thing um the closest I got to that was a Grand Theft Auto 1 uh that we found the wave files for the cut sequences which will also be like it would always be this like amazing artwork of like some serious gangster and me and my friends would just record like hello Reginald here I've been shooting some people up but I'm done now and I'm going to go start cake shop I think Grand Theft Auto 1 was the one where I also went in and found some .ini files where you can just go in and then they're pretty human readable and then there's stuff like debug mode and I was like yes please so this I think we're just we're coming to it's like it's hacking around was really an interesting point it seems to be what what is it's always a weird kind of passion or interest that drives you to just dig deeper because otherwise I wouldn't have canceled on my friends and stayed at home to keep working on something stupid I really am a meaningful order has gone completely from this episode so I'm going to jump back to education um and that like the we we learned how to one module that we had was making a website without using Dreamweaver or something like that yeah which I which was actually useful because I had never tried that before and we also did um one module on CSS Zengarde do you know what that is I I've heard of it I don't think I've ever used it but I roughly know what it's about it was kind of dawn of CSS becoming the right way of doing things and it was a an HTML page and you were only allowed to change the CSS and it was essentially an art gallery of different things people could create by only changing the CSS oh it was by Dave Shay um who I saw and I thought it was it was actually quite a modern thing for us to do that at university um but then I met Dave Shay later on and I was like we did a module on you at university it was a sort of it was a weird moment but I would say it's like that yeah a lot of the course was depending on the teacher a lot of it was out of date I remember a question on my exam paper um which was about CSS it said like what does this CSS do and it had a dot active the color red that should be a colon shouldn't it should be a colon and so the person who marked that must have hated me because I wrote two answers and it's like one of these answers is the answer you think because I was because I just was so obsessed with the active class on it or yeah you're meant to say or you maybe you meant to say this and the teacher was just like is it illegal to punch pupils like because you know I had done a bit web stuff on the side so I felt really smug and it was probably if you can outsmart the professor then yeah that's winning but for me the most important part of my course was the year in industry it was a four-year course and in the middle work experience and that I didn't have that that's why you're rubbish well I got I did that myself because and in my second year I think I tried to do my own company with a couple of other students that oh you did do that I did and that's how I got into the whole low level stuff where I did microprocessor programming and hardware engineering and all these things from the very basic electrical engineering logic I had mostly taught from my mom who was an electrical engineer oh and I didn't have that my dad played guitar did he teach me guitar dad teach me guitar no your left hand did not stringing this up again actually he was very spot if I just I wasn't cool enough didn't have the dexterity so yeah that's that's where I picked that up and my my company failed miserably like it was absolutely not a success after two years of working full-time and not paying myself anything so okay do recommend yeah but did you learn from it so that's what I always like I would never do it again but I also would not skip it right because it I I got all my contacts during that I learned so much about what I want to do and what I'm good at what I'm not good at I'm not good at being a ceo because I spent all my time doing legal and taxes and like no that's not what I'm good at did you this is I yeah I know I'm taking this episode in random directions again did you have to it's fair to say like we were talking about we've got a lot of luck there's also a lot of people who have to have to have to overcome a lot of stuff yeah to like sort of to make it or to just like you know survive in the industry did you get anything close to that was there anything that you had to overcome I had massive lots of privileges along the path that made it very easy to end up where I am considering that so my my dad is a doctor who was one of the first doctors to adopt a computer system for his patients instead of having a paper file system and for some reason he allowed so he had a computer at home which was not the norm in the mid 90s necessarily I would say like a proper windows 3.11 good times yeah and I I mean I wouldn't do anything related to coding on there I would just sit there and not be afraid to touch computer and just open up paint and draw because that's what I do yeah yeah yeah um but yeah he allowed me to use a computer and I bricked it more than once and he still allowed me to use it despite this being his you know work computer with his patients data on there um so that's obviously a massive head start to many other people who did not have a computer at home at age six or seven you see I know I did so my my family uh weren't particularly well off who I wouldn't I don't know if I'd say we're poor but we weren't well off either but it was like definitely when uh my sister arrived um that my dad went well what we're going to do about this other child get him a computer and as I got a zX spectrum 81 I was a Sinclair spectrum and that was kind of like and and when I saw like because obviously my dad was thinking two things like we'll get the boy a computer was also thinking we'll get the boy a computer and so and he did a bit of programming on that and I found that almost more interesting than the games I came with it and that was I think um but because I was I tended to be on the generation of machine behind um the kind of people that were richer I I sort of felt like I was trying to get the most out of the system right and that led to a lot of like hacking it led to a lot of perf matters yeah right from the start that was it and um yeah and and like trying I was really interested in the demo scene I was never really on it but like I was really fascinated by like people who are really driving computers so would you say that that's what made you go into programming that you saw your dad do a little bit of coding there yeah yeah yeah yeah because for me that was my cousin oh interesting I didn't like I was okay with him it was good with computers I knew my way around them was comfortable with them but I didn't do programming and I hadn't any interest I didn't know what it was but then I saw him write a a batch script like Windows batch scripts that were just output stars and two spaces as far fast as possible and so it would look like snow falling in the terminal because it was so fast like he looked like was going down oh nice and I took that script and I turned the stars into a backslash and now it was raining I was like I'm a hacker I was the star of my school because I could like write on the screen mr butler has farted one time has farted two times three times and make that go down the screen everyone thought that I was the funniest kid in the classroom like yep I coded the machine that's not that different today no I still do that trick just the name at the start changes but yeah but there was one one teacher had at school he was a science teacher who I guess didn't like children he definitely didn't like being in the north because I was doing like computer stuff and I think I was probably not that was probably being annoying let's say annoying severely annoying and he sort of took me aside at one point and so he kind of went you think you're pretty smart you think you're pretty smart like the computers and stuff but compared to kids in the south you're nothing yeah yeah all right and so and that is probably the only time in my career that I kind of really like felt that and so when people talk about especially like women in the industry minorities who are getting that every day every day yeah that that moment that happened to me is the one thing that I can hang on to and think god how that made me feel I would not I would not make it it would not make it if that was constant like so it's yeah it's horrible that happens and that's the only thing I've got that I could get some empathy I could just expand multiply that by millions yeah pretty much isn't it so so what is the bottom line I just don't mind I mean as I said like there's so many people that I work with we work with that come from completely different fields and will put us in a corner in the things that they can do yeah um that I hope more companies adopt the whole you don't need a degree to get hired as a web engineer or something on those lines yeah because they're missing out on some very very good talent out there yes yes the other way around nobody should feel discouraged from getting started web development just because they come from an orchestra background or something like it actually might have some really nice synergies that you're not aware of yet anyone could be a web developer as long as you're extremely lucky and they're in the right place in the right time what in it yeah that's our moral that that's that's bleak I guess it's I don't don't be discouraged but don't also feel you have to copy someone else's footsteps because the when someone tells you here's how I made it they are almost certainly completely wrong they made it through some other things some luck um and if you're trying you know if anyone watching this is trying to make it in the street then I hope you have the same luck keep going keep going HSB 203 swag it's just a button so we're gonna get at like get a full keyboard with different pitches