Future-Proof Your Career: Positioning Yourself for Success in the AI Era with Drake Porter (DF#107)

Drake Porter [00:00:00]: [Episode Highlight]

In the long term, we have, like, big societal implications of AI, and that's what people are scared of, and rightfully so. But you shouldn't let those fears cloud the opportunity that AI is creating or that the disruptions that AI is causing can ultimately lead to your career and ultimately as a result of your life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:25]:

Aloha folks, welcome back to degree free where we teach you how to get hired without a college degree. I am your host, Ryan Maruyama. Before we get into today's episode, I did have a couple of things for you. If you haven't already, go to degreefree.co/newsletter to sign up for our free weekly newsletter that has different degree free jobs, degree free tips to get hired. and get the work that you want. And also, we created a free community for you that has 2 free courses that you can take on the 5 degree free pathways and the 7 day get hired challenge to help you get out of the job that you're in and get into the job that you want, you can go to degreefree.co/network to sign up for our free community, the degree free network. I am super excited today because we have a repeat guest today, Drake Porter. He is back on the podcast. If you haven't already listened to his first episode, I definitely suggest going back and listening to it. It is degree free episode number 63, and I will put links to that as usual and everything else that we speak about in this episode at degreefree.co/podcast. That first episode with Drake is one of my favorites. We go over everything, product management, to mindset and the degree free where it is jam packed with actionable advice. This time, we are doing something completely different We go into what he would do if he were to start all the way over. We go over how AI is going to affect your job and what you can do to get ahead of it and how you can use AI in your career right now. And we go over the tech layoffs and whether or not you should be transitioning your career to tech right now. I know for a lot of people that are listening to this, you're doing something completely different and you're thinking about getting into tech, but you've heard about all of these layoffs and you don't know whether or not you really wanna hitch your wagon to it. This episode is for you. Drake is such a wealth of knowledge, and we are so happy to have him back on. If you'd like to connect with Drake, go to his LinkedIn, I will put links to his LinkedIn at the show notes to degreefree.co/podcast. And without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Drake Porter.

Drake Porter. It is great to have you back on the podcast. You are the first person that is a repeat guest on this podcast because we loved you so much, and we had to have you back. Thank you for making the time. Yeah. I'm I'm happy to be back Honestly, first time around was a really great experience. Got a lot of really good feedback from people, a lot of cool reach outs and questions and everything that came out of it. So figured it made sense to come back. Yeah. Awesome. And for those that are new to the podcast and I know we have a bunch of new listeners, from the first time that you were on. I wanted to just give, like, a quick ninety second recap of your background. And for those listening, if you didn't here our first episode, you can go back and listen to it. It is episode 63 with none other than Drake Porter. And I know that number off the top of my head. We are now a 100 episodes in, and I remember episode 63 really well. because that is the number one episode that I recommend to my friends and family. And that is saying something at least for me because I don't know. When you're once you're doing this, like, entrepreneur or business thing for long enough, Your family and friends can only support you for so much. Right? Like, they'll do they'll listen to the first thing that you put out in the world or They'll buy your first product. But eventually, like, you've been doing it for 7, 8 years. They kind of, like, they don't listen to this podcast. and everything. Right? And I don't expect them to, which is totally fine. But I recommend your podcast to them even though none of them are in the product management space, which is that's what you are. You're a senior product manager at Meta. So there is something for everyone on their career journey in that episode. And some from defining what product management is soft skills, how do you think about positioning your career?

Drake Porter [00:04:50]:

I mean, it is a wealth of knowledge, and you are a wealth of knowledge. So really, really thank you for coming on. No. Thank you so much. I mean, that's probably the the kind of introduction you could you could have given me. You know, honestly, I just have been through it and kinda done it all on on on the way to where I'm at now and made a lot of the mistakes and move fast and Yeah. I'm just happy that I have the opportunity to help people not make the same mistakes I did.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:18]:

Yeah. Definitely. And we're very fortunate to have people like you come on and share their experiences. One of the first places that I wanted to start As we mentioned, you work at Meta. Over the past 12 months or even longer than that, we have been hearing so much about tech layoffs. In the news, there's always headlines. This tech company lays off this many thousands of people. that tech company lays off 10% of their workforce. If you go back and listen to our very first episode, at the time, I think that only with Meta at the time of the recording for, like, 6 months or so?

Drake Porter [00:05:56]:

Maybe not even. Less than that. less than that. Maybe, like, 2 or 3, actually. It it was very recent. Right. And so

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:05]:

here we are And we are, hopefully, on the other side of these layoffs, here you are still at Meta. And that was one of the things that really stuck out to me as an outsider looking in. I'm just like, I have to have Drake back on to talk about this. And, like, how do you position your career, and how do you position yourself within an organization to withstand these types of layoffs and these types of, you know, for a lack of a better term, you know, head chopping, you know, and cost cutting. Yeah. You know, I think that for people who've watched the last episode,

Drake Porter [00:06:41]:

you'll notice this trend in my career where I have always just not been very risk averse. If it leads in the direction that I'm generally interested in, I will usually take the leap. And whether that's, like, moving cities or leaving a company to go do something else, like, I I'm very quick to take those risks. And So I feel like it was actually the opposite when I joined Meta. When I joined Meta, to me, it felt quite apparent that there was going to be some kind of economic certainty on the horizon. There are a lot of indicators, but the housing market was probably the most obvious one at the time. There was, like, a very clear housing market downturn. And generally speaking, if certain sectors of the economy go down, other sectors go down. And so I felt like it was pretty likely that there were going to be maybe layoffs And if not, layoffs, like, at least the stock prices were going to take big hits. So when I joined Meta, I was like, okay. We're gonna do the opposite of what I normally do. We're not gonna pick the risky teams to to join. We're not going to orient my career around, like, the fast track or whatever. I mean, I I wanted to pick kinda the safer route that still was in line with my personal strengths. at the very beginning of the last episode, we talked about the team I was on. I'm still on the same team. That was a XR security team. And so it's security tooling for both augmented reality and virtual reality devices. And now our team has a different name, but we still focus on the same things. My perspective there was, okay. It's you're much less likely to get laid off if you're in security, privacy, anything that makes sure that the company is safe and that users are safe, you're always critical. And so there was definitely a part of me that selected the area I went into because of those concerns. There was also a part of me that was, like, Well, I don't wanna be stuck in, like, the abyss of security where I'm, like, only a security product manager for the rest of my life, and I can't move and do other things. And so that's where the kind of ARVR focus came in, where it's like, let's be at the forefront of a new technology, what might be the future of computing platforms if if the bet's right, but we're gonna be in the safer area of that insecurity. And so there there was definitely a a strategy there. But I think that that really is reliant on a big theme from the last podcast, which was like Foresight, where every single time, especially right after I make a new move, I'm really trying to think about what I think the world's gonna look like in the next 6 months to a year. And the bet doesn't have to be right. But even if you're, like, 5 to 10% right, and you're at at least orienting your career life around that direction, you're gonna be way further ahead than everybody else. who's facing what they think is going to happen on what has happened the past 6 months instead of what they think will happen over the next 12. Right. Right. And So it's basically just taking the

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:46]:

macro view of the situation, of whatever situation that you're in and whatever industry that you're in for those people listening, positioning your career in a essential

Drake Porter [00:09:58]:

role within the company and within the organization. Yeah. I I think a lot of people have this feeling that, like, oh, I'm I'm a account manager in in a sales team. Like, I don't need to be the, you know, Wall Street predictor of of all the things that are going to happen in America over the next year. and, like, you don't have to be that. You know, those aren't necessarily skills relevant to my job at all. But if you even try, to to have that outlook, it's going to pay, like, massive returns in your career if you even just, like, orient towards that line of thinking at all. And and there are plenty of times where the answer isn't that they're going to be layoffs or or that the global economy is gonna collapse. A lot of the times that you look to the future and it's like, hey. My industry might be impacted by AI or my industry might be impacted by changes to even a company policy. Like, whenever Apple kinda changed their application tracking policies, There are a lot of industries outside of, you know, obviously, impact of Facebook, but outside of social media that were heavily impacted by that, where you could just look those things. And just ask yourself the question how could that possibly impact what I do. And then if you're asking the right questions and understanding the problems the right way, the solutions are usually

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:20]:

right there. With the tech layoffs, there are so many people out there that are reading these headlines. They are seeing the quote, blood in the streets, and a lot of people are really worried about transitioning their careers into tech into technology. And I know that's a broad broad spectrum, but they see these headlines and they're just like, This company lays off. This company lays off. And you're sitting here listening to this podcast, and you are walking on your way to your serving job. Right? You're a bartender. You are wrenching underneath the car right now, changing oil. As I know, some people are literally doing that I know at least one of my listeners does that. You're like, well, I am going to dump everything that I am into whatever career change is next. How do I know that I'm not gonna get laid off in tech or how can I position my career so that I'm not doing that? Like, what are the actionable steps for those people that are in an completely irrelevant or seeming irrelevant, you know, career and trying to make that career change. Yeah. You know, I think that a lot of people

Drake Porter [00:12:30]:

are weary and rightfully so to tech because there was, like, this perspective right around the time the pandemic hit forward of, like, oh, everyone needs to go become a software engineer or a designer or a data scientist or whatever. and work from home and make their 100 of 1000 of dollars. And and that's what everyone did. Like, everybody and their mom went to some coding boot camp, you know, and came out and and and, you know, made made some career jump in. I I think the truth is that in reality, the pandemic hit and it changed the world and we are all at home, and we are all using technology more than we ever had because that's all we could do. And that resulted in massive profits tech companies and those massive profits skyrocketed stock. And the truth is that I think as humans, in general, we do this, but especially in in the private sector, we tend to overshoot. And I think that a lot of tech companies overshot. I think that they're growing very rapidly. There's this heavy demand to compete for talent. And I think that they overshot, and they knew that they overshot. And the economy was reeling back. people went back to work. They stopped using tech as much. Advertisement stopped performing as well. Companies had less money in, so they could spend less on advertising, which further hurts a lot of the tech companies since most are sustained in some part by advertising. You take all of that together, and there's going to be a rebound and the rebound where the layoffs I think when you look at the core of technology as a sector, that's where you you can kind of find some confidence again. If I wanted to make water bottles, compete in the water bottle industry, I would have to go a know how to design I would have to go spend tons of money on finding suppliers and, you know, storing them and shipping them and marketing them and all that. There there's a huge barrier of cost entry to do anything in that space. When you look at technology, there's no barrier to cost entry at all. you just have to know how to code. And then the rest is almost free as long as you have an Internet connection to computer, which, like, you could go to a library, right, or in theory, it's almost free. If you have an industry like that that is growing so rapidly in adoption by users and has such a small barrier to entry to do anything in terms of development of a product. It almost has infinite growth, which is why I'm so confident in technology as a to work in even if you're looking for something stable. I think that there's not much better. Now to answer your question of, like, how do you think about that? I don't think it's actually changed a whole lot. I think, like, if you wanna go do a coding boot camp, that's something that you can do. I think that if you want to go and just launch a whole bunch of mini projects and slowly build up That's something you can do as well. In fact, I think now is probably the best time ever to do that because the tech companies are reeling. Sure. But, like, Metas already started hiring again as have a lot of the other tech companies. If you start a project now and you slowly develop your ability to code or to interpret data or to, you know, lead people, manage people. In a year, whenever you've really matured those skills and you've developed whatever this project is or coding boot camp or whatever, the industry is gonna be in a much healthier spot and probably rapidly hiring again. And so if anything, I would think revert back to kinda how things were 2 years ago. You double down on that, and you just have to think, like, 12 months out kinda tying back to that last point.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:06]:

And I think that there's potential there. So -- I wanted to key in on a couple of things. The first thing that I wanted to talk about was just talking about the upside of technology being infinite. And related to that point, what a lot of people think when they think of tech is they think about working at, you know, the the Metas of the world and the Amazons of the world, things like that. But what a lot of people that are thinking about making these huge career transitions. There are a lot of tech roles within non tech companies. You can be, you know, working in tech while working out a mortgage broker's office. Like, the method hasn't changed or at least the job hasn't changed in 50 years, right, a broker between 2 things. But the way that they do it and the way that they transact is so high-tech now that you could go to these seemingly low tech places and gain experience from that. And in that way, that is another interpretation. At least that's my interpretation of the upside being infinite, and that's a great way -- to get your foot in the door in some other place and some other roles.

Drake Porter [00:17:19]:

Mhmm. I I mean, absolutely. That that's exactly how I oriented my whole career. I had a background in esports, competitive gaming. and there is a company that put on events and broadcast in competitive gaming. And I happen to be an experts very specifically on college competitive gaming and and league of legends, and they were building a product around that. And they needed somebody who had domain expertise in that area. to go be a product manager there. Like, I wasn't even a software engineer or a data scientist or anything like that. It was like a product manager for a very niche product that happened to be very familiar in. And there are tons of those everywhere. There are tons of startups that are launching in super niche areas that, you know, you may be an expert in. or or relatively knowledgeable in. And then you can, like, have that opportunity to, like you said, get your foot in the door. I think startups are a really great opportunity, but but what you call out is actually, you know, brilliant as well that, like, there are tons of small businesses or medium sized business as mortgaging is a really good example. There's, you know, I used to work for a company called Biatt, which made teeth aligners, and they had, like, a whole product org. with software engineers and product managers and whatnot. Technology is innovating in every single area. There are so many crafty ways to get in but that's, like, the hardest part. And if you're open minded to all the different pathways, that's where you're usually going to find the most success. If you have the limited view of, like, I have to go work at Amazon or Meta or Google or whatever, that's where you're probably going to fail over and over and over again and get scurrage, you have to find, like, the back doors. That that's, like, the right way, and then you develop a strategy to get to

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:05]:

the Googles, Metas, and Amazon if that's what you wanna do. Totally. It's funny, you know, thinking about that low tech thing. I just thought about a meeting that I'd had recently with somebody there in another country And it's a, I don't know, 3rd world country, I guess, as you wanna say. I don't wanna say the country, but they are thinking about setting up a electronic contract management system or basically using OCR and scanning contracts. That that's pretty much it. What I thought so funny about having this conversation with this person was that that was my first job out of college. was literally exactly what this person was trying to set up in another country. I was doing that 10 years ago. And even 10 years ago, that was low tech or it was it was already around for 20 years prior to that. but the geo arbitrage of going somewhere else as well and kinda thinking outside the box. Like, this person basically wanted my help of of thinking of how to put this into play because what I did was I focused on the operations. This person's a salesperson at heart and They can demo the thing. They could sell it. But then when it comes to scaling the team, hiring temp work, you know, that's where they needed help or at least ideating the process. so that if they had closed a contract, they could scale this team quickly. So I that that just brought to mind that. And you know, there is that arbitrage. And you don't have to go as wide as going to a whole another country, but you could do what you did, which was you know, you were living in LA, and then you went to Salt Lake City to work at that at that bike place. Right? And it's like, you just go and say yes to all these different opportunities, and you never know what is what is going to happen after that. What's what doors are gonna open?

Drake Porter [00:20:56]:

from there. Mhmm. You know, I I just to comment on that, I used to always say that one of my biggest advantages was I was never scared to move. And that's true. Like, I worked in Chicago. I worked in Columbia, Missouri. I worked in Salt Lake City, Utah. I worked in Los Angeles. Now I worked in San Francisco. to work in Dallas. I I've kind of been all over the place in in terms of work. And it's fascinating because I actually think that that's changing with the way that remote work is kind of finding its footing, and we don't know if it's gonna be like totally remote or or what what you know, balance that's gonna be. But I still do think that people who are open minded to being versatile in terms of company, but also in terms of location can dramatically increase their earnings over time. And you can even develop a strategy of, like, let's say you move to San Francisco to get a job in tech or something like that and you make all this money there. And you can then develop a plan of, like, Okay. I'm going to work specifically to have the opportunity to work full time remote, and then I'll go move back to Dallas. Or I'll go move back to wherever I'm originally from. And now you're earning that San Francisco income, you know, in a significantly lower cost of living. I think there's a lot of interesting strategy that comes into play with the growth of remote work now that didn't exist whenever I was really trying to crack into product management originally.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:21]:

Just to comment on on that. We've talked a lot about that before, and we've gotten a lot of pushback on that as far as being willing to move somewhere else. We are of the mind that it is a superpower to be willing to move somewhere else. I'm not saying that you have to. I'm just saying being willing to do that is going to open up a lot of doors for you that otherwise would be closed. And I get it. Everybody has different priorities in life, and everybody has different things that they care about and different things that they're dealing with. Maybe you have kids and maybe the they're in a school and they have friends that you don't wanna take them out. All I'm saying is that the people that are willing to do it, and then when they have those opportunities, they jump on it. those people are going to, a lot of the times, see outsized returns as you were saying. The way that I think about it and I equate it, especially if you're thinking about college in the lens of the degree free mindset and what this whole thing is about, is so many people are willing to go and do 4 years somewhere else that they've never been before. Right? Like, you're you're willing to go over in God knows where college in the middle of nowhere, but you're not willing to do the same thing for your career, which to me is just lack of I want it's bonkers. I I don't know what I don't know how else to say. The last thing I wanted to say and bring up about what you were talking about earlier is the layoffs. I think that you are dead on with the Things were good. Right? Prior to the pandemic, things were going really well. And these teams inflated to you know, a large size. And, eventually, when things do that, there's a scaling problem or, you know, if revenue gets cut, something's gotta get cut, and here we are. We actually covered something like this on a previous episode where Amazon hired or conditionally hired a bunch of college grads but then ended up paying them, like, $13,000 to not work for them for, like, a year. Like, they deferred they were just, like, You know what, guys? We're gonna defer your your onboarding. If you take this if you take this little package and you come back, and then we'll we'll we'll see what's up. I think that was, like, 6 months ago, and I'll link to that episode that we did for those listeners in the show notes, degreefree.co/ podcast. But so because I'm forgetting a little bit of the story here, but I think you're absolutely right. I think it's just, you know, things are good, and then Unfortunately, things swing the other way, and things are bad. And sometimes people get cut, but that just means that you have to be

Drake Porter [00:25:03]:

willing and ready to move at the drop of a hat. Mhmm. I I think that I've always tried very hard to just be super flexible in terms of my career. And whenever the layoffs were announced at Meta, even though I worked in security, I knew that there is a very real possibility that I could be laid off. And I had very, very low levels of anxiety around that, actually. Like, our first round of layoffs, I'm pretty sure it was just, like, basically randomized. And The possibility there was just I don't remember what the exact percentage of employees were, but let's say it is around 10%, because it it was, you know, plus or minus some some percentage points there. That means that there is, like, a 10% chance that that I'd be without a job. And I wasn't particularly terrified just because I've been laid off two times prior and every single time I got a better role, but also because I've always had an understanding of, like, what is the plan b. I don't put a lot of, like, effort into plan b because I think that takes away from plan a. But to to have that there, is helpful. And my plan b is just the same advice I give everybody. My plan b is that, okay. I'll go to a startup and try and become a chief of staff at a startup. And, like, Sure. I'll probably never be a product manager again, but that's gonna launch me into another direction of my career that has potentially higher upsides. And so if I'm forced to take this risk, I'm gonna turn this into, like, a gamble that benefits me even more. And I think that that's like a good outlook tab for a lot of people. If I was, like, on a sales team or something like that, and there's a possibility I'm going to get laid off, the way I would think about this is, like, okay. Well, if I'm gonna get laid off, I'm gonna go to a start up and do sales there and make it part of my pitch that I can work towards another role at this startup that I would prefer to have. I think having that contingency plan helps a lot. with that being said, like, I don't have kids. You know? Like, there there are a lot of things that I'm not responsible for that allows me to take these risks, and that's a privilege And I think people who have that privilege should really lean on that whenever they're in those positions of uncertainty. But with that being said, I I I think that it's very helpful to kinda always have that. You know? If if anything hits a fan like, Here's the diversion path where things end up better. Or worst case scenario, they end up the same or slightly worse. But that was kind of like my how I was treading the waters during that that

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:40]:

layoff uncertainty period. This is a perfect segue to we were texting to set this second round up, and we were talking about things that we could talk about on the podcast. And one of the things that I keyed in on was you were talking about if you had to go back and be fifteen years old again, and make a plan and execute a plan, that you would do it differently. And so

Drake Porter [00:28:08]:

I would love to know what would that plan be now if you were to have to start all the way over. It's it's a really hard one because I actually do think that the benefit I had was I was still in high school when everybody knew that you had to go to college. Like, what I mean is when I was in the 9th grade, like, there weren't kids not going to college. Like, they all every kid was going to college. I was, like, the point of showing up to high school. And I watched TED Talk by sir Ken Robinson. I believe it's you know, he he he goes and talks about how the education system's broken. And from that point on, I was like, oh, this is just useless. And and and then I learned more from Sam I think his name's Altacher. He he talked a lot about college not being of particular use, and and and that really framed a lot of my choices. And so it let me get ahead of everyone else. I think that there are a lot of kids now who are choosing not to go to college. However, at at the time that I decided not to, that was, like, freaking unheard of for, like, every single kid was to college. So that that was part of my advantage was that I I decided to do that when other people weren't. I mean, I still would make the same decision now. I I wouldn't go to college if I were to start over. And if I did, I would do I would do it as cheaply as humanly possible. Like, 2 years Community College, I would go to a state University, and I would only get a degree in something that, like, absolutely requires me to have a degree in it in in order to, you know, pursue that. But I I probably wouldn't go to college. I I would pursue it similarly in that I would start with some kind of side project, and I would sustain myself economically through the gig economy effectively. Whether that's, like, Postmates or DoorDash, I did Postmates for a little bit. And I would probably just launch something within an area that I'm familiar with. So, like, I went and did a start up. I don't think you need to do a start up. I mentioned in our last podcast, like, if you like walking dogs, make an app for it, make a site for it if you like photography a whole lot, like, make some site for your photography that has some kind of useful functionality of some sort. And you don't have to know out of code to do that. Go make a WordPress site or something along those lines. And in -- instead of focusing on the coding of it, focus on, like, how you use data to make decisions around how you're going to change the site or how you're going to take different photos or how you're going change your posting schedule and take note of, like, every single one of those things. Basically, I would put more effort into using the project to build the resume instead of using the project to get more opportunities to then build the resume because that's really more more of how I oriented. The truth is it's highly likely your project will just become profitable, period, and you'll be able to do that. But if that's not the case, in in any case, you're effectively getting, you know, the value of years of education or within the period of maybe, like, a year or some something like that. From there, one once I've kind of, like, built up that that resume and that opportunity, I think that there's a lot of value right now in terms of, like, development of personal skills in that traveling piece. I just would wanna get into an opportunity where I am as uncomfortable -- and challenged as possible. That really depends on kind of what your opportunities are. But, like, if it was me, Like, I'd be in New York or I'd be in San Francisco or LA or London or whatever. Like, some massive city where I'm going to, like, really struggle but the opportunity is to meet different people, the opportunities to, like, develop my communication skills and things like that. I think that's actually going very much be important. And the next generation of workers, maybe it's the COVID thing. Everybody's stuck at home Generally, I've definitely generally, I've definitely seen a degradation of communication and social skills within the workplace over the past couple of years. And I think that putting yourself in those situations in those environments where you're really challenged in that particular area whenever AI is coming in and doing so many other areas of your job so effectively, I think that's a bet that I would take. Even if you, like, went into sales or something like that, like, anything that's really going allow you to be able to communicate with other people, influence people, negotiate effectively, make people, you know, get on board with your ideas and you don't have to be an extrovert to do that. That's what I would really focus on orienting my skill set around right now. It's

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:42]:

Awesome that you brought up Alticere. James Alticere for those people listening to James Alticere show. He runs that. We've had his wife, Robin Alticere, on the podcast, and his his producer and engineer Jay Yao on the podcast as well. We've been lucky enough to Hannah and I to call Jay a friend. And what James Altucher talks about a lot of the times is picking one thing that you're good at and another thing that you're good at and finding the inter of those 2 things. And so I will give you a real world example for those people listening, and you did it yourself. In the first episode you talked about, think it was Elon Musk or Peter Thiel that said, you know, pick 3 things that you wanna do and change in the world. And one of those things was journalism for you, and then you chose something that you knew a lot about, which is esports. So you took the 2 things and you he calls it idea sex. And idea sex and out came

Drake Porter [00:33:40]:

e s e sports news. You you got it. It is a yes and c. And fun fact, the literal reason why I decided to do that was because of James Altacher. I had specifically read about the idea of idea sex, and I was like, okay. Let me come up with a way to do this. And that resulted in ESNC. It was a 100% outager. Yeah. And and I will give credit where credits do as well. That is pretty much how we came to having a podcast.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:06]:

about these things is because Hannah and I were running a specialized tattoo shop where we were doing YouTube videos for it. And we were pretty successful at it, and we had all the gear and we understood it. We understand the production side of it and how to produce it. But it wasn't filling our soul. I mean, we were helping people in a very in a very rudimentary way. We were helping them feel better about themselves. but we wanted to help people really change their lives. And we thought, okay. Well, how can we take this proficiency that we have in production and bring it to the people and help people change their lives, and that's where degree free came because we had this passion for, you know, basically breaking the narrative that you have to go to college to be successful in life. and that's how this podcast came to be. And I think that that's a great way for people to get started on their projects is finding something that you're interested in and finding something that you're proficient in or finding 2 things that you're interested in, and then combining the 2 and you know, and then starting that. The problem that I see now, it is a great way to get started. It's a great way to gain experience. and it's a great way to differentiate yourself in the market, especially when you're trying to make seemingly unrelated career changes like we talked about, the guy wrenching underneath the car. into a tech role. The problem is quantifying the experience that you gain as a you know, project head. Right? Like, you start these projects and let's say you start a blog that gets

Drake Porter [00:35:48]:

10,000

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:49]:

hits a day in traffic. Well, how can you tell that to somebody? Right? Like, how can you without the title, and I'm using air quotes for those not watching, without the title convinced somebody, hey, I can run your SEO, or I can run your content marketing. Like, I can do all these things or I can be the product manager of, you know, this within your content team or whatever. That I think when somebody figures that problem out, I think the work landscape is going to change in the way that we hire people and the way that we vet our candidates, is going to fundamentally change because we are seeing it right now the uprising of the gig economy and the contract work. And people Everybody and their mother has these little side projects going on, but it's so difficult to slap that on a resume. A lot of people don't put it on their resume. And and I think that that's an error. A lot of people would have to say, well, I only made, like, a $100 on this one project. But, yeah, you created you created a product, you created a website, you marketed it, and you fulfilled the sales. I mean, there's so much to put on your resume from that one thing, but it's just so hard for the hiring managers to quantify it at the on the other end of the table. I don't see what is wrong.

Drake Porter [00:37:18]:

If I deserve criticism in this belief, then I fully embrace it and accept it. But and and I didn't do this with the e s and c, but if I were to go back with the e s and c and do this, I don't see what would be wrong with it. I was a product manager at ESNC. That's the 100% what I was doing. I was fully focused on the product measuring ways that we identify success and then driving decisions based on the metrics that we're moving and our our understanding of users. I did I do other things for us in c 2? Yes. However, if you're at a start up, you're gonna wear 5 different hats, but have a title anyway. And so even if you did found your dog walking, you know, company and and made a site, I might put down, like, founder slash Product Manager, founder slash data scientist and maybe bring on somebody else. That way, you know, you have a cofounder who also has different roles. and you can justify some of those titles as well. I think that that's kind of the very first step that you take in in that direction. It doesn't matter if you make any money with the project that you're working on. I don't think that that's important at all. I think what's important is that you made something So long as you make something, that's what the companies care about. Like, a company hiring you doesn't actually if you just think about it from, like, purely conceptual perspective. They don't care about how much money you made at at your last place. They care about what you can make for them that they can then sell and then make money in, then they will pay you for a portion based on your perceived value. And I don't see what's wrong with somebody going and saying, like, oh, I founded this thing, and I acted in this capacity. And here is my role within that capacity. Here are the different actionable or or or measurable results that I drove as a result of the work that I did, and you put that obviously in, like, in the -- description of your job title on your resume. And you treat it no differently than you would treat any other role. I I don't know if they're, like, state laws or anything like that that would, you know, potentially corrupt this, but I don't think so. I I think, realistically speaking, you can pitch your career in the work that you've done and and what is accurate, which is based on the title that best describes the work that you're doing. I I I think that's where people feel challenged. I think that they perceive resumes. This is, like,

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:46]:

cut and dry. Like, if you didn't have to file taxes on this, then you can't put it. And and I don't think that that's really true. I love that we're getting into this topic because it's something that I've thought a lot about being an entrepreneur and being a business owner. It is a huge, huge problem. Like, how do you quantify that? And on your resume, what do you say? because I'll tell I'll tell those people listening. If you are applying to a, let's say, product manager role, and then you put down that you're founder of a company. A lot of times, there's a disconnect between people. Maybe product managers a little bit because being actually being a founder, I've I've heard this from a very reputable source. He's a CEO of a multibillion dollar company, and he was, like, actually his best product managers. are X founders. He's just like, as soon as I see a founder and they are applying for my product roles, he's like, I'm hiring them. And because of and it goes back to what we were talking about in our first episode. It goes back to their vision, and it goes back to their execution of the vision. So okay. That's a poor example. But let's say that you're in sales or you wanna do entry level marketing. But you put down that you're a founder of a company and then you're putting down every single thing that you've done in that capacity in that role. There's a massive disconnect for the person on the hiring side looking at this and there's like, I don't need a founder of a company. I need a marketing associate to come in here and do marketing associate level tasks and work. And in that same vein, I tell people to do exactly what you said, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and it's definitely not illegal. Make it easy for that person sitting across the table from you to analyze your resume and say, yes. This is how you can fit into my organization. And here's the value that I can bring in this marketing associate capacity. I will tell you right off the bat, I've talked about on this podcast about my worst interviews, and I've had some, like, really, really. I've had some doozies. And I haven't even talked about this. One instance, But I go to this interview, and it's for project product manager kind of sort. There's no real role. I go to this interview, and that exact experience happened to me where they looked at my resume and I had founder this, founder that, and then whatever roles that I that I had underneath. And then I had look. I have plenty of experience managing projects, managing products. I can work pretty much anywhere. I'm very confident of that, but I didn't make it clear to them what value I could bring in the role because here I am, I'm saying, oh, I brought this company from $0 in annual recurring revenue to a 100 and x1000, you know, annual recurring revenue. And they're like, that's freaking great. But how are you gonna bring value in this role? And it's so It wasn't until I had that experience, and that interview, literally, the actual interview portion of that lasted 2 minutes. And then the other 28 minutes was us just talking talking story, chitchatting because it was over. because he would just like, He was just like, I'm not hire like, I'm not hiring you. Like and I was like, I guess, we're just gonna sit here and talk story. which is exactly which is exactly what happened. So I feel very strongly about this for business owners and people that have projects out there. And it's something that I definitely wanna get into. I have some product

Drake Porter [00:43:33]:

ideas of how I would solve this, and and it's in the pipeline for sure. Mhmm. You you know, I think that one of the big mistakes I made so I I have, like, 80 different versions of various resumes on my computer just for me, like, fine tuning and perfecting it. The biggest mistake I made was You you have to realize that hiring managers, they don't understand, like, the context behind a lot of the results that you provide them that you drove. So, you know, there there's, like, levels to the resume. Right? The first thing is you put, like, what you did. Right? But in terms of just, like, basic responsibilities. That's not very good. You you really should put what you did and how that impacted the organization that you worked for. And so it's like I was a sales associate at Abercrombie. I pit some new idea to my team lead, which led to an increase in foot traffic of this area by x percent or something like that. That's good because the increase in foot traffic, like, you can give it a percentage. The bad data point that you can give is I drove sales of this much dollars. And it's like, okay. Well, are you, you know, Goldman Sachs? Or is your company, you know, 2 guys in a in a closet, you know, working on a really small project, like the They don't know that dollar amount, and they don't know the value behind that dollar amount. What I think would be ideal is if you could even give more context of, like, team had been performing in this way for x number of halves. I came in with this idea, which caused that performance to have this kind of change. That way you're giving context. You're giving your position in that context how you're able to change it. and then the result that you provided. Once I pivoted my resume around that kind of framework, I seriously went from 0 responses regardless of the hundreds of applications I was submitting to, like, I would submit 50, and I would get, like, maybe 2 responses. But, like, that 2 responses is the difference between making no money because I was laid off. and making, like, a $100,000. And so it makes a really big difference. But I think it's hard because we're not taught these things in school. You you you don't know how to present information the right way. But whenever you, like, really sit down and spin the hours on your resume to to make those adjustments and tell the right story the right way with the right title to represent the work that you've done. you really can take one little project and pitch that the right way to I mean, frankly, to, like, change your life. I mean, that that's what it did for me. Yeah. As far as not being taught this stuff in school, it's definitely not. We are not

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:36]:

taught to be job seekers even though it's such an important part of what every one of us does in the society of which we live in now, this you know, capital to society, you need to exchange your value for money in some in some way, whether that's being a founder of a company, whether that's being an employee of a company in some way, you exchange your effort for money, and then you change that money for other things in your life. And we are not taught that very, very critical skill of selling ourselves to these companies, and it's really at our own detriment. And so here we are. You know, a lot of people that are listening to this, they're in their twenties or they're in their thirties and they're just like, I've never heard any of this before. And that's something that I think is gonna change, and I think it's gonna change with the -- advent of AI. I think with machine learning and with AI, there's a spectrum that's gonna happen that it's gonna be really shifting where eventually we are not gonna have to apply to jobs or at least the ideal experience is that we wouldn't have to apply to jobs. We would just be like, yeah, I'm ready to find work, and everything lives in your your cloud profile, and the matching gets so good in the back end that you just toggle a button, and you just say, yeah, open to work. And all of a sudden, you just get an inflow of hey. How does next week Tuesday at 6 o'clock work for an interview for this role? Here are the details. And then you just say yes or no to that. That's what I think is down the road. But until that happens, these are really crucial skills that you have to learn. Mhmm. I mean, the beauty is that, like,

Drake Porter [00:48:26]:

AI actually is getting very effective. We have internal large language models at Meta that that we can use But, also, I've used in my own projects outside of work. We're not allowed to use chatty BT because of security concerns. But outside of work, I've used chattyPT in a handful of circumstances where it's able to do things really effectively. And if you're not able to find ways that chatgy PT can work for you, you probably need to look harder because there are, like, some ways in in some capacity where it can improve your output. And one of the ways I can imagine it'd be quite effective would be in the resume building area. So even if you don't trust Chatty BT to, like, say, write your resume, which I've never tried this, but, like, If you don't trust it, that's fine. Just have it, like, do some stuff for inspiration, see, like, the kinds of ideas or suggestions that it might make that you can then use. I also think that, like, gathering opinion from other people is very helpful. I posted my resume anonymously on Reddit and just gone in -- changed a whole bunch of the titles and stuff like that to anonymize it. I've posted that onto the product management, sub Reddit many times. like, 10 plus times. So many times that it started they started, like, blocking and banning me and stuff like that. I had to, like, make new accounts and -- SPAM. -- but Yeah. I I was like ruthlessly committed to, like, perfecting that resume and using every single tool that I had. that's just, like, my approach to everything is find every single tool and just, like, exhaust it to the point where, like, you're just there there's nothing more that you can gain from it. I think that, like, I could imagine Jack GPT or any of the lay large language models being quite effective, actually, at being able to, like, craft a resume or at least give you pointers too. Yeah. Totally. We did an entire episode

Ryan Maruyama [00:50:13]:

on using chat EBT. For those listening, you can go back and listen to it. So, like, 14 tips to use chattyBT in your job search. And one of the tips was exactly that instead of having it write the complete resume for you, and you could totally do that. But instead, you could have it ingest your resume, you know, and then just be like, word this differently. And I have prompts for everybody listening to this degree free dotc04/podcast, where you can do this, and you could just be, like, every bullet point making an action making an action word. Don't make the sentences longer than 8 8 words. You know what I mean? You can just go as granular or as ungranular as you want. and it really is amazing what these things can do with you working at a large tech company I would love to get your thoughts on where AI is going and how it's going to affect labor and the jobs. And so I'll just give you while you think about your answer, I'll just give you something that we've talked about before on this podcast. which is I'm not sure how many jobs AI is going to take over, at least not in the short term, but it is very obvious that AI and large language models are going to get integrated in almost every industry if it's not already being integrated in in every industry, and we are going to have to learn how to utilize these things to further our careers.

Drake Porter [00:51:49]:

My honest opinion is that I I believe the AI is going to change everything. And whenever I ask myself this question of, like, can Take my job, for example. Could AI do my job and how many steps away are we from that? I don't think we're actually that far. I I think that simply because of the NA errors of large language models and and how they function today. For the foreseeable future, there will be a need for some kind of human review. You know, you see the examples in the near term of, like, the lawyer who used Chat GPT and then it, like, invented fake citations. as, like, an example there. That's not a prominent occurrence, but it does happen. And what most people will say in response to that example is, oh, well, the models will get better, and I agree with them. The models will get better, and they won't make those mistakes. But simply because of the how futile error is in a lot of companies, there will still be need for some human review. Do I actually believe that AI will place my job in the near term? No. And that's simply because of how poorly large companies are at integrating new systems. I think it's highly unlikely that they would actually be able to just here's our product manager AI that can go and talk to all the engineers that can go and coordinate with all these teams that can negotiate on OKRs and that that stands for objectives and key roles is kind of like our plans for the half. I I I don't think that they'd be able to integrate that in time. There will be entire roles of the within the economy that I think here. I can imagine that, like, the legal sector will be impacted significantly. A copywriters will be impacted significantly. I think there are areas in marketing that will be impacted. I think that we could even see areas in data science that will likely be impacted as well. And short software engineering will get easier. But because the software engineer can use AI as a tool to pump out more software, I don't actually think that software engineering will be impacted as heavily. With that being said, I do think that Sam Altman, he's the CEO of of OpenAI, the company that made Chachi Preeti. I I I do think that he's accurate in his belief that there are going to be new roles created as a result of AI. That's where I think that what people can do today to equip themselves is use new technology. You don't have to use chat GPT to do your entire job. But if you're at least familiar with what the emerging trends are, what what the the newest things are, you don't have to be on, like, the cutting edge of the newest AI tools because there's a new one every 2 hours. But you can be relatively knowledgeable on what the big ones are, what the direction is that the industry is heading in. And so whenever those new roles become apparent, you can, like, have the opportunity to pivot faster so that whenever all the eighteen year olds who are the earliest adopters are coming into the workplace and doing these new roles, you can also compete because, a, you have the context of how it got there, and you actually know how to use whatever these tools or or new roles require you to to understand.

Ryan Maruyama [00:54:58]:

You know, it's so funny. I think about Twitter, Facebook, any type of social media that curates your feed for you. I think about my own feed and how prevalent I think that AI is because if you look at the things that I look at, it's pretty much all, like, AI this. Here's, like, 10 different AI tools to use, and here's how people are using AI to make more money or to get ahead in their jobs here, so on and so forth. And so I think that the use of AI is prevalent and widespread But, really, I read a stat that only, like, 14% of people have ever logged in to a 14% of Americans ever logged in to you know, chatty PT and OpenAI. The market penetration, while it was very quick, I mean, I don't think there's have been an app that's been quicker, but It is fast, but it's still a minority of people and you are not late. Right? Like, if you're listening to this, you're not late to the party and to pivot your career, and you don't have to pivot your career wholly, but exactly what what you were talking about, which is just learning these bigger things and how utilizing these types of things. And Chatipity is a good example of how you can get these different prompts to spit out what you need it to spit out, whether it's you know, Excel formulas or whether it's a little bit of data analytics or a little bit of say, you run WordPress site and you're just like, I need to write a plugin of how to do this. I'm just learning how to get chatty PT to do that for you. Those are the skills that you're going to need in the future. Mhmm.

Drake Porter [00:56:50]:

You know how, like, iPhone came out in, like, 2008? And then we had a handful of, like, little technological advancements there that brought iPhone toward us now, and now everybody feels like every new iPhone just the same thing, and technology is not moving. And we haven't had, like, a big thing in a long time. Like, you know, the iPhone came out and the the the tech big tech change that really revolutionized iPhone was that, you know, we had 4glte connections everywhere and now, like, you could use social media everywhere, and you could upload photos and videos, etcetera. And since then, you know, we've relatively gotten the same iPhone over and over again. What people don't realize is I think that that next technological advancement is AI. That is our next iPhone. And the people who are still on blackberries that don't know how to use iPhones effectively are not very helpful in a work environment. And so there is, to me, a level of urgency to become literate in these things. But I don't think that it's like a challenging thing because technology's goal is always to fuse with the way that humans naturally function to the best of their ability. Like, whenever you develop physical products, they have to work in the physical world. So you have limitations. Technology does work in the physical world. There are there are no limitations. So the objective is always to shape this totally new thing that has no ground in what is natural for us to do into something that feels natural. And the large language models in most of these AI tools are actually fairly natural to use. chat CVT could have a better user interface and whatnot. But when you talk to this thing, it always gives you something back. And you can get better and better things to to output from it, but you can always use it in some way. You can always play with it in some way. And that's where I think most people feel intimidated as they think AI and they think of the other technological things. that are hard for them to learn. They don't wanna learn Python because Python doesn't come intuitive. But, like, most of these AI tools actually are quite intuitive. And if you'll sit down and spend, like, you know, an hour or 2 just playing with it and pushing it, not just, like, the small things, but, like, really trying to implement it into your workflow in some way, you can pretty quickly, a, it can actually help you, and you'll just learn by it helping you. But, b, you can start to understand, like, even if you can't find ways for it to help you now, you can understand where it needs to be for it to be able to help you, like, when our chatty boutique can ingest a Google Sheet or something like that or an cell document and then use that data. Maybe that's what you need in order for it to be helpful. And now you can keep an eye out for whenever that that feature enters the market, and then you can dive on it. But it's just helpful to understand because I I really do think that this is going to have a a much bigger impact and a much shorter period of time than people realize, and they're just more intimidated by it than they actually need to be. Totally. Totally.

Ryan Maruyama [00:59:58]:

And talking about what Sam Altman was talking about with you know, this is going to sure. It's it might eliminate some jobs, but it's going to create other jobs elsewhere. I like to think about the ATM, the automated telemachine, and I actually learned this from James Alticere. We talked about the James Alticere show. He was talking about when the ATM first came out, all of the tellers thought that their jobs were gonna go away. But in reality, what happened was that it became cheaper and cheaper for branches to be open because they could outsource a lot of their customer service to this automated teller machine. So, actually, there's more tellers now than there ever was before because it's been so cheap. It was so cheap to open up these branches. I know I've talked about this story before on on this show for those listening, but for those that have never heard this before, I think that that is very similar to what's going to happen is that you're gonna see the second order effects that we can't predict. Like, I personally thinking of that, I I just see the first order effective. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. ATMs are gonna take your job. Definitely 100%, but I never could have predicted, oh, but the unit economics are such that we can open up more branches so that it actually means that we have more tellers and we're employing more people. than ever before. And it's not gonna be exactly the same because maybe the teller gets completely gone, but maybe but there are gonna be more opportunities in different fields that we can't even think of right now.

Drake Porter [01:01:34]:

I think that there are kind of these Right? There are stages to thought that that you can follow here. What what we like to do is focus on how the AI is going to be able to do what we do. But what we don't focus on is what is the actual output or production increase that occurs there? That's, like, the root of, I think, what you're what you you bring up like the ATM example is your focus on the fact that, oh, the ATM can do the work that the tellers do. But we don't realize the ATM increases productivity such a degree with such limited cost that it actually opens opportunity. And I think that AI will definitely do that. The question is, you know, what will the results be, and I think you're spot on in saying, we just don't know. And so instead of preparing yourself and and trying to think 12 months out in terms of, like, what's the world gonna look like in that way, you just have to be able to be, like, very flexible and take it, like, on a day to day basis. That's where I think the most practical cool thing. Instead of sitting here reading hacker news and trying to figure out the latest AI trends, like, just use it. Most of the technology that I understand today is because I grew up with computers. I I have my first computerized 4, and then I just, like, used them my entire life. And so I just kinda know how they work. Like, if I didn't play Starcraft competitively, I would not be working at Meta today. It's just true. And so I think, like, play with the AI. I use it on a day to day basis. The I went to Seattle and lost my wallet, and I didn't know what hotels I needed to call or, like, what the hotel customer service line was to make sure I could even get a hotel without an ID. The I didn't know who to call from the airports to try and figure out where I lost it. I didn't know all that stuff. So I just asked chi Chat GT to make me a list of all the different things that I needed to do in the next hour to make sure I don't like, ruin my life, and it did. And so I I just use it on, like, a day to day basis. I I was working on some stuff down in my garage And I needed, like, a certain bolt for a certain tool or whatever. I asked Chachi PT, and he was able to, like, find that for me perfectly. I I think that, like, the tiny little examples on a day to day, instead of, like, going down the Google rabbit hole trying to find answers, just like pull up chatty PT and see if that can find the solution for you. And as you integrate it more and more in your life, it's just gonna become the technology that you understand in the long term. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't wanna take up your whole day, but I do wanna say something to what you're talking about about using it every day. For an example, in my own life,

Ryan Maruyama [01:04:00]:

I did something very similar. I've been trying to lose weight. I've been trying to work out every day and, you know, try to optimize that portion of my life. one of the things that I was really struggling with is I was getting out into my garage and actually working out, but I was struggling with defining a program, and I just didn't wanna go through the headache of, like, trying to google bodybuilding.com, all these different things. And so I went to ChattyBT, and I just literally told it. I said, here's the equipment that I have. I wanna do a workout every single day, 7 days a week. come up with a plan. I don't want it to take more than an hour. And my prompt was, like, 2 paragraphs long, but then it spit out exercise plan. And I was just like, Perfect. This is this is awesome. And then I I have to tweak it a little bit, but, I mean, it gave me

Drake Porter [01:04:48]:

the bare bones of, like, what I needed to do. And so now when I go down into my garage every day and work out. I don't have to, like, think about it, and I just, ugh, Chatch EBTs have to do this. Perfect. We're we're just gonna do that today. Something that just, like, came to mind in in this conversation is that, like, what what I'd like people to take away from, like, this conversation is that I think that the world is going to change very rapidly because of this technology, and that's scary for people. But I think if you also look at, like, you look at all the tech workers who are are making a ton more money. You know? I am, like, the best example that I think, you know, a couple of years ago, I was making $65,000 a year, and now I make significantly more than that. It's absolutely changed my life. That came because of change. We had a global pandemic that absolutely revolutionized the entire technology industry in the direction that it was going in. And I was able to, like, hop on board that, and there are tens of 1000, if not hundreds of thousands of people who've also done so. And I think that that's what's gonna happen with AI too. And so, really, instead of viewing this as, like, a scary thing, It's like wherever you are, you're probably not where you wanna be. I think that that's just like a trend with humans. This isn't necessarily just an opportunity for your life to be disrupted. It's an opportunity for your life to be disrupted positively. Like, it's an opportunity And I think that if more people view it that way, like, I think that's a really good takeaway. Like, sit down and create a plan, to just like for your career, the direction that you wanna go in. And it doesn't need to incorporate AI at all. It's just that AI is going to change the game so much that if you just have a plan or a direction where, like, I'm gonna, you know, start this project or I'm going to apply to these jobs or whatever. Like, if you get any degree of change and you are flexible with it, odds are, I actually think it will benefit you. short to medium term. I think in the long term, we have, like, big societal implications of AI, and that's what people are scared of and rightfully so. But you shouldn't let those fears cloud the opportunity that AI is creating or that the disruptions that AI is causing can ultimately lead to you or or or lead for your career and, ultimately, as a result of your life. Last question.

Ryan Maruyama [01:07:10]:

Drake, you have a really awesome setup now. When are you starting your own podcast? And for those not only listening and not watching. Go to YouTube and check out Drake set up. It looks sick. When is when are you starting your own podcast?

Drake Porter [01:07:28]:

Well, I we actually do have a little an internal podcast I've been working on at Meta that we were actually supposed to have our first episode shot this week. It'll be shot next week, but that's not for external viewing. I will say I love these conversations. I really do. I I I love to talk about the the state of the world and technology and change and opportunity And who knows? Maybe at some point, I'll come around to that. Or I'd really like to. I think that I just have to find, like, the right angle. I have to I have to find what makes sense, what what people want. But This is just such a good method of conversation, I think.

Ryan Maruyama [01:08:07]:

Yeah. Totally. You know, it's funny. I've heard a lot of people that our guests on other people's podcast talk about it. And whenever asked that question, a lot of them say that that they don't have their own podcast, but they're internally on other people's podcast is, like, why would I start my own when I can just come on yours? And you don't have you you don't have to deal with any of the production or the distribution of it all. And and there's some wisdom in in in those words because production is it can be a bitch sometimes. But, yes, I am very grateful to have people like yourself come on and share your knowledge and be so giving of your time because, I mean, you don't get compensated for this. I You know? So and you're just giving of your time and of your knowledge, and thank you so much for those people that wanna get in touch with you that wanna see that you're doing? How can they get in touch? Yeah. I mean, same as last time, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I don't have much of a social presence in general, but Yeah. I think my LinkedIn's something like Drake on product or something along those lines.

Drake Porter [01:09:16]:

Or you just look at Drake Porter and and and find me in. I've I responded to and talked to a whole bunch of people who viewed the last episode, and I'll do my best to to get back to everybody who who checks out this one. But Yeah. I I'm just super grateful that you, you know, you let me come back on again and and go through and have this conversation in such a crazy time in the industry. I hope that people are able to find find some value in all this and and reach out and and ask questions. How was that episode?

Ryan Maruyama [01:09:43]:

I know every time I talk to Drake, I learn a ton, and I hope that you did too. Once again, show notes for everything that we talked about, links for everything that we talked about, can be found at degreefree.coforward/ podcast. You can connect with Drake on LinkedIn, and I'll put a link to his LinkedIn there. And before you take off, if you haven't already, if you'd like to receive an email every week that has different degree free jobs, degree free tips, and how you can get the job that you want, get the work that you want. Go to degree free dotcoforward/newsletter to sign up for a free weekly newsletter. And if you wanna join a community of like minded people, just like yourself, trying to get ahead in their careers and reach career success, whatever that means to you, go to degreefree.coforward/network to sign up for the degree free network. It's free to sign up. There's a couple of free courses in there that you can take if you do not know where to start and you wanna learn how to become an effective job seeker and get the job that you want. And that's pretty much it for this week until next time guys along.