happy 2025 welcome to the new year i hope you all are excited uh to get into the new year it's january 5th and if you are a super fan of the show you might know what that means I'm very grateful and excited and a lot of emotions actually I'm technically recording this on January the 4th I feel like I should say that but on tomorrow and really just as we approach this January 5th date for the show this is a very important date for us it's the date that we started this podcast uh date that I started this podcast it's a solo operation um almost exclusively solo against with the help of my lovely
wife way back in 2015 so this episode is marking the 10 -year anniversary of this show 10 years of this show and we've been on quite a journey together those of you who have listened to this to this podcast for a long time you know you all know about the days where we were a part of the spec network network, spec .fm.
You know, the early days when we were really focused on one primary topic at a time, the show has not really changed drastically over the years.
We've had many people on the show.
A ton of incredible guests have shared their knowledge, their wisdom.
My intention starting this podcast in the earliest days was to create a podcast that I felt like I needed.
a podcast that I wanted to exist, a short form podcast that focused on skills aspects that are evergreen, that I would always be able to return to kind of these principle level skills, soft skills, usually.
Sometimes we talk about more tactical skills on the show, but that was, that was the goal to create the podcast that I wanted as an engineer, as an engineering leader and as we got into building this show as we created you know as I was able to you know join with the spec network as I was able to you know create episodes create content that people like you listening to show actually latched on to you know we we climbed the podcast rankings very quickly back in 2015 that was that was a different a different environment than it is is today but we were able to climb those rankings fairly quickly
uh we were sponsored not sponsored but um featured by pocket cast that was a big moment for the show we garnered our first couple of uh you know podcast hosts and it took us a little while but we settled on this ultimate kind of governing mission of developer t that is to help developers like you find clarity perspective and purpose in their careers.
That is still the mission of the show.
And I doubt that will change.
I doubt we will change that because this is kind of an evergreen mission.
It is one that as an engineering leader myself in my day -to -day work, I find this to be a recurring theme.
Finding clarity, perspective and purpose in your career will help you kind of shape your your career into what you want it to be.
I try to avoid becoming a self -help, a guru type podcast. That is not what we want to do here.
I want to give you practical advice.
I want you to walk away and be able to apply what I'm saying on this show in real life situations and it actually matter to you.
If you get to the place with this podcast where you feel like you are not able to to apply what you're learning, I encourage you to do two things.
One, let me know. Let me know if the content is not actually applying well.
You can do that by emailing me.
You can join the DeveloperT discord community.
Email is developerT at Gmail.
And just let me know that this isn't really hitting what you need it to hit.
It's not doing what maybe it once did for you.
But I also encourage you to step away from the show.
go uh that that's not you know that's i'm not pushing people away certainly we want as many developers as find this valuable but i don't want you to feel like you're wasting your time listening to this to this podcast that's the last thing that we want we want people who are engaged with this to feel uh the value that it is generating in their careers and to be able to practice it um you know practice the things we talk about on the show day in and day out in your careers, in your life.
I've been very fortunate to receive plenty of messages kind of affirming that this podcast has been helpful.
And those messages come from all kinds of people, not just junior software engineers, but I've got people who are listening to the show who are very, very much senior level and CTOs who listen to the show, but also people who aren't even engineers at all.
So, you know, people who are not software engineers who listen to this podcast. And I really believe that's because we focus on those principles.
These are principles that happen to apply to software engineers.
And we talk, usually we talk about how they apply to software engineers most specifically, but very often the principles that we discuss on the show are broadly applicable.
They can actually translate to other categories of your life.
Whether that's your personal life, maybe it's other industries that can apply some of this stuff we talk about on this show.
So we've done this for 10 years and you may be wondering, what's next?
We're going to keep doing this show.
The format might change over time.
We might have different frequencies, but this show is fulfilling an important need for me in my life.
It is a constant. I've had multiple jobs while hosting this show.
I've played multiple parts in the the industry.
I've done a lot of different things, but this show remains a constant part of my career, a constant part of my life.
And I truly love doing this podcast. I really enjoy being able to help people and to do it in a way that's freely accessible.
You don't have to pay me anything to take advantage of what I'm saying.
And selfishly, I get a lot out of being able to to talk through some of these concepts myself, being able to learn about the concepts and share them in a way.
Seneca once said that while we teach, we learn.
And this idea, this is actually called the protege effect.
It's the idea that when we have to explain material ourselves, we tend to need to fill in blanks that we otherwise didn't see.
We didn't recognize that those blanks existed in the first place.
And in filling in those blanks, we tend to learn more ourselves.
So as long as this podcast continues to generate value for me personally, and especially if it continues to deliver value to the people who listen to it, I will continue creating this podcast and I hope you will continue to listen.
The one thing that I ask on this show is that you share it with people that you think will find value in it as well.
Share it with other engineers or people who aren't necessarily As we've already mentioned here, you know, this show is certainly geared towards engineers.
We're not going to change that.
We're not going to try to broaden to, you know, making it perfectly applicable to all audiences or anything like that.
But if you know somebody who you think would be able to take advantage of the ideas, the mental models, the frameworks, the various things we talk about on the show, please share this episode and other episodes and they can get an idea of what this podcast is about.
out. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
I hope you enjoyed this discussion, this quick kind of reflection moment for me and for you, especially those of you who have joined me on this journey.
Thank you so much. And until next time, enjoy your tea.
