Rachel Nabors
===

Paige: ~Test, test, test.~

Rachel: ~Test, test, test.~[00:00:00] 

Paige: Hello and welcome to Pod Rocket, the podcast brought to you by Log Rocket. Log Rocket helps software teams to improve user experience with session replay, error tracking, and product analytics. Try it for free@logrocket.com. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pod Rocket. I am your host today, Paige Kneeing House, and I am a staff software engineer at Blues.

And with us today is our very special guest, Rachel Neighbors. Rachel, thanks so much for joining us.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having me, Paige. It's great to be here with you.

Paige: It's great to have you. So maybe for people who are less familiar with you, you could tell us a little bit about yourself and some of your past roles in web development.

Rachel: ~Well, uh, I, oh man,~ where do I start? I come from an open source. I did a lot of for withs, c s s and web animations and ~the,~ the Mozilla crew on MDN and with developer tools. And then I did a brief stint on Microsoft's Edge browser. ~Uh,~ Then, ~uh,~ I, I was, ~uh,~ on the [00:01:00] React core team built out react.dev and React native.dev, the doc sites that people use to learn, react, and react native.

Most recently I led developer education for AW s Amplify. ~Um,~ yeah, and I'm still very much active and at large from the developer education community. I.

Paige: That's fantastic. And I have to say, as a React developer myself, ~uh,~ your documentation has been something that I have referenced ~many,~ many times and come back to. So thank you for continuing to update that and improve it and make it what it is today because I think it really is a great example of what every framework should aspire to when trying to help.

Developers get familiar with what you can do with them. So let's talk a little bit about your experience of working on React, because as you said, you worked with the Meta team for quite a few years. You were pretty instrumental in helping them make React,~ uh,~ a really household name in among JavaScript developers.

~Um,~ [00:02:00] can you tell us a little bit about how it was to actually work on a lot of the documentation as well as working on the code with them?

Rachel: ~Well,~ I would argue that React was already a household name, which JavaScript developers before I got there. ~Uh,~ one of the reasons I wanted to join the team is that~ I,~ I originally was getting into view because I really loved the built-in animations that came with you at the time, and I was at a inflection point in my life where~ I,~ I wanted to pick a new path forward and I.

It turned out that ~I,~ I kept hearing from women and minoritized folks that, ~you know,~ react was hard to learn, didn't feel like it was a place for me, didn't resonate with the community. And to be honest, I felt the same way. But what I noticed as I was pivoting and looking at different roles was that all the big Fang companies and the six figure jobs were React jobs.

View doesn't have six figure jobs associated with it, usually, at least not in the United States. ~Um,~ and the same goes for Ember and all these other communities that were really attracting the people I knew and Remi admired. And I was like, ~well~ that's [00:03:00] unfortunate because from an intergenerational wealth standpoint, every person who's not adopting right reacting, getting those big six figure salaries is net losing out for ~like~ all their descendants.

~Um,~ So I was like, ~well,~ if I could just make the react, ~uh,~ community more attractive, if I could just make it a more inclusive place and make the documentation easier to understand so people don't have to spend 600 bucks on a course, which is out of range for a lot of people in the world. ~Uh, like that's,~ that's an obscene amount of money in places like India.

~Uh, so.~ Democratize a great React education and make the React community a place people wanted to be from all backgrounds. Then that was a really big lever I could push. So I actually, ~well,~ when I say I wanna do something, I do it. I ended up on the React team and started with the documentation. I. Also put on women of React conf, ~uh,~ online during the con, ~uh,~ during the pandemic, one of the first major online conferences out there.

~Uh,~ did a lot of ~cool,~ cool little things. I'm not sure [00:04:00] I had the impact I wanted to have on the community, but I did have the impact I wanted to have on the way we teach, react to people.

Paige: ~I mean,~ I, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And even though you have since moved on from Meta, you're actually still giving a lot of talks about React and React Dev and React Native. So one of the talks that you, ~uh,~ mentioned in our show notes that's coming up is called Gateway to React and is about the React dev story.

So is there anything that you can share with listeners about what that talk is going to encompass or, ~you know,~ Some little sneak peeks that you could share with us.

Rachel: Oh, absolutely. So you know, there's the React documentary out there, which tells you all about all the engineers you can think of. I talk as ~sort of ~like the behind the scenes, how we built a better education experience for React. Like usually like. When I first got there, I always start with the community.

I start with the real people. So I ran user sessions and I was just sitting and I'd be like, okay, so you know, walk me through how you're using these docs. And it would [00:05:00] take so long to go from, ~you know,~ at the beginning to working in an app, it was like, ~well,~ if we just cut out all the spin up, all the configuration, if we just.

Let people edit ~the,~ the code right there on the page. We can get them to Hello world in ~like~ five minutes versus 50. And so we ended up with building these ~um,~ interactive sand sandboxes with Code Sandbox.

Paige: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: This talk is a lot about, ~uh,~ that background. It's about the behind the scenes decisions that were made, ~uh,~ the research efforts that went into it.

~Um,~ both React Native, top Dev and react.dev. A lot of the ideas that worked on React site we're actually piloted on React Native, ~uh, react,~ react native site. And there was a huge community effort there too, to roll out the changes. So it's a bit of a behind the scenes about the efforts that went in, how the two sites are connected, and how they change how people learn.

Paige: ~That's really interesting.~ And I was just going to ask you,~ you know,~ as you're talking about [00:06:00] making the documentation better, making it more accessible, making it easier for people to get started, was that something that Meta was initially on board with, or did you have to ~kind of~ make a case for it that this was something that needed to happen in order for it to gain, ~you know,~ the followers that you're talking about, the people who maybe can't spend $600 on a course ~to,~ to learn how to set it up and get it all configured the right way.

Rachel: So this is a fun one, and this is one of ~the,~ the things I love about meta. ~Uh,~ I originally had applied to be on the team, ~uh,~ thinking software engineer, but then I saw what was involved was the software engineering interviews. And I was intimidated by the way, I totally could have passed those interviews.

This was revealed later, ~uh,~ when I started doing mock interviews internally. So never ~count,~ count yourself out. Always aim high, and then you can always backpedal into, ~um,~ A different role. I ended up coming in as a documentation engineer because, ~you know,~ I've done, I'd done docs with MDN and technical writing, like I wrote a book.

~Uh,~ so [00:07:00] I, I, yeah, ~it was,~ it was an easy pass. It was an easy way to work with the team. And they were already thinking about redoing React native dot Dov because the community had cited poor documentation multiple times in, ~uh,~ on GitHub as being, ~um,~ A major barrier to adoption. So it was like, all right, spin this straw into gold.

And I did. And then the React team was like, okay, now do ours. ~And Dan was like, we, we need to get~ Dan ABA on The React team was like, react native. ~Let~ let Rachel go. Let Rachel go. ~We need, ~we need Rachel now. And ~it was,~ it was so silly. And I think originally Dan was like, this should take ~like~ five weeks.

It won't be a big deal. I was like, oh, dad, Dan, I love you Dan, but it is gonna take more than five weeks. ~So, uh,~ Meta actually just lets the engineers do what they think is right. Usually, at least on the React team, it's very self-driven. ~Uh,~ a lot of trust is placed in engineers to be smart. This is a little different from other FANG companies, ~uh,~ like Microsoft and a Amazon [00:08:00] slash aws.

They tend to be more product management driven, or like a product or a P person product program project tells the engineers, these are the business requirements, deliver this at meta. It's more collaborative and the engineers are like, I think we should do this. And leadership's ~like,~ okay, that seems to make sense to me.

And if the engineers say we need better docs, then we're doing better docs.

Paige: ~I mean~ that's, that sounds fantastic ~that,~ that to me, especially for frameworks in particular, which are, yes, they're a product, but they're also for people to build things with them. That seems like a great way to approach it, so it's nice to hear that, ~you know,~ it came from the bottom up and people at the higher levels agreed that this was something worth worthwhile and worth investing in.

Rachel: I have to give, I have to give the org credit for that. You don't always find that on corporate sponsored open source projects. ~Um,~ yeah, it was really great to see how community driven the React [00:09:00] team at Meta is.

Paige: That's good to hear. ~So one of the things that even though you have moved on from meta, you still, like I said, you're still talking about how React came together, how the docs and the dev site worked together. Um, so you've been keeping up somewhat with React and the, the things that they have been adopting and debuting since 2023.~

~So, React server components obviously have been very much talked about and lauded and shown off, um, but there are some other React projects that are, you know, other really interesting pieces of the React puzzle. So what are some of those things that you are excited about or that really you think haven't gotten enough press and people should be aware of?~

Rachel: ~Oh man. You know, I gotta say here, I think you might be in a better place to pivot into why is this not working? Um, you might be in a better place to pivot into talking about product roles, uh, and program management, because I just mentioned the difference in, um, In how product and engineering people drive outcomes.~

Paige: ~Hmm.~

Rachel: ~just because otherwise this is gonna feel a little bit tacked on and I think it's better to get to it. And the things I'm excited for in 2023 section.~

Paige: ~All right. We can totally do that. Okay, so we will. We'll go from there. So you were just saying that the way that Meta and other employers that you've worked for have driven, uh, new products, has been, you know, a lot of, a lot of it has been top down, but meta was a little bit different in that it was bottom up and community led.~

~So~ maybe we can talk a little bit about your more recent roles. On the React team, you were more of an individual contributor working on the documentation and helping them get that community going and more inclusive. But then when you went to Amazon, you took on more of a T P M role, and I was hoping that maybe you could talk a little bit more about what that is for people who are less familiar with it and what it ~kind of~ entails as opposed to a software engineer.

Rachel: Absolutely. So prior to Big Tech, I was just an engineer, ~uh,~ mostly specializing increasingly on web animations, their APIs, ~uh,~ the browser's rendering engine. It's really neat. You can't make money doing that. So I was like, I've gotta get a better job. And I got a. Program manager job at Microsoft. I'm still not sure what program managers at Microsoft do, which gets a laugh out of anyone who's a program manager at Microsoft.

~Uh,~ but, ~uh,~ it, I think ~these p~ these [00:10:00] p as I call them, P people, ~uh,~ at different large companies, it's unique in that these roles don't really exist in startups. They only start occurring in bigger companies and. They aren't engineering roles, but you still have to have a good technical sense about you to take them on.

~Um,~ there's three different ones and depending on who you ask and what company you're at, they mean different things. There's the program manager, there's the project manager, and there's the product manager or the mini c e o. Project managers, ostensibly, they're logistics. If I'm gonna use a wartime metaphor here, ~uh,~ if you can imagine, ~you know,~ ancient soldiers of Rome on the battlefield.

The project manager is like the logistics person, making sure that the food's convoy is arriving to the right camp, that the fortifications are being constructed at the next landing, that the scouts are going out in the right direction. And ~you know,~ they give you dates. They're dates, people, they're dates and [00:11:00] deliverables.

They are usually operating on a plan that may or may not have been put together by, if your company's large enough, a product manager, which is the mini c e o, they're ~the,~ the person with the visions. ~They're the person who's like, yeah, we're gonna,~ they're like the general, they're being like, yeah, ~we're,~ we're going to invade and conquer this forest here cuz it's a good source of timber and we're going for it and we're going to fight the war by water because it's an island or we're going to use.

We're gonna use elephants this time because they'll be able to navigate the forest really well. And then you've got program managers. Program managers are people who organize programs of efforts. So for instance, if you have, ~um,~ In this case, ~like, uh,~ there would be the program for exercising the program for battle drills, the program for, ~uh,~ up and coming lieutenants to further their skills.

~Uh,~ the program for training the youngsters and the program for, ~you know, uh, uh, ~officers, wives, and their dwellings. So they manage more systems of people. It's a little harder to [00:12:00] describe. Now the funny thing is, at Microsoft Program managers are like product managers. ~Uh,~ at meta ~product~ product managers are more like project managers.

And at Amazon, ~uh,~ all these P levels ~are,~ are like, ~uh, the,~ the general calling the shots.

Paige: So that was the role that you moved into when you joined Amazon, was to be a product manager or a program manager?

Rachel: Actually, I was a principal technical program manager, and at the principal level, they all start to really bleed into each other. At aws, ~uh,~ we were considering product, we were considering program because we wanted to do docs as a product for Amplify. And in the end, though, ~uh,~ because of the nature of how.

The person leading documentation has to activate so many other people. I'm not gonna write the docs myself. Like I could write one book, but I'm not gonna write five. ~Uh, it,~ it fell more into the program manager, ~uh,~ list of abilities and capabilities. So that's the one we [00:13:00] went with.

Paige: Gotcha. So let's say that you were at currently an individual contributor at your company, that you were a lead, a technical lead, or something along those lines. How would you first, how would you decide that? Program management was something that you wanted to be in instead. And how would you go about trying to achieve that?

What would your advice be?

Rachel: First you have to make sure your company is large enough because it's smaller sizes. Pretty much. Engineers do everything. Engineers are the occasional project manager, and the vision comes from, ~you know, your, your founders, your,~ your directors, ~or you know, your, your, yeah. So.~ It's only in ~really, ~really big, like once you get around the 1000 to 3000 number of people, that's when you can start talking about, ~Hmm, you know, ~I might like to do this more.

The key factors I've noticed when I meet people who've transitioned into program or product management is they like having impact, but they don't necessarily like managing people. They wanna manage [00:14:00] people's time, they wanna manage people's efforts, but they don't want to hire and fire, they don't want to, ~you know,~ be a mentor and grow people.

They're more interested in getting things done. ~That's,~ that's program management tends to be, ~I wanna,~ I wanna tell the troops where to go, but I'm not going to actually, ~you know, uh,~ be the person leading them into battle,

Paige: Yeah.

Rachel: ~you know? Uh,~ so you'll be like, Hey engineers, we gotta deliver these features. Go for it.

~Uh,~ product management. For this, it's a similar thing. People have vision. Maybe they were engineers, but they didn't like that someone else was always telling them what features to build for the customer. Maybe they're out there, they're doing a little bit of in the field UX and they're feeling like, yeah, ~you know,~ I.

I have, I, I am more passionate about what the customer experiences and where the product goes than I am about actually building the product. So that's ~like~ one of those signs if you find yourself really advocating hard for the pro, ~uh, the, the,~ the user, and you might think maybe I should be a user experience designer instead.

But [00:15:00] the difference is that a user experience designer or ~you know,~ a designer, they are building for the customer. But it's a product manager is actually defining what to build, what direction the product should go in. ~Um,~ so sometimes UX people end up in product management too. Product designers,

Paige: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: there are a couple of different paths in.

Paige: So was that one of the things that kind of drew you to Amazon? Did they offer you the opportunity to have a larger impact~ and,~ and ~make,~ make a greater, ~uh,~ swath of a w s and their documentation, your own?

Rachel: ~Well,~ it was a really unique challenge because part of Amplify is open source. The Amplify Library's product is built and maintained in the open, and this is a little unusual for Amazon. ~I mean,~ Amazon does have some open source, ~uh,~ things like open search for instance. But for the most part, AWS is,[00:16:00] ~you know,~ its documentation all lives, ~um, ~in, in its own.

AWS docs, et cetera. But because amplifies open source nature was ~so.~ Unique. There was no real way to latch onto the a w s documentation process. Amplify moved too fast. ~Uh,~ it was built from source,~ you know,~ it all existed on GitHub, so we had to build our own processes around that. To have this little website that was built in next and a small team of two documentation engineers and I came and,~ you know,~ expanded the team a bit, ~uh,~ brought in a content team from another side of the company to start working on building out new learning paths, et cetera.

It was a much bigger challenge. I remember when. When I looked at Amplify, I was like, this is five products across five platforms. We're gonna need a bigger boat. This is a real big challenge, but because of that unique situation, the way it was an open source and it had five products across five platforms, [00:17:00] my experience with React Native meant that it, I saw this not as an impossible challenge, but as something that ~could be,~ could be delivered to, ~uh,~ with ~the,~ the right team and the right processes.

~Um, you know,~ It was a lot of fun. I, I remember setting up this really great double approvals process so that engineering teams could technical, technically review, ~uh,~ PRS to content that affected their product. That was, ~uh,~ a really wonderful little piece of program management that I worked on with, ~uh,~ with our engineers to create ~this,~ this process and then hook it into the engineering on-call process.

This insured ~like,~ Such a good quality control on our documentation. But that's ~kind of~ an example of some of the challenges you face when you have so many teams building a product, so many products, and you're documenting them outside of an existing system. It's ~sort of a,~ a greenfield thing where it's ~like,~ oh my gosh, we gotta do things a little differently because this project is a little different.

Paige: It sounds ~very much~ like a, ~yeah, a,~ [00:18:00] a very difficult problem to solve, but you had a lot of good experience in history up till that point to ~help~ help you make the right decisions for it, so that's fantastic. ~So I wanna talk a little bit more about, you know, the way that you've kind of gone, you,~ you talked really briefly about getting into big tech back in 2016, and you've since moved through some of the biggest names in tech.

~So, you know,~ we're in ~kind of~ a weird place in tech right now.~ There's a lot of the,~ the economy is not the best that it's ever been. Inflation is slowing down, but it's still much higher than it was before and there's a lot of layoffs that are happening. Do you have. Any, ~uh,~ advice for people who are going through those things or who are concerned that ~their, ~their jobs might be next?

~I mean,~ it's a scary thought and I think it's on everybody's minds at least a little bit. So do you have any advice for people?

Rachel: I don't wanna be a fear monger, but I, I, I wanna say you're not safe. No one's safe right now. ~Um,~ these layoffs are different from layoffs that we're used to, and they're not based on your performance layoffs are different from [00:19:00] performance based firings. Those are usually part of a cyclical cycle. ~Pardon?~

~Um,~ they happen like ~every, ~every y. So many months, you probably have reviews and performance improvement plans. Layoffs are indiscriminate. They're usually done by spreadsheet. You're not being considered as a human. So the nice thing is ~like,~ it's nothing personal. It's not a reflection of you. But the sad thing is there's nothing you can really do about it.

There's no performance improvement plan that you can ace. There's no manager you can, ~you know,~ convince or appeal to. So a lot of people have ~like~ one of two reactions. ~You know,~ they've got this kind of freeze or faw reaction, which is where they're like, oh, that's, I haven't heard anything of about layoffs at this place.

I'm fine. Or I'm working really hard, I'm safe, wrong reaction. ~You know, like,~ doesn't matter how hard you work, if you're gonna get laid off, you're gonna get laid off. ~Uh,~ which is why I would say first off, ~don't work harder. Um,~ burnout does not serve you in this situation. ~Um,~ And appealing to power, ~you know,~ that kind of fawn response of, ~you know, um, I will, I will,~ I will try to ingratiate myself to these powers.

Your manager [00:20:00] doesn't have any control over this, ~you know, ~he does. He or she doesn't wanna give up, ~uh,~ any headcount, but when ~the mandate comes,~ the mandate comes and they have to. So the other set of responses is this kind of fight or flight, which is. ~You know, like,~ oh, I can't believe it. I'm seeing everybody getting laid off and I'm so upset and maybe I should be looking for a new job too.

The fighting response is not useful because you can't fight a non-entity. It's a spreadsheet. What are you gonna do? Go into Excel and delete all the roles, like,~ oh, um,~ yeah, it's an algorithm. You can't hit back at an algorithm.~ I mean,~ I wish you could, there's so many I beat up, but. The best response is to sit tight.

Wait for your layoff package set. Boundaries don't burn out. There's absolutely nothing worth burning for right now. It's not gonna save your job. That's been predetermined. ~Uh,~ and the other thing is flight. ~You know,~ if you see a better opportunity and you're not feeling safe where you are, you should probably just take it.[00:21:00] 

~Uh,~ but sitting tight is a good idea because even if you do get laid off, you can negotiate for a package. It's better than completely getting scared and quitting without anything lined up. Like just wait it out, be calm, be patient. ~It's,~ it's hard. It really, ~You know,~ like events like this can have a huge impact on people's careers graduating into a climate like this.

What do you do if you can't find a job? I have some ideas on that.

Paige: I would actually love to hear your ideas on that because I've talked to a lot of, of early career developers, and I have a non-traditional background as well. ~I,~ I was in marketing and advertising for five years and then went to a coding bootcamp and completely changed my career path. But I graduated from that bootcamp back in 2016 and the market was, Good.

Then I was able to land a job immediately and I just kept moving ~up~ up the ranks from there. [00:22:00] So I would love to hear what your advice would be for people who are new, who are trying to just get established when there is so much competition. Because like you said, nobody really feels very confident that their role that they're in is going to continue to be a role that they'll be in.

Rachel: Yeah, and one thing I I hear a lot is, ~you know,~ after getting laid off myself was, ~you know, you,~ you are gonna land well. You have a lot of, ~you're,~ you're, you look at this passport of teams that you've been on and your skills, you'll be fine. And that's actually my initial gut reaction is always, Oh, you think so?

~Uh,~ because a lot of roles are being shut down right now. I'm in a very niche developer education space and those roles are just, ~uh,~ winking out like so many candles in the night, and. That means there's more people. More people are competing for the same number of, ~well,~ a shrinking pool of roles. And I've seen some people far better than myself get laid off.

And every time that [00:23:00] happens, I'm like, ~well,~ that person has to find a job before I do.

Paige: ~Mm-hmm.~

Rachel: So we had a similar situation way back during the great recession. I made the mistake of working my butt off through that. That's when I entered the~ rece, uh,~ the tech community.

Paige: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: My advice from working during that time, then looking back and realizing, oh, I could have gone to school and gotten health insurance through a school.

Oh man. Or I could have contributed to open source and ridden some of these things like WordPress, ~uh,~ started around that time. ~Um, yeah.~ Periods of, ~uh,~ employment in stagnation are when open source tends to really take off. The best ideas happen when people who are laid off are like, yeah, I think I just wanna build something cool in my spare time, and you wanna find those projects. And see if you can get involved in them. Make some bets with ~your,~ your contributions, because getting in with an up and coming platform framework, ~um,~ tool, AI tool, ~uh,~ early is something that you just can't reproduce later in your [00:24:00] career. ~Uh,~ Dan aov, what would've happened if he'd been, ~you know,~ focused on working a day job versus poking around with React.

~Uh,~ so there's nothing wrong with poking around. If you can swing it, if you haven't gone to school formally, now is a great time to consider it. Or if you've gone, maybe you wanna up it and, ~you know,~ go in for a second degree or something. Because the industry is shifting. We're moving more towards AI and ml and.

That is going to really change things, if not in the next two or five years, definitely in 10 years, and this could be the pause necessary in your career to move in that direction versus skilling into a bunch of roles that will become increasingly. I wouldn't say less relevant, but let's just say that, ~uh,~ you would have to reskill at some point anyway, so maybe you can just get [00:25:00] ahead of that and get into something even cooler.

Paige: ~Yeah. So is that something that you're considering?~

Rachel: ~Oh, always. I, uh, before getting into, uh, technical program management here at Amazon, my original plan was to pivot into back into engineering, straight, straight up engineering. Um, cuz I, I. I saw how much the engineers at Meta could move and it was really inspiring to watch them work and you know, documenting that that brilliance and making it available for the rest of the world is one thing, but I'd also like to be building some of it myself.~

~So I think, uh, for me, I'm looking forward to, you know, going back out into the, into the woods and exploring and building things and reacquainting myself with my favorite part of the development process.~

Paige: ~So one of the things that you have, cause we have a little bit of an outline for our listeners of things to talk about. One of the things that you had written down in your outline, and you kind of touched on it already, was when we have a chance to breathe and think, not just about the product that we're building or the company that we're working for.~

~When you're. When you're cut loose really is to find your thing that is, that scratches that itch. A lot of people describe it that way or is just something that you've always wanted to try. So it's kind of like that, that higher purpose, I guess. Um, and I'd love if you could align or, or talk more about that and kind of.~

~Maybe you don't know what your higher purpose is. You've always been employed, you've always had something that you pointed yourself towards. So if you don't really know what that might be, what is your advice for kind of trying to find that thing that you know, you just can't put down, or you wanna be, you wanna learn more about?~

Rachel: ~Oh man. There are many different, um, workshops for doing this. I recommend reading, um, Mr. Frankl's man, search for a meeting. Uh, it's a, it's a very good book about, um, We, we tend to look for meaning in what the, and, and he's a Holocaust survivor and found that we tend to search for meaning in our job. And the things that the world gives to us are forces upon us.~

~But in his time, um, Surviving in the camps. What he saw was that the people who survived were less concerned about getting theirs from the universe and more concerned about the thing they had yet to give the universe their purpose, their mission that they hadn't achieved yet. Um, in his case, he wanted to finish his paper on this very topic.~

~I mean, maybe that that skewed him a bit. and his, uh, You know, there's the, the person with the symphony, they have yet to write or the, you know, the, the, the neighborhood bake shop that they wanted to open. And it was always in the service of something greater than themselves, something that they were doing for the world.~

~And for me,~

Paige: ~Yeah.~

Rachel: ~um, I always was aligned with, I want to teach people to build their own solutions so they're not having them dictated to them by higher powers. And this is a good time to detach from your company's goals and purposes. And, you know, we get enmeshed. We really adopt like the company or the team, what they're doing.~

~We, and we adopt it as our own persona. But if you know what your own North Star is, It can really help you frame the work that you're doing and give it meaning, and also help you pivot away from that a lot better if you're overly enmeshed with the goals of the company. When those goals aren't your goals anymore, it can leave you with a bit of a crisis of identity.~

Paige: ~Yeah, I, I can relate to that. I have been in that position where I drank too much of the Kool-Aid and was quite unmoored when suddenly that that was ripped out from under me. So~

Rachel: ~Oh wow.~

Paige: ~I. Yeah, I mean, it, it actually was the best thing that could have happened because as I said, I transitioned from, uh, advertising to tech, and one of the reasons that that happened was because the last advertising company that I worked for just didn't have enough work in the end to keep me.~

~So it was very much kind of like the layoffs that were going through right now where it wasn't really that I wasn't performing well, it was that they just did not have enough. Enough client work coming in that my position needed to still be there. So, you know, I didn't expect it. I didn't see it coming.~

~It was a Friday afternoon and suddenly I just didn't have a job. And that was, but that was the, this push that I needed, I guess, to. Instead of going and finding another job in advertising, which I knew I could do to go and explore this coding that I'd heard about and I'd tried a little bit of and see if, if through a bootcamp, I could really be good enough to get hired as a developer afterwards.~

~And it was the best, I mean, it was the best career decision I could have made. I enjoy my work so much more. I enjoy what I'm doing on a daily basis so much more. So it really, it all turned out. The way that it should have in the end. But yeah, it was, it was the weirdest feeling, cuz I'd never, I'd never not had a job since I graduated from college.~

~I'd always known what was gonna be the next step, whether it was a different company or a different position, and suddenly I didn't,~

Rachel: ~Everyone's been asking me like, what's your next steps after you've been laid off? And I'm like, I don't know, man. Get off my back. Um, I've gotta go have some fun and explore things. Everything's about to change in a really big way, so anybody who finds themselves without a job right now, you're in the perfect place to get ahead of the curve and start diving deep on things that will be relevant.~

~You know, what is coming up in the next two to five years that you can get in on now while everyone else is still. You know, keeping the, uh, what is it still building horse buggies? What are the cars you can start building? And it, it's kind of, yeah, I don't wanna be overly positive and say, you know, it's a good thing to be taken off the treadmill because it makes you, you know, refocus. But it still sucks. It's still terrible to be without, you know, like, Much like you, I'm in that place. It's like, wait, what? I, I normally have another thing lined up and I step off of one ship and onto another,~

Paige: ~Mm-hmm.~

Rachel: ~but now I'm in the life raft and it's like, I haven't been in a life raft before. What is this? Uh, it's, uh, it's a different experience and it can be really intimidating and scary, especially if you're not prepared.~

~There are some things you can do, uh, to make that transition a little less scary though.~

Paige: ~So I would love if you would talk a little bit about that, because like I said, when it happened to me, I didn't see it coming. I actually had about five minutes notice from one of my coworkers. She sent me a message on Slack five minutes before it happened and said, Hey, I think something is about to happen.~

~She didn't know what, but that was all I got.~ So when you can see the writing on the wall a little bit more clearly, like the economy that we're currently in, what are, what's your advice for getting yourself ~kind of~ prepared that if I'm not here tomorrow, Things still keep running, either personally or professionally ~For,~ for my job.

Rachel: First off, no matter how good things seem, unless you're at open AI right now, consider yourself at risk. ~Um,~ Just consider it because a lot of these layoffs are not performance based financially by the company They are. In vogue because everyone's doing them right now. ~Uh,~ so don't expect rational behavior from anybody right now.

You can be irrational. ~Uh,~ there's a couple of things that you can do. I already did them because I was looking at blind and I was ~looking,~ looking abroad, and I always see people like me getting swept away at other companies. And I was like, yeah, ~well,~ let's see, ~uh,~ likelihood that this will [00:26:00] happen to me. always. Always be thinking about the future. One thing I recommend is that ~you,~ you talk with a financial planner. Go ahead and do that now. Find out like how much change you'd have to make in your life to have about six to 12 months runway. I expect we'll see a correction in that amount of time and hire, ~you know, ~you gotta expect at least six months to find any good job that's not, ~you know,~ a windfall or you making a hasty decision that you might regret.

Paige: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: It usually takes that long. Expect it to take longer in this climate. So talk to a financial planner. Look at your expenses and things and see, ~you know,~ how much runway do you need to be saving right now? What are you, what would you have to drop? Create a little emergency scr plan. Just like a nuclear power plant.

~Have a scram plan so that if something happens, you're immediately like, cancel the Netflix honey and drop the kids off with the grandparents. We can't afford the daycare anymore. Uh,~ It's also good to create like a laundry list of the assets that you have that won't show up in a financial plan. ~You know,~ who are the friends you can rely on to watch your dog if you have to travel for an [00:27:00] interview, ~um, you know,~ counting your blessings, the things that you have or have access to that you wouldn't normally.

~Uh,~ we usually don't think about our friends and our family as assets or, ~you know,~ resources we can call upon in a time of need.

Paige: Yeah.

Rachel: But surprisingly they are, ~uh,~ even your cat that comforts you is worth putting in that list because that is something that's gonna be there for you in the, your hard times. ~Um, ~also like for this kind of career go bag, ~I recommend, uh,~ I recommend writing your goodbye post ahead of time because it's much better to write that when you're in a.

Expansive mindset versus a terrified mindset,

Paige: Yeah.

Rachel: it should reflect all the great work that you've done and that you're proud of. This will get you thinking about the work that you're. You're excited about the work that you wanna make sure that you deliver in a timely fashion, et cetera. This is really good for prepping you for that interview mindset and also just really appreciating the moment that you have with these people and the [00:28:00] things that you've been doing.

So writing that goodbye letter, celebrating people, ~sort of~ like writing your obituary makes you really appreciate the now and what you wanna be. Write that ahead of time. If you can't write it ahead of time, put it through chat g p t and tell chat. J p t make this like 50% more positive and professional.

And yeah, and also like it's a good time to start talking with colleagues about exchanging mutual letters of recommendation on LinkedIn.~ Uh,~ while you're still in that good vibes and you're thinking about all the stuff that you've been doing, ~um,~ it's a ~good,~ good thing to do. And you can get ahead of all of this.

You can do it today, you, it's not gonna impact whether or not you keep your job.

Paige: ~Yeah, I mean,~ none of what you have just talked about costs any money. It just takes a little bit of time and like you said, putting in some thought about ~what you,~ what you're doing, what you wanna be remembered for, and what kind of an impact you wanna make at the place that you're currently at.

Rachel: A financial planner might cost you a bit of money, but I do recommend ~if you,~ if you can [00:29:00] swing it.

Paige: yes, that's money well invested. ~So as we're, oh,~

Rachel: ~I think I do.~

Paige: ~whatever your time zone is.~

Rachel: ~Pardon me.~

Paige: ~Yeah.~ So as we're talking about ~how,~ how to transition or how to be ready to transition out of your current role, tell us what you're excited about in 2023. What are some of the things that you're really looking forward to that, that listeners might wanna know about, ~um, ~where they might be able to find you now that you're, you've moved on from Amazon.

Rachel: ~Well, I, it turns out that I don't have a hard stop, but we should still, we should still keep it up. Uh, so we can go a little bit over. Uh, so things I'm excited about. Well,~ one thing I'm really excited about is catching up on the state of animation in the community right now. ~I, ~I would love to say that a lot has changed since I stopped going deep on animation about six years ago to begin my fang journey, but I gotta be honest.

It seems like they were saving the best for right now, because all the good stuff is coming out. I look back at the web animations api, I'm like, did you release scrolling timelines yet? It's coming. It's coming out now. ~Uh,~ page transitions. Oh my God. This thing has been trying to get off the ground for a very, ~like,~ over a decade, and it's finally here in Chrome under a flag.

There's ~a,~ a [00:30:00] lot that is changing, that I'm excited about, and I, I'm excited to get caught back up in it. I'm not gonna, ~you know,~ be a web animation, ~uh,~ niche specialist. But I do ~like~ playing around quite a bit with what you can do with animations. And I know everyone is talking about react, ~uh,~ server components, but I gotta be honest, I find them really boring. ~Uh,~ and ~I,~ I, I think at least back when I was on the React team, I think that the React team was very, yeah, ~these, these, ~these should only be really important to people who are building frameworks, et cetera. But everyone's very curious about them. But that's not the thing that's exciting for me. I am excited about offscreen rendering because it has huge implications for how people experience projects that are done with React.

~Um,~ Let's see. You can find this on React dot devs, ~uh,~ blog section. It's,~ uh, they've,~ they've listed in the same post as the one that talks about the compiler and server components, but [00:31:00] I'm really excited about this. It's, ~um,~ basically it's a feature that allows the, ~uh,~ allows the server to pre-render screens and things in the background.

So they're ~sort of,~ Immediately swap a inable, ~uh,~ when you transition or animate that content in, or the person navigates. Now, this is pretty tricky stuff to do, but I love it because it, Chrome has been trying to do a lot of these things behind the scenes for people ~sort of~ anticipating what page people are gonna go to next.

Preloading that information into a cache so that when people click the link, it just loads super fast. But there's some stuff that you can only do in the UI layer, like tapping. ~Um,~ and one tab contains a lot of stuff that's, ~you know,~ rendered on the server in the edge. And so moving that to the UI layer, it's just so exciting.

~Uh,~ they've piloted this on, ~uh,~ react Native project and it's gone really well. So it has implications for mobile as well. But the idea is that we could get. A very slick [00:32:00] mobile animated experience in web apps. ~Uh,~ that has just not been possible in the past. And so I am excited about offscreen, rendering super nerdy.

~And,~ and the post itself was like, we don't think that individual. ~Uh,~ engineers are gonna be excited about this. This is more ~like~ something framework people be. I'm like, oh, ~uh uh. ~I don't know. I think maybe it is exciting for people.

Paige: Absolutely. ~I mean, I've,~ I've definitely dealt with my fair share of animations in web development, and it is, it has been very painful for so long, even with the Great React Spring and ~the,~ the various libraries that are out there to make it easier. So having this be built in to react from the start would be, ~I mean,~ it would just be such a step forward in my opinion.

Rachel: It really would make, ~um,~ it would really make a lot of things possible that just aren't possible with how we build today, [00:33:00] with the different APIs that browsers make available to us.

Paige: Yeah. And if you could push through c s s Houdini while you're at it, that would be great.

Rachel: Is it still on the, is ~it~ It's still waiting in the wings. Oh my

Paige: It's still, it still is, and I don't know if it'll ever get out of the wings, unfortunately. It's such a cool idea. But yeah, it just hasn't quite gotten the support that it needs.

Rachel: ~There's a lot of cool stuff out there. All right. I'll put it on my list of~

Paige: ~Okay. All right. So, uh, you know,~ react, react, offscreen, rendering, web animations in general, are there any conference talks that people could potentially see you at?

Rachel: ~Well,~ I think people will be listening to this a little too late to catch my render Atlanta, how to survive a Layoff Talk. I'm only gonna give it once, so you're gonna have to go watch the recorded video on YouTube, but you could also catch it because it's a part of a book I'm writing. ~Uh,~ you can, I'm writing in public.

You can read it on wiggly goose.ck.com. I'll come up with a better short r l I called it wiggly goose because being a wiggly goose [00:34:00] is, I used to raise geese and they're always getting through holes in the fence to get into the pasture they wanted, and I'm like, darn, you wiggly geese always getting into trouble, but a wiggly goose goes to go, gets into trouble, and no fence can contain them.

~So,~ That's been my kind of engineering and leadership mindset of, ~uh, you know,~ if there's a fence, you can find a way around it. You're a wiggly goose gets into that green grass. so@wigglygoose.ck you can actually. Read, ~uh,~ a lot of the things we're talking about here, ~uh,~ formalized, ~uh,~ if ~you're,~ you're worried about layoffs or you've been impacted, you can have a peak.

~Uh,~ and there are ~other,~ other things in that, ~uh,~ in that book that I'm writing about ~how to,~ how to survive your fang career without a CS degree or an mba, including, ~you know,~ how to react to organizational change, which can be very scary. There's gonna be organizational change now too.~ Uh,~ so give it a look.

As for actual conference talks about the work that I did with React Native and React. You can catch me at React Brussels, react Summit N Y C, [00:35:00] and React Berlin. So I will be seeing ~the~ The Atlantic Ocean very shortly.

Paige: Fantastic. ~Well,~ Rachel, it has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. ~Is is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you'd like to?~

Rachel: ~No, you got it all. Uh, I really appreciate, uh, I really appreciate you walking me through this.~

Paige: ~Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us.~

Rachel: It has been an absolute pleasure to chat with you, Paige. ~Uh,~ thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

Paige: All right, so we will see you on the next episode of Pod Rocket.

Rachel: ~Thank you both.~