Rikki Endsley - Journalism to Open Source Tech Writer (#27)
Biography
Rikki Endsley is currently the Open Source Community Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS). She was previously the editor of Red Hat Developer and a 2016 recipient of an O’Reilly Open Source Award. In the past, she worked as a community manager and editor for Opensource.com; a community evangelist on the Open Source and Standards team at Red Hat; freelance tech journalist; community manager for the USENIX Association; associate publisher of Linux Pro Magazine, ADMIN, and Ubuntu User; and as the managing editor of *Sys Admin* magazine and UnixReview.com.
Rikki has an English degree from the University of Texas (Austin) and a Master’s of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Kansas. For her thesis, she researched how to highlight women’s contributions to open source technologies.
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Episode Summary
“I like helping a publication or website or magazine become its own life form, you know, have its own voice and stand out”
—Rikki Endsley
In this episode we’ll cover:
- Why Rikki took a pay cut to jump-start her career as a tech writer.
- How technical do you have to be to be a tech writer?
- When is the right time to jump out of your comfort zone and try something new?
- Why it’s a great idea to write a ‘deep dive’ article for a niche audience.
Key Milestones
Intro: 00:18 [Inaudible]
Grant Ingersoll: 00:19 Welcome everyone to the Develomentor podcast, your source for interviews and content on careers in technology. I’m your host grant Ingersoll. Each and every episode we aim to bring you interesting interviews and advice on careers in tech, not just software development. Our goal really is to showcase all the different aspects that go into creating a tech company and how you might find your own path in that realm. To that end, today’s guest has had a long career focused on writing, reporting and editing content in the tech industry. Along the way, she’s turned an English bachelor’s and a journalism master’s into titles like managing editor and community architect. Those jobs also translate into a pretty full travel schedule. It seems as her Twitter feed always seems to be full of tweets from some conference she’s attending. Please welcome to the show, Rikki Endsley. Rikki, great to have you here.
Rikki Endsley: 01:10 Thanks for inviting me. I’m excited.
Grant Ingersoll: 01:12 Hey Ricky. You know, we’ve known each other for some time now and I’ve had the opportunity of writing content for one of your publications. So I thought it would be appropriate if I could flip the script and have you produce some content for me. So how about we kick things off and have you give a proper intro to yourself and your career?
Rikki Endsley: 01:30 Well I’m, I’m always better in print, so it’s exciting to get out of my comfort zone and try podcasts again. It’s been awhile. My background is as you mentioned tech journalism, I got into it very accidentally via some customer service background I had. And I started at a tech publishing company back in the late nineties in a customer service department running the fulfillment group and helping, you know, sell back issues of magazines and that sort of thing. So I really got into it accidentally.
I actually took a step down to get my first editing job on Sys Admin magazine, which is no longer around but still fondly remembered by subscribers and writers. And it kinda took off from there. And I, I just, I ended up liking it. Didn’t, you know, I, it just was so accidental that I ended up in this industry, but I really liked the people and what I was learning, it’s never boring, you know, so I just, I stayed at that company for almost 10 years before I decided to go back to grad school and pursue my master’s and moved over to another tech publishing company. And that’s how it all got started.
Grant Ingersoll: 02:44 Wow, that’s great. And so, so actually during this time period, I mean, quite a lot of transition going on in the industry. It sounds like very early on, like you were actually doing full on physical dead tree printing. Right?
Rikki Endsley: 02:56 Absolutely. I’m, in fact, I remember one of the first meetings I was in at the company, which was at the time called Miller Freeman. And eventually we got bought by, I think CMP media or we bought CMP media. I forget how that all went down. And then it became part of United Business Media, I believe. This was so many years ago. But I remember being one of those first meetings where I was still in customer service and I remember listening to the publisher of Sys Admin magazine, which was a Unix admin magazine, talk about the challenges they were having because Unix, you know, wasn’t really a thing so much anymore and everyone was doing windows administration. And then a few months later him talking about how things had kind of shifted and this thing called Linux, people were talking about it a lot more and they were expanding their coverage to be a Unix and Linux magazine. And so it really changed then and the in the magazine continued to grow. You know, this was back when they were starting to launch all these other Linux magazines to print magazines. So yeah, it’s been awhile.
Grant Ingersoll: 04:02 Yeah. Those are the good old days of tech publishing too, where you could actually make money off of writing a book and then things like that because, because the information wasn’t online. So, so you’re in this customer service role, you know, how did you, how did you, you know, you said it kind of accidentally, but you know, presumably there’s some point in time where you said, Hey, I can write or I can, I can do these kinds of things. How did you get that first gig, if you will? Or how did you prove that out for the first time?
Rikki Endsley: 04:30 That’s a great question grant. And I think it is a whole theme for my career is it’s all about networking and I, you know, knew the editorial staff at Sys Admin magazine because we worked at the same company even though I was in customer service and I got to know them and express my interest in an editing role and entry-level editing role at some point. You know, in it, like I said, it ended up being a little step down pay wise, you know, to move into an associate editor role. Because I was a manager of a customer service team at that point. But for me it was a really good career move to get my foot in the door over there. And they gave me a chance because they had seen, you know, that I could write and I could edit and I could to manage people and tasks and that’s the kind of thing they needed skill-wise, you know, in publishing and in, in the magazine business.
Grant Ingersoll: 05:20 Yeah. I think you hit on some really key career points in there of this, you know, one networking and relationships. But with second, and I think this is something that’s often lost if you go to, you know, a really hardcore STEM path is this ability to communicate. Right? And, and you know, if not, if nothing else coming out with English and journalism like that is just founded around communication. So talk a little bit about how that’s really helped you then go forward out of, out of this starting point.
Rikki Endsley: 05:50 I’m about that. A communications background. Yeah. Well, I mean there’s just not a field that that’s not useful in. Right. And so it’s funny when I joke about my English degree and I’m like, you know, I mastered my native language, you know, but it really does give you any of the liberal arts degrees, you know, just give you they’re people degrees, you know, I mean, you’re learning so many things, history and culture and anthropology and you know, all these skills that end up helping in various careers, you know, and so for me, just being able to communicate clearly and you know, early on I was you know, in the, in the fulfillment area I was communicating with international people.
And so having to communicate very clearly with folks from around the world and, you know, being very mindful of that, you know, that emails have to be more clear and, and you know, you have to be careful of colloquialisms and you know pop culture references, you know, that aren’t going to translate well. And so that is all serving really well in my career.
Grant Ingersoll: 06:55 Yeah. The, I can remember the, some of the first trips I took abroad and the realization that the things that are funny here in the U S aren’t necessarily funny in other places it really hit home when, when you just see the audience is entirely deadpan after what you thought was a really good joke. So
Rikki Endsley: 07:11 Well, exactly, exactly. And you know, after I left Sys Admin magazine, I worked for Linux new media, which was a company based out of Germany. And so that was really interesting. Culturally, we all we all got along very well and would openly joke about the different cultural things between the two different companies or countries, you know, for example you know, gun references were not okay in Germany, couldn’t put gun illustrations in the magazine or anything. Whereas, you know, a little nudity is more acceptable over there than it would be you know, in North America in a magazine. So it is interesting.
Grant Ingersoll: 07:48 Yeah. So many things we could unpack there. If this were only a political podcast, but we’re not going to go there, you know. So the, so digging in a little bit more, I mean, you know, so coming into tech kind of from, you know English background, what do, what do you see as some of the keys that all techies could use around being better communicators? Like, just so you know, maybe a tip or two that, Hey, if you hadn’t thought about this in your own career because you’re so focused on the code or on, on some more technical aspects, what are some tips in your mind that would help people?
Rikki Endsley: 08:24 Well, communicating online can be tricky no matter how well you communicate because you still, people aren’t seeing gestures. If they haven’t met you in person, they’re not seeing your face. They’re not you know, people come in with assumptions and so occasionally a phone call or a video call as actually essential to making sure you have essential or you know, clear communication.
In fact, I mean, at one point I actually needed to go over to Germany and meet the team because we reached a point where we realized at LinuxCon media that I would work a little more effectively with a few people on the team if we’d actually had some FaceTime and got to know each other a little bit. And that really did help improve our ability to work. And that’s where, you know, still conferences is such a great way, you know, people talk about the hallway track being the best thing of a conference.
And I really do believe that it’s that you know, face to face, you know, personal interactions, even if they’re very brief. It just really helps you communicate more clearly online, you know, and, and build, you know, friendships and business relationships a lot quicker and more effectively.
Grant Ingersoll: 09:30 Yeah. So true. You know, shifting gears a little bit, you know, so you’re, you’re coming in and you have to write about tech and so how do you approach, you know, the issue of getting up to speed and perhaps breaking down some of the barriers around tech of, you know, it’s really heavy jargon. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of stuff in there that, you know, you could spend your whole life in tech and still never understand. I know I do. Right. So how do you approach as a journalist, as a writer, like getting an understanding such that you can then communicate it to other people?
Rikki Endsley: 10:02 Well I’m not doing as much writing now as I used to, but for awhile, all I did was write as a freelance tech journalist. And so for me I really, I can’t just read about a technology. I really have to get my hands on it and use it. And so you know, the stuff that I wrote about, it tended to be stuff that I actually installed and played with. You know, I was writing about content management systems or you know, different Linux variations, you know, or gap or whatever.
I actually have to get my hands on it and use it to visualize it and to be able to describe it better. And so that’s one approach. And then the other trick of the trade, I guess is, is interviewing people and you know, and, and using quotes from people, like, I wrote an article years ago about you know, when one tool was good for a job or when a different tool was better. And I just, I interviewed different professionals who are using both tools, you know, and put that together for an article. And then you know, just a lot of research, a lot of reading.
Grant Ingersoll: 11:05 Yeah. And I imagine then you pick you, you’ve probably become fairly technical over the years, just through almost osmosis and trying things out. So that’s, it just goes to show too that you can, you know, this, just working at it and continuing with it, you’ll, you’ll pick up a lot of things, I imagine.
Rikki Endsley: 11:22 Yeah. And I think it leads to more interesting articles too. You know, otherwise you’re just quoting what someone else has written in a press release or something like that and you’re not giving any color to it, you know, like, I don’t like this about it that this other tr, you know, this other part of the new release is really useful for doing X, Y, Z, you know, and so it helps if, if you actually get your hands on it, otherwise you’re writing the exact same thing. 10 other journalists are writing based on press release.
Rikki Endsley: 11:50 Right. Well, so, so you mentioned you don’t do as much these days, so talk about that shift in the w, you know, management or editorial, you know, being more at the layer above where you’re, where you’re managing editors, you’re building community, those kinds of things.
Rikki Endsley: 12:08 You know, I, I do like writing and I’ve, I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. For me, I found that doing it all the time I liked it less, you know, because if you just aren’t in the mood to write or you’re feeling kind of stuck it, to me that was really stressful. But the part that I really, I’ve always loved most is helping other people be better writers and other people say what they’re trying to say more clearly and more effectively.
And so I just, I get a lot of enjoyment out of that and I feel like that’s really my strengths. And I help, I like helping a publication or website or magazine you know, kind of become its own life form, you know, have its own voice and stand out and be polished also, you know, have some kind of editorial control on it where you’re really creating this polished, you know, platform.
Rikki Endsley: 13:00 So that’s, that’s what I’m enjoying. And you know, I recently moved over to a developer program from opensource.com and I’d been on open source.com for about four years and really enjoyed it and had zero complaints about it, you know, and that at this point in my career I also was feeling like, okay, I’m going to be doing this for probably another 20 years or so and what’s next? You know?
And I really felt like I needed to get out of my comfort zone and, and, and, and feel the struggle again and feel bad at something for a while, you know, and challenge myself. And so I’m, I’m had this opportunity to move over to develop a program at red hat, which I did recently and really did get out of my comfort zone. It’s, it’s been good for me. I’m learning a lot, you know, from different, different people, things that I wasn’t necessarily strong at, but then I could bring in my experience and skills and fill a hole that they have and program.
Grant Ingersoll: 13:52 That’s fantastic. Let’s, let’s unpack that comfort zone idea a little bit here because I think this is a really important thing for people in their careers is, is this notion of getting out of your, your comfort zone. And you’ve hit on it a couple of times throughout, you know, that, that switch and, and in many ways step down to that first editing job. And then now you’re, you’re talking about it now.
How do you, how do you frame, or how do you know when you’re in your comfort zone a little bit too much? I mean, there’s not necessarily bad to be in a comfort zone for a little bit, but then what were you feeling that you, you know, kind of unpack that a little bit more? I’m not asking that question in a great way, but, you know, talk a little bit more about it.
Rikki Endsley: 14:36 Yeah. And it’s not for everybody, you know? I mean, there was a point in my life where my personal life, my home life was so chaotic. I needed something less stressful than the job I had. I needed to be in a comfort position at work, you know? And so it’s not for everybody. And I’m not saying everybody should hop out of their comfort zone, but there are times in our life when, I mean, it helps you, like, it helps me avoid burnout, you know, I mean, I reach a point where I, if I’m not excited to get up and go to work anymore I just don’t want to be like that.
It’s not, I’m on my best behavior then I’m not the most pleasant to be around and whatever. And so you know, like years ago when I took that little, you know, pay cut, move over to Sys Admin magazine, I remember at the time we weren’t really even a financial position to do it in my family, you know, and, and people were advising you not to you know, except within the company.
Rikki Endsley: 15:26 And, but I went ahead and took that risk because I also looked at the bigger picture and the longer term and what my goals were. And so for me at the time, you know, it, it was a good trade-off, even though it was a little bit of a hit to the pocketbook, it ended up, you know, moving me into the position where I could make more money and you know, have more options. And I’m in a position now where, you know, it, I didn’t have to take a pay cut to move into something new, but for me I, that’s, I just, I don’t work well if I feel bored, if I feel like I’ve mastered something, at some point I feel good about being good at stuff. You know, but then I’m like, okay, what’s next? And I just start thinking about it and obsessing on it.
Rikki Endsley: 16:09 And and that’s kind of where I was and I knew I didn’t want to leave my company if I could avoid it because I really do like you know, my company. And so and when I joined this company, one of the, the things you know, I looked for was an organization like red hat that where you could kind of create your next position, you know, that there was a growing company with room to move around because I like change, but I don’t like too much change.
You know what I mean? It’s kind of nice to settle in and work with people you like all the time, you know? And, and so I am enjoying that part that yeah, I think getting a little uncomfortable. It’s a little hard at first, you know, because I do remember when I joined this team, I jokingly said a couple times, Oh my God, I’ve made a huge mistake. What have I done to myself? You know, but it was also good because I’m learning so much, you know, and I was like, Whoa, it’s been so long since I felt really bad at something. And and it’s not that I was so bad, it’s just that I wasn’t comfortable. It’s exciting.
Grant Ingersoll: 17:07 Well, I think that’s true of a, you know, especially when I see a lot of discussions amongst people earlier in their career, you know, there’s, there’s often a lot of angst around change and you know, I think, I think as you get more experience, you realize that it ebbs and flows and there’s a time and place for being kind of quote unquote comfortable and there’s a time and place when you need to, to move in, up and out. Reflecting back a little bit then, what’s been the most surprising thing about your career today? Like, you know, if you asked you know, I’ll assume you’re older than 18, 18 year old Ricky, that Hey, you’re going to do this in your career. She would say, no way.
Rikki Endsley: 17:47 Oh, well all of it. I, you know, at 18 you know, I’m first generation college and so when I was 18, I wasn’t even really planning on going to college yet. You know, because I just wasn’t raised in a family where that was a thing that we did, you know, so my entire path has just been, I mean, I worked at a record store then and that was kind of the future plan I had. You know, luckily I got out of there because record stores went away for a long time, you know, so yeah, they’re back, you know, so I think one thing that I discovered a decade or so ago on my career that I had never heard of but it’s still such a factor for me as imposter syndrome. And you know, when I first heard about it and discovered it, I was like, Oh, that’s totally me.
Rikki Endsley: 18:32 And now that I know about it, you know, I can, I can get over it and move past it. And it’s fascinating to me what a role that still plays in my life and how much I have to fight that feeling still, you know? And, for example, when I joined the team on, I’m on now. Oh, you know, I interviewed with quite a few people to make sure it was a good fit. I was interviewing them and they were interviewing me.
And then I joined and immediately felt like, God, I’m not qualified, I’m not good, you know? And and then I had to tell myself, okay, and even at the coming five years, 12 people have talked to you before you took this role. And it’s still that voice inside your head, you know years into your career. I just, it’s fascinating to me that it doesn’t matter how much experience you have that you have imposter syndrome, that’s still a little voice that you fight, you know?
Grant Ingersoll: 19:20 No. Well, and, and then the flip side of it is like, we sometimes live in a culture that’s fake it till you make it too. So, so you actually have both of these voices in your head. Oh, the whole, Hey Ricky, it’s okay. Fake it till you make it and then, you know, but, but I think what’s really hitting on with imposter syndrome and what really underlies it is that discomfort of, of Hey, you’re outside your realm of expertise, you’re outside your bubble a little bit. But if you can step back and realize, and I, I struggled with this myself, is you can step back and realize that, Hey, know what I’m doing is actually increasing the size of the bubble, right? And adding this new set of skills, then you can get past that.
Rikki Endsley: 20:00 Right. Well, and the other funny thing about it is so many people I think have it in tech, have imposter syndrome because we’re all doing stuff that hasn’t been done before in many cases, you know. And so we’re, we’re, no one is holding our hand and telling us how to do it or training us or teaching us, you know, that we’re really just blazing new trails, you know, or getting, you know, just experimenting and, and so you have to be a little bit comfortable with failing at stuff too and prepared for that. And not you know, feel like a failure if a new thing you tried didn’t work the way you thought it might.
Grant Ingersoll: 20:32 Yeah, I mean, I, I think you hit the nail on the head there. I mean by definition tech is about new and new means hasn’t necessarily been done before. Maybe it’s only been prototyped, it hasn’t been brought to production. So yeah. So you don’t know if it’s going to work. What a, you know, every job has its pros and cons. Kind of real quick, what are the top two and bottom two things about a career as a tech content writer or publisher, you know, not necessarily about a specific job or a specific company, but just kind of the two best to worst things about this field you’re in?
Rikki Endsley: 21:09 Well, I mean, the best thing for me is it’s really the people. It’s why I’m here. You know, from the very beginning of my career, I didn’t intend to stay in tech when I got into it, but it, the people are really what kept me here and keep me here. And so it’s you know, that, and then I’ll, I mean, part two of that I guess is that you get to continue working with the same people in different ways in this career. And in open source you get to work with your competitors, which I really like that. It’s a pretty friendly field, you know, that I have friendly relationships with people who work at companies that are technically competitors for red hat and that’s that’s fine. That’s acceptable. That’s normal. That’s good. That’s the way this industry is supposed to work.
Rikki Endsley: 21:54 And then con wise, I guess sometimes the pace at which we work will always, the pace at which we work. There’s never anything that I sent that I published, you know, or sent out where I’m like, it’s perfect. It’s done now. Because that’s just not the nature of tech journalism, you know? I mean, you can do that if you’re writing a book maybe you know, but it just doesn’t work for tech journalism.
You’ve got to get it out there and keep going, you know, otherwise the technology is out of date by the time you perfected article, you know. Yeah. And then the business model for publishing has always been challenging. You know, and that was really hard when I was actually in print publishing and you know, that, and I was fortunate, the magazines I worked on, including Linux, new media, we were always just so focused on the reader and you depend on the advertisers to a degree, you know, but that’s also been that total downfall of many publications. It’s where they got lost along the way. And [inaudible] yeah, that’s
Rikki Endsley: 22:55 Well, which is if you lose yourself and at Everett and you forget the reader, you know, it’s not fun anymore and you lose the reader. And so that’s always been a big challenge. And that’s one of the things that I really loved about working on opensource.com was it, it’s a site. It’s supported by red hat. And so, you know, we just got to focus on readers and you know, creating content that would be interesting and new and it didn’t have to make a profit, you know we weren’t selling a magazine or selling ads on an article. And so that’s, that’s always a challenge.
Grant Ingersoll: 23:27 It’s always nice to have a patron, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I can tell you that writing a book is no different in terms of deadlines. And in fact, in some ways it’s just as painful because the, because the tech is changing so fast, the thing you were writing on, all of a sudden it’s different. Yeah.
Rikki Endsley: 23:46 Tech publishing books. Yeah, that’s, it’s the same boat. But if you’re trying to write a masterpiece novel, I assume you have a little bit more time, you know, so,
Grant Ingersoll: 23:55 Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, so speaking of the business model, I mean, you know, I think you hit on, you know, I want to shift gears into this, you know, looking forward at the, or at least to the here and now, you know, content publishing is notoriously difficult game, right? I mean, you know, SEO, you’ve got these content farms out there, a lot of offshoring hack, even AI these days is starting to generate articles that are of some decent level of readability. I mean, how do you think about staying ahead and, or keeping your team ahead when it comes to, to publishing?
Rikki Endsley: 24:36 Well, you know, I, I, since I have moved to a tech company now it is a little different for us. You know, I mean, I keep an eye on with the tech publications are doing, you know, the for-profit tech publications and they still, I mean, it’s a big struggle still. And I really, I’m, I’m fascinated to see you know, where the industry is going or even with regular journalism, you know, it’s just, it’s still such a struggle. I think we in tech if we want to see good tech journalism, we also have to be prepared to spend some money and help support it. And I think that’s not a thing that many of us are comfortable doing, you know? And so we have to be thinking about how can we financially support publications if we like them and want them to stay around. You know, so,
Grant Ingersoll: 25:24 But, but even in your like, you know, like working on a specific product and now you’d like, you ha, you know, part of what you’re doing right is evangelizing this idea to developers, to architects, to users. And, and you, you’re still playing that same game of how do you get on the first page of Google.
Rikki Endsley: 25:42 Right, right
Grant Ingersoll: 25:43 So, you know, like, how do you think they’re, you know, how does, how do you stay ahead there? I mean, obviously you’ve got the weight of, and you in this particular case, red hat behind you, but you still gotta work pretty hard at it, I would think.
Rikki Endsley: 25:56 Yeah. I mean you have to, you definitely have to have an editorial voice and you know, some kind of an outline of who you are as a publication the people on your publication matter, the editors or the writers. That makes a big difference because we, you know, readers don’t necessarily get attached to the brand of a publication.
We follow specific writers or editors that we trust, you know, so I think that’s important. And then if you’re doing any kind of publishing or editing, you really need to be thinking about you know, your focus. You can’t be good at everything, you know. And for example, on opensource.com when I was there or on the developer program on, I’m on now breaking news is probably not a thing we should focus on. There are other sites that should do breaking news and do it better.
Rikki Endsley: 26:45 And we should focus on more deep dive articles, you know, with a very specific audience in mind. We can’t, you know, in a developer program, we are very clear on what our audience is, their developers, you know, and so that we just need to deliver excellent develop developer content, you know, or if you’re on a more general publication like on Linux pro magazine.
When I was there, people would always ask me to compare us to Linux journal, which was, you know, technically competitive magazine. My response then was, well, you should get both of the magazines because they’re different, you know, and we were very focused at LennoxPRO on you know, professionals, you know CIS admins or developers or people who were using Linux and open-source tools in the workplace. And Lynux journal did some of that, but they also, I thought they had more hobbyist type stuff too than we did.
And so I would think you back then, and I thought you would probably want to get both of them if you were into Linux and open source, you know, but they, because they were different. And not, they just and I thought that was a good argument to have. And then also we were a better magazine because we had competitors to hold ourselves against, you know, and you know, it, it made us focus on a very specific set of content and readers.
Grant Ingersoll: 28:03 Yeah, that makes sense. Rikki, I want to thank you for coming on and I want to finish up with one last question around career advice, but before we do that, I mean a lot of really good things in here and career-wise that people should be able to take away around building up relationships.
That key of networking, the key of getting outside of your comfort zone and then ultimately, I mean, I think in many ways what’s your, encompasses a lot of your career as you found your voice, right? And you found a way to leverage the skill you had around communication and to actually bring in bringing your voice to the, to the table, if you will. So perhaps then, you know, just finish up with the, the question I ask everybody, which is, you know, what advice would you give for somebody who wants to get started in this field?
Rikki Endsley: 28:50 Well, it really is about the people in this field. And so, and, and I understand that not everyone can go to a conference, you know, for, for many reasons. And so there are many other ways to build your network, which, and when I say network, I mean it’s relationships. You’re building relationships with people and you know, and it should be fun.
You know, it should be something you enjoy. You’re connecting with other humans, you know, and so that can be done online and that can be done regionally, at can be done in your neighborhood. You know, I mean I’ve been surprised at how many people I’ve met and had interesting conversations with who work in tech. You know, just at like a grill out last weekend for example, or going to a meetup, you know, or a local coffee shop, you know, you see someone’s sticker on their laptop and it’s some interests you share.
Rikki Endsley: 29:35 Those are opportunities to actually get to know folks who have something in common with you and make you see the world a little differently and think about opportunities you might not have thought of.
Grant Ingersoll: 29:45 Yeah, that’s fantastic. I had never thought of the sticker on the laptop as being an icebreaker, but that makes a ton of sense. I love the, I guess I better put some stickers on mine again. No, a lot of great advice there, Ricky, and I think you hit the nail on the head at the end of the day that, you know, tech is important, but the relationships are even deeper, so our need for important, so can’t thank you enough for joining me today on the Develomentor podcast. Thanks again, Rikki for joining.
Rikki Endsley: 30:14 Thanks so much for inviting me. I enjoyed it.
Grant Ingersoll: 30:20 Thank you as always to our listeners for taking the time to listen. If you’d like to show, we’d love for you to subscribe on Apple podcasts or whatever your favorite podcast app is. You can also visit us at develomentor.com to hear older episodes as well as find other content on careers in technology. Most importantly, if you like the show, please tell your friends. Referrals are the lifeblood of any podcast. If you have any feedback on this episode or any episode where you’d like to be a guest, drop us an email at [email protected] Finally, we here at Develomentor hope that each and each and every episode helps you move that one step closer to finding your path
Outro: 31:18 [Inaudible].
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