Category: Career

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Artificial Intelligence Career What I’m Up To

Claude does impression of me, comes up with new acronym: STARBS

Ben Affleck’s interview scene from “Good Will Hunting”.

I’m working on some new videos for the Global Nerdy YouTube channel, and one of them is on answering questions in the dreaded “behavioral interview.” That’s the interview where you’re asked questions like “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a conflict on your team. How did you handle it?”

To help come up with ideas for the video about behavioral interviews, I posed some questions to LLMs. As I like to say, no matter how creative or clever you are, it is by definition impossible to make a list of ideas that you’d never come up with yourself.

So I posed this question to Claude, which for some reason, seems to know stuff about me:

How would you describe a behavioral interview, if you had to describe it in the style of Joey deVilla?

And wow, was the response snark-tastic:

Here’s the text of the response:

Joey deVilla’s Guide to Behavioral Interviews

Imagine me adjusting my accordion straps and coffee mug before dropping this knowledge bomb…

So you wanna know about behavioral interviews? Those corporate rituals where they ask you to “Tell me about a time when…” instead of just asking if you can do the damn job?

Behavioral interviews are the tech industry’s version of “Show, don’t tell” – except instead of showing your actual skills, you’re telling stories about when you supposedly used them! It’s like your professional life as fan fiction, where the hiring manager is desperately hoping you’re not writing in the genre of fantasy.

These interviews operate on the radical premise that past behavior predicts future performance. Revolutionary, I know! It’s like assuming that because I once played “Lady of Spain” on my accordion at a Tampa dev meetup, I’ll do it again given the chance and sufficient sangria.

The formula they want is STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. But what they’re REALLY looking for is STARBS: Situation, Task, Action, Result, Bull$#!t – that special sauce where you frame yourself as the hero who saved the project while maintaining perfect diplomatic relations with that passive-aggressive PM who kept moving the goalposts.

The trick isn’t just recounting what happened – it’s storytelling with a corporate-friendly narrative arc. You need conflict (but not TOO much conflict), challenges (that showcase your skills), and resolution (where you emerge victorious but humble).

Remember: in behavioral interviews, there are no failures – only “growth opportunities” and “valuable lessons” that conveniently transformed you into exactly the employee they’re looking for!

Adjusts glasses, takes dramatic sip of coffee

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice my own STAR stories for when someone inevitably asks me about “a time I demonstrated adaptability in a challenging situation” – which is code for “that time I coded for 36 hours straight because someone in management promised an impossible deadline.”

My questions, after reading Claude’s output:

  1. Am I really that much of a smart-ass?
  2. “STARBS” — Situation, Task, Actions, Result, Bullshit — is pretty clever. Whose writing did Claude lift that from?

So I did some web searches using terms like starbs star situation task action result bullshit, and couldn’t find any instance of STARBS. It seems to be one of those effectively new creations that an autocomplete-on-steroids can generate.

I’m not gonna lie: I kind of like STARBS, and wish that I’d come up with it myself.

(If you’re interested, see if you can do some searches to find other instances of the term STARBS.)

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Career Humor Process

Types of Workers

Comic titled “Types of Workers,” with three images. First image: “Remote,” featuring worker on Zoom call. Second image: “Hybrid,” featuring worker on Zoom call. Third image: “Office,” featuring worker on Zoom call.

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Career Video What I’m Up To

New video: “Surviving a Layoff: Mental Health Tips & Tricks”

Thumbnail for Global Nerdy YouTube video: “Maintaining Mental Health While Laid Off.” Features Joey de Villa with his head in his hands.
Tap to watch the video.

The newest video on the Global Nerdy YouTube channel is now online! Its title will and thumbnail will evolve over the next couple of days, but as I write this (the evening of Sunday, August 11, 2024), the thumbnail looks like the one above and the title is Surviving a Layoff: Mental Health Tips & Tricks.

(YouTube titles and thumbnails can be changed even after the video is posted, and many YouTubers change them as they figure out which versions attract “search” and “browse” viewers.)

Selected moments from the video

Near the start of the video, I suggest to viewers that they try to come up with their own mantra to help them through their layoff journey:

I also remind viewers that there’s a difference between being fired and being laid off:

Here are some layoff stats to reassure you that if you’ve been laid off, you’re not alone:

Making things worse is the fact that shareholders love layoffs — they’re cost savings, which can boost stock prices:

Remember this motto:

I also go through some of the items in the Life Events Inventory, a ranked list of the most stressful events in life. Guess where getting laid off is in the list — I won’t show you kere, though; you’ll have to watch the video!

Here’s the most pithy advice I have for expressing the emotions you may have in the aftermath of being laid off, courtesy of Scott Hanselman:

I talk about the benefits of exercise…

…remind the viewer that it’s always 5 p.m. somewhere…

…and yes, I make a reference not just to “That Site,” but That Site’s identifying drum riff:

You don’t need a unicorn gratitude journal to make it through a layoff, but you should practice gratitude to help you through the process:

I suggest that it might be therapeutic to get rid of at least some of your (former) company swag, but hang on to the stuff that’s useful. I’m hanging on to the Patagonia sweater they sent to me (ironically, a week or so before they laid me off) because it’s nice and warm, and I’m willing to put up with the “VC Bro’ vibes it gives off:

And finally, here’s one of the images I use to explain that if you need therapy or counseling, get it:

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Career Humor

Why “It depends” is a consultant’s go-to answer

Ancient Chinese artwork depicting Confucius, with the caption “Solve a client’s issues, and you bill them for a day. Keep saying ‘It depends,’ and you bill them for a lifetime.”

Two notes:

  1. “It depends” is actually true in most cases, but you can use it to stretch out a consulting contract.
  2. “Confucius” is a Latin name given to him by Jesuit missionaries — in Chinese, he’s generally referred to as Kǒngzǐ (pronounced KONG-zuh).
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Career What I’m Up To

My afternoon

This is what my afternoon looks like. How’s yours going?

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Career Humor

The best one-on-one meeting story ever (or: Blind is WEIRD, man.)

I don’t care if it’s not real. I want it to be real!

I found the above post not on LinkedIn, but on Blind, the anonymous discussion board app for white-collar workers. Think of LinkedIn, but make it anonymous, angry, toxic, and total-compensation-obsessed.

The Blind app will kill your soul if you use it too often. It’s an ugly agglomeration of late-stage capitalist cynicism, career despair, envy-inducing discussions of total compensation, and occasionally a place for sexually frustrated tech bros to vent.

But like that lemonade they’ve been serving at Panera, while it’s toxic if you consume the full serving, Blind is useful for keeping you awake and aware if you keep your dosage small. As nasty as its content can get, if you:

  • Really want to get a sense of what’s going on in the business world,
  • Get the inside scoop on what it’s like inside a given company, or
  • Read some really unhinged stuff for poops and giggles…

…then you should download Blind and peruse it — very occasionally.

Here’s the text of the post:

Had an in-person 1-1 with my boss today. Was dreading this bc I hadn’t completed a task that was supposed to be done by the 1-1. —————————————————————-

I burst out in tears, and then boss comes over and gives me masculine pats on my shoulder. I don’t know why but I felt compelled to give him a hug, and HE RECIPROCATED!! Very warmly, in fact. We became locked in a double-man bear embrace, lol. Seems straight out of a bad tv drama, but it’s reality. We’re both guys too. (btw he’s really tall and muscular and manly)

He starts caressing my hair and rubbing the skin on my face, and at that moment, I felt something I’ve never had for any of my previous bosses. I’m in my early 30s; he’s in his late 30s, so age-wise, we’re not that far apart.

After about 5 minutes of being locked in this bear embrace, we both stand up and separate. He looks at me with a tenderness I’ve never seen before in his eyes.There was a spark

At that moment, I knew that everything was gonna be alright.

Categories
Career What I’m Up To

I’m Unified API’s developer advocate!

And hey, I work for a company with an octopus mascot!
I knew that office art would come in handy.

Long story short: I’m joining Unified API — or “Unified” for short, online at unified.to —as their Supreme Leader of All Things Developer Relations. That’s not my official title, but it’s the most accurate description of my role.

Unified’s product, like the best startup products, is something its founders needed but couldn’t find, so they made it: a unified API.

It’s a way to call all a whole lot of SaaS APIs from all sorts of categories — HR, ATS, CRM, marketing, authentication — from a single API.

Unified API’s founders, CEO Roy Pereira and CTO Alexey Adamsky.

If you’re going to join a startup, you had better believe in the founders, and I believe in Unified’s founders, CEO Roy Pereira and CTO Alexey Adamsky. I know them from when I live in Toronto — Roy from Toronto’s strong startup scene and its then-monthly DemoCamp gatherings…

…and Alexey, who developed one of the apps that I regularly showcased when I was Microsoft Canada’s breadth developer advocate for Windows Phone 7:

I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting and being vetted by Unified’s Head of Marketing, Kailah Bharath and Head of Sales Michelle Tomicic:

Unified’s Head of Marketing Kailah Bharath and Head of Sales Michelle Tomicic.

And yes, with the addition of Yours Truly, that’s the entire company. I’m back in startup mode!

The Pragmatic Engineer’s chart comparing working at a startup
vs. working in big tech. Tap to view the source.

It’s going to be an interesting change of pace, moving from a big tech company to a small and scrappy startup, but part of the allure is the adventure. As Gergely “Pragmatic Engineer” Orosz puts it, the good part about startups is that they’re are amazing places to learn in, and you can make a large impact and directly influence the company.

Of course, adventure doesn’t come without a “risk tax.” Being in a startup can be unsettling: there’s less financial stability, you can’t “coast,” and you’re always looking over your shoulder for the ever-present spectre of potential failure. But I prefer to live by this Venn diagram:

Unified is based in Toronto, but I will remain based here in “The Other Bay Area,” Tampa Bay, operating from my home office, pictured below…

My home office, where the developer relations magic happens!

I’m going to spend a lot of time going over Unified’s documentation, SDKs, blog, white papers, dashboard, and every other part of the developer experience and do what I can to make a great developer tool even better!

I’m looking forward to the adventure with Unified!