dev diaries | I made a huge mistake building my app
I didn't make a video about this but I actually re-bought The Vision Pro it just wasn't working out but if I do decide to join another company I would more than 100% want to join a company that had some in office presence we don't know if it's going to work this is just a guess that we have this could all be for nothing but I think that's also the whole point of Building Product it's like you kind of just have to take like calculator risks and see what sticks and see what doesn't stick it's very underdeveloped it's a much more untapped Market a lot less competitors [Music] good morning y'all it is just I just woke up I think it's like 7:20 a.m. uh I'm about to hit a workout you already know I got a little a little bike session coming up what am I watching on YouTube today oh I I'm watching this video I don't know if you know this channel Steven Bridges it's like a card counter for jackp one of the best channels I just love watching this [ __ ] we have a realistic day realistic very boring day in the life of somebody that is working a full-time job but also building a software for as a service ass sass side hustle so we got a busy busy day today got a lot of things on the plate we got to start off with a quick workout session got hour bike ride once I'm done with that I'm going wash up meet you guys upstairs in the lab I know it may be confusing it's like um dude you're working out but you're just watching Netflix for an hour yeah I am you have a problem with it just a brief context about why I have this exercise bike here and why I love doing this [ __ ] so pretty into Endurance Sports back a couple years ago I actually did a half Iron Man which is like 1.2 M swim 50.6 mile bike rate and a half marathon at the end unnecessary Flex you know I just had to drop that fact on you but yes I'm a huge cardio junkie like long endurance cardio Sports so yeah a lot of my workouts is on this stationary bike for an hour sometimes 2 hours it's a longer one and I use this time as my dedicated like Netflix YouTube binging time like hey I'm on this bike for an hour or two hours might as well enjoy it and just shamelessly watch Netflix and YouTube and all that good jazz and M my brain a bit so we are around 20 minutes in see you guys in 40 just to prove that I actually did the workout we got the receipts it logs all of my workouts into the software bang Thursday uh February 29th 1 hour now it is time to shower cuz I'm disgusting and then I will become less disgusting and we will start chatting again shout to this fat pimple in the center of my forehead oh God I'm so sexy Jesus Christ I'm in desperate need of a perm my hair is really flat really boring once again friendly reminder to all the gross software Engineers out there that are watching this video go take a shower yeah you may feel like you don't smell you do you should take a shower I don't care if you haven't left the house in a day two days go shower you're you're an adult now okay you need to be a functioning human being and being clean is a core tenant a bean a functional human be got it new camera angle you know it is coffee time we got the same beans for my last video I'm almost out of them I'll bring you over to the to the coffee count although the lighting is kind of ass but whatever you deal with it 24 G of beans we then are going to use 400 G of water this is our favorite part of the coffee brewing experience where I have to low-key violate the coffee beans with coffee beans when you grind these coffee beans up static flies everywhere and it causes just a huge mess at my coffee grinder and one simple trick to make there be less static is you literally just get your finger and you kind of just you swirl it around and I don't know I feel like I'm violating these beans it just just feels dirty you know like little sus Behavior right there got my barazza Encore I have had this coffee grinder for probably almost 6 years at this point I kind of want a new one though and then my friends got me a brand new ember mug I still have my old one but this new one well my old one the battery is kind of shot and this new one it's bigger and they got the copper one so I think it's a way better color so shout out to the homies I don't know if they watch my videos but if you do shout outs I really appreciate it this is an awesome gift really appreciate it guys while the water is boiling uh and coming up the 10 I was chatting with my co-founder of perfect interview his name is mang mang duck you may have seen him on Instagram this is his page right here he's pretty big on Tik Tok as well so he's been my co-founder through this whole thing the whole reason of perfect interview was to provide mock interviews for people that are trying to get jobs give you the most realistic job interviewing experience practice out there before your actual interview and originally we had like three different product offerings we had like the mock behavioral interviews which is a product where you can upload a job description and upload your resume and then it guides you through a mock behavioral interview then we also had launched the mock coding interview the mock software engineering interview for all of y'all because you know all the software Engineers out there I'm I'm guessing if you're watching my channel you're probably a software engineer so I I wanted to create that for all the software Engineers out there so that they can find perfect interview useful for their mock interviewing needs and then the third product that we launched was a mock investment banking interview because my co-founder Andrew he has an investment banking background water is done boiling let me make the coffee then I'll finish this chat upstairs in the office picking up on the little tangent that I was on downstairs we built Investment Banking interviews for his audience just because that is an industry that he knows essentially we were trying to create three separate products right because the investment banking interview and the behavioral interview and the coding interview they are all super different in their interview formats and we try to create as much and while we try to create as much like common technology common formats across all three it just wasn't working out so with that in mind I think we have to make the decision to go with one product moving forward One Core product and then later on maybe in a couple months we can add the other product again you wanted to choose either the investment banking interview route or the coding interview route and I think after going back and forth we are going to move forward right now with the first product being the investment banking interview and honestly there's a lot of reasons behind this so please feel free to skip this portion because I'm going just be ranting and yapping like crazy but if you find this interesting just feel free to listen you know the first big reason is the fact that the software engineer interview prepping Market is hugely saturated now don't get me wrong I do think that perfect interviews method of doing the mck coding interviews is differentiated enough that it can still carve out a small wedge in the interview space but still just a ton of competition whereas if with the investment banking interview prep site it's very very underdeveloped it's a much more untapped Market a lot less competitors and also on top of that the investment banking recruiting season is a lot more cyclical it only happens during certain times of the year and that time of the year is coming up right now from March to July that's what my friend Andrew is telling me at least whereas the software engineering interview cycle it kind of happens year round so there's a little bit more of a time pressure to hit this Investment Banking recruiting season that's just starting off whereas software engineering it'll kind of always be there right so while that was the decision that we made it it wasn't easy and honestly I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad like I want to build a product that I have a personal connection to and I feel like I have a good take I have good insight into the software engineer interview realm so that's why I wanted to build something for the other software Engineers for you my subscribers to help land your dream Drive in Tech wherever you may end up but when I look at the situation objectively it's like the investment banking interview Market is the better one right now at least I am planning to come back to the coding interview Market Market the software engineer interview Market but at least not right now probably not for the next couple of months one of the most important lessons I have learned over the building product for the past couple of years is that you cannot get too attached to one idea because when you are drinking that copium that Kool-Aid on your idea too hard you might not see a better opportunity around the corporate so right now it is currently around 9:00 a.m. a little late start to the day but because my team and my corporate job is all based out of the Pacific time zone I probably don't go online till like 10:00 a.m. 10:30 a.m. around there and then I'll work until like 6:00 p.m. around that time is R so I have roughly an hour maybe an hour and a half to do some more coding work where I had to build out some more Investment Banking uh features for perfect interview and then I got the day job the day job is pretty busy right now we're working on a brand new feature I was out of office last week so I I'm kind of lagging behind some of my other co-workers they're like bro we already got this feature where are you at dog like we ready to launch so I got to try to pump that out today I don't think I have too many meetings let's see oh actually there's there's a all at hands three standups that I have to go to so today actually is a pretty meeting heavy day so I got to build that out today this brand new fature that we're launching and then we're going to end the day coming back to the investment banking interviews and then tonight I'm meeting up with a couple friends for dinner they are going on vacation for the next week and because I have attachment issues I want to see them one last time before they head off in the next week so that's the plan we got to get grinding let's dive into the investment banking interviews of what we're going to build also fun fact I didn't make a video about this but I actually rebot The Vision Pro I know I'm mentally ill I returned it then during that one week I didn't have it I had like returners remorse I was like I miss it where's my Vision Pro I wish I had it again so I got the Vision Pro again so I'm bullish on the Vision Pro I'm forcing myself to use it do I have an absolute immediate use case for using it no not at all but I do think that this is the future of computing and I want to ride that wave while I can so I've been working out of this every single day multiple hours a day and that's what I'm going to do right now all right time to strap SP and grind there will never be a cool way to put this on like you will always look lame as hell putting this [ __ ] on we're so back all right just wrapped up a solid work session with the Vision Pro and I am hungry haven't eaten breakfast yet normally I don't eat much breakfast I'm normally just like a coffee for breakfast guy then eat an early lunch so time for me to have an early lunch it's 11:30 right now all right so I'm kind of embarrassed to show what I'm going to have for lunch but whatever my existence is pretty embarrassing period so let's dive into this I don't know about yall but I hopped on this ninja creamy train it was super trendy on social media and there's like a whole really great video I'll link in the description below explaining what exactly the ninja creamy is uh as a part of lunch almost like a pseudo dessert I have this like healthy protein ice cream it's not my entire lunch I I kind of just have it as like a snack it's almost like like an asai Bowl type of thing and it's relatively healthy there's like I don't know 20 grams of protein in that thing and does it taste like ice cream no it does not you can clearly see that it tastes healthy but the reason is because I showed this before but I make this ice cream using huel on the inside so for those of you that don't know what huel is it's kind of like soilent you know that [ __ ] that was really really trendy amongst like the tech Bros that was like oh I'm not going to eat for satisfaction I'm eating for fuel Feud is fuel and like I it's honestly kind of gross my friends I tried it and they say this is like disgusting but um I think it tastes good enough for me to have like like this dopamine hint of like oh it's kind of like eating a healthy ice cream once again does not taste like sweet pure ice cream but it's good enough for me to eat on a daily basis and get a little little sweet treat in my dayto day so this is part one of my lunch and then the other part is I got some leftover food from Costco that's lunch this is what it ends up looking like and not going to lie it looks pretty good to me like look at that look at that texture it is very ice creames live taste test definitely one of those things that looks way better than it tastes like you think this is going to taste straight up like strawberry ice cream it does not it's very very healthy tasty take it for what it's worth it so it is currently like 2:30 going to get a little afternoon snack in me since I had a kind of an early lunch number one we got some Costco leftover mac and cheese I just feel like it's like such a little kid food that I'm kind of embarrassed whenever I say I love mac and cheese but uh can't help it it is so damn good I just love cheese I am heavily lactose and tolerant and then to wash it down we got some Korean tea it's called py chop it is some barley tea and I've been getting this in the mix lately so I've been drinking this pretty often mostly in the afternoon I loved sipping on a warm beverage while working like I love drinking coffee while working but you know I'm not trying to get blasted with caffeine at like 300 p.m. so I'm on
the tea grind this going and honestly it's super simple I just have my barley here I got my hot water here and then I just let it steep for like I don't know 5 minutes or so we got a nice little cup of tea let it going to get all nice all percolating up in there again to know each other so can't wait to sip on this I actually got some new cups L I got a a little birthday gift from a friend is a look at that like double walled really pretty it's from fellow they make coffee mug coffee glasses a lot and really really pretty stuff so super excited to drink tea out of this and I guess I also realized I never told you what exact features I'm building for the investment banking lock interviews there are like two main features that we're building out number one is I guess there's something called a higher view interview in the investment banking world it's essentially like a video interview where they ask you a question and then you have to record a video response I think you have like 60 seconds to think of a response and then 90 seconds to record the video I've never done it before but my co-founder told me about it so I was like all right pretty good let's build that out shouldn't be too hard Asen we have a lot of the building blocks of creating a mock interview question now we're just like repurposing it redesigning it in a way such that we can present it as a higher view interview so I don't think that'll be too bad and then the next thing that we're going to do is almost like creating a question bank for investment banking interviews you know how there's like leak code for software engineering interviews I guess there's no equivalent necessarily in the investment banking space so that will be something that we're going to build out and see if like there's any appetite for it amongst people that want to break into Investment Banking we don't know if it's going to work this is just a guess that we have this could all be for nothing but I think that's also the whole point of Building Product it's like you kind of just have to take like calculator risks and see what sticks and see what doesn't stick and if the investment banking interviews don't work out then we'll go back to the coding interviews and then if the coding interviews don't work out we'll just scrap the product and do something else but for now we have plenty of time left to like experiment and still figure out product Market fit so those are the main things that I'm going to be building I do think right now now I am pretty confident by 700 p.m. I can finish the higher view mock interview I don't think that'll be too bad but the creating the question Bank of like leak code style interviews that might be a little bit more complicated um I don't think I can get that done today so probably that's like a tomorrow thing or maybe a this weekend type of activity so we'll see I'll keep you guys updated as I chip away at this little project so pretty no just kidding it low Q looks like piss but I promise it tastes pretty good surprise we are and we office it is Friday morning and I'm in the office today for no a reason in particularly outside of the fact that there some dinner plants down in the area where the office is located so I figured hey might as well go my day job has this office space and a co-working space which we are at right now yeah nothing crazy it's just a it's just a co-working space I'm here super early at like 7:00 a.m. right now so I did a couple hours before my actual workday starts by now you already know the drill right now it is time to do some non 9 to5 job cuz it's not my 9 to5 hours yet so I probably have like 2 to 3 hours of work time to continue building out the feature the higher viewed interview features for perfect interview the app that I'm building out and I think I'll make some some good progress I we made some pretty good progress last night I laid out a lot of the foundational work normally I do a lot of the front end work first and then I do the back end afterwards but yesterday I did a lot of the back end first so everything's hooked up in the back end now I just have to hug everything up on the client as side to make everything look really pretty you know cuz I'm a design designer I'm not a designer I'm an awful designer but I'm trying to survive out here okay it's hard being like a solopreneur busy morning ahead today not a lot to build out still but not going to lie I do like I do like going to the allice St days I think don't get me wrong I love working B but I I'm getting a little sick of it I think if I were to get a full-time job somewhere else big if because ideally my next full-time job would be working for myself and doing my own thing but if I do decide to join another company I would want 100% want join Aon that has some in office presence not every day but at least like I don't know two to three days a week like Tuesday through Thursday Tuesday and Thursday something like that I just uh I go some days without talking to any human beings for multiple days in a row and not leaving my house and I don't think that's good for my mental health or my development as a human being sometimes I forget how to talk to people and I'm hanging out with friends and I'm like uh I don't I don't know how to interact with you I'm sorry I am I am not socialized right now me your thoughts are on work from home return to office cuz I'm I'm like three and a half almost four years in on this work from home thing and I'm getting a little sick of it I'm here so early the coffe is not been ready yet so just going to sip on the water bust out and code right now so let's get started I guess I could also just show you a quick little office tour this is just a co-working space and this is all communal stuff um yeah just like drinks little Office Space trash area as well here nothing crazy I saw office [Music] all right it is currently noon it is time to eat it is lunchtime I'm a little sused out because I'm so self-conscious of filming in public especially in like a work environment bro luy there's not too many people here so that's why I have this whole like conference room all to myself so I have a little bit of privacy but yeah I'm going to be whispering I can't be too crazy I can't tweak out too hard on camera right now just cuz there's other people only like two other people it's pretty EMP the office it's a Friday nobody comes into the office at this time but it is time for lunch but because I do not get free food at work anymore and also because out of principle I refuse to pay for lunch um just a thing I hate paying for lunch I don't know it just feels wrong so today we are subsisting off of the fruit snacks at work it's toxic it's a red flag Behavior I know that but we got a beef jerky stick I'll probably get like three of these later on and then a granola bar and then some kombucha what a struggle lunch we'll do a live taste test while we chat a little bit so I think one thing that I always found really interesting about you know still working in big Tech and having my day job which I'm really thankful for in the end I know sometimes it can get kind of tough and there are times where I'm like it's so hard to balance like both the content and the SAS stuff as well as working a full-time job I am still thankful at the end of the day that I had this full-time job just because like layoffs hit left and right having a stable income is so great and also just in terms like an entrepreneurial P perspective having this stable income lets me almost helps me to like fund my own Endeavors so I'm basically my own Venture Capital investor so it helps me not have to worry about like paying for rent so I can be more experimental with the product I don't have to focus on making a ton of money with products or content I can just kind of enjoy the process a little bit more and think more long term with my decisions as well first bite of the beef jerky Archer mini beef jerky stick supposed to be like a Healthy Slim gym I mean it's good it's better than a slim gy tastes the same to me I don't think I'd be able to tell Blind Side by Side taste up but because I still code in my day job and I still code my own products man it's just so funny how how different the coding experience is in like a big company versus by myself a big company we got a distress the tiny detail right 100% unit has coverage make sure nothing breaks it makes sense why I got to do that cuz we have like legit thousands if not millions of customers using your product I go back and build my own stuff it's like the Wild Wild West with my code on my own project no rules I've not written a single test case for my any of my personal products in ever I've never done that for my products yeah I just test on prod I develop on prod push directly to ma send it baby probably not the best engineering practice but I'm also the only engineer right now so it's not too a deal but later on if I ever get to this point that I have to hire another developer then we probably want to clean up our engineering prct a little bit Yeah thought an interesting experience context switching between the two just because the coding and engineer cyle and processes are so different now we got this kodiac cake protein bar it's a how taste um I mean it's like any grola bar let's see if it's any better than like a generic name brand nothing crazy it's good not bad it's better than other generic on debatable anyways that's this edition of lunchtime talk five of bees and five beef sticks and maybe another kuch as well so going to TP G to chill probably watch a little bit of YouTube to pass the time then got to get back on the grind you know what I'm saying but hopefully tonight I'll have some time to work on the perfect interiew Stu I worked in the morning made a lot of progress I put a screenshot right here how look so far it looks better not super ugly but not fully functional either I am getting dinner with a friend tonight again because I have so many friends and I'm not a loser despite what you may think about but not too much time to do too much work but fingers cross I can just push through the work as fast as I can and because it is right maybe I'll wrap up the day job a little bit earlier off the record of course busy got a lot of work to do before I go out to dinner because chances are I will not be doing any work after dinner see you guys in bit hopefully I'll have some substantial update for you later today yo we on some gang [ __ ] right now it is currently Friday at 11:00 p.m. and I finally got some time post dinner with my friends to build out this damn mock interview feature for the uh the Investment Bank G mock interview I was talking about this higher view interview so let me show you quick demo of how it all works bang all right so we have this little interview Lobby um to create the interview and then honestly the feature is pretty simple once you start like this is this is a it's just very basic questions apparently this is like a very like highlevel part of the interview like very early process of the interview just so we all like really canidate and stuff like that so you just got a question walk me through a DCF we have 30 seconds to prepare an answer then we say this is a test answer to question one then we go to the next question new question I don't know what that is what the hell major asset class what the I'm not an investment banker then we say this is a test qu answer to question number two then there's a third question and then you say this is a test answer to question number three stop the recording and the interview then this modal pops up we upload all of the videos and oops oh all right yeah then we can review the interview then B we have the answer to question one to question two question three not too bad of a feature to build out happy I was able to get it done tonight though I think my co-founder and I we are trying to launch this as soon as possible so my goal is to try to get everything done for this weekend so this is a big step this is step one of things to complete For the Weekend Step number two is trying to create like a almost like a leap code for investment banking questions where people can just grind out a bunch of questions and this has been requiring a lot more like a a lot deeper collaborations with uh myself and my co- because I'm just providing a lot of the technical skills I don't know what an investment making interview is like that's really a huge part of having a co-founder when you're building something like you lean on them and you lean on each other for this type of expertise and stuff just having that trust in each other to build and and having that trust that they know coming up this weekend hopefully we can launch soon I might give a little Financial update about how the the product is deing let mean if you're curious to know those details then I can make a video detailing all that I think it is time to sleep since it is 11:00 p.m. bro we turn it up at the club yall at the club I'm in my IDE cuz we going crazy it's a movie all right I'm getting the delusion I'm going to shut the [ __ ] up and go to sleep before I say stup see you probably tomorrow as I build out the next feature of leap code for investment making the design everything kind of stressing me out that's a Tom [Music] I am unwell unwell it is currently the next day it's almost it's 1:30 p.m. I haven't showered look at this mess I look insane right now and also just had way too much caffeine today I feel like I'm going to explode out of my skin someone SOS please send me a help but I have been coding all day today to get this stupid ass feature done for the investment bankers out there of the world and their whole mock interview solution so let me walk you through it because I just finished up after like a five hour coding session this morning I'm beat I need a rest I can't even film I can hardly film right now but let me just walk you through what we got cooking up over here okay okay let's make it quick this old thing over here this is what I've been working on for the past couple of hours we got bang all of our questions over here on the left hand side we got the category clearly the category is wrong but that is because my co-founders got to take care of that but you don't care about that cuz this is an engineering Channel and they going to you're curious about how I built it and last but not least we have this little status right now of whether you have solved it or not so when you go click into the question you're going to see an answer key a solution there as well as your answer uh that you can fill out on the side obviously this varies depending on what type of question you're working on but I'm going to be honest this feature right here is a little it's way more complicated than it looks because it looks like oh just a simple text box that you enter in with like a category right here but it is like a lot of nested categories subcategories let me show you the code that is behind it yeah see right here we have to like this part is the crazy part where you have to group by sub headers Group by headers and then just do so much nested iteration to render this text block right here of the varied income statement cash flow and balance sheet that you have to fill out uh and then you can submit the question scroll through all of the questions as well and yeah this was this is a doozy this is a lot normally when I build things the front end part is the easier part and the back end part is usually a little bit more complicated just cuz I am much more comfortable in the front end than the back end but this one this whole feature right here the front endle was way way more complicated than I had ever anticipated um yeah it kind of sucked but at least for now my part is done the engineering work is done for now I look like a mad scientist what I need to I need to go take a shower I smell disgusting but I'm excited that this feature is done because I think that this pivot is going to be good I was kind of mentioning this earlier before in the earlier part of the video when I first announced this major uh pivot in terms of like the product that's moving forward but once again we're not completely giving up on the coding interviews out there we definitely want to build in that space eventually but just for now uh the investment banking interview prep space is just a lot less competitive just because there are less developers going into that space so you got to get the low hanging fruit you get the easier I mean I say easier but it's still gonna be really hard get the easier uh customers get the easier product out and then eventually I'm not forgetting about all yall software Engineers out there were coming back with a better improved M coding interview experience so thanks for coming along in this journey it's been a crazy one finally got the feature done see you in the next one
2024-03-11 21:16
