8 Bits
8 Bits
8 Bits with Becca Rosenthal!
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Becca Rosenthal is a Software Engineer at Reddit!
Watch the Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krn0lZHh6NA&t=10s
Follow Becca on Twitter: https://twitter.com/beccaroro
Follow Chloe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChloeCondon
Follow Brandon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCodeTraveler
Hello, and we're live. Hello, everyone and welcome back to eight bits. I'm your host click on done and I'm here with my co host,
Brandon Minnick:Brandon Minnick. So good to see you again. Hi, Chloe.
Chloe Condon:Hi. How have you been doing it this week? Brandon, I can't believe it's Wednesday again. Can you believe
Brandon Minnick:know? What's interesting last week, and I wonder if this is true for more folks, let us know in the comments. But it just flew by for me. It was like the first week. That felt like a normal week since the whole quarantine pandemic started. And I remember it was Friday last week. And I just remember thinking myself, Oh my gosh, sorry, Friday, like this week is flown by whereas normally it's like, it's only Tuesday. Oh, yes. gonna be tough to get to Wednesday.
Chloe Condon:I'm super excited because I am taking my PTO next week. I'm going to have a nice little staycation here. I encourage everyone. Don't forget to take your vacation even though we all have to stay at home. Take some time for yourself play some Animal Crossing travel to your island and Animal Crossing. Well, I know last week was super exciting for us because of all the surface announcements, but anything you want to share for this week's fun exciting updates for heaven.
Brandon Minnick:I there is but I'm a little ashamed because I haven't tried it yet. But Microsoft Flight Simulator edition is out. Have you had a chance to try it yet?
Chloe Condon:Okay, I haven't. But I've seen so many tweets about this. And I keep thinking of our previous episode with Christopher Harrison. Yes, y'all. We're talking about flight simulators. What's like, new and cool about it?
Brandon Minnick:Well, I mean, I've only seen the videos, but it looks amazing. I've seen folks post videos of them flying around their hometowns, and there's my house there's the office or like, you can just the detail in this is just amazing. And to think like I could just download that and play it on my computer right now.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, I thought they were able to see their like home or apartment from it from flying over. I saw Satya tweet about it. That was pretty exciting. I have yet to play a flight simulator game I need to get on.
Brandon Minnick:There. Yeah, that's our homework for this week. We both play flight simulator.
Chloe Condon:time I'm like, What do I do on my vacation. I had a super exciting week, because I have been working with the awesome awesome students of bit project. They have a program called bit camp. And they've basically been spending the last couple weeks putting together these amazing Azure Functions, IoT projects, everything from a wearable device from scratch, that's a heartrate monitor to take a picture of your face, determine your mood, make a Spotify playlist with it, some really, really cool projects. Some of these kids didn't even know what an API was before they started program. So it's been wonderful to watch their growth. And this last Thursday, they presented their projects live. And I will share in the show notes a link to those presentations, because they're really fun. They even had a political bias. The Terminator thing where you can put an article in determine, you know, how, what, what, which way it's leaning politically. But some really, really cool projects. And I have a blog post that features all of them, that we're scrolling at the bottom of the screen right now. And it's aka.ms slash bit project f Tw for the win. So definitely check that out. Down below. Learning which which way. But yeah, check those out. I'm just I'm always consistently impressed by what students are able to create with Azure. And these projects are really, really cool. And we're going to be making blog posts of each one. So check those out, have some fun, learn how to make cool Azure Functions, projects and even Cognitive Services projects with Azure thing.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah. And I love the fact that they went from zero to app. Yeah, not even knowing what an API is. And being able to build it I think that's a huge testament to just will say that the future of mankind these students are just incredibly smart. I, I couldn't have done that. Back in the day,
Chloe Condon:Whitney Houston I'm like I believe the children it was just so wonderful to watch them all learn and grow. My favorite part, though random was so they had to make these presentations where you know, they they had a whole lot You know, a PowerPoint presentation that showcased all of the different features and things that they built. But it was very, very relatable to see these memes that said things like, Well, you know, I did get stuck at this one point and I had to like at the tutorial took me three days to complete. And I wanted to throw my computer across the room. And I was like, welcome to software engineering
Brandon Minnick:for 18 years, and it's still the same every day.
Chloe Condon:My Computer across the room yet, but I've gotten close. But it was so fun to see them learn and grow and discover their their newfound API skills, love them and never worked with an API before. So that was really cool and fun. So check out those projects. I'm super proud of them. And we'll be posting some videos talking about them to sin. It's incredible. Yeah, yeah, children for the win, or I guess they're not children I their high school project anyway, big project. If you're looking for a really great cause to give back and help teach students how to how to program that, I definitely recommend checking out their project, some really cool stuff going on there. Um, anything else before we invite our special guests onto the show?
Brandon Minnick:I'll say the one thing that's got me, we'll say tentatively excited is I saw an article that the UK is moving towards allowing self driving cars on the motorways, which is theatricals careful with the wording it wasn't, this is going to happen. And here's the date. But I love that we are moving in this direction. You know, I think as as we become more and more comfortable with self driving cars, and we'll see the statistics start to play out where they actually are safer. Like Yes, accidents are inevitable. But compared to human drivers, self driving cars have much fewer accidents that Oh, don't fall asleep at the wheel. They don't change lanes without their blinker.
Chloe Condon:Animal fries, or their chicken nuggets onto their lap and swerve lanes typically
Brandon Minnick:never never happened. Right? And yeah, I'm really looking forward to that world where, yeah, I hope when maybe 60 years from now, we can look back and be like, you know, back in my day, I had to drive the car myself. And the kids have grown up in the world where cars always drove themselves like what do you what do you mean, you had to get a steering wheel, you didn't just tell it the address. Like you're so old.
Chloe Condon:It's an interesting, I talked to my dad about this a lot. And he's he's very uncomfortable with it. But in the neighborhood that I used to live in, in San Francisco, they were testing out a lot of those cars. And there was always
Brandon Minnick:that goes by today here.
Chloe Condon:It's kind of a weird, I think, you know, living in Silicon Valley, we're kind of in a bubble. But like, I really got used to seeing these cars with all these apparatuses on them and everything. But I can totally understand for someone like my dad, who has never even experienced anything, any technology like this, it can be really scary. But I too am I'm very excited for innovation to make the road safer. And also, I would love to go on a road trip where I don't have to drive the whole time. That would be great.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, that was I don't, I don't know if we'll be able to make it. But my wife and I were talking about the same thing, because we have a cousin getting married in on the east coast in December. And we don't know what the world's gonna look like in December. But when we're thinking about ways to get out there, both my wife and I are comfortable getting on planes right now. But you're saying what if we rented a car like a Tesla, and then we could, like you still have to drive it. But once you get on the highway, you could activate the grid, they call it not it's not self driving, but it will stay in the lane and it'll keep a distance from the car in front of you. And it's kind of takes the stress out of driving by five days across the country. We'll see who knows what the world will look like in four months.
Chloe Condon:Right? Well, I don't know if technology is progressing that quickly for you to be. But I will keep my fingers crossed for you. Alrighty, well, we have a super special guest today. folks may recognize this individual probably because there's a description on the video link that says their name. But this is a dear friend of mine. Becca Rosenthal. Well.
Becca Rosenthal:Thank you for having me, I guess. So I have one comment about your whole self driving conversation. Go for it. Which is that like, okay, so I'm one of those like curmudgeonly old people that forgets that I'm not a grandmother. And when I hear self driving cars being safer, I'm just so confused about what you do in the snow because if the whole thing are sensors that like that are supposed to be able to detect the road and the lines I think about a snowstorm that I was driving in ones and like the fact that you couldn't tell what was rude, what was what was anything. And the idea of a self driving car having enough miles on that to do so safely just freaked me out. So I don't mean to be that curmudgeonly old person but like,
Brandon Minnick:that's a good question. Stay
Becca Rosenthal:behind the wheel my way that we
Chloe Condon:do have a comment in their comments here on Twitch that says, I don't have a driver's license, and I'm holding out for self driving cars to arrive. I feel like it's going to New York streets will be packed.
Becca Rosenthal:What a change of pace for New York to have a lot of cars there.
Chloe Condon:Right, right.
Brandon Minnick:Well, and as somebody who doesn't own a car, you know, we did before we moved to San Francisco, but your public transit is good enough. You don't really need one. I love to imagine this world where nobody owns a car, you just tell the car to come pick you up. You get in it, and then it takes you where you need to go and you don't have to worry about parking. You don't have to worry about navigating or traffic like just here's my self driving chauffeur service.
Chloe Condon:So true. But enough about cars. Becca, tell the lovely humans at home who you are what you do. Who's Becca, what do you do? Yeah, how'd you get here?
Becca Rosenthal:I got a text from Chloe that was like, Hey, you want to be on a fifth? And I was like, sure. That's why I'm here.
Chloe Condon:To be fair on Twitter dm, but Sure, sure.
Becca Rosenthal:That's true. It was you communicate almost primarily via Twitter dm, it's like alright. Sorry, sorry to blow your secrets. Do you want you to Twitter dm? Um, yeah, so I am a software engineer for Reddit. I'm the tech lead on our community engineering team, which is a team that is very new, that I helped start up a couple months ago to help build some tools for our internal community support team. So if you if you're on Reddit, and you have any issues or a moderator people are being bad to each other, and you reach out to the admins, I am building tools to help support those admins who you are talking to. I've worked at Reddit for about two and a half years. What else uh, Chloe and I did a web show together for a hot second and the beginning of quarantine. It's called BCC all those a lot of fun.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, we'll link it if anybody out there has a non traditional background or path to tech. So Becca and I actually met and we went to the same all females after engineering boot camp called hackbright based here in the Bay Area now completely remote during Corona so if you're looking to upskill your tech skills, and you know you are a female identifying persons definitely check out hackbright definitely changed my life and Becca's as well. We promise we're not sponsored by hackbright we just love them a lot.
Becca Rosenthal:Know what if they'd like to if they'd like to support us as if we were sponsors? hackbright you have my address? And I will happily take that sweet, sweet endorsement check. But uh,
Chloe Condon:well, that good. So you work in community engagement and making Reddit a lovely, inclusive place for people to be and your background is actually kind of in that genre field. Correct?
Becca Rosenthal:Sort of, but you wouldn't say close enough. Yeah. So my background is in Middle East Studies with a focus in Israel Palestine. And so kind of the capstone of that in academics was I spent my junior year of college literally living three perspectives of the Israel Palestine conflict in the Middle East, in Jordan, Israel and Palestine. And then I got back to stateside I went to school in LA. And I spent two years working at a Jewish nonprofit where I was traveling around the south, helping them implement a Sunday school curriculum that we were writing. Um, and I'm not going to go into the why you should never work in the Jewish nonprofit world, but don't work in the Jewish nonprofit world. Anybody. It's absolutely terrible. I cannot stress it enough. This is the most like tame way I can describe it. But if you get an offer, congratulations run for the hills. I cannot stress it enough. It's so bad. Just like don't do it. Have I mentioned it? Don't do it. Anyways. Yeah. So then from there, I did that for two years. And then I moved back in with my parents in Oakland and said, I want to solve interesting problems with people who are smarter than me. And for better and for worse, these interesting problems in our world are getting solved in tech. And to be clear, a lot of them are also getting created in tech. But I I kind of pestered my way into a job at Reddit as our CEO Steve Hoffman says, he's not wrong. But I he's like legitimately not wrong at all. With some help of songwriting and other things. Yeah, it's been about two and a half years of working at a company that's been really interesting. And obviously, you know, read it's one of those websites where you can find everything you want and more the good, the bad and the ugly and it kind of holds a mirror up to who we are. And I really appreciate that there's different community needs for different people in different communities that Reddit is this place where like, so long as you're not, you know, spewing out hate and misinformation and whatnot, like, come on in come be a part of it.
Chloe Condon:Yeah. And I think you know, if you You don't already follow back on Twitter. She's got her handle right by her name there. Becca is a huge Hamilton fan and something that I always think about when I think of Becca other than Hamilton obviously, is there's a song in Hamilton for those who haven't finished it on Disney plus yet called in the room where it happens. And I always something that always comes to mind for me with Becca is the importance of having people in the room where it happens who don't look at sound talk like everybody else, like having that diverse perspective in the room. And it makes it fills my heart with joy to know that someone who is passionate and curious about community engagement stuff is in the room. So thank you backup for the work you do make the internet a safe and lovely place for people.
Becca Rosenthal:You're so welcome. I succeeded. There's now no more work to be done. The internet is now a perfect place. Particularly for tech. Actually, I know I did it. I know. Actually, the women in tech update is coming tomorrow. So you're gonna have to wait for another Hamilton joke. I'll also add actually, you gotta wait till Monday. I'm on PTO this week, enjoying a lovely staycation. So yeah, you gotta wait till Monday for the internet is harassment free for women in tech.
Chloe Condon:I'll set it on my calendar
Becca Rosenthal:on your calendar.
Chloe Condon:Before we dive into our eight, eight bits question my answer to the one that questions on what technology Do you hate is I really dislike any kind of technology where you can be anonymous and like be awful and rude on the internet. And in a lot of ways, like I feel like Reddit is that but it takes people like yourself to make sure that that that is done responsibly. So I applaud that making the internet safer for for all humans of all shapes and stars and stripes and sizes. So
Becca Rosenthal:when we get into that you're welcome. But when we get into that question, we can talk about it because anonymity is both the best and the worst thing that exists on the internet. That is very true. Very, very true.
Chloe Condon:We had a comment here that says my computer vision spots a foosball table in the background. Nice. Yeah, yeah, that just got a whole startup in the background.
Becca Rosenthal:So if we're really getting the tour, so I moved in with my parents, by the way early in quarantine, because I was like, oh, it'll just be a couple months. And now it's been almost six months, and I'm a 28 year old woman living in my childhood bedroom being like, yeah, my 10 year high school reunion, look how far I've come from my childhood bedroom. But no, so this is the foosball table that was purchased as a Hanukkah gift. And I want to say 2003 ish. And you'll notice that you got to be really skinny to use the table pushed up all the way against the wall and is clearly not used. And then while we're continuing the tour, we can add a bunch of random assorted junk from my apartment in the city. And then this gas stove fireplace thing, which I've been informed looks like it's straight from animal crossing.
Chloe Condon:I was just gonna say I have a foosball on Animal Crossing, so we have similar decor.
Becca Rosenthal:Yeah, but the difference is like this one's in real life. Does this still work? Oh, you know the scope works but it's hot as God knows right now. So anyway, yeah, we just have a full on fireplace there and it's why I'm a Pyro and yes, I'm absolutely a Pyro no shame in admitting that. I did not start this current wave of fires. I feel a need to admit that just you heard it. You heard it here first. But no, I didn't do it.
Brandon Minnick:The last round. Hashtag Becca didn't do.
Becca Rosenthal:And you don't have to say what the it is just no matter what it is. Hashtag Becca didn't do it. Um, yeah, anyways. Well, Becca,
Chloe Condon:are you ready to dive into our eight bits? Question?
Unknown:Yeah,
Chloe Condon:let's do that. Okay, so our first question, as always, so if nobody's joined us before we ask the same seven questions each time with a special bonus question that is ad hoc for the guests. So back then, what is your earliest memory of tech?
Becca Rosenthal:So my first memories of tech, I think back to elementary school, when I had handwriting that was so bad, my teacher said, I'm not going to attempt to decode your hieroglyphics and required me to type all my assignments. And so when I was in like third or fourth grade, I was given an alpha smart, which is this keyboard ish thing that's got like three or four lines of text and all it does is typing. And it had bad spellcheck or no spellcheck even. And you would plug it into a computer and then it would upload whatever you types directly to the word document and my primary memories of this alphasmart other than it turning me into a very loud typer, which is something that is now held against me by every person when I type anything, but also it was that it always wanted to change the spelling of my name because it was confident that my name was Mecca, and not Becca, and I have nothing but respect for this lovely Saudi Arabian city, but it's not my name.
Unknown:Yeah,
Chloe Condon:I know. I do. Hold this alpha smart thing and it's kind of like a speak and spell almost but a little bit more wordprocessing computer like I speak and spell meaning like the thing that et spelled like falling home on. Yeah,
Becca Rosenthal:yeah, no and it was it was funny like I used to like I remember sitting in the back of the bus and like writing you know, bad song parodies on it to like Avril Levine songs Oh my god, where are these memories coming from?
Unknown:She's
Chloe Condon:incredibly on brand to write a song.
Becca Rosenthal:Um, yeah, I kinda got what was it about? Yeah, we're not going to talk about this on stream. Yes, I remember but no, it's not nice. So we're not going to discuss it.
Chloe Condon:Through an afro Levine phase, it's okay, maybe no, I
Becca Rosenthal:have no shame. Wait, hang on Avril went on tour last year. My sister and I bought tickets for her show. The second they came out, we bought eight tickets. And we were like everybody and their mother and their dog is going to want them. Nobody wanted these tickets, cannot stress it. Like I'm used to buying tickets and you know, buy eight tickets confident I'll be able to sell them. We could not sell all of our ever Levine tickets. And I don't even care we were able to sell six out of eight of them, including to day have been at the Fox Theater. She's alive and well. And like my 10 year old self lived a dream watching her sing complicated and skater boy what was funny is she would put up the music videos behind her. And so you're like, Oh, she doesn't look like she's aged at all. And then she put up a video from 15 years ago and you're like, Oh, right, you have aged 15. And then all I could think was like damn average. That is a brave move to put up a video of yourself at age 17 behind you while you dance around on stage and own it. Fun fact, like she wrote breakaway by Kelly Clarkson. She wrote that song. Mm hmm. She's saying that live. It was awesome. I'm a big fan of Afro. Don't ask me what to ask me. But I'm shamelessly obsessed with that Bolivian.
Chloe Condon:I mean, I personally I spiritually identify as a Canadian. I love Canadians of all
Unknown:your Canadian.
Chloe Condon:I mean, I wish I was Canadian. I truly feel like I've been watching Canada's drag race and all of it. I've heard Ali x the the singer from Canada for all our Canadian fans out there. But I am loving Canadian pride. Alright, question number two. We got we all go out on weird tangents. Okay, Becca, we go on tangents about Oh, town and theme parks that happened. I mean, I want
Becca Rosenthal:it all or nothing at all. Let's be very clear. When you reach the bottom, it's now or never. Okay. Wow.
Chloe Condon:Wow. What is the last piece of tech or hardware that you bought?
Becca Rosenthal:Yeah, so in contrast with the alpha smart and the gameboy color that I didn't mention, but it's sitting here in case we wanted to talk about old technology. Yes, that's Pokemon Yellow chillin right there. I bought an Oculus quest a couple months ago, because I had played beat Sabre at a friend's house and thought it was fun. And I was like, this will be a fun way to get in shape and quarantine. And I promptly got obsessed with it. Because VR is very cool. It's very intimidating, and I have no idea what's happening, but it's very cool. And the highlight of that was getting my dad to play beat Saber, and I like tweeted out a video of him with the most adorable sound effects you will ever hear. And then Chloe retweeted it. And as always happens when Chloe retweets anything I do on Twitter, it just explodes and everybody and their mother and their dog sees it. And in this case, the VP of Marketing at beat saber saw it. So then she started retweeting it and they're like executive music director be like Queen a Becca's dad mode. And my dad was like, my dad didn't understand it. He was like, I'm glad people are happy. And I was like, they're laughing with you. Right? And he just kind of looked at me and was like, whatever. Yeah, I just went with it with
Chloe Condon:brand new watch, or have you played beat Sabre yet? I've only watched people play beat Sabre.
Becca Rosenthal:Oh, it's so fun.
Brandon Minnick:I love it. actually caught me at the Microsoft office here in San Francisco. There is a I'm not sure which brand but a VR headset. And the only trick is it's behind like lock and key. But yeah, I've been I've been able to sneak in there a couple times and yeah, just you can lose yourself for hours in that game. It's amazing.
Unknown:Yeah 100%
Becca Rosenthal:there were like they they had a couple like they've paid expansions and like I believe that paid in game things are always a scam and that here I am buying the American Idiot Green Day expansion pack and I also bought organic disco expansion pack. And then I also bought shoot, I bought a bunch of them. And then I saw the other day that they just released a Oh my god, what was it? Uh oh, at the Lincoln Park expansion. I haven't bought that one yet, but I'm very excited to I have not become so nervous. Oh, we are just hitting all of the nostalgic music right.
Chloe Condon:Also a quick message from the corrections and admissions department in our chat. I earlier said on the stream that I googled something I actually pinged it. Thank you for that correction. On this Microsoft
Becca Rosenthal:stream. Personally, I asked Jeeves, but I see you.
Chloe Condon:For those who do not know, Beck and I are based here in the East Bay in Oakland and the asq.com formerly the Ask Jeeves building is in our inner city here. So thank you for the correction.
Becca Rosenthal:But what does ask jeeves even do now cuz they're not a search engine anymore? Are they? Oh, Becca,
Chloe Condon:I googled this other day I highly recommend going down the rabbit hole I think that I actually had this similar issue with with English recently, I was trying to say something about a b&b like a bed and breakfast. And my I'm so used to saying Airbnb, but I couldn't just say b&b. So there's certain things like next you know, that you associate with a specific brand. So my bad I think that idk being it.
Unknown:Next,
Chloe Condon:what technology Do you love that guy?
Becca Rosenthal:So I am obsessed with online communities. And I'm obsessed with online communities that are just weird. And that have no ulterior motive other than to just be weird and entertain people. So like one of my favorite examples of this is a subreddit called our slash bread stapled to trees, which is exclusively photographs of slices of bread stapled to trees, and people stapling them and like there's no ulterior motive. It's not like there's any secret, you know, thing. There's nothing to it. It's just slices of bread stapled to trees. And every once in a while the moderators of the subs will be like, warning, we will remove all posts of bread stapled to bonsai trees, images dumb, and everybody's like, Okay, cool. I'll stop with bread, the bonsai trees now like that, like that's gimmick, that's that's the thing. And I think that like the internet, as we sort of alluded to earlier in the show, the internet is a toxic sludge hole with all of the garbage in the world, we all know that. But when the internet shows up, and when people show up authentically online, you get some of the most awesome, weird, you know, creative people just getting to kind of show that. And I think beautiful that, you know, in places like Reddit and on Twitter, like, there's so much gem like there, that's not a sentence. There are so many gems there. They're like, you know, there's a subreddit I love called many much gems. Yeah, hashtag, hashtag. Please don't do that. I'm literate. Guys. I cannot stress it enough. This is vacation brain. No, but like, I love the fact that you'd like I started a subreddit about a year and a half ago for folks with vocal injuries. And it it didn't exist. There was nowhere on the internet where patients who've gone through vocal issues, we're talking about it from the first person experience. And suddenly there's suddenly now there's like 950 people in the subreddit, constantly asking for advice and asking for support and people providing insight. And like I think, I think that's magical.
Chloe Condon:That is magical. Because I think back to so Becca and I share a similar vocal injury story, which is that we both had some some issues with our vocal cords. me specifically when I was closer to high school. And when I had those issues, I remember finding like a Broadway actress or something on Myspace who had posted about her vocal injury and I dm her and she happened to message back, but it was the only resource that I had on like, going through this, this surgery. So that's so so true. I feel like the internet like back in the day, at least when we were a little bit younger, was a lot broader. Like I know for sure I was in a Pokemon fan club, AOL chat room group and I had a newsletter for things you know, it brings people together like I'm sure there's what are some of your like, favorite both of you your niche like community groups or subreddits that that you like?
Becca Rosenthal:So it's hard to just call this niche but I'm going to anyway, so I'm a huge women's soccer fan. And most recently, the NW SL, which is the US is Women's Soccer League. They were the first pro sports fleet to come back they did a month long tournament, and the NW SL subreddit was on fire like it was just shitposting all day every day with us. The whole tournament was like absurd and so all of these social media jokes popped up around it's like there was a playground on the field. So the NWS l playground Twitter account was made and like there's always an ambulance like all this random inside joke Hurry and the subreddit, which is kind of this home for it and then all these game threads like during the game can people be commenting really enthusiastically. And it turned into this fun back and forth we had with the commentators on air where we'd be like, Hey Mike, if you say the phrase You say what I make? Do I made him say something on air to like a rule. So I say, I forget what I made him say, but then I made the other. The other reporter say the phrase piled high with veggies on air. And it was I'll give $100 to a charity of your choosing if you do this. And then the next thing I know, they are saying this weird stuff that redditors are saying, Oh, yeah, I'll give 50 I'll give 25 like, I think about $500 got donated to athlete ally, which is an organization to help queer representation in sports. Like because of this, which is just like weird people on the internet being weird together. I love it. I love it. So that's my like,
Chloe Condon:also pretty active on Girls Gone wired the subreddit as well.
Becca Rosenthal:Yeah, that's what women in tech sub I'm a big fan of. I also really like our slash mom for a minute, which is a really, really wholesome subreddit when people who either don't have moms or have strained relationships with their mothers post, like, Hey, Mom, I'm really going through a rough time. And I'd love your support. And all of the comments are just like, Hey, honey, I just want to say I love you. And I'm proud of you. And I'm here for you. And then and then people will comment be like, Hey, sis, right? Like, you know, I'm not I'm not a mom, but I want to be supportive, like, Hey, you know, big bro here, little sis here. And people are just so nice and encouraging. And like, yes, there's so much garbage on the internet. And when the kindness shows through, it's beautiful. The Internet isn't
Chloe Condon:total garbage all the time. Also Becca real quick. Someone in our comments here. And Michelle said, I'm a hackbright. Student currently in Project season. Yay, congrats. Don't worry, we're on a lunch break. Okay, good. Do you have any recommendations on where to find female mentors or female software engineering communities? I currently have amazing mentors, but would love to meet more women in the industry?
Becca Rosenthal:Yeah, um, so girls hard wired is a great subreddit. And people post a ton. They're asking this very question. And a lot of the time people will just kind of ask and offer advice, but like, the big thing I would recommend is just reach out to people who you admire with a really specific question that they haven't answered publicly elsewhere. And make yourself somebody that they want to say yes to, um, I get messages all the time. They're like, Hey, you work at Reddit, I want to work at Reddit, how can I work at Reddit? And I'll tell you how I respond. I don't. I don't, it's not worth my time. But if I see a message, it's like, Hey, I listened to this interview you gave and you talked about XYZ and I, I've taken that advice. And I've now done this, and I'd love to get your advice on the following because it worked in this way. It didn't work and others. It's like, oh, you're you're engaging with something I've already said. You're thoughtful. You're a go getter. Ooh, now I want to talk to you. Now I think you're compelling and interesting. And now you have something to offer me as well.
Chloe Condon:specificity is key for sure.
Becca Rosenthal:And like, it can feel creepy to be like, Hello, I've listened to everything you've ever said in every recording ever. And I noticed there was a discrepancy between what you said here and here. And I'm curious what changed. But also, if you were to do that, I would be so impressed. Oh, you bet I would respond. I might report you to authorities. But I would also respond.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, there's a lot of I would say there's just so many amazing communities online, I follow a lot of women in tech that I find particularly inspiring, who are just often posting advice and situational tweets about things that go on at work. There's a wonderful article that I will link in the show notes after this is done written by my dear friend, Ollie, it has a very funny title. And it's actually specifically written for people who who just dm Hey, because that drives me crazy. Or I just get a message from random dude. But it's called How to talk to Chloe content on Twitter. But truly, it's how to talk to anybody on Twitter and how to dm them with a specific ask. She put even put some examples and templates in there on like, Hey, here's like an example of how to reach out to someone. But I would say follow people on the internet who are doing the things that you want to be doing. And they often tweet even more people who are doing more of those things. And you can kind of find, find your find your chosen family on the interwebs.
Becca Rosenthal:And I'll add one more thing to that, which is that, um, if you don't know what you want, that's okay. But once you figure out what you want, really articulate it, right. And so to say, I want to be inspired, cool, like, I'm not a show monkey. I'm not I'm not just gonna like do that. But it's, oh, you have this ability to do X. I'd love to learn more from it. Right? I want to get better at being assertive in meetings. I want to get better at you know, telling stories as I did this. Not my team did this. Right? Like those are specific things you want. Cool, then we can then we can talk through it, then we can work on it. But the harder of a time you have articulating what you want, the harder it will be for someone to mentor you.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, yeah. But we didn't get to here we went a little loop there. Thanks for that question. Michelle. That was a great question. Brandon, do you have any favorite or fun online communities or subreddits?
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, that's as I was just thinking about you know, I mentioned a game that I play called civilization that it's now civilization six seven played it since that that civilization to back in the 90s probably gonna get roasted the comments for did that date rock been played it for years now. And and yeah, you can join these I mean there's a subreddit for everything. But there's this. There's a whole subreddit called Civ six, it's actually sixth of the Roman numeral. So it's six VI, technically. But yeah, people are sharing like tips and tricks on how to play the game. And like it's such a complex game as most of these world building games are that I've been playing, even just Civ six for over a year now. And there's people mentioned, I'm like, Oh, I didn't know that. And then sure enough, the next time I jump into the game, like, I see exactly what they're talking about, like sometimes they'll get attacked by barbarians, but that only happens when you're first spotted and you can actually see when you get spotted gives you like this little exclamation point flashes. And I was like, Oh, I was just thought that was super random. And I would just get really frustrated getting attacked by barbarians all the time. But my guess as to became through general.
Becca Rosenthal:Yeah, like and it's fine sometimes. But like, I like to restrict it to my Mondays only Yeah.
Chloe Condon:My Twitter dams only personally. I similarly, I've been lately very, very into the Animal Crossing design subreddit, because I get a lot of inspiration for my Animal Crossing island on there. But I just discovered Becca, I haven't told you this yet. I think I found a new favorite subreddit, which is di wise. Because I follow a lot of accounts on various platforms that are like, you can turn this watermelon into a candle and I'm like, why would I do that?
Unknown:But yeah, do it yourself.
Becca Rosenthal:DIY is delightful. And I'll add on top of that is at BG, which stands for awful tastes, but great execution. And I describe it as it's stuff that's like a beautifully done marble statue of somebody pooping. Like it's impeccable craftsmanship. But like, why did you make this thing?
Chloe Condon:Well? I've been following for a while. And I really enjoy all of the comments on it. Because it's like a very helpful subreddit is what are slashed. What is this thing? And people will post things that they either find or like maybe they'll move into a new house and they like find a thing and it it'll be anything from like, a small tool to like an artifact to like a piece of plastic like that ends up being part of a kid's toy. And since it knows everyone on the internet looking at it, I would say like 98% of the time they're able to figure out what it is. So the power of the internet helps solve the problems like I'm I opened up Reddit real quick to take a look at one right now. And sometimes it'll be some of the the strangest things like, you know, are my parents engaging in psychological warfare? Is this This allowed alarm that's gonna sound twice a day for 10 minutes. But is it and people are like, Oh, no, actually, that's a lockbox for keys. And it's like, oh, cool.
Brandon Minnick:It's a covered monoxide detector. Yeah, I saw one. I saw it on that subreddit. I think it was a piece of a car. I think it was a bumper. hubcap? Yeah. Somebody was like, I was involved in a hit and run there. This piece of their car came off. Can anybody help identify it? And yeah, somebody's like, Oh, yeah, that's, you know, 98 Silverado E Class series with a special trim share? Like, what? And then sure enough, like they post a link and you're like, yeah, that's, that's a match and like the person took it to the police and helped the investigation.
Unknown:It's incredible. I love the internet.
Becca Rosenthal:What I will say though, is like the thing, the untold secret of Reddit Is it the best stuff happens in smaller subreddits. So like the huge subreddits that have 10s of millions of subscribers, like every once in a while, there'll be posts that are just like incredible, and the comments are magical and all the things but the vast majority of the time, like that's not where the gold is, the gold is in the smaller subreddits where he got the like 50,000 ish subscribers and whatnot that people are just like really passionate about the things and that's where it gets fun.
Chloe Condon:If you're in our comments right now you're watching live or even if you're watching later, but your favorite sub reddits below that are safer work of course, because this is
Becca Rosenthal:Yeah. And put your username and you may find some gold come your way. Oh, yes.
Chloe Condon:Take advantage of that.
Unknown:Well,
Chloe Condon:great segue into our next question, which is what technology Do you hate Becca?
Becca Rosenthal:So um, I'm not going to talk about Tick Tock because I know my place but I will. I will talk about Facebook and Instagram, both of which I've been on For over a year and a half. And I bring those up because I cannot stress how good that has been from mental health. And I initially deleted my Instagram and deleted my Facebook because I had just gotten re diagnosed with vocal nodules. And it was becoming clear that I was going to have to be on vocal rest a lot of the time. And I was going to have to spend a lot of Saturday nights alone, and a lot of time not going to bars and not going to parties and not having fun with my friends. And I figured that having these ways of just scrolling through the idealized versions of somebody else's reality was not going to be good for me. And within a few weeks of getting rid of my Instagram, getting rid of my Facebook, I just felt better about my life choices. Mostly because their Saturdays were all I want to do was sit on my bed and watch Parks and Rec reruns. And instead of feeling like I was a pathetic loser who was sitting on my bed on a Saturday, watching Parks and Rec reruns, I was just sitting on my bed watching Parks and Rec rebounds and having a lovely time about it without judging myself. And so I want to strongly recommend getting off those apps. And the the only refrain is like, oh, but how do you find out about events, your friends will still text you. And if they don't, you didn't want to go anyways. And that random family member who you don't really talk to, or that person from high school you really don't care about you don't care about them anyways. Um, so maybe you do but like, Is it worth it? For me? It wasn't personally. Yeah.
Chloe Condon:Do you feel like now that there's a lot less kind of noise? Like, because it sounds like you're a pretty big Reddit user and you use Twitter? Are those kind of your main social platforms?
Becca Rosenthal:Yes, absolutely. And I will say that, like one of the things I've struggled with, and this all happened, because I lost my voice, is that the notion of like, Who am I yelling out to right? Like, then this was back in college, and I had cysts on both my vocal cords, the ones that ultimately needed surgery. One of the reasons I developed was because I was constantly screaming, trying to be heard, and something my speech pathologist asked me was like, Who were you talking to? Right? Why are you sharing this thought with the world? Are you saying it to say it? Are you saying it because somebody needs to hear it? And what I find is with Reddit, when I when I take a funny picture, or whatever, I'm not just like, Oh, I must show this to read it. It doesn't make sense, right? Like I had a dental surgery a couple weeks ago. And I was trying to ice my face as one does when you have dental surgery, and I had this thing of frozen corn, but I wanted to play cards. So my sister took an ace bandage, and like started wrapping it around my head, looking like she was trying to murder me. And so I had this hilarious picture of myself with like frozen corn and an ace bandage. And like, that's the kind of thing where when you have an Instagram, it's like, duh, I'm obviously gonna post this on Facebook, you're obviously gonna post it. And I thought to myself, like, what subreddit would this go on? Right? Because on Reddit, it's not just like, the internet is here, speak to the internet. It's like, which targeted community would want to see this? And I was like, No, it doesn't really fit here. Right. And so I had this read, obviously, I put it on Twitter. And because that's become my like, I'll just rant there. nobody's listening. I don't really care. Think but with Facebook and Instagram, I think there's a different perception like it's, it's a little more, let me tell you a version of my life that isn't real. And I feel like Twitter's naturally pretty self deprecating, or maybe just the people I follow are naturally self deprecating. I don't know.
Unknown:Yeah, I love that.
Becca Rosenthal:And but you can carve out your corners better.
Brandon Minnick:I will say it's, as somebody who was a, we'll say, an ogee Facebook user, like I got into it. I think a year after the facebook.com came out, and you still needed your college email address. Like it was one of those. As soon as I got my acceptance letter from University of Florida with my@ufl.edu email, the first thing I did was to create my facebook account. But cool, something that I'm a little embarrassed to admit is how long it took me to realize that this isn't reality. This is people posting, but either way they want you to think their life is like or what they think you want their life to be like, if that makes sense. And again, after a while, you realize like nobody's posting boring pictures of like, like you're saying, like watching cartoons while laying in my bed on a Saturday, like people will post pictures about going on vacations and and then that leads to people also faking photos for weird reasons where like, they pretend to be on a plane, but really, it's like a picture of their computer monitor. And it's like, what, why do you feel the need to do that? And it was kind of after I came to that realization, I stopped really using I mean, I'm still on Facebook, I'm still on Instagram, but I haven't posted anything really in a long time. And kind of that coupled with the fact that you know, they're using all of your data and they're profiting off of that and it's like, oh, that doesn't make me feel great. So, yeah, power to you for being able to totally unplug stuff. I will take yet
Chloe Condon:someone put in the comments here that some of the pictures on Instagram are just kind of like feet at the beach. And I agree, although I will say there wasn't a kid for a while called legs or hot dogs, or it was just someone who's holding up hot dogs to determine if it was like someone's knees in front of a beach or hot dogs. And that that did bring me joy. But our next question is, what other profession would you want to attempt?
Becca Rosenthal:So when I was living in Mississippi, before getting into tech, I spent a lot of time playing live music and writing music and, and performing and I loved that. And there was a piece of me that actually thought about moving to Atlanta, and trying to like do the music thing. And then my mom lovingly reminded me that I have pre existing conditions and like having health insurance. And that was kind of the end of that dream. And when you when you work in tech, or at least I feel very fortunate I work in tech, and I'm able to, like, have discretionary income. So I can like buy a nice guitar and buy a bunch of pedals and you know, make loud noises in my own house, and then, you know, also have health insurance. And as soon as your hobby becomes your livelihood, you lose a lot of the joy of it. And so while like, I would love to tour around the world and whatever, but like let's be real, I don't have enough talent or anything to tour around the world. So that's never going to happen anyways.
Chloe Condon:back I think I once everything opens up again, if you start doing talks where you're playing mandolin, and then you talk about you know how to make community safe online, I'm there
Becca Rosenthal:sure, but that's not going to sell out, you know, Oracle that's going to sell out like a tech conference which To be clear, not opposed. And as somebody that got it, partially because I wrote a song called my mentor and I, which is a fictional comedy song about matching with a professional mentor on Tinder. That's really just three minutes of coding puns and Jewish wedding jokes.
Chloe Condon:Well wait. That's a great parody.
Becca Rosenthal:It's true. And then my mentor came to my show email me the next day said send me a resume and then my desk was next to his from my first four months at Reddit True Story Gianna Warren if you're watching Hello, hope you're well you're the best
Chloe Condon:we got a request in the comments to have a musical number maybe when we get to the end of the questions we'll we'll do that request from our from our audience here. But it's something that I couldn't agree more with Becca I come from an arts background as well where it's not common to have as much job security and health insurance so I what I love about what you've done with that Becca is you've brought that like love of music into your life as a as a software engineer and we may not be able to talk about some of them on the air right now but there's been some very creative parodies and ideas from working at Reddit and song related that I look forward to seeing on your your YouTube someday.
Becca Rosenthal:Can I not wait Can I not talk about it on the air because of Microsoft or because of Reddit? Okay, fine.
Chloe Condon:Why would you not want to attempt
Becca Rosenthal:so I am definitely afraid of arts and crafts. We're talking like coloring books give me a lot of anxiety. Drawing like it took me into my early 20s when working in an educational nonprofit to be able to like cut things out and like glue them down without like having a mild panic attack. So anything that involves crafting or like Fine Arts in that way Absolutely not. I love music as I said like huge fan of art, huge fan of arts, all that but like Don't make me do it. Just Just don't and I'll add to this like, one of the things we did when I was in Mississippi, we were rewriting the first grade curriculum that was going to be used by about 75 different congregational Sunday schools and so we would write out instructions for art projects and then expect them to follow it so something my boss asked me to do one day was can you just follow the instructions of this art project and make sure it made sense and can I tell you what I spent the next two hours doing pacing around the office looking for supplies? I was
Unknown:gonna say pulling.
Becca Rosenthal:No, and to be clear the art project was like making ice cream cone by getting like by cutting out like a V shaped thing and then taking a CD and like taping or gluing it down and then like taking some like glitter and stuff and just putting it around like it was not a complicated thing. But I spent two hours walking around the office and panic mode about having to do a crafting project.
Chloe Condon:I'm the opposite I well I'm my mom was an artist and literally attended the College of Arts and Crafts here in Oakland, but I love a craft project. I just got my first maker cabinet during shelter in place. Are you crafty Brandon?
Brandon Minnick:Um, I'd say more handy than crafty. So if there's something like that needs to be fixed around the house or simple things like i'm not i'm not going to build a frame or pour any foundation but yeah, I love I love that challenge of fixing something Like, back when I owned a car, I would do all the maintenance on on our cars because it's To me, it's just like a big puzzle. It's it's kind of the same part of my brain that activates when coding because it's just like, Hey, here's a cool puzzle to know how to solve it. And you get that satisfaction of having done it yourself. And probably, maybe the best and worst part is when it breaks after you put it back together, because like, you left, you're left with like a handful of parts. And you're like, well, I guess I don't need those. And like you start driving down the clock. Oh, that's where those carts went. And like, pretty quickly,
Becca Rosenthal:so that happened to me was this is totally unrelated story. But as soon as that driving down the street, click clunk, clunk, clunk. So I was driving home. This is my senior year of high school, and I was driving and I turned out the reds, I got off the highway. I'd gotten a flat tire. And I like kind of heard something seemed off and I was like, Oh, I'm like a mile from home, it'll be fine. And I kept driving. And then at one point, I just saw the rubber of the tire go off in front of ya know, so I pulled over on the side of the road called my mom. I was like, Mom, mom ever. No, this is a car car. And she was like, are you okay? I was like, Yeah, I'm fine. She was like, Okay, next time lead with that.
Chloe Condon:I coded for me is a lot like virtual or digital crafting. Like I feel like using different API's is like using different materials and stuff. So maybe we just need to do some like CSS crafting with you, Becca. Oh, and we've got a couple comments here. One is first of all, Becca, someone says, stream your music we'd watch. So check out back on on our pan. Yeah, I
Becca Rosenthal:do that a lot. I'm gonna do a stream probably in a couple hours.
Chloe Condon:Yes. Oh, yeah. cuz she's on PTO. And also, I love this comment from running free on Twitch that said, Okay, so last year, I was responsible for putting bows on things at a store and I wanted to cry. So I think we found someone with a similar fear of crafting back.
Becca Rosenthal:Bless you. I see you. I just want to acknowledge that like, it's really hard out there for folks who can't do things that first graders can do happily. And I see you and I recognize your pain.
Chloe Condon:All right, we've only got a few more questions left. Our next one here is what technology Do you wish existed from film or TV?
Becca Rosenthal:So I have a terrible answer for this because I'm a bad nerd sidebars, I thought I was a nerd. And then I started working at Reddit and remember that I was a jock in high school. So I'm like, not into sci fi at all. I don't know, I think apparition from Harry Potter would be really cool. And I was told that that counts. So that's as close as I get to like cool tech things that I wish existed. But mostly I just want the people who make tech to have social skills. And I think that's my like, fictional reality that I would like to exist more in the real world.
Chloe Condon:Yeah. Okay.
Unknown:So wait, the
Chloe Condon:answer is specifically your collaboration. operacion. Okay.
Becca Rosenthal:Okay. But engineers with social skills. Okay. Which which To be clear, most of the engineers I work with have social skills. And it's delightful. And it should be the norm. Yeah, just saying.
Chloe Condon:Microsoft skills, as I like to say, be able to communicate and be able to be a good programmer.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah. And honestly, I'd say it's, it's more of a trope than anything else that it's Oh, you're the nerdy software guy in the movie, and you don't know how to communicate with people. Is that mean? Certainly like that. That stereotype exists across all sorts of Don't forget, like the hacking
Becca Rosenthal:noises. Like,
Brandon Minnick:don't talk to me that, like, I'm in my hacker basement, but yeah, I mean, we're, we're normal people, too. Yeah, there's, there's all sorts of folks who could become developers. So yeah, you don't have to think totally. Yeah, I played sports in high school as well. So you don't have to worry about the nerds versus jocks for Check.
Chloe Condon:Check the hair accessory today on
Unknown:zoom in the coding crystals that
Chloe Condon:says dev on it. Yeah, I totally agree. I, the more that you can be yourself and be in this industry, the better because we don't need a bunch of people in hoodies hacking into the mainframe while I'm James Bond, please. Okay, back I have the ad hoc question for you. Are you ready? This is like Ah,
Unknown:here we go. It'll be easy. Don't worry. Um,
Chloe Condon:what is your favorite lyric from Hamilton and why?
Becca Rosenthal:Okay, cop out answer to which is I feel constant push and pull between I am not throwing away my shot and wait for it. Um, and I didn't come up with this. But liminal Miranda gave the commencement address at Wesleyan in 2015 which you should link it in the show. It's a phenomenal speech. But he basically tells his life story through the lens of Berg versus Hamilton with their kind of driving motivations. Hamilton's being I'm not throwing away my shot and birds being wait for it. And I think that so much of life is figuring out the moment where you have an opportunity, and now is the time to pedal the metal and go, go go. And then so much of life is waiting and kind of figuring out what the opportunity is, and setting up the foundation so that when that opportunity arises, you're in a position where you can take it. Yeah. And so like the song, wait for it the first time I heard it, right, when it's got that line of, you know, I am the one thing in life I can control. It's not that I pulled over on the side of the road, started crying and then listen to the song and additional four times, but that's exactly what happened. Right? Because, you know, music just gets you. But I think that there's such a balance between the need to wait for it and the need to seize that moment when it pops up.
Chloe Condon:Do you have a favorite Hamilton lyric? Brandon? I know. Did you just watch it? I feel like you just watched it.
Brandon Minnick:I've seen it three times. I've seen it twice live twice once when I happen to be in London for NDC London. And Hamilton was there the Victoria theatre, which is amazing. And also ironic because it's about the American Revolution, which is the US from the UK. And then you're in the UK getting it kind of it's like I wonder how some of these jokes will add but of course how did they land? Perfectly I mean,
Chloe Condon:for the king
Brandon Minnick:there's not too many people nowadays that have a personal relationship to King George anymore. So I think we're past that. Like we could be from
Becca Rosenthal:Prince George now.
Chloe Condon:Hamilton like like I think in the same way that I during hackbright listened to a lot of Legally Blonde the musical and identified a lot with L I see a lot of Hamilton with Becca of like, I'm not throwing away my shot. I'm going to be in that room. I'm going to get that interview. I'm going to talk to the CEO and I so I see that hustle in that. That that correlation, Becca Well, I'm
Becca Rosenthal:honored to hear that you should know I was obviously listening to a ton of Hamilton during hackbright but then when I started reading I actually I've seen the show now five times in person I'm not ashamed some people waste their money in a lot of ways I waste mine on theater tickets sue me but somebody I went with at intermission turns me she goes is Hamilton your spirit animal?
Chloe Condon:Yeah, and I was like I'm on Clinton and Becca DNA.
Becca Rosenthal:Right and that like frantically I don't have enough time to do everything I want to do and like I wouldn't I'm not saying I'm gonna die in a duel but like I wouldn't be that surprised if like something hit the fan and something turn fast
Chloe Condon:like you're running out of time.
Becca Rosenthal:know i mean but my real favorite lyric in the show which it relates to nothing in my life but it's that line of I'm in the cabinet I'm complicit in watching him grab into power and Kissinger Washington isn't gonna listen to discipline dissidents this the differences because it's out just cuz the rhyme scheme is nuts. Yeah. And then the rhythmic past that gets me is because I'm the oldest and the wittiest and the gossip in New York City is in city because that rhyming of city is insidious. Like Holy God, it just got me.
Chloe Condon:This is now a Lin Manuel Miranda. Stan show we love
Brandon Minnick:the show about that moment, when Ben Moe Miranda, where we learn
Becca Rosenthal:to say his name
Chloe Condon:at Miranda's got about two minutes last year. So before we let you go back there, where can people find you on the interwebs? Sure. So
Becca Rosenthal:you can find me on Twitter at Becca ro ro because I made that account 10 years ago and like let me just not use my name. That's great. But what could go wrong? So there's that you can find me on Reddit. My username is sim shred code. If you need help with something going on on the platform, you messaged me about it, I will fully ignore you because that is not a proper health channel. The same is true as if you tweet at me about looking for help with your Reddit needs. I will not help you there. Just FYI, but feel free to reach out to Reddit. And I'll probably see your ticket but I will not be the one to do that. Um, but yeah, thank you guys for having me. This was fun.
Chloe Condon:Thank you for coming. And we loved having you come on the show. Come back anytime you want, Becca, and I'm super, super happy and excited for all the work that you're doing at Reddit. So thank you for everything that you do. And we don't have an official way of signing off yet. Do you want to play us out Becca?
Becca Rosenthal:I do. And while I'm talking a Reddit shill, you should know that they made guitar picks for South by Southwest. Wow. So I will be using one of these specialties. Yeah, I bought mandolin quarantine and then I banged it against the desk but I can kind of do this is a theme song. Theme Song isn't good. This could be the theme song.