8 Bits
8 Bits
8-Bits Interview with Ro Paydar!
This week we are joined by Ro Paydar! Ro is a front end web developer based in Toronto making fun, whimsical, hilarious projects on the internet. Join us this week with special guest co-host Christopher Harrison to have some giggles and learn about Ro's journey to tech!
Oh that song every time gets me pumped up for the show. Hello everyone. Welcome to eight bits you may notice a different co host with me today. Welcome to the show, Christopher Harris and
Christopher Harrison:well thank you thank you for having me here. Yeah, I'm not quite Brandon but I will do my absolute best and Brandon and pressure. Well,
Chloe Condon:apparently last week PJ was a stand in for me while I was out on vacation, and he wore an orange wig. We should have got you like a something something brand new. Had a brand new wig random glasses. No cosplay today. It is Wednesday all brand new. It's a Wednesday friends, which means it's time for a bit my favorite show to do every week. Christopher, how have you been? You are a previous guest of the show. Of course you came on in our early days. What have you been up to?
Christopher Harrison:You know, I'm living the dream or some reasonable facsimile thereof, I guess. Um, you know, I've been I've been streaming a fair bit. In fact, if you're bored in a couple of hours at three o'clock Pacific, he said in a shameless plug. I'll be doing web Wednesday, we've got Aaron Palawan this week to chat about react and TypeScript. So that to be a lot of fun. And then otherwise, you know, just just try to do my best stay healthy. Run a fair bit. And yeah,
Chloe Condon:how has streaming been, I mean, I have been loving, loving doing technical content while streaming because it feels like it doesn't even feel like pair programming. It feels like world programming where like, I can get through problems a lot faster.
Christopher Harrison:Yeah, that's, you know, whenever you're doing like live code on the stream, there's no shortage of people that are then you know, there with with possible answers and so forth. So it definitely can be a lot of fun. It's, you know, it's it's a great way to like stay connected with people, especially in this time when we're not really connected with with people. So it's, it's, it's quite nice in in that regard, I think.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, I have been making these very silly bots with my friend and mentee, a newly employed friend PJ. We'll have to have him back on the show to give us a job update. But we've been making some Azure Functions. Shania Twain bots, Britney Spears bots, Mariah Carey bots, and I'll tell you, we would have been lost without the help of the audience because it had been a while since I had touched regex. PJ had never used regex before even helping teach some very basic concepts of get were like it was super helpful to just have people all around the world who knew shortcuts and expertise is and you know, knew how to best deal with that. So shout out to all the people not only the streamers, but the people We're helping with the streams. Oh, I may be frozen. We'll figure this out. You
Christopher Harrison:are like in a perfect pose though. So
Chloe Condon:it's great. Oh, now you're frozen for me too. Okay, well, I may need to leave and come back in just a second. Okay, I think my MacBook fan is going to take off and take my computer to another place. So I'll be right back friends. Let me grab a different computer.
Christopher Harrison:Okay, if you want to bring row on,
Chloe Condon:let's see if I my whole computer is frozen. So we will see if it's possible. There she is. Okay, I've been frozen.
Ro Paydar:And you're on frozen, too.
Chloe Condon:We were all frozen. This here. This is wild and weird. Okay, wait, we're gonna remove you real quick. Okay, bring you back in because we're gonna do a special intro. Okay, pretend that never happened. Okay, this is the beauty of technology, right? I don't know, I think my computer just decided not today. Too many tabs open. Probably. Y'all. I am so excited for our guest today. And of course, if you've never tuned into the show before, this is a show where we have people from all kinds of walks of life in technology come onto the show and share their stories and paths to take their interest. And this is a human being that I am truly obsessed with. Because all of their projects are so cute and funny and wonderful. I say this as I tried to bring up this app here, I'm going to share my screen. Let's see if this breaks my computer. I'm a huge fan of any sort of puns CRISPR as I know you are as well, especially technical and engineering plans.
Christopher Harrison:Yes, I do have a tendency to tell dad jokes even though we're child free. Makes me a full PA.
Chloe Condon:That was good. That was good. We love it. I was looking at these cute designs that our guests read today, working on a branch. Oh my gosh, I just got that joke. I had looked at this image previously, and I just got it. This adorable Pikachu and of course snack break. This makes me hungry for some Paki right now. But checkout road the coder.my shopify.com for this really cute merge. I can't wait to put the stickers on my new bullet journal I will inevitably by so welcome to the show again, row. You know, other than my computer deciding to take Sick Day, right in the middle of the stream doing pretty good. How about you bro?
Ro Paydar:I am good. I am very excited to officially launch this merge sets that I was working on as well as to be here. So thank you very much.
Chloe Condon:Tell us about this, these adorable designs, what was the story behind making this very, very cute shop?
Ro Paydar:Well, the thing is, we were briefly talking about ADHD. And that's something that I have. And my brain just does not stop thinking. And constantly. So I'll be in the middle of drawing something and my brain will go and I'll have an idea. And then another one just it just keeps on popping up. So for the stack break one, I was actually like, I'm gonna take a snack break, I sat down with my pocket, I went, Oh, I was like, I'm gonna draw this. It's gonna be cute, and I'm gonna love it. And then I did
Chloe Condon:vision. And I'm like, take my money. I'm the same way. I think I have a doc, as I'm sure Christopher does as well of just like puns and ideas of things that I eventually either want to tweet or make merge of, or, like there's so many. One of my favorites is the more you node, which is for making that one. My boyfriend loves to joke that I joined tech for the dad jokes which I'm, I'm fine with being associated with that.
Ro Paydar:I want that title too. But right
Chloe Condon:we've got a little ahead of ourselves. People are probably like, Who is this person? What brings you to the show? Tell us a little bit about yourself. We're Of course going to dive into your whole as we like to say on the show, Marvel origin story of how you got into tech and all of that, but tell lowly folks at home who you are what you do.
Ro Paydar:So my name is ro. I am a front end developer. And I
Chloe Condon:Oh, hello y'all. Usually Brandon Minnick does all of the scene changes and designs for this. So please bear with me while I figure all this out. There we go.
Ro Paydar:So for the people listening on the podcast, we were all moving around on different screens and now I am the big screen. So
Chloe Condon:yes, we know why we're lost without Brandon. For Of course famously, podcasts are a visual medium and Just know that Chloe is not that great at using stream yard continue?
Ro Paydar:Well, yeah, so I front end developer and I graduated from Juneau College of Technology back in July, August. During that time, I was, you know, having a lot of fun growing and learning as a developer and using that creative side to make different projects like Chloe's favorite game Battle of the babies. And, you know, really like unlocking this world of art and code of putting that together, which is something I did not expect to happen. It just kind of did. And I'm really happy that it has. And right now, what I'm doing is I've just been designing some art things. And I've been working on small projects, like a little tiny one with a friend, we're working with a little API, we're trying to create, like, a simple like map application, all it does is you put in your info like on our like a little quiz. And then we will get like kind of hone in on the results of a location somewhere. So like, let's say it's Toronto. And then if you select that, what is your choice, because you'll have multiple choices. If you select that one as your choice, a map will open using the map box API, and will give you choices of things to do in the area. So that's what we're aiming for. So far, all we have is a list that renders different things that you put that's it, that's all we have. But otherwise, I mean, start somewhere, right? Yeah, exactly.
Chloe Condon:And I don't know about you, Christopher, but something that I really So row was on another show that I do called, oh my gosh, I'm like what show is this adopted of where we have folks come on who are job searching and our developers. And row was a gal after my own heart because I was the girl in my boot camp, doing all the projects. And it would be something like use CSS to make an image bigger, or and everyone was using stock photos. And I had like, the sloths dressed up as a pope or something like everything that I said, had a sense of humor to it, or something silly, I think I made a fake facebook facebook page account to test out an app I was building during hackbright that I called sloth orphanage survivors, and would put all my test tweets through it to my test Facebook post to make sure it worked. And people started subscribing to it, which was very funny. But ro mentioned this lovely app called Battle of the babies, which she shared on the show. And there is sound y'all that I won't play because it's incredibly cute and too distracting. But once I saw this, I was like, okay, yes. So basically, you select your fighter. Um, so I've selected a baby out, of course. And I then can fight against these babies in a street fighter type capacity. And you can't hear the noises. But there's the sounds of babies giggling and crying. So what I love about these projects that you have wrote, and y'all will will drop a link to rose portfolio here in a second is just how playful and fun they are. Tell me a little bit about this project because I am so obsessed with it while I play a little bit of it.
Ro Paydar:Yeah. Play all you want
Christopher Harrison:to talk while I play in the background? Yeah. For the rest of the show.
Ro Paydar:Well, basically, like I remember at the time like this was this would have been I think, in June or July that I made this up. We were learning jQuery. So this is like a jQuery Javascript app. And I, I just thought, okay, coding, what can I do? And I like video games. So I was like, I want to make a little arcade video game. So I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. And I basically started to think of things and Originally, I was supposed to have six fighters and it was supposed to be all like, choose your fighter and you know, very arcade like Tekken five, eight bit style. eight bits anyway. Oh, perfect segue. And then I presented it to my, my instructor, MVP, and he just suggested that I try to tone it down. He's like, start with three. And I was like, okay, because then I could do a little bit of rock paper scissors. And that'll make it easier because that's essentially what this is. It's like an if else statement that kind of evaluates who beats who. And I didn't make it so that it's obvious for you to know who beats who because then it makes it less fun. Like, you just kind of play and see what happens. So yeah, I chose baby urine baby group because I think in January, like like for New Year's, my partner and I were doing a we're doing code check at a restaurant just because we're like, why not make an extra book on New Year's What else we're gonna do? And he, as I mentioned, he's a he's an artist and I was like, what should we make for our tip jar? And so we're like, let's do a baby Yoda vs baby group thing and then people would tip who they want to win. And oh, yeah, yeah. I think like
Christopher Harrison:smart.
Ro Paydar:I got really mad at people no offense who voted group because I'm a big, big, big baby Yoda fan. Oh, wow.
Chloe Condon:Okay, that's some merchant that I need. I do not have the water bottle. Yeah.
Ro Paydar:My best friend got it for me. And I was I was like, I started screaming and she's like, Okay, stop, stop. But yeah, so from there, I was thinking about that. I'm like, okay, those are two babies that I want to fight. And I also love SpongeBob. So like, if I'm going to have any babies fight, it's going to be these three babies. And then from there, I got, you know, I got assistance, obviously, because we had just learned it. There's no way I could build this from my own brain without getting assistance. So we would get help from the teachers. They helped me learn and grow. And then I actually was able to update it with those animations and the things that you saw with Daniel from adoptive. He had me come in and do a live stream with him.
Chloe Condon:I love this comment from Sarah Gonzalez. Those are the those are two babies that I want to fight is my favorite thing I've ever heard on a live stream. lol. I agree. I think that's my favorite quote from the show and it's not even halfway
Ro Paydar:think some pretty interesting thing. So you're in for a ride appropriately
Christopher Harrison:though. perfect life quote. I say some interesting things.
Ro Paydar:My next sticker.
Chloe Condon:I love that it started from the tip jar. Because I've seen those tip jars before were you know, they'll be like, Oh, do you want Are you team so and so or? Oh gosh, I can't think of any Pinky. Your brain could be one or
Ro Paydar:dark side versus the light side. And missing
Chloe Condon:Team Edward team, whatever.
Christopher Harrison:I'm honestly sad that I know that.
Chloe Condon:There was even another app that I also brought me a lot of joy, which is this adorable also has music on on the site here a polka dot x. And remind me I type in the number of the Pokemon and then it'll pop up in here.
Ro Paydar:Yeah, so I mean, even if I wasn't here, you can always click on the instructions so like, they can see the instructions will pop up. It'll tell you what to do.
Christopher Harrison:Read the instructions. I'm sorry, you
Chloe Condon:read the instructions. You can press clear to reset your selection. You must input a number between Okay, back when I was a youth, we only had 150. Pokemon. This is wild 807. Okay, cannot start with zero. Let's see what is a good number that I should put in here row
Ro Paydar:112. I don't know what will come up.
Chloe Condon:Enter. Right on. Okay, you know, this is going to be very useful as I start playing Pokemon Snap on my Nintendo Switch again.
Ro Paydar:And it's found its responses to take it to go with you anytime you want.
Chloe Condon:Amazing. And was this another boot camp project that
Ro Paydar:you did? Yeah, it was this was my first pair programming project with my partner Katie King. So basically, we got paired up, and we were thinking about so many different things we could do. And like her and I are, we're admittedly nerds. So we were like, okay, let's look at all the API's that we could we could, you know, play with, and we were stuck between I think like Lord of the Rings and pokimane knows what you learn, you know, a little bit easier to do, like, we're gonna make a quiz. But I'm like, you know, I really want to play around with my CSS art skills and see what I could really do. So this was like my first stab at CSS art. I did get a little bit of guidance from this, this other Pokedex app, and learned how to create the CSS art but there's wasn't actually functional like mine where you can actually get the information there.
Chloe Condon:Let us know in the chat if there's a number a Pokemon number you want us to put in and I'll put it in.
Ro Paydar:But yeah, this was a really great project. I had so much fun with it. And you know, being able to add the music and kind of bring it all together is just very delightful.
Chloe Condon:What I love about this is you as we can see from your your beautiful designs that you've made that you're truly an artist who got into tech, and I am also an artist who then detect but I'm not very talented at the visual art thing, but I've always viewed coding a lot like crafting like it's kind of like digital crafting in a way. And I love that you have a essentially just taking these pieces of your, your previous life, even a tip jar really put that into app for.
Ro Paydar:I know, it's just it's really crazy how that happened because I was not expecting it whatsoever. But coding honestly kind of paved the way for me to really see that I am an artist because I didn't think I was for the longest time. And yeah, like I actually have a I have a sketchbook that I used to draw on, because I think this would be six or seven years ago. I was like at a really like low part in my life. And I wanted to find a creative outlet to kind of help with that. And I eventually found my way to art, because it helped me kind of connect with the thing that I was struggling with. And as time went on, I realized I actually really liked drawing and I just kept practicing. And then I started to draw cartoon characters and like, the scrapbook is filled with drawings of me and my partner as like, like Simpson style or or Bob's Burgers style, or like Adventure Time and Rick and Morty style. And they're so cute. I love them. I was like, Whoa, like, I really got to stop this whole imposter syndrome thing like that's gonna go away.
Chloe Condon:I'm wearing the wrong shirt. today. I have a little prince parody shirt that says leopard t Ric on it that I wore yesterday. That is so I love, love, love. And we have creative folks that come into tech because we just get some really fun, quirky, unique things that we wouldn't have otherwise had before. And are you finding that tech is kind of similar to like crafting an RTS or is it Do you not think of it as a creative space at all?
Ro Paydar:Oh my gosh, tech is so creative. I think that the two combined is what makes it so creative. Because like, I mean, I literally just sent this to you right now, because I just remembered we were talking about Pokemon. I'm like, Alright, I recently made a Digi vise Do you remember those like Digi vise toys from Digi mon?
Chloe Condon:Yes. Like Like a Tamagotchi sorbet. Yeah.
Ro Paydar:So I don't know if you could see in the private chat. There's a link to my code pen. And it's best to view it on desktop because it's not responsive.
Unknown:Oh, here I'll open it up and we can share it with the class. Here we go. Hopefully, it won't break my computer.
Ro Paydar:I'm so sorry. If it does.
Unknown:Here we go. I just stream Oh, this is all CSS.
Ro Paydar:Wow. Yeah, this is all CSS and I don't know if you can notice. But um, if you drag the top part there, you can make it larger, I believe. Yeah. So if you look closely, our Guan is actually moving up and down. It's very subtle. But that was like you know I could have drawn that but could I have made it move? No. Right coding made that happen. And so I made this little Digi vise that combined my you know skills of knowing CSS and like making these shapes come to life and then having argument actually move up and down. By the way this took four ever took all day to code each and every single pixel individually it was
Chloe Condon:I was gonna ask this looks like a very I don't even think I could draw this by hand
Ro Paydar:let alone 100 164 individual pixels.
Chloe Condon:Now row Do you still have a link to your Clippy one that you made? Because I think we got to give the people what they want.
Ro Paydar:Like if you click on my username, I think it should take you to like bytecode pens because that will be there.
Chloe Condon:Oh, there's some cute stuff on the air.
Christopher Harrison:You've got an Atari a one. I do. Okay, we're not BFFs
Chloe Condon:here's Clippy Okay, I got to take a screenshot and share this on the Twitter because this will get us some viewers. I think we've got some hardcore Clippy fans who watch this show. These are beautiful. How did you Is this something that you taught? I have not played at all with CSS art and for the folks at home were or for the folks at home for the folks listening to the podcast. You can check out code pen.io slash read the code cooter and we'll put in the show notes as well. But we're looking at these really beautiful, intricate Finn the human Daria Clippy images made entirely with CSS. How does one do this? Don't tell me everything.
Ro Paydar:I mean, so like the first one I did was fin from the human. And I was really excited about that because I was like, I basically did that on my own without asking anyone for help. Like I did look up a few things. But a lot of it is like knowing how to use like the border, how to use the border, how to use gradients, how to use before and after selectors, like that is really, really awesome. Because then you you don't have as many Dibs because it will look like there's nothing there but you have a shape before or after and you can move that around. But yeah, like a lot of it has to do with just shapes and toying around and moving pixels around and I really want to make more but it's it's very time consuming there's so many things I want to do and
Chloe Condon:yeah, I just oh row I see a stream in our future where we make some sort of maybe even the three of us you show us how to do this because I am so inspired by how detailed I this is so detailed for CSS like I had no idea that this was even possible. I also want to give a shout out to I'll find a link to it but analytical the drag queen did a makeup palette recently using CSS that was super I'll see if I can bring it up on on the show here. But have you ever done this Christopher? I've never been able to make art like this.
Christopher Harrison:No, no. And what I was gonna say is what I love so much about this is this is also just like, it's it's a great example for everybody to see of like, Hey, you can learn more technical stuff, while still having fun that you know, something that you're passionate about and then build it like I never would have would have thought about it. Then as you were describing it, I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's such a great way to then learn CSS because now there's so much that you need to be able to put together with all of that and and learning CSS selectors is such a tricky thing to do. So I love that you're doing that based around something that you love. It's fantastic.
Chloe Condon:Wait here is a naked makeup palette by Urban Decay that our queen analytical made shadow to analytical. And and I believe they may have done a video or a tech talk on this, but I'll link this to folks as well so they can check it out. But I am just amazed by especially I consider myself a creative person like in the creative Performing Arts. But when it comes to drawing something it stick figures only for you, though, that you're able to make this art like this very detailed, beautiful. css magic. I'm trying to think what we would if we did a stream, I'm like Duplo What do we do? Do we do SpongeBob we got to figure out what their burgers would be super easy. Bob's
Ro Paydar:Burgers.
Chloe Condon:Oh yeah.
Ro Paydar:The thing with Bob's Burgers is like, I view their shapes is very like butternut squash. Like they're very, like lean at the top and then they're all kind of like bulbous. Well, especially Bob. That's true. She's very like she has like this Like this Like, like, bold at the top, like her hair kind of bows out and then curves at the bottom though. So it's usually easier when their shapes are less curvy like this, but like I am trying to learn how to get better at that, which is why Clippy like you see, Clippy like that was tricky, because there are shapes there. That's basically masking the clippies like, you know, yeah, yeah, like there's shapes that are kind of there to almost like hide that. And that's how it works. But there are definitely better ways to do it. Like I just have to learn it. But
Chloe Condon:it looks like you're trying to learn CSS, how can I help
Christopher Harrison:with like SVG?
Ro Paydar:No, I've never, I've never tried, but do you think I should?
Christopher Harrison:I have no idea. All I know is that the some of the cool kids use SVG I am in no way shape or form artsy, like whatever that gene is, I lack it, my mother has it. But that did not get passed on to me. But I get it because there's a lot that you can do with regards to drawing and so forth with with SVG, and then you could also then combine that with CSS. So that might be a way to approach it. And especially like, you know, you're talking about some of the more bulbous characters, that might be a better way to manage that. Because then you can like start like drawing the arcs inside of SVG so that you can identify the starting point, the end point and then like, you know, kind of identify what the curve is supposed to be like where a straight is supposed to be and and things like that so and and and that is the extent of what Christopher
Chloe Condon:is just an odd because row, you're so kind of early on in your technical career, you're already able to create stuff like this. I'm just so excited to see what you make going forward. Like I'm expecting people illustrated children's books online. Oh, Rose cinematic universe.
Ro Paydar:That would be awesome. We will see how that goes. But I've seen some people create like, the Mona Lisa with CSS and I'm like, how
Chloe Condon:did So we skipped over a big chunk of the how we got here part, which is all of the things that brought you to your coding boot camp, why you started learning to code. Now I did a little bit of sleuthing, I looked at your LinkedIn row, and you and I share something, which is that we both worked at the Disney Store. And I think it was both one of our very first early jobs. So I would love for you to paint the picture for us of how we got here today how you discovered this love of programming and decided to go all in on it.
Ro Paydar:Yeah, so I mean, in terms of like the Disney Store, that was definitely like, that was my second job on my first retail job. And I'm sure Chloe can back me up here. But like you walk in and you are smiling from head to toe, you cannot stop smiling, you have to wish everyone a magical day and go home covered in glitter.
Chloe Condon:Very true.
Ro Paydar:I'll be honest, I was you know, even if I wasn't in a good mood that day going there and being forced to smile kind of made me really happy by the time I left. Like, it really did work. I was like, Okay, I mean, smiling makes you happy, I guess. So from there, I worked so many jobs. And I don't know how much time we have, because it is just a lot of jobs. But I essentially worked at Starbucks for a couple years. And then I reached a point where I wanted to expand a little. So I went to a company and I did web sales assistant, which I didn't really know what that was. And I'll be honest, I still don't know what that is because how to eventually quit. It was a very interesting role. But it's had nothing to do with web if I can be totally honest. And after it became that I became a bank teller at TD Bank in Toronto. And then from there, I realized it wasn't quite my passion to get yelled at by people over money. So I was like, Okay, time to get a new job. And so I moved on to something i thought was my passion. I thought it was my calling, which was personal training. And I worked as a personal trainer for a couple months. But again, I noticed that there was something that wasn't quite right. And that was the industry felt like it was very much so focused on the selling. And I was focused on the helping and I got penalized for focusing on the Help part. And that's when I was like, I don't think this is for me, because, you know, it just doesn't feel right to turn somebody away because they can't afford it. It's like, I understand, obviously, the company and myself need money to keep doing this at the same time. If somebody is desperately in need, and you're like, Well, sorry, you don't have $10,000 to give me right now. It's like, that doesn't make sense. So not for me.
Chloe Condon:I worked in sales for a hot second at Yelp. It was my first tech job was cold calling people and this is pre IPO. So no one knew at Yelp was and thought it was illegal that someone could make a website for them. But yeah, it's it's one of those things where you really have to have not only the mental strength, but even like the physical strength to have those conversations, those difficult conversations. And I think it's important early on in your career to figure out what you enjoy doing and what you don't enjoy doing. And I have found I don't like cold calling people.
Christopher Harrison:No, no, I'm curious. So you've had that very background? I'm curious, like, what, what jobs or maybe like, What lesson or lessons, were you able to kind of pick up along the way that you've been able to apply to, to being a developer? Because obviously that I mean, well, not obviously, but I'm assuming that there must have been something along the way that that you've picked up and have been able to apply to what you're doing now?
Ro Paydar:Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, I think, you know, for example, like, the role that I had last before I got into dev was working at a restaurant and I did multiple roles in the restaurant, but I eventually became the assistant manager. And that really taught me how to, you know, manage my time, manage the things that I have to focus on and kind of like taking things head on because my management experience was not simple. It was very complicated. We literally had a period of time where I think eight people quit, and I had to learn how to hire people within like two weeks of being a manager. Wow, by myself, I was hiring people, onboarding them, training them, scheduling everything. I did all this and that's when I was like, You know what, if I can do this, I can literally do anything. It was brutal. Like there was like to the point where We had a day where the Wi Fi shut down. So we couldn't take payments on the POS. And we didn't have AC and it was July and the restaurant was like 40 plus degrees. And we got through that. And I was like, if I could get through that I could get through anything.
Chloe Condon:I think I had some moments like that, in my brief stint as a children's birthday party entertainer, I would find myself in these very bizarre situations with a kids cover your ears with a Minnie Mouse head over myself sweating, making a balloon animal doing face paint going, you know what, like, if I can do this, I can survive anything?
Ro Paydar:Yeah,
Christopher Harrison:yeah. And especially because I worked food service as well for for a couple few years. And it that that pressure it creates like this foxhole mentality, that you really just wind up relying quite heavily on everybody else that's around you to sort of like get you through those tough days. And so I definitely hear you on the you know, if you can do that, if you can survive that you can then survive, survive anything. And it does that help kind of when you get into now working with a team that you do start to then learn how to depend on those around you. And there are stressful moments.
Ro Paydar:Yeah, exactly. And also just learning how to quickly pick up something like how to onboard people that requires having to use a computer, go in there and figure it out. And I actually think the biggest thing, this is something I missed, the biggest thing I learned was my time at Starbucks. And that was like how to genuinely connect with people. And that was something I probably wouldn't have been as fluent in, if I hadn't worked that job. And like, say what you want, whether you're a fan or not, there, if you have a great manager, like you pretty much feel invincible. Like my manager at first was not the greatest I think it was I was 19 and I was super like angsty it didn't want to work for him. He made me feel like bad, I would come into work, like, bundled up because it smells like crazy here, bundled up like this whole, he sees like a circle on my face. And he would start the day with always someone grumpy today. And I'm like, No, I'm just a 19 year old kid who just walked into work and I'm cold. So
Chloe Condon:I would have been like, now I am.
Ro Paydar:I would feel that way be like, Well, no, I'm grumpy. But then he ended up leaving, and we had this wonderful person come in. And she would like set up like, you know, like, partner appreciation day and we come into the office and there'd be like banners, and she'd give us props and like, you know, drinks and things not alcohol, but like drinks and, and things like that to just kind of like cheer us up. And like we would take like pictures with our props and stuff like that. And I started to feel happy coming into work. And I wanted to talk to the customers. And I wanted to listen to my manager. And I took from her example. And I applied that to when I was the manager because I never wanted my staff to feel the way my first manager felt made me feel. I wanted to feel the way that the second manager made me feel. Yeah,
Chloe Condon:I have never been a manager personally, but ro, I would love to have you as my manager because I think I'm busy. I'm having fun. And like having a enjoyable work environment. Like you said, it's just so conducive to better work. Like I love thinking about, you know, like every reality show, they say I'm not here to make friends. I am here to make friends. And that's why they call the team right everyone work together. We have a comment here from Nicole Martin, lead by example. Love this. Couldn't agree more put out the energy that you want to get back.
Christopher Harrison:Yeah. 100%.
Chloe Condon:And when did you first like start touching a computer and thinking of it in terms of code?
Ro Paydar:Okay, well, the first time I was playing around with it, I didn't really know what code was. So like, I had a Tumblr account when I was 16, like most 16 year olds have. And I was like, I want my layout to look the cutest. So I would see someone create a layout and like you're supposed to like copy and paste this into the editor and Tumblr. And I would like copy all the HTML and CSS not knowing what it was i'd slap it in there. And then I'd be like, I like this color. So like, I'd start scrolling through these lines of code, not knowing it was lines of code and then I'd see like a hex color. And I'm like, that looks familiar. Cuz I think I used to draw like, I don't know if either of you remember Facebook had a feature called graffiti. Okay, that sounds a little familiar. You could draw on your friends walls or like their their Facebook profiles. You could just draw stuff and send it to them. And that was called graffiti. And I used to just grade nine graffiti all the time. And I have all these pictures that I was drying just using a mouse. And I didn't know that I could do that. But I was I was pretty impressed. Looking back. I'm like, wow, I actually didn't do a bad job of sounds
Chloe Condon:like Microsoft Paint. for Facebook,
Ro Paydar:actually kind of. And I think from there, I learned what x codes were because I would just see these little numbers and letters. And so when I was able to print that out in the in the actual code, I would just take a different hex code, plug it in, and then see the results. I just did that. So I like play around and move pixels around. And then one day, I just stopped because I was like, oh, okay, summer's over time to go back to school. And I forgot about code. I didn't even know what it was, like I said, so. I think it wasn't until 2018 that I wanted to try something new. As we know, I had that one year where I worked every job. And then again, I found my restaurant job. And I was there for a while. And I was like, you know, the money is good. I like my coworkers. I like the hours of great, but I don't feel quite passionate about this. Even though I'm good at this. I don't want to stay here. And my partner was like, why don't you look into code? And I was like, why music? I don't know. Maybe you'd enjoy it. Okay. So I looked at a couple places that were available in Toronto, and I saw the school and I went to go check it out. And when I arrived, I loved the vibes I loved the people were sitting and not running around like crazy at a restaurant, you know, I was like, Oh, I could do that. I could sit for my job, that'd be great. So, finally, they tell me Well, okay, you know, this is great and all but the fee is like 10 to $12,000 up front. I was like, Ah, okay, I guess that's not happening. But I left there feeling kind of like discouraged. But I thought about it and kept thinking about it and was like, I still, I think this is something I could still try and my partner's, like a lot of people self teach. So you could try that. And the first language I tried to learn, as recommended to me by a quiz from Code Academy was Python.
Chloe Condon:I was a Python JavaScript gallon myself when I first started.
Ro Paydar:Well, the thing is, as someone who barely understood what HTML CSS was, that was a huge shock. And my friend who went to school for engineering is one of those people who is so smart, they don't have to study for their test and gets like 90s was trying to teach me. And as you print both probably understand, most ADHD brains have a certain way of studying and learning and grasping things. And so for me, I got kind of scared away from coding a little bit, because I was like, What if this coding, not for me, but I had introduced, I was introduced to someone by a colleague of mine. And this person is a developer and I met up with this person. And they went to the school that I ended up going to, they, they kept checking in on me, they kept making sure that I was still on the path and wasn't falling off, even though I was but every time they checked in, they were like, get back in their house. Okay. So, one day, they found an intro to web dev course, from my school. And it basically just goes over HTML, CSS, responsive design and accessibility. And they told me, like, try it out. And if you love it, then you know that you should probably stay in this industry. And if you don't, then at least you tried. And hopefully you take some skill from this. And I was like, okay, so I tried it. And like day one, I just loved being there. And it was an amazing experience. And that point on, I went to boot camp, and then that's it. That's how I got here.
Chloe Condon:Now, it's interesting, because I am very similar. I too have ADHD. And I really need structure like our dear pal, PJ, who has been on the show before, he's self taught, he can do it all on his own, I needed accountability. I'm an obliger. So I will not get work done. Unless it's for myself, I won't get any work done for anyone else. I will get it done. So I needed that structure of other people going through the same course at the same time. We've got some great comments in the chat here that say things like ADHD and learning from reading books is out of the question. In my experience. I was at the same case for you, when you were kind of learning you really needed that group. incentive and environments. It sounds like you're this friend who's checking in with you like that external accountability seems to be very helpful for neuro diverse folks. It seems. Yeah,
Ro Paydar:I mean, definitely, like trying to learn on my own was tricky, but once I got my footing, and once I entered my school, really and like had that backup and had a teacher, everything seemed to pick up and click and everyone around me started noticing how passionate I was there. Like I've never seen you this passionate about anything before. And, like that's how I knew this was this was it so, you know, I'm really hoping that I can eventually break through into this industry because like, I know I want to be here and I want to keep going. And sometimes it's tough. But, you know, that's just life. And I think that giving up early is not an option even though it feels like it's sometimes it's not. It's not.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, we should also say, bro is job searching So anybody who wants to hire I mean think of all the CSS art you could have think I'll give you like, Oh yeah, I we have a shout out to Donna here in the chat. Donna Sarkar. She's She's a great role model to follow. I totally agree there. I am just looking I'm tweeting out this this image. I'm sure we'll get a bunch of viewers in a second of the Clippy and Daria stuff here. What are you looking for in your first, you know, engineering technical role? Like what is your dream job that you see yourself doing in the industry?
Ro Paydar:I'll be totally blunt. And this is something of a trying to figure out since I took step one, I'm still trying to figure it out. But the thing is, I'm very open minded.
Chloe Condon:We don't know what we want to do, either.
Ro Paydar:Yeah, that's the thing. Like people, people keep asking me that question. And I keep thinking and thinking and like, you know, the thing is, so far, I'm enjoying playing around with react. So I know that I have no idea. Yeah. I've been enjoying playing around with react. And obviously, like HTML, CSS, that's always like, you know, that's always fun. It's very it comes, it can, it can very easily once I finished that intro course, and then did it again. So that is always something that I enjoy doing. And same with JavaScript, just understanding that and keep, keep working on it. But in terms of like, Where do I want to go, like, I can't tell you like a perfect title. Because it's so it's so hard to pick just one thing when there's so many different titles out there. And so many different ways to learn. It's just crazy.
Chloe Condon:For me, that's been the beauty of even just making a transition into tech is that I feel like in every other job that I had, and y'all can create my LinkedIn later, I've worked every job from the Disney Store to J crew to children's birthday party entertainer to summer camp counselor is when I was working as an actress, you know, you would get the best that you could at singing or the best that you could at dancing or acting. And like there was a peak in which you became a professional or an expert. I even think about this with medical degrees, like it was always sort of imprinted in my brain that you had a specialty. And you stuck it to that and your foot doctor and your foot doctor the rest of your life. And what has been so cool about working in tech is I have already in my five year career worked in several different technology expertises, from Docker to error reporting to serverless. And it's so cool, that there's no shortage of things to learn in this industry. And I can be you know, working on Azure stuff now and in a year working on machine learning, and that's totally normal. So I love that you're keeping it open.
Christopher Harrison:Yes. so fantastic. For the for that for the for the ADHD brain. Because it's like, Okay, cool. I've done this, I've done this, I've done this. And now I'm kind of bored. Let me go find something else that I can get really excited about and start playing with. So yeah, so like you mentioned that you're interested in react. And that's fantastic. So you can dig into react for a little while. And then you know, after a year or two decide, hey, you know what, I'm bored. Let me let me let me go look at view and you can start digging into view. And yeah, just keep keep playing. That's it's so fantastic.
Chloe Condon:Yeah. So have you had to do any engineering interviews yet? Have you gotten to that point of your job search? Has it been a total just like what is this moment? Cuz I know for me going from the job interview that included. Here's my resume, nice to meet you. whiteboarding. Oh, my goodness, what a new thing to add into your your tool belt of things that you need to know, as an engineer? How has that experience been for you?
Ro Paydar:That was a terrifying transition. I did not like it just being totally upfront. I did not like going from like, I would go into interviews. And I knew I would get the job because I was so good at interviewing, right? And then I went to tech, and I just got so good at this. We're gonna start it over. But I always do very well, the first interview because I've had I've had probably like 10 at this point, maybe a bit more. And I always do very well on the first, but either the roles they the people who usually reach out, they realize, Oh, sorry, we're looking for someone more senior and I'm like, Well, okay, and then the other part is, we either get to the technical part, and it's a little bit too technical, and it's sometimes confusing because I'm told Well, it's okay. If you're not super Good at the technical part as long as you could show them that, you know, some of the work and like if you don't know it, like what you would do to kind of supplement that. And, and then also if they just really like you and I was like, okay, cool,
Chloe Condon:I can get people to like we I guess.
Ro Paydar:And yeah, it's just it always seems to be like the part two where it just kind of stops because it's either just not the right fit in terms of like what I know so far. Or it's just they had like so many other candidates to choose from. So it's like, Okay, that makes sense.
Chloe Condon:It's definitely a chicken and an egg battle, because I remember especially for my first role going to these, I almost said auditions, go into these interviews. And they knew going in that I was a bootcamp grad. And I would ask for feedback if I didn't get the role. And they say, you know, we're just looking for someone with more experience. I was like, you knew what your knew what was going on here. So I to anybody out there like, like yourself, or PJ, who are either self taught or bootcamp grad trying to get their way into this industry. I always say we should have like, like Letterman jackets of honor little badge of honor for folks, because it's hard to even get through the front door. So hang in there. These interviews, even for experienced folks like myself, Christopher, who I see nodding along here, whiteboarding is not easy.
Christopher Harrison:So here's the thing is that I like I cheated the Kobayashi Maru. Because I've, I think, maybe once in my entire career, I've actually had to do the the whiteboard thing. Just because I, I had, like, I came up in a very different in a different path. And so I started as a trainer. And so that's how I've been able to sort of, like prove my technical skills. And then every time I've gotten a job, it's it's been much more focused around. Well, for the most part, it's been more focused around the around me being able to do education thing. So I haven't had that, that that tech part. And so what I what I always like to try and tell junior developers is I'm going to be honest, like, if you put me up there in in a junior developer coding interview and asked me to start whiteboarding, like, how do I write about bubblesort? I have I literally true story like, this is not an exaggeration, I have, I have no idea. And I have to give it to, there was one company that I interviewed at a very long time ago, and I did get get the job is their coding interview was, here's a little piece of paper with, you know, a handful of different tests that are different things that we want in this app, these different features. And then they just gave you a computer. And they said, here, here's an hour, build something. And that was the way then that they they decided whether or not you're a good developers, like that's perfect, because you know what, that's what we all do, like, yes, people whiteboard, like different ideas, but nobody is writing code on a whiteboard.
Chloe Condon:Yeah, it's so true. And I think like, I found myself I'll share the video, right. But I was the same way. I was like, Wait a second, I just had to learn how to code. And now you're gonna make me do these crazy sorting methods that I didn't learn in my coding course. But here's my tip to anybody out there who's a senior programmer or junior programmer, these videos of the Hungarian folk dances, I'm a visual learner. And in hackbright, they showed us these videos that basically I'll click through here, but it shows you how these sorts work with dancers and all the dancers have numbers on them. So you can kind of see it. Let's see which one is this? This is bubblesort with Hungarian folk dance. And this was literally the only way I would have to have this open and be playing leet code at the same time to like, visualize what these structures look like. So for anybody out there who needs visual cues, Hungarian folk dances helps me out quite a bit for interview. Yeah, it's very, it's one of those things where, gosh, I saw a tweet one of my favorite tweets out there about whiteboarding is the man who invented homebrew, which is used by famously by everybody to download, you know, different dependencies and whatnot. And I guess he had just interviewed at Apple. And it said, You literally build the tool that 100% of our developers use, but you can't invert a binary tree. So you can't get a job here. And I think that's such a way to describe, you know, in this industry, just how these historically, you know, done interview methods are not the best for everyone out there, especially neuro diverse folks like ourselves. So I wish they should have a warning before you sign up for a boot camp, like Do you know what the interview processes for?
Ro Paydar:But also, that could scare some people off because if I saw that I'd probably run the other way.
Chloe Condon:It's very, very true. Well, we have about five minutes left on the show. So we have to do two very important things. One is we also Let's talk on the show about what our guests favorite theme park is and theme park attractions. So Knoxville young spot row, but do you have a favorite theme park and a favorite theme park attraction? I love it.
Ro Paydar:Oh my gosh. Well, well, okay. Here's a see this is why I tell people I'm not as cool as you. You might think my my online persona makes you think I am. I get motion sick, so I can't really ride roller coasters, but I love them. And I haven't been to Universal in Disneyland for years. But like, I love both those parks. But like, the one that I go to in Toronto is it's called Canada's Wonderland. Ah,
Chloe Condon:I've never heard of this.
Ro Paydar:This is a love Wonderland. Like I used to go all the time. And there's there's this one right i think it's called the Leviathan. Okay. Let me let me find it. Wonderland.
Chloe Condon:What is the theme of Canada's Wonderland? Is it Alice in Wonderland?
Ro Paydar:No, it's it's literally it's just a sorry, one sec. I'm trying to find the actual roller coaster. It's just like a theme park a big theme park but I mean, you don't have to watch the video because it's it's probably some like really intense. Oh my God, this link is gonna make
Christopher Harrison:everybody motion sick.
Ro Paydar:Yeah, that's that huge link that's just my Google search of Leviathan from Canada's Wonderland because like I went on that once. And oh, actually, there is an amazing picture. That is I think a product of the Leviathan that I'm going to pull up on Facebook. It looks
Unknown:very intense for someone who does not ride roller coasters right.
Chloe Condon:Official point of view
Ro Paydar:I just did very motions thick. Yes, if you need a POV of Leviathan that is it. And you can ride the ride for free with us right now.
Chloe Condon:This was early quarantine for me was watching a lot of videos of Disney park rides from the point of view so this this is definitely up my alley and I will be watching this in its entirety later.
Ro Paydar:Oh my gosh, I'm trying to find this picture because it is a really great picture and you will see why in just a moment.
Chloe Condon:But I really feel like I should be leaning back getting ready to go down a really big drop here in a second.
Ro Paydar:This is still going oh yeah like it is you mungus it is very scary like at one point I was like Okay, wait, this is still going up. This is still going up.
Chloe Condon:I really feel like I'm there.
Ro Paydar:That's literally like you go like forward and down and it's just like crazy. This is the point where I get right here.
Christopher Harrison:One of my favorite things about playing roller coaster tycoon Yeah, you start to spot like the specific things in the roller coaster then that you would get rewarded for inside of roller coaster tycoon you know going under part of it or like having that little shoot and and, and and so forth. Like you know all of those different things, you know, spot like we're all educated on rollercoasters just because of that game.
Chloe Condon:This is honestly given me You took the words right out of my mouth. Christopher's give me a hankering to play roller coaster tycoon. And I think I see a fun project for row in the future. Like, we got to make some kind of roller coaster tycoon project. I love So, bro, where can people find out about all the cool stuff that you're doing? Of course, I'm going to bring up your website here in a second so people can check out the baby Battle of babies stuff and all of that fun stuff. But where can people find you on the interwebs?
Ro Paydar:Oh, well, you can find me on Twitter at Rhoda coder. You can also find me on Instagram at real decoder, you can find me at my LinkedIn which would be I believe you could do ro the coder and I will come up. And you can also find me on Twitch basically any platform you could probably find me a real decoder except for GitHub. That's my first and last name so that'd be Roseanne Hadar which is spelled right there for you. So in case you are like how do I spell that right there.
Chloe Condon:And you can check out all the links in our show notes. This has been such a lovely time road thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you Christopher for coming in and being a wonderful Brandon stand in and let's see. I well let's see how should we end the show today? We don't have Brandon here today so we can do it however we want. Should we play it today play one battle of the babies and out the show.
Christopher Harrison:I think I see no Either way,
Chloe Condon:I'm gonna battle some babies and we'll close out the show. Who should help me select my fighter we're going to do I think we got to do baby Yoda right? Yes.
Ro Paydar:Yeah. All right.
Chloe Condon:Baby Yoda is battling Groot. And that's okay because any baby is winning my heart here. All right, y'all, that'll be our show for today. But everybody higher row to be your future, anything baby battler anything of that sort and we will see you next week on eight bits. Bye bye