After taking a little break from LinkedIn Live because of conference preparation, I came back with Taylor Desseyn, Vice President of Global Community at Torc. We first met at CYC 2025, and after seeing everything Taylor and the Torc community have been doing, I knew there was a lot we could talk about.
We planned for about 30 minutes.
We ended up talking for almost an hour.
We didn’t exactly have a smooth start to the LinkedIn Live. A few minutes in, my connection dropped and Taylor suddenly found himself hosting my Live by himself. He kept the Live going and continued talking while I worked my way back in.
You should definitely watch the video for that part because the written version won’t do it justice.
Once I rejoined, we got into what we were actually there to talk about: community, career growth, AI, content creation, DevRel, speaking, and the importance of showing up.
Community, CYC and Torc
Yodit: We can start with introducing yourself.
Taylor: Sure. I’ve been helping engineers really get to work for the last 15 years. I’ve spent nine years of my career really focused as a heads down recruiter. I’ve probably placed, at this point, over 5,000 engineers in new jobs.
Lately, I’ve moved into this community building role. What I tell people is that what I do now is I’m still a recruiter, but I’m not a one to one recruiter. I help people at scale.
So, get people connected through in person events, help provide high value content to navigate your career and job search through virtual events, and various other things as well.
Basically, 15 years in the engineering industry recruiting engineers, and again, excited to be here.
Yodit: That’s amazing. First, I have a question. Where do you get your energy?
Because we just wrapped up CYC 2026, and I’m still recovering. I saw you already online yesterday. When I messaged you, like, “How do you feel about our LinkedIn Live?” I was expecting you to say, “You know what? I’m tired. Let’s reschedule for next week.”
Taylor: I’m gonna be honest. It’s a little performative based. I kind of view myself as an actor. I know it’s weird to say.
The reality of it is, if you really wanna see who I am, ask my wife, because I’m definitely not as charismatic all the time.
But the reality is I get excited to help people. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years.
People ask me, “Where do you get your energy? How do you continually show up?”
Because I’m an introvert.
Yodit: I wouldn’t have guessed that!
Taylor: Everyone’s like, “I don’t know how you’re an introvert.”
But the reality is that I have learned over the course of years how to conserve my energy and when to exert my energy.
People joke with me. I don’t stay out for networking events. When I go to a conference, I’m usually in bed by 9:00. If it’s a dinner, I go right home. I don’t go to drinks after.
I’m pretty regimented in my time.
But I do that because I wanna be able to give as much energy to people as I feasibly can.
Yodit: That’s amazing.
I remember when we met at CYC 2025, you had a booth for Torc, and I was asking, “This is too good to be true. What is the catch?”
Taylor: There’s no catch.
I think what we’re doing at Randstad Digital and Torc, the way I tell people is, think of Microsoft as Randstad Digital and think of LinkedIn as Torc.
We’ve built our own internal version of LinkedIn that helps people get jobs. We really created an inner circle.
I think one of the biggest issues with the job search right now is all the applicants.
This is actually my second livestream today. I had Guidance Counselor 2.0 earlier today, and we talked about the thousands of applicants.
What we’ve done with Torc is built a platform where, if you sign up, you can specifically get access to jobs that other people don’t have access to.
However, we have layered that with the community approach, which is basically DevRel.
Instead of putting out documentation on the latest APIs or our latest framework, we actually help provide value through your career and job search.
It’s the resume reviews. It’s the LinkedIn reviews. It’s the Q&A fireside chats we bring into the community. It’s the upskilling. It’s the in person events.
My mom said the same thing.
My mom was like, “So how much do you charge for this stuff?”
And I was like, “Nothing. It’s free.”
She was like, “You’re kidding me?”
I think we have a good thing going. We can always be better. We’re always pivoting. We’re actively looking at our feedback from our events through Luma and pivoting.
But I truly think we’ve built a foundation to really help people navigate their careers.
Yodit: That’s amazing. I feel like that’s one of the reasons you really sync well with the CYC community. They also have that same community driven approach.
This was my second time at CYC. For you, comparing the previous one with this one, do you see any change?
Taylor: There are a lot of storylines with Commit Your Code for me.
Danny and I met during COVID virtually. He started to really get into the streaming tech world, and he was looking for people to come on and review LinkedIns.
I just slid into his DMs. I was like, “Hey, let’s do it. You seem like a cool guy.”
He and I hit it off.
Actually, our stream together has 91,000 views on YouTube, which is crazy.
I still get people coming up to me. They’re like, “I’ve watched that religiously for years.”
That’s a storyline for me.
The other storyline is that Commit Your Code was kind of our first official conference.
We showed up in the States as a community team for Torc in 2024. The 2024 one, I believe, was in September, and I started in August, so that was kind of our first one.
It has been really cool to see Danny’s evolution and what he’s built.
It has also been really cool to see our evolution because the very first Commit Your Code, I threw a little informal hangout. About five people showed up for lunch.
The next year, we threw a dinner. About 30 people showed up.
Then we threw our in person event at Commit Your Code this time, and we had about 75 people show up.
It has been really cool to see the evolution of not only what Danny has built but also what we’ve built.
It’s those storylines converging.
There’s a lot of overlap. Danny is really passionate about helping people get to work. So am I.
I always love showing up and supporting.
Yodit: I was actually at the after party this time at Hideaway. It was really good, and a lot of people showed up. I was surprised.
The community is growing very fast. I remember it was, how many thousand was it?
Taylor: We’re over 5,000 in Discord.
I actually found out we’re over 10,000 in our Luma community too. And that’s not even sharing the actual deep numbers. I don’t wanna share specifics.
But we’ve grown our North American user base 320% this year.
There are different levels to this thing.
We’ve been able to not only grow the brand from a public perspective but also grow the community as it relates to Randstad Digital and helping people get jobs.
Yodit: I remember I told you this when we met in person. I thought you were the founder of Torc.
Taylor: I get that a lot!
Mike Morris, if you watch this, I’m not the founder.
Mike Morris and Dave Messenger are, but they’ve trusted me to be the very vocal voice of it, so I’m very grateful for that.
Content, Community and Showing Up
Yodit: Obviously, you’re doing amazing.
I also see you post YouTube videos. I remember seeing the vlog you did for Arizona. It was almost, I believe, 17 minutes, and I watched it in one go. It was so good.
I was wondering, do you overthink?
For example, for me, I started one community driven YouTube channel. I have my personal YouTube too, but sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to be consistent, and now it’s holding me back.
How do you keep consistent, be genuinely energetic in the videos, and keep showing up?
Taylor: It’s exhausting.
The Phoenix vlog, the Raleigh vlog, and now we’re working on the Commit Your Code vlog. All of those I’ve shot myself.
I shoot all that myself, and then I have a few editors I work with that are great.
But it’s hard.
There are some conferences where I would love to just show up and not take one photo and one video.
But the reality is that the way marketing and branding work, you have to always be upfront and center.
And I wanna document the ride.
The reality is that you can go back now and watch all of the Commit Your Code vlogs, and you’ll see a change.
I’m really passionate about helping people, but I’m also really passionate about storytelling and bringing people along for the ride.
I pull a lot from run clubs or CrossFit or Hyrox, all these brands, fashion brands that build in public and bring people along for the ride.
I talk about it all the time. You have these kids that start a T shirt company and they go viral.
And it’s like, we’re out here helping people land jobs.
So what could I do and what could we accomplish if I mimicked what these companies are doing but brought it to the corporate world?
That’s why a lot of our stuff doesn’t feel overly corporate.
I really like to have more of an organic, natural approach to it.
I think it’s worked.
Yodit: It’s actually working. People are getting jobs, and the community is growing.
I like the fact that there are so many different things. There’s the Laid Off Lounge and also the Friday one. What was the Friday one?
Taylor: Yappy Hour is our networking hour.
Then we have our Laid Off Lounge.
The Laid Off Lounge is kind of a more intimate version of Guidance Counselor 2.0.
It’s basically where we bring in people who have been through the job search or hiring managers who can help answer questions.
It’s very informal.
We do that because we realized people are more willing to ask questions and be engaged in Discord than in public streams.
We’re actively trying to pivot and figure out how to gain more engagement.
When it comes to Yappy Hour, that’s our weekly networking session.
Then Roxy has her podcast, She Ships, highlighting women in tech.
Obviously, I have my podcast, Guidance Counselor 2.0.
Then we also have our career audit sessions, where we review resumes, Torc profiles, and LinkedIn.
We do a lot.
Yodit: I remember you saying it’s hard for you to keep up with the Discord messages.
There are different communities providing different values.
For someone also trying to job search and attend all these amazing sessions, how do you get the best out of it if you can’t be present for all the content?
Taylor: This is something I actively think about because the reality is I can’t get into Discord all day. I’m in meetings all day.
I’m constantly thinking about how we engage with the Gen Zs out there. The Gen Zs are in Discord, but then you also have the boomers who aren’t gonna get in Discord.
For us, if you wanna be engaged with what we do, show up to a stream.
Show up to an event. We do a lot of in person events.
Sign up for the email newsletter.
I think that’s a great start.
There was a decision I made to go with Discord instead of Slack.
But there have been more conversations about, as we grow in 2027, we’re in 2027 planning now, should we spin up a Slack?
Should we have a Slack just for people who want to use Slack?
The whole point of community is meeting people where they’re at.
If we’re making people use Discord and they don’t wanna use Discord, that is not meeting people where they’re at.
The reality is we’re such a lean team. We just have to pick where we wanna go right now.
I found out the other day there are other communities within Randstad Digital on Microsoft Teams.
So it’s like, do we need to be on Teams?
These are all the things.
Community building is a very hard and vague thing. You kind of just have to know how to do it.
The Discord has grown from a few hundred members when we started in 2024, when there were almost no messages being sent, to now over 5,000 members and about 16,000 messages in a month.
Yodit: Wow. That’s amazing.
Mentorship and Career Growth
Yodit: What is the rewarding part?
For example, is it people getting a job or even the fact that they just show up after a long week on Friday and feel refreshed?
How do you summarize that?
Taylor: We have a mentor mentee program.
We took a break because we’ve been traveling so much. We’re gonna spin it up again in October.
One of our mentees got matched to a mentor and found a job because of the relationship with the mentor, not even through us.
Yodit: Wow.
Taylor: That’s kind of the whole thing.
There’s no silver bullet when it comes to your job search.
Do I wish we could place every single person within Torc and Randstad Digital?
Of course I do.
But the reality is we probably can’t.
So for us, it’s providing all this other value.
It’s the resume reviews. It’s all the things we’ve talked about.
I had a guy come up to me at All Things Open AI in March when I spoke in Raleigh.
He came up to me and goes, “Hey, you don’t know me, but I just wanna let you know I hopped into your resume reviews in Discord. Jason reviewed my resume, and because of the changes he made me do, I got an internship, and I’m moving out to California.”
All of these conversations.
We literally have a Slack channel of feedback that I screenshot.
There was one today. Somebody messaged around CYC.
They said, “I caught up with Roxy at the Friday event. I started following advice available from Danny Thompson and watching some of the reviews on the Torc Discord. I then got my resume reviewed and LinkedIn reviewed by the Torc Discord.”
After updating from the reviews, their LinkedIn profile views from recruiters went from something like 50 ish in 90 days to nearly 600 in the past 90 days.
They said, “I would say I average about three recruiters per day in my DMs, sometimes as many as 10.”
Yodit: Wow.
Taylor: The reality is that we’re here to help you find a job, whether it’s through us or not.
Yodit: You mentioned the mentor mentee relationship at Torc. How can someone be part of it?
Taylor: Sign up for the newsletter.
That’s kind of our faucet of information.
We send it out once a week. It literally comes from my team. We write it every week.
The mentor mentee program will obviously go pretty hard on social when we announce it, and we’ll send it through email.
We’ll probably open up sign ups in October.
The way we’ve done it in the past is anywhere from five to 10 mentors in a specific skill set and anywhere from 25 to 50 mentees.
We pair them up based on what they wanna do.
Is it a technical side?
Is it more of a career side?
We’re going to Argentina in two weeks for a conference. Once we’re back, we’re gonna turn on the faucet and start our mentor mentee program sign ups.
We’re gonna redo it.
If I’m gonna be honest with you, if you work for me, Brianna, Roxy, Jason, and Amanda can all attest to this.
I’m like, “Burn it down. Let’s rebuild it.”
We’re gonna burn down the mentor program again and rebuild it.
We don’t know if it’s gonna be super organized with tasks or if it’s more just on the person. More to come there.
But we’ll have sign ups.
We’ll also be opening up ambassador sign ups.
Our ambassador team is, in my opinion, top notch.
We’ll be opening ambassador sign ups in November.
If everything goes to plan, the awards and rewards our ambassadors will get will be more than they’ve ever been.
If you just wanna help people and be an advocate for what we’re building, we’ll have sign ups in November.
Yodit: I didn’t know there was a reward.
I was actually about to ask about Jeff because he’s everywhere in Discord. Is he part of the team?
Taylor: The way I treat the ambassador team is very similar to the way Bandit Running treats their influencer program.
I really view the ambassadors as an extension of our team.
We have a really lean team just because of budget.
We have an ambassador only chat in Discord.
We constantly get feedback from them.
I have a few of them on a text message basis where they have direct access to my phone.
If they need me, if there’s anything broken, if there’s anything we need improved, I tell them to do it.
Jeff has been massive in helping us run Discord with Roxy.
We’ve had a bunch of other ambassadors who help us with posting and gaining visibility for what we’re doing.
Shout out to Pat Clark.
I actually don’t know if Pat Clark is technically even an ambassador, but he’s a VP of Engineering in Raleigh Durham.
He went to our meetup for All Things Open that we were sponsoring last night and presented on behalf of us.
That has been really, really cool.
I appreciate Jeff and everybody who has helped us.
Yodit: When people register for the mentoring program, does it end after six weeks? Is it ongoing until someone gets a job?
Taylor: I don’t know.
Again, this is kind of the whole “burn it down, rebuild it.”
We did have a curriculum.
I don’t think it was necessarily well received.
I think people really want to be able to go at their own pace and have their own questions.
If I’m just pontificating here, I think what we’re gonna do is have a technical track and a job search track.
That is something we’ve kind of done in the past, but not really.
Again, taking a book out of Danny and Commit Your Code.
Our technical track will probably be very focused around AI literacy.
Maybe we’ll do a Java track because we’re in a lot of enterprise shops.
Then we’ll have a job search track or career track where you can hop on and go over how to write a LinkedIn, how to write a resume, and all that stuff.
More to come there.
But that’s kind of high level what I want our next mentor program to be: a technical track and a job search or career track.
Then we’ll probably cap it at three months.
I’ve done mentor programs before through the University of South Carolina.
Sometimes you just run out of things to talk about.
I don’t wanna have a six month program and string people along.
So we’ll probably keep it super short, super concise, three months.
Then if you wanna continue with your mentor afterward, you can.
Yodit: When you put a deadline toward something, people will put more into it.
Taylor: People want deadlines as much as they don’t want deadlines. They do want deadlines.
Yodit: And separating the career and technical tracks is good because not everyone has the same goal.
Taylor: Exactly.
We’re starting 2027 planning now with me and Brianna, and I think we’re gonna have much more incentives for our ambassadors next year.
But again, I appreciate all the ambassadors now who have taken a chance on us and have just done it for the love of the game.
We appreciate it.
Yodit: We kind of started talking about layoffs. Have you ever been laid off?
Taylor: Technically, I chose to move on with all of my opportunities.
But the reality is, if I did not choose to move on, I would have been laid off.
There was kind of writing on the wall.
So yes, I have left two jobs now at this point in my career.
Yodit: Was the transition easier for you? Did it take longer?
Taylor: I’ve been doing what I do for a long time.
I have a very deep network of folks, which is why I continue to preach: do these streams, show up, do a podcast, do something, get connected with people.
My job searches both times took less than a month, which I was very fortunate about.
If it happened again, I don’t know. I think it would take me a little longer.
When I left Vaco, I documented my job search.
I talked about what I was doing each day and all this stuff.
Everything I preach is everything I do.
Yodit: Yes, I’m a witness.
DevRel and the Changing Job Market
Yodit: We have a question in the chat about transitioning into DevRel and insights into the job market.
Taylor: I saw an interesting post the other day by Hank Taylor.
Shout out to Hank. He’s great.
He was formerly at Vercel, and he was recently at Laravel. He’s more of a technical marketer.
He has a podcast called Developer Marketing or something. I listen to it. I promise, Hank, I just forgot the title.
He and his friend Gonto were talking about how DevRel is kind of splitting.
There is developer experience, the documentation and things like that, which can increasingly be done with AI.
Then there is the public facing stuff: the streams, the events, the personality.
While I am not traditional DevRel, everything I tell my team to do has helped people get jobs.
Jason Torres got promoted out. Our community manager got promoted out and went to JetBrains.
Amanda Cruz, who was our Latin community manager, did the steps on my team and then she got promoted out.
I love Roxy to death, but the reality is I know somebody’s gonna pick her off within two years because she’s a gem, even though I don’t want them to.
You have to stream.
You have to be comfortable streaming and developing educational videos.
Josh Cirre at Laravel, I think, is one of the masters at it.
Even Aaron Francis, I know he’s VP of Marketing and Community now at Laravel, but he has been great at video.
You have to understand videos, how to create videos, how to run a booth, and understand the developer ecosystem.
Do you write?
Does your stuff get engagement?
It’s all of those things.
AI is taking over more of the operational work, which makes it even more important for Developer Relations people to be front and center and comfortable streaming, executing events, etc.
Which is everything we do with my team. We just aren’t a SaaS company.
Yodit: Speaking of Aaron, being more active on LinkedIn, starting my blog, and doing all these videos actually started from listening to his keynote speech at CYC 2025.
I tagged him, but I don’t know if he read it or not.
That’s where I got the inspiration to be this active on LinkedIn.
Taylor: Aaron’s great.
Aaron and I had coffee in Dallas last week.
We caught up and exchanged notes on how I’m running my team and how he’s running his team.
There’s a lot of overlap, which was cool.
I highly recommend checking him out.
Yodit: I didn’t even know he was in Dallas.
AI, Work and Careers
Yodit: Speaking of AI, I saw your post this morning.
It said 72% of employers say they cannot fill their roles, yet there are so many people out there job searching.
It’s kind of funny to navigate.
What was that post about?
Taylor: You need to pivot.
I think the problem is people aren’t pivoting.
I talked about this morning on my Guidance Counselor 2.0 stream.
People are like, “I’m just a frontend React guy or gal. That’s all I’m gonna do.”
But the reality is that you have to start integrating AI.
These companies want AI first developers, but people don’t use it, so the jobs stay open.
If I did what most developers are doing right now in my role, I wouldn’t do half the stuff I’m doing.
But the reality is I’m leveraging AI in so many aspects that I’m fully AI native at this point.
I have bots running.
I have Claude for writing.
I have automations set to trigger.
I’m fully orchestrating everything through AI.
The reason I do that is because I have aspirations of taking on more of a marketing role, branding, community, kind of the whole thing.
What I’ve seen is companies now want marketers who can do the whole thing by themselves.
Aaron Francis posted it yesterday. He goes, “Every role now is a technical role.”
Every role.
And that is using AI.
My thing is, the jobs are still open because you have Java developers not using any AI.
They are still writing hard lines of code, which is fine.
But that’s what backs up that stat.
People aren’t pivoting.
People are sticking their heads in the sand thinking this is a fad.
This is not a fad.
It’s only gonna get better or worse depending on how you look at it.
If you stick your head in the sand for another year, I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to find a job.
That’s my hot take.
I have people in my DMs now who are not pivoting and who can’t find jobs.
It’s already happening.
Yodit: There’s an interesting distinction there.
Everyone uses AI now, but are you building something? Are you really integrating it?
Taylor: There’s a difference between using the chat feature on ChatGPT and using Grok bot to manage your entire content process.
There’s a difference between asking Claude to write a post and setting up sessions in Claude to monitor your social media analytics or email response rates.
They’re different.
Most people think, “I’m gonna use AI,” and it’s just like my mom asking ChatGPT something.
That’s not using AI.
You need to be able to fully orchestrate your entire day job using AI.
Right now, in this moment, Grok bot is pinging me because it is working in the background.
I have Muse that I’m trying out now. It’s going in the background right now.
I have other tools running right now on various other tests.
So I have three or four different AIs running these orchestration processes to help me do my job.
This is a hot take, but if you are not interested in AI, that is a signal that you’re not interested in learning and changing, which most companies act as a red flag.
If you’re just like, “I’m not gonna use it,” to me that’s like, “Well, then you’re not flexible to work with. So why am I gonna hire you?”
Yodit: Someone in the chat said they just added AI to their roadmap and are working on positioning soon. Do you think they should go all in?
Taylor: Yes.
If I were looking for a job, I’d be like, “I’m an AI first growth community marketer.”
And I can specifically pinpoint all of these orchestrations I have going now.
I will say Grok bot gets heavy on usage because I have a lot of things going with Grok bot right now, and it eats the usage.
But it is what it is.
Yodit: Do you think companies are willing to train people who want to go in that direction?
Taylor: No.
You know why?
Because you don’t need a company to train you using AI.
The reason I say that is because I am the pure definition of a nontechnical person who is fully AI native at this point.
You don’t need to pay for AI training.
You just do it. Figure it out.
Every task I do, every micro task, I ask myself, “Can this be automated with AI?”
Every task.
You can go on YouTube and train yourself.
You know what’s great about AI?
You can just ask it.
If you want someone to train you on using AI, you’ve missed the entire point.
AI can train you how to use AI.
This whole corporate training of, “We need to train people how to use AI.”
No.
You just need to be interested in using AI.
The first thing I do with any of these AI tools I use is say, “Hey, what can you do? How can you help me?”
I start there.
Yodit: But aren’t all these tools expensive?
Taylor: It depends.
What do you wanna do?
They are expensive.
My wife has had a conversation with me.
She goes, “You need to stop spending so much money on AI bots.”
I said, “I understand.”
So I cut them.
If there’s not immediate value, I cut it.
But how much money do you spend eating out a month?
How much money do you spend getting cold brew, like myself?
How much money do you spend on gaming?
The reality of the situation is we all have money we can put toward AI.
It’s how valuable you think AI is for your career.
I would say they’re not all expensive.
The tier above free for Claude is $20 a month.
I don’t think that’s expensive.
Some people may think it’s expensive, but the reality is that $20 a month could help you land your next job.
Yodit: What kind of things are you using AI for?
Taylor: I created a job search tracker on Claude.
That would have been within the $20 a month plan.
I have Grok bot going through all my YouTube videos, cutting them up for me at a super high level and creating a thumbnail.
I stream a lot, so I’m trying to condense everything.
Grok bot is doing all that.
I have another set of bots as my chief of staff internally.
I have one bot that’s project managing our whole team right now within Torc.
Yodit: Wow.
I actually don’t have X, but after seeing some of the CYC 2027 sponsors and everything around the corner, I was thinking, okay, maybe I should create X.
I see there’s a lot of technical stuff there too.
Taylor: Listen, I know people have thoughts on X.
I get it.
But I will tell you this: if you are not consuming X and seeing where the market is heading, you’re gonna get lost.
I don’t see that type of chatter on Bluesky.
I just don’t.
The reality is X is where a lot of the trends and things are heading.
I’ve learned a lot there.
I would pay $100 a month for X if it were subscription based.
Yodit: For me, it’s not about whether I like this or that.
It’s just that I don’t wanna add another platform where I’m scrolling.
I already have LinkedIn, and it might be good enough for something like that.
But I see it could also be useful to get more technical stuff, which I would like to.
Taylor: I think the technical trends are massive.
Yodit: My chat has never been this active. I love it. This is amazing.
Another thing I wanted us to cover is taking a break.
When you had paternity leave, you had to be away for, I don’t remember, was it three months?
How was coming back after a break?
Was it an easy decision to take the break in the first place?
Taylor: It wasn’t three months. It was about two months.
It was eight weeks.
I’m super grateful for Randstad Digital having an actual paternity leave and being able to help my wife.
It was good for me to reset.
The reality is I’m always on.
We’re going on a beach trip in October, and I’m gonna put it on the record: I’m gonna put my phone away.
I’m always answering emails, always answering chats, always answering texts.
Being able to unplug and focus on the baby, my wife, and our other two kids, we have three, was very beneficial.
Yodit: That’s amazing.
I think we have a question from the chat.
“I feel that, yes, bots are doing things for you and you’re moving fast, but what’s the point?”
Taylor: That’s the whole point.
You’re asking, “What’s the point?”
That is the whole point.
That’s what companies want.
Companies don’t want you to do manual labor anymore if it can be automated.
If you are not leveraging AI to be a 10x developer, whatever term you wanna use, that’s the whole point.
The whole point is to move faster.
The velocity at which we ship on my team is insane, and we have a very small team.
The reason for that is because I’m fully AI, Brianna’s fully AI, Roxy’s fully AI.
We do more.
We have contractors, but in terms of core full time people, there are only about five of us.
The reality is our output is like 15 people.
I’ve been told that on the record by multiple people.
It’s because of AI.
Get Over Yourself and Start Putting Yourself Out There
Yodit: You mentioned being more visible, streaming, and engaging with your followers or people who see you.
But what if someone is really stuck in analysis paralysis?
For example, I have something I want to do around data structures and algorithms.
I want to solve questions and put them on YouTube.
But it holds you a lot.
You’re like, “Okay, let me do this,” and then you postpone it.
Especially if you’re not used to being on camera, it can be hard to take that step.
I’m used to being on camera now because of LinkedIn Live, and if I’m having that issue, imagine people who have never done it before.
It would be a lot harder to take that step.
What do you recommend?
Taylor: I’m gonna say something that may ruffle some feathers.
Get over yourself.
My boss said this a while ago.
He said, and I quote, “You’re not that important.”
What he meant by that is nobody cares.
The reality of the situation is you’re like, “I don’t wanna post.”
But that’s one of the ways to really get anywhere these days.
People are like, “That’s not fair. It shouldn’t be that way. What about introverts?”
Why do you think I post so much?
Because I’m an introvert, and I leverage content.
You realize I very rarely walk into a room now where I don’t know people because of content.
The content opens doors.
The content is the thing that gets you warm conversations.
This whole argument that I have with people sometimes where it’s like, “Well, I’m an introvert. It shouldn’t be this way.”
It is.
I would always recommend putting yourself out there.
Build, build, build.
Good things will happen.
Yodit: Is that specifically for people who are interested in DevRel?
Taylor: No.
Anybody.
If I had time, I’d probably create content around this whole “dumb guy learning AI” situation.
You can be whoever and post whatever, and you can become known for that thing.
There are multiple people in our Torc community who aren’t senior, but they post about one thing over and over again.
In my mind, they’re known as that person now.
I’ve been encouraging my mom.
She’s in her 60s.
I told her, “You need to start a Substack and just talk about what you like.”
My mom loves AI agents too.
I got my dad using AI, which is crazy. My dad loves it.
You just talk about this stuff and become known for it.
I was known as a recruiter for a bit.
Now I’m known as a community person.
Now I’m trying to be known as the guy who tries all these AI bots.
It’s not for one person.
It’s not for one skill set.
You just need to put yourself out there.
Yodit: Another thing I want us to cover is the speaking engagements you have.
I know we scheduled for half an hour, but we can end with this one.
How was your speaking journey?
What was the first time you did it?
Because I did my first conference talk at CYC, and it was terrifying.
Taylor: I started speaking back in 2013.
That’s when I started getting involved in meetups.
I started going to the .NET meetup in Raleigh, which was very active at the time.
I started getting to know the guys and girls.
Finally, I became kind of the trusted confidant of the .NET group as this recruiter who actually cares and knows what he’s talking about.
So I got invited to speak at a code camp.
There are different levels to this thing.
Code camps were kind of your introduction.
I don’t see a lot of code camps anymore. I don’t know if they’re still going strong.
But back in 2013 and 2014, there were a lot of code camps.
It was usually a free event at a community college, usually on Saturdays.
My very first talk was totally Q&A.
There were no slides or anything.
I had the hour leading up to lunch.
We got to lunchtime, and I said, “Alright, guys, y’all can leave. It’s lunchtime.”
Nobody left.
Yodit: Wow.
Taylor: People went to get their lunches and came back in.
So I went for two hours on my very first talk.
Then I kind of got hooked after that.
I’ve iterated.
I’ve come up with talks.
I’ve been rejected a ton.
There are still a lot of conferences I would love to speak at that I’ve never spoken at.
It has been this evolution.
I used to be really big on no slides.
Now I use slides.
At All Things Open in October, I’m giving a three hour workshop, which is crazy.
The only other workshop I’ve given was at Commit Your Code two years ago, which I still have people talk about as probably one of my best talks.
I’m giving a three hour talk on how to use AI in your job search and career in October in Raleigh.
It has just been an evolution.
Like I said, I’ve been rejected a ton.
For the most part, all my talks have gone well.
I’ve had some that maybe didn’t go as well.
I’ve presented sick before.
It has definitely been a journey.
But I would highly recommend everybody start speaking.
Meetups are just gone, by the way.
One of the biggest pieces of feedback we get for Torc is, “Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re doing this. Nobody’s doing meetups.”
It has been really awesome to bring meetups back to cities through Torc.
Yodit: What is your favorite talk ever?
Taylor: I think there are a few that stand out.
Obviously, my very first talk ever at Raleigh Code Camp in 2013 was the Q&A talk about how to use recruiters.
I answered every single question.
I didn’t shy away from anything.
I think the Commit Your Code talk was still one of my best talks.
It was about how to write your resume, how to write your LinkedIn, and really how to get started on your job search.
Then I would say probably the other talk that really stands out, I mean, there have been a lot of talks that stand out, but I spoke in Barcelona at Spring I/O, which is one of the larger Java conferences in Europe.
It was a completely packed room at a Java conference.
I had 250 people in the room.
It was insane.
I’m very, very grateful for that.
Yodit: Wow, congratulations with all this.
Taylor: Yeah, and someone in the chat asked about the topic for CYC.
I don’t know if it was recorded. I think it was recorded. If you go through the archives, maybe ask Danny.
But that one was before all the AI hype.
So I was like, open up your resume, how to create your resume, how to create your LinkedIn, all that stuff.
Yodit: Yeah, and those LinkedIn Live sessions for LinkedIn and resume review, they’re really helpful.
They helped me a lot.
Oh my God, it’s almost one hour.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you everyone for showing up in the chat also.
We actually should do this again, like after three months or something.
Taylor: Yeah, let me know.
Yodit: Thank you. Thank you for coming.
Taylor: Absolutely. See you guys. Have a good one.
