The Scrimba Podcast

Chris Webster:
... This large consultancy and you get put on projects but you get put on the bench as well. You go between being on the bench, being on project. But being on the bench was quite good at times because it meant I could just... That's my Scrimba time.

Alex Booker:
That was Chris Webster, a teacher turned full-stack developer. After enrolling in a premium London bootcamp, Chris recently landed his first role in tech, but was the bootcamp worth all the money? I wanted to speak with Chris about his experience to see how the bootcamp compares to teaching yourself to code online. This way we'll get bright ideas from the bootcamp without necessarily having to invest the same time and money. This episode is particularly interesting because of Chris' perspective learning to code as a teaching practitioner who also has a master's in education. Apart from learning how Chris got the job, we spoke about the psychology behind effective adult learning, strategies to stay hyper-focused and the mindset that helped Chris see hard coding challenges through to find success. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Webster:
Funnily enough, when I was younger, when I was a teenager, when computers in the mid-nineties became a thing, every household was going to have a PC and so on. I was very, very interested in computers at the time. Used to take my computer apart, put it back together, but I'd say my computer is my mom and dad's computer. They used to really like to, "Man, get off the computer." Because they home made them back then and people couldn't use the phone if someone was on the internet. That kind made me kind lose interest in computers generally after a while because you can't really use them all the time. I've always been interested in computers and later in life I was like... Been in education for quite a while and thinking really would fancy a change.
A friend of mine during Covid, we was on a walk as you do and he said he was dating a girl who did a bootcamp and then got a job within 9 weeks. I was like, "What? That's crazy." It almost felt like there was a sign to me to say, "Oh Chris, you've got a really good opportunity here. You could go into a different career and then something that you're generally interested in." Because development and working in tech appeals to things like creativity and you have your own input, your own personality put into it as it were. I thought, yeah, it presented a really good chance for me to do something that I knew I'd be passionate about and be very committed to.

Alex Booker:
Were you passionate about teaching at the time? What were you teaching by the way?

Chris Webster:
I was teaching Mandarin, Chinese actually, funnily enough.

Alex Booker:
What?

Chris Webster:
I lived in China for a few years and then I wanted to come back to UK and there's an opportunity to do a PGCE in Mandarin, Chinese in London, so I did that and yeah, I was passionate about teaching because mainly I was passionate about learning Chinese. I put so much time into learning it and when I was teaching I was very enthusiastic trying to teach to the children and stuff like that, but I think education is a career, for me personally, I just felt like the amount of hours you put in to what you get back from it, you're doing it for the kids as it were, sort of thing. Nice to shot. I was in it for like 15 years and I thought I really want to try something else because I had friends who work in tech and their work life balance is really good and they were getting paid really well as well. I know the money's not everything, but I think work life balance is a really part of it, really for me.

Alex Booker:
Yeah. Were you doing teaching in a secondary school, that type of thing or was it a dedicated teaching center?

Chris Webster:
Well, I was based at a school which would roll out Mandarin interstate schools in the area, so I was a regional director for part of the UK as part of a national initiative. We got it into about 25 schools in the end and yeah, I was teaching in primary and secondary and I was working with universities as well. So all across the range, which is really good, from a pedagogical perspective it was really good because you see it across the entire range, so you try and work in many different schools as well.

Alex Booker:
Yeah, different ages.

Chris Webster:
You'd work in different schools and then you try different approaches for different kids at different age groups and you find that things work well for older kids as well as younger kids and vice versa. That was interesting.

Alex Booker:
I think a little bit later in the interview we can look at the similarities between learning and teaching a natural language versus a programming language. I'm kind of curious if there's something there. But talk to me a little bit about why you wanted to make the change. It sounded like you were quite successful in the role.

Chris Webster:
It wasn't an easy decision. A lot of... I wouldn't say a lot of people, there were close family and friends that say, "Are you sure you want to do this sort of thing because you have to go start from scratch and build up again?" But I knew that by making a change, I felt confident I could make it a success because from learning a foreign language like Mandarin, Chinese and everything that comes with it such as resilience, perseverance. If you get out what you put in, it kind of applies to everything really in life. If you work hard, you persevere, don't give up, you'll get there in the end. Coming to tech, I started at a lower salary but after a year I got a new job and then I increased my salary and now I can earn a better salary over time. But that's just one aspect of it, that's what people are interested in.

Alex Booker:
Well, I like the way I guess your family and friends put it, emphasizing that when you make a career change its scary because you're starting from the beginning, but it sounds like because you had that experience of teaching yourself and these traits around resiliency and things, you believed in yourself and now you've made a success of it. But I think to your point about salary and stuff like that, obviously it matters and I can only reflect on an interview I did a few months ago with a lady called Jess Gilbert. She was a secondary teacher in the UK, which for international listeners in America, maybe that's like high school, so teaching teenagers and things.
Even though she got into it because of her passion for enabling students and sharing information, the working conditions just really were quite poor basically in terms of work-life balance, compensation to some extent, with the cost of living crisis in the UK and everything becoming more expensive, of course you want to pay it forward and help bring up the next generation, but that shouldn't come at a detriment to your own situation I don't think. That kind of inched her towards coding where there was a bit more of an opportunity to grow in her career, I would say.

Chris Webster:
I remember listening to it actually and nodding, "Yes, yes." I don't think teachers do get enough respect in the UK really, in the schools because it's a lot of pressure. You're working with every single aspect of society almost in a way because you're working with kids of all backgrounds. Then you've got their parents and then you've got the leadership team and other colleagues in school, and then there's you in the classroom with hundreds of kids that you have to be responsible for. So yeah, it can be a bit of a burden really, on just you and then you're trying your best, but then the recompense and everything else you get with it, like you're saying. It's just not worth it. I think maybe for a few years if you've got an niche to teach.

Alex Booker:
That walk you did with your friend, this socially distanced walk is what I'm imagining around the pandemic time, you said they did a bootcamp and they got a job in 9 weeks. Is that what the promise was with the bootcamp when they did it?

Chris Webster:
I suppose it's kind of what they market to everybody and then yeah, it's a cue to then get the job at the end. I think people have that understanding really. But yeah, when you market something like that and you like it, it really pulls you in.

Alex Booker:
Well, talk to me a little bit about that because you have all this experience learning a language, so you have a sense of how to learn something hard to completion. Did you just say, "Right, I'm doing a bootcamp," or did you consider your options at the time?

Chris Webster:
Well, I looked into the bootcamp and I thought, "Well, I could only do it part-time." So I did over six months instead of 9 weeks because I needed a salary to pay my wage as it were. So they give you resources to say, "Go onto Codeacademy and learn Ruby, do a course in that to get an understanding of a program and language and how it works." And then on the course you do a bit more of a deep dive into it. It was definitely a steep learning curve for me. When you're trying to balance a job with learning to code at the bootcamp style, it's pretty intense to be honest. There's not much time to reflect on what you're learning and things like that.

Alex Booker:
How did you structure that in terms of your days?

Chris Webster:
I think it was Tuesday and Thursday evenings for three hours that you were online doing it with everyone and on a Saturday it was a whole day. Also, you are supposed to watch lectures before and do a little bit of practice before you do the sessions, and some weeks I just didn't have time for it, so I was just busy with life and work and stuff like that.

Alex Booker:
So Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, it was synchronous and online. You'd join the calls and do the sessions with people, but there was also this expectation that you'd have to do a little bit of prep before those sessions and Code Academy obviously you do on your own.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, that's right. If you wanted to get the most out of it, you would need to spend the extra time to recap and review everything, to then phase into next thing you're going to do. I mean for me personally, I just couldn't, I tried my best, but...

Alex Booker:
It's hard. It's so hard. It's the time issue, sure, but it's also an energy issue. Doing two jobs, context switching and all the other stuff we have to do in life around family and whatever.

Chris Webster:
Yeah.

Alex Booker:
What was your experience like doing the bootcamp overall? You did it part-time first of all, which is interesting. Did you get out of it what you were expecting?

Chris Webster:
Not as much as I hoped, and again, that probably goes back to the lack of time and doing it part-time. I just didn't have the time to really do everything and someone could say to me, "Oh, if you push yourself hard enough, you could have made time." I suppose there is truth in that, but there is always that, "Oh, I could do some coding rather than watch this TV program." But then rest is just as important because you need to refresh your brain and your brain is still working while you're post-work.

Alex Booker:
What did you think of the curriculum and the support you got as a student? I guess the big appeal of a bootcamp compared to being self-directed is that they give you a path, like, "Here's the curriculum you're doing." And then you're not totally alone if you get stuck, hopefully there's someone you can go to, whether that's aupair, a TA, or a teacher to help put you on the right track.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, there was lots of support there. There was all these TAs, teacher assistants that they had and then the lead teacher for the course, and they were really, really nice people. They were really lovely and I've kept in touch with a couple of them afterwards as well. So the support was, if you message people, they would reply. It was like a Slack channel, I'm still part of it today, which is support network, which is really good. In terms of the curriculum, I think from being a teacher, you're always going to have that sharp eye on how its structured and stuff and having rolled out Mandarin on the curriculum in schools and the only way the school would keep Mandarin is to make a sustainable part of the curriculum is if the results were good and the kids were able to access the content and keep their interest and keep that sense of success going. I felt with the bootcamp, well, for me personally, I think it felt like, especially at the beginning, that it was pitched for people who knew how to code already really.
Whereas when you're a complete beginner, you feel like you're in the deep end of it, which a lot of people would say is the best way to learn because you're just thrown into it, which is fair play. I think for me personally, I feel like I need to have an access point where... I noticed from being a teacher myself, I had to learn this over time, it took me a really long time to learn it and teachers that I trained, I also shared this with them as well. I said, "You're best off pitching it at a level where everyone can access the content. Don't just put it at this level and just find people who can do it and the rest of them can't."

Alex Booker:
It sounds like the marketing pitch didn't quite align with the offering in that sense. I think it's a common critique of bootcamps. They're incentivized obviously to make money and get students in the door, and so the marketing material can be very tantalizing, you could say. "Get a job in 9 weeks." Sometimes they'll go as far as saying, "Get a really high paid job in as few as 9, 12 weeks, whatever it might be." And likewise, they might want to appeal to complete beginners and assure you that, "Hey, if you've not done any coding..." But obviously once you get there and you felt perhaps that you would've benefited from a bit of a foundation before getting there, else you're lagging a little bit and there's this time pressure as well because you're only in the cohort for a certain amount of time. I can imagine that's a little bit tough.

Chris Webster:
At the end of the day, every company does marketing and they stretch the truth a bit. It's just part of being a company and being successful. Then again, you could say to them, "Well, they haven't stretched the truth." Because I did get a job at the end of it. It's a weird one. I think it's just a process of doing it, where it just felt like a lot of pressure because you feel like you're lagging behind all the time. You're like, "I've got to keep up." At some point I was just like, "Whatever." It's interesting when I got to that mindset, when I got there, I just thought I'll just crack on and just see what happens there. When you get into that mindset of not stressing too much, just going, "Whatever, just let it go, let's just go with it." I actually found to relax a bit more and then I kind of accepted, "Yeah, I'm not going to know everything. It's fine."
There's plenty of people on the course that felt the same as me as well. You partner up, you buddy up when you do a challenge. Everybody says, "I don't know, don't know what to do." Then we talked together about how we can break it down to the smallest step and see how far we get. Quite often we wouldn't even finish a challenge, we'd do a little bit of it and then share that experience together. That's quite comforting in a way because you don't feel completely alone.

Alex Booker:
Yeah. That's huge.

Jan Arsenovic:
Coming up, how Chris landed a job and then a dream job.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, I just kept on badgering him basically. That's it.

Alex Booker:
Badgering him? I doubt it, but what do you mean?

Jan Arsenovic:
But before that, there's a favor we need to ask of you. Hi, I'm Jan, the producer and I would like to remind you that the best way to support a podcast that you like, like this one is to tell somebody about it. If you're enjoying the show and if you're learning something from it, share it with someone, be it in person on discord or on social media and if you're feeling super supportive, you can also leave us a rating or review in your podcast app of choice. We also read your social media posts and your reviews right here on the show. As long as your Twitter or LinkedIn posts contain the words Scrimba and podcast, we will find them and you'll get a shout-out. But for now, we're going back to the interview with Chris.

Alex Booker:
My reflection on what you're saying and bootcamps in general is that there is that appeal of the path, but also the community, right? You're in that Slack channel to this day, for example. But I guess to measure the value of a bootcamp, it's all kind of relative to the cost, what you put in terms of the cost and what you're hoping to get out of it and stuff like that. Tell me a little bit about how you feel about the investment in retrospect. Do you think it was the right way to invest in that time and money?

Chris Webster:
I actually found out post bootcamp from... I had a spare room at my house. I rented out for Airbnb and someone came to stay there and she did the School of Code bootcamp offered by Microsoft, which was free, and I was like, "Oh wow." Then she learned React and things like that through there, which we didn't on our bootcamp, which is very relevant. In my job now that I do it's React and no-js and the pair in the stack. So Postgres Express or actually use something else than Express, but yeah, React and node. I thought, "Wow, if I did a bootcamp with that, that would've put me a bit more forward." I'd say from that experience of meeting her, if I knew I could have done the bootcamp for free, that would've been good.

Alex Booker:
Where does Scrimba come into this? Because I know you spent a bit of time learning front end development subjects on Scrimba.

Chris Webster:
I became a teaching assistant at the bootcamp school for a short time after, and I heard from another teaching assistant about Scrimba. He was saying how amazing it was, he'd learn React on there. I said, "Oh, I need to learn React," because everyone was talking about React, you need to learn it and part of the bootcamp curriculum, the post content afterwards was I learn React. So I was like, oh, that's great. I went on there, I just started with it. I was like, "Oh wow, this is brilliant, you can actually code in the environment and you can pause and then you can go back, all sorts of stuff like that." I thought, "Oh, this is really good." Then not just that, but also the following lesson that followed that and each one that... It's just built very incrementally. It appeals to the spiral curriculum pedagogy where you build upon what you've learned from before and it's layered up rather than it just be like you're thrown in and you're just lost, that sort of thing.
I like the way the teachers kind of reassure you as you go along. "It's okay, you won't get this right now. You can always go back." That sort of thing. That kind of reassurance is really important for any student. I know from myself when I was teaching that you always have to reassure and give feedback and say, "Just stick at it." You can always look back if you're not sure and that sort of thing, so that's good.

Alex Booker:
That's awesome. Yeah, at Scrimba, it's very much like an emphasis on the pedagogy I would say. There is this interactive format where you get hands-on and generally speaking, if you are in a position where you have to retrieve knowledge... When we learn something, oftentimes we just input information into our brain, we study, we watch, we listen, but that isn't actually how you learn stuff. You have to combine that input with retrieving something from your head. The short of that loop is arguably, for example, if you do a little quiz after each module or if in the case of Scrimba, you actually challenge yourself to follow the instructions and interact with the code, it just creates a nice little feedback loop where you can really say, "Yes, I understand this, I understand variables. Now it makes sense to move on to if statements. I understand if statements now I can quite easily grasp what a switch statement is," for example. It's all kind of building on.
I think for every module at Scrimba, it's like if they introduce a concept that just wasn't in the previous few modules, essentially, that doesn't happen generally speaking because the idea is to build on top of each point, but they'll call it out and acknowledge it and say, "Hey, we're going to look at this thing called a Promise. I know we haven't looked at Promises in JavaScript yet, but don't worry." I think from my perspective as a student, if I'm watching a course and they mentioned something and I haven't got a clue what it is, but I don't know their intention is that I don't need to know about it yet, I start panicking. I'm like, "Wait, wait, I need to pause this. Go and..."
That's the whole point of a teacher, to not just exchange information but almost coach and guide you towards being successful. That in my opinion, is the art of teaching that gets lost with very well-intentioned people on YouTube or Twitter or even some authors who self-publish and stuff. I think they miss out on this pedagogy part that you're describing and it makes such a big difference to the student outcome in my view.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think a lot of the time, I notice this in schools and different people I've worked with in the past as well, they just want to get through the content as fast as possible and then they don't consider how the students are feeling, because that being paramount as well, it's their wellbeing you got to think about as well. If they're put under huge amounts of pressure, they find it really hard. I did a master's degree in teaching. I did part-time before I, funnily enough, I left teaching, which is weird, but it was paid for by my school, so that's why I did it. But also I was interested in the topic of cognitive load as well. My dissertation at the end of it was to do with strategies to do with cognitive load.
Well, it's actually called load reduction instruction. So you would reduce the load in order to pitch at a certain level for the children or adults to then be able to make steady progress over time. Then to put it very, very simply, what it comes down to, which I know it sounds really, really obvious, but is practice. You just got to practice a lot. Then the teacher has to enable the student to practice as much as they can within that lesson rather than just talk at them for a half an hour, 40 minutes, just talk and talk and talk or even some of the lectures bootcamp, it was an hour long. You just sat there and you're trying to code along, the tutorial hell concept.

Alex Booker:
Yeah, because you're never really understanding the concepts, you're just following along basically. If you got a sore arse from sitting in a chair for an hour straight and your eyes are sore from just following, it's boring. Learning should be fun and apart from being boring, it's tiring. It's draining if someone just talks at you for 60 minutes, especially if you got lost in the first 10 minutes. If you didn't understand something early on, on which the remainder of the presentation hinges, you can easily switch off, but then you have this obligation to stay on the Zoom call or if you're in a physical class, you're literally captive there.
If you hear me getting hyped up about it, It's because that was my whole experience learning stuff at school. But then when I got an opportunity to learn from some really great teachers who know how to engage me, I feel like that kind of unlocked my intelligence a little bit. I was like, "Oh, I thought I was kind of stupid, but actually I've had just kind of bad teachers. It's not really my fault. I can do this thing." But yeah, the idea of cognitive load is interesting. I was wondering as a former teacher and a current learner, if you had any sort of learning hacks you could say, up your sleeve, tactics and things you come to when you're trying a new topic?

Chris Webster:
I would say, and this is easy to say and also to hear as well, I'd say you'd hear it in just one go and just go, "Yeah." Then dismiss it afterwards. Don't move on if you don't really understand what you're doing. That would be the ultimate advice I would give to anyone. You think you've understood it and you're like, "Yeah, that's fine." But you don't know if you've understood it unless you've tested yourself on that particular thing. If you can really understand what a quality is doing, even if it's something really simple like incrementing by one, that will really help you then when you move on to the next thing, because I think the temptation would be just copy paste and go on Google, "How do I do a for loop of this thing?" And then you sort of feel like, "Yeah, I sort of understand it." But if you're actually feeling like that about a fundamental concept like a for loop you're going to be struggling a bit later. That was probably the key thing.

Alex Booker:
I love that example of a for loop because you can maybe copy and paste the for loop that counts from 1 to 10 and you're like, "Okay, I get it. It runs this code in the middle 10 times." That's a kind of loose understanding. But then if you can say, "Oh, okay, we're declaring the counter variable here in this first part, and then we're declaring the condition and then we're declaring how to increment the original. Okay, that's an understanding." Then within that you're like, "Okay, what does the plus plus mean? Why do we do ++ instead of +1?" Then you realize that's because ++ returns and then increments the variable, for example. You're like, "Oh, why do we start from 0 instead of 1?" And then you're like, "Oh, okay, that's weird, right? We don't do that when we count... Because that's how arrays start. They start from an index of 0, so it makes sense."
It sounds basic at a high level, but there's lots of little things in there that you might not understand before you move on. But another example is maybe functions. You can understand how to declare a function, but I wouldn't rush over and start learning arrow functions until you've got a really strong grasp of how to declare a sort of traditional function, you could call it. But I guess the question is how do you know when you... Because you can go so deep, but the whole point is if you're new, you don't know what you don't know. So how would you decide when you know something well enough to move on, what's your threshold there?

Chris Webster:
To give another example, if you've got a coding challenge or a task given to you to do a problem, it's that initial step of understanding what the problem is that you're solving and really understanding it to its full extent. You can break down the wording or anything like that. I used to call it, it's a much simpler example, I reckon it's fully problem solving steps to do with that, really understand what the problem is and then think of steps to solve it. But you need to understand what you need to do at each step. If you don't know how to do that thing at that step, then you can research how to do it and then that how, then you need to understand how process as well. Then it's the implementation after that. I think that as a whole is essentially what it means to be a coder, I think really to be honest.
I think there's that book by George Polya called Steps to Solving a Problem. It's to do with mathematics actually. You look at the rest of the book, you think, "Oh, god." Actually you only need to really look at the first couple of pages, which actually tells you how to solve a problem in steps, understand the problem, notice steps to solve it, then execute a solution. If it didn't work, go back and review the steps of how you would solve the problem and try again. Then just follow that kind of process until eventually you solve the problem. But I think one thing you can fall into trap of is just keeping them going and going and going, trying every method under the sun without really stopping and thinking about how you would solve the problem, if that makes sense.

Alex Booker:
Yeah. No, I mean I'm so guilty of that myself. Just hammering the problem, trying to brute force it compared to if you take a step back and think, "Okay, what are the steps I need to do here?" I don't know why that's so hard. Do you find it hard as well or does it come quite easy to you at this point?

Chris Webster:
Oh no, I still find it hard. Yeah, absolutely. I think because you can get in your own head about what other people's expectations might be of you and of yourself as well. You think that everyone wants you to finish this problem within a week or a day or something like that, but actually they don't necessarily think that at all. Then the bizarre thing is that if you do take your time to really think about a solution to the problem, you'll solve it faster. That's the weird one.

Alex Booker:
Yeah, you're so right, that brute force often comes from... This will sound like a big word for it, but it's a kind of panic I think where, I don't know if you've ever seen a clip of a bank robber trying to leave when the alarm's going and they're pulling a push door and they just keep pulling it and keep trying the same thing over and over again, they're just panicking. It's not so extreme obviously, but it has to do with the pressure you feel. It could be intrinsic like, "Oh, I should really know the answer to this." And so you keep brute forcing it or it could be extrinsic, which is like, "Oh, everyone else will think I should be able to solve this in one fell swoop. I shouldn't have to..." But you're so right, counterintuitively you slow down to speed up.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, it's so bizarre and it's something that I've really had to get used to because when I was in teaching, I was in it for many years. So it did become a bit more second nature to you because... Another book I can recommend as well is Think, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. In your brain you've got two things called a System 1 and System 2. System 1 is your automatic thinking. When you walk down the street, you don't think about what you're doing when you're walking, it's just an automatic sort of thing. In a way, when you've developed skills over your life, they do become more second nature. He uses the example of a chess master could walk on a street and go, "Three moves, checkmate for white." Or something like that. Then it was correct because he just knew instantly like that.
I'd been in teaching for a long time, it did eventually come like that and not in every way, but in a lot of ways it did. So I had a lot more head space there to, "I can just keep going." You'd, like on a treadmill, just keep going and keep going and keep going. But what I really embrace and I enjoy about coding's career is that no matter what you do, you have to take a break because if you don't take a break, your head's not really cleared, then you're not going to be the right mindset to approach a problem. And you know that if you don't have a clear head that likely it's going to take you a lot longer to solve the problem. I think people within the company or other coders know that's also really important as well. So they accept and embrace that as well. I think that's a really beautiful thing about coding as a career and working as a developer as well, is that aspect of it.

Alex Booker:
It's a weird one. I think everyone listening and yourself, Chris, can identify with this feeling of you're stuck on a coding problem, you take a shower, you wake up the next morning, you go for a... You come back and you're like, "Why was I stuck on this?" That's the most quintessential evidence for, it works. I sometimes think about intellectual work is draining a battery, you're outputting a lot, you're focusing a lot and you can recharge with rest, like sleep and stuff. But I also think you can recharge with inspiration and insights and ideas. So sometimes just reading Hacker News or Reddit or listening to a podcast on a walk, I don't know, it's the kind of thing that makes you come to the problem again and you're a bit more intelligent as a result of something. You can solve it now whereas you couldn't before.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well returning to that book again, the System 1, being able to match your thinking. System 2 is the of part of your brain that's doing the work to really solve the problem and then you just need to give that system to a rest to then recharge. Then once you've had that, like you say, you listen to the podcast on the walk and you've just cleared your head a bit. I mean for me, I'm playing my guitar, as you're seeing in the background of my video, that clears my head. Then yeah, like you say, or you have a shower and that System 2 has been given a rest, that working part of your brain that you're doing the problem solving with and you come back and you're refreshed again. I think it just doesn't come naturally to people to think that way. I think so even for me, I thought, "Oh, I can just keep going. It doesn't matter. I'll get there in the end." But yeah, taking that moment to have a break's important.

Alex Booker:
There's a stigma, I guess, is the right word for it there. Some people will say like, "Oh, you're not working hard enough." Or like, "Oh, you just need to keep hammering the problem," sort of thing. I guess the reason I call it stigma is because if I think back to five years when we were all as coders working in offices, if you were on the sofa chilling out or not at your desk kind of thing, nobody would come to you and say, "Hey, work harder." Nobody would call you lazy. But I do think there was a stigma there. People would be like, "That's not a real hard worker right there."
And as we just identified, sometimes that is efficient working as opposed to grinding or grazing. You're being considerate and intentional with your time and effort. Maybe one of the perks of working from home is that we get that freedom to... I do a 25-minute Pomodoro timer, even I spend 5 minutes just tidying a little bit. That's one way I approach my days and I just do that on repeat for a few times and I get a clear head and when I'm finished with work, I've got a nice fresh apartment. You couldn't really have done that back in the RTO or office days because you'd really sort of be expected to be at your desk all the time.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think the change of the hybrid working scenario or working from home, I do hybrid now. I think that is so good for your wellbeing and just keeping your mind at pressure. I used a Pomodoro timer when I was using Scrimba actually to learn to code. You do so many and then you think, "Oh, I need a break. When am I going to have this break? I don't know." Then you've got that time and you're like, "Oh yeah, I can have a break now because I've set it for 25 minutes and I'm up for a break again." Yeah, Pomodoro timers, I can't recommend them enough as well.

Alex Booker:
I was talking to Ali Spittel last year who was a teacher at bootcamp for a period. She's a very good teacher and she made this point about the difference between, if I remember well, the active states of learning when you're reading for example. And then there's a more passive state called the diffused state, which I need to be careful not to misrepresent as if I know anything about neuroscience, but the idea is that equivalent of a dust settling, you take a bit of distance, the dust settles, it might have something to do with neural pathways and stuff forming in your head and those paths can only get formed when you take a little rest. So just one more example in favor all of this.
The last question I wanted to ask you about teaching and pedagogy. I did just wonder in your experience if you've ever come across this idea of the psychological state of flow or being in the zone? The reason I am inspired to ask this question is around the Pomodoro technique because I find the Pomodoro technique quite interesting when you are doing a sluggish kind of task, like you are maybe reading a kind of tough book or you're doing a course that you just really want to finish. But what I find sometimes with coding especially is that after 25 minutes, I'm getting in the zone. If I take a break and I lose my momentum, essentially I lose that state of flow. I just wondered if you had a perspective on it with your experience.

Chris Webster:
You make a great point there. I do the same thing actually, it depends on the task. So yeah, if it's a course like you say, that Pomodoro timer is really good for that. But yeah, I found when it was a task, if I was given a project to do on the Scrimba course, the Tenzers game, I remember doing that and I was really getting there in a state of flow going, "Oh, I'm actually quite enjoying this." And I just ignored the Pomodoro timer. It would be happening, I'll just turn it off and just carry on and then just keep going. Then I think that's like the bread and butter of it all really.
All the learning that you've done has really then started to really come into effect. That state of flow I think is really important. It was touched upon by PGCE as well about if you can get students into a state of flow and if you can observe that in the room, don't move forward with your lesson just to let them carry on and then they find they start to learn more by themselves as well and that kind release of being an autonomous learner will start to kick in and that's when you really feel like you're progressing, I think. I adapt to the situation is very much a part of it, isn't it?
The morning person principal like, "Are you a morning person or you're night owl?" I'm definitely a morning person, so any heavy work that requires a lot of use of the brain, I do in the morning. I'd schedule my day where I'll do course learning in the morning. In the afternoon I'll do a project because that way I'll just keep going. I can put music on as well and when I'm really able to concentrate I can't really listen to music at the same time but if it's something where I feel like I'm just going in the flow, I don't mind having it on. It actually keeps me going for longer, so that's quite good actually.

Alex Booker:
I think we could stay on the subject for quite a bit longer, but I want to make sure that we covered the part of your story, which is around getting your first role. I know that you actually have done two roles technically, but maybe talk to us a little bit about how you went from feeling like you were ready. You could say you'd learned enough that you were ready to start opening yourself up to opportunities. What was your kind of strategies to find a job and how did things play out in the end?

Chris Webster:
So big credits to the bootcamp because at the end I did get a job because through their networking channels they had a recruitment event done online or at the physical location and it was through that I got my first job. The job was then given through a agency who then was the middleman between you and the company. It was an apprenticeship agency, they introduce you to them as an apprentice in a way. So then got the job there, its this large consultancy and you get put on projects, but you get put on the bench as well. You go between being on the bench, being on projects. But being on the bench was quite good at times because it meant I could just... That was my Scrimba time.

Alex Booker:
Oh nice. So this was the company called Infosyst that you joined in June 2022 I think.

Chris Webster:
Yeah. So while you had things to do when you're on the bench, because they give you products to do, they get you to go into different groups. I went into a React group, I went to an AI group, coordinated with different people remotely because they were everywhere really, where you would have extra time in a day to focus on other things. So yeah, I just made sure I did my Scrimba time and that was really helpful.

Alex Booker:
Infosyst, I'm getting the vibe that it's like an agency where customers come to them and then they will code things for them. If you were coding something for a customer, you were in the game, but there were occasionally periods where there wasn't work, so you would have some downtime between projects to continue leveling up.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, exactly.

Alex Booker:
I can't tell if that's really great or really not so great because I mean you want to be engaged all the time I feel like. But as a newer developer and you were still, it sounds like after the bootcamp there were a few gaps in your knowledge maybe, it might have actually been the perfect thing for you. I'm not sure. How did you find the experience overall was it as fulfilling as you wanted it to be?

Chris Webster:
Yeah. It's a bit of a two-sided coin really, to be honest, because it did give me time to then push up on my coding skills as well after bootcamp because it was very full on for me. Outside of the bootcamp hours, I couldn't really dedicate much more time to reflect on what we were learning and so on. It was like, "Oh, it's a great opportunity. I could really apply myself. Then when I'm on projects, I'll be in a much stronger position as well." But at the same time in my current role, which I love by the way, its brilliant now. It's like you are thrown into the deep end a bit again, but you're learning a lot of very valuable skills that you know is useful because you're seeing the output directly in the application.
Whereas at Infosyst it's more like you are a very, very small cog in the wheel, which is fair enough because you're the company and you've got to earn your worth as it were, or earn a reputation to then be given more responsibility, which is their strategy, which is absolutely fine. You don't really have much input in how things work or change, you're just a small role. Whereas in the current company you play quite a significant role in developing an application. That's really rewarding and I've learned a lot actually, definitely.

Alex Booker:
That's awesome. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think you described your current role as your dream job on the announcement post you shared in the community. What happened there? This is a really interesting subject to me. You're in this role, it's good enough you could say, and you've got opportunities and you are learning. It all sounds very positive overall, but you obviously made a change at some point. So how did that change come about exactly to this new role?

Chris Webster:
Yeah. Well, I felt like I'd come to a point where I'd made my LinkedIn pretty solid enough as you know, you probably know all the advice that you get when you go, "I've you've got the LinkedIn sort out. I've got my CV sorted out." I've been at Infosyst for about a year and a half, probably a bit longer or a bit shorter, I'm not sure. I thought, "You know what? Other people I know are getting jobs elsewhere, a bit closer to home or whatever." I live in Reading. I thought, "Well, if I could get a job in Reading, that would be really good because it's a bit closer." I could get in the hybrid scenario that I was referring, whereas the office in London, because usually I walk, was quite far away. So all sorts of factors as to why I wanted to move. But one of them was just proximity really and just having a bit more of a...
I'm not from Reading originally, I'm from Nottingham. I don't really know that many people, once you get to work somewhere you can get to know people and then get a bit of a social group going. It's a dream job in terms of the company culture and the people there are really nice. The leadership team are really, really good people and they make... Like, at the Christmas party, they put in so much effort to make it really fun and just really enjoyable for everybody. We had Pancake day last week and they got this whole pancake thing going on. It was like, "Wow, I've never been anywhere that's done anything like this." Everyone went in there because it's actually a co space. So there's loads of different companies in the building. They all come together in this kitchen. It was really cool. Yeah, it was fun.

Alex Booker:
I'm starting to think the biggest takeaway from this episode for someone will be for in the UK we have a day dedicated to celebrating Pancake Day. I think Shrove Tuesday is a UK holiday, I think.

Chris Webster:
Yeah. Someone asked me, because my coworkers from Hong Kong, he was like, "Why do you do pancake day?" I was like, "I don't know, but it's Shrove Tuesday and we always do it on that day and it's the day before Lent starts or something, that's apparently why we do it." People give up things for Lent and then you can do a day where you can just eat loads of sweet stuff.

Alex Booker:
But tell me quickly, how did the new opportunity come to you? Did you apply for it and go seeking it or you did mention LinkedIn, so now I'm wondering if the opportunity was inbound?

Chris Webster:
Yeah, it's from LinkedIn. It was, yeah, there's loads of recruiters on there and they're looking for people to help get jobs because they get commission for it. I think I did my LinkedIn, made it as good as I could, following all the advice, but I also did the LinkedIn skill assessments as well. I think that might be what is the key to getting them to find you because when I did it, so many recruiters contacted me.

Alex Booker:
Oh. So you turned on the Open to Work thing and you did the skill assessments and you noticed the correlation between doing that and more recruiters reaching out to you?

Chris Webster:
Yeah, and also making sure that when you do your skills in LinkedIn that you align them with the job that you're in and then you've also done a LinkedIn skill assessment, you get some sort of tick or something on it. But yeah, I did notice a difference when I did that. Actually this current job was done because I was looking on newsfeed, on the homepage and then there's this guy on there saying, "There's a job in Reading." And then I actually just contacted him. I just went to him, "Please give me a chance." That sort of thing. I got the job through him.

Alex Booker:
No way. So yeah, you did the LinkedIn stuff, but you could attribute the new job to networking essentially, I would say.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah. Enthusiasm's the biggest one. Just be really enthusiastic and I know people say the, "Fake it till you make," thing. There's a sort of element of that, but you do have to show this real passion, enthusiasm to people and that's what really grabs their attention and then makes you stand out.

Alex Booker:
Can I ask you what you wrote in that LinkedIn message to the person talking about the role in Redding?

Chris Webster:
Have a look actually if you want.

Alex Booker:
Yeah, that'd be great. By the way, there's one great sign of... People sometimes wonder how well did the interview go. And the thing I always tell them is, "Did the interview finish on time or did you continue talking after the scheduled time? If you went over time, that probably means it was a mutually really great conversation." I think in this interview, even though it's not a job interview, granted because we got so excited about over teaching topics, we've run a little bit over time.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, well I had an interview with the company, we went over time. We started talking about... He said, "Oh, what did you do for A Level?" I was like, "I don't know." They were wondering about my history of course with coding and stuff and I said, "Oh, I actually did a philosophy, English language and history." Then the CEO said, "Oh, I did philosophy. I sat next to Hayley Atwell at school." The actress from Marvel. I was like, "Oh wow." And she goes, "Oh yeah, she's just as pretty back then as she is now, don't worry." I was like, "All right, okay." It was quite funny. Responded over that. It's funny because it's supposed to do with coding, you just got to chatting and then you've got something in common. Yeah, [inaudible 00:39:11] recruiter. I said, "I was wondering if you were happy to offer some advice on how I can enhance my chances of being shortlisted. I usually don't hear back if I use recruitment websites, so I would love to hear from you, et cetera," that sort of thing.

Alex Booker:
That's a good angle. Yeah, like asking a question. I like that.

Chris Webster:
Yeah, seemed to work and I just kept on badgering him basically. That's it.

Alex Booker:
Badgering him? I doubt it, but what do you mean?

Chris Webster:
He didn't reply to that one. So I sent him another one and said, "I'd be keen on this role he's posted." And then he got back to me again. I sort of badgered him once.

Alex Booker:
I pick on the language a little bit, because badgering sounds like being a nuisance or something, which nobody wants to be, but you're persistent, right? Maybe that's a better way to put it because I don't think you did anything remotely irk him or anything. It's just like... Recruiters have a lot of messages, they get missed. If you pop up, you've got another chance of them seeing it again. It sounds totally legit to me.

Chris Webster:
No, you were right to focus on that word a bit more. I just sort of meant it [inaudible 00:40:06] hate to talk away, just... Yeah.

Alex Booker:
Yeah, fair enough. As a Brit, I totally get that. All right, Chris, well thank you so much for coming on and telling us more about your story. I've certainly learned a lot and had fun vibing about pedagogy and teaching and stuff like that, but I just think there's so many takeaways, right? Like your story in itself, tips on teaching, but I'm also really glad we stumbled into that last little anecdote you mentioned about having enthusiasm and more of a personal conversation. I think a lot of people go to job interviews and they're here, they put their back straight, they're ready to just answer questions like it's an interrogation, which I get, it's scary. But at the same time, if you can ease into it and show a bit of personality and find a connection, your offer won't hinge on that. You need to be good at the role, obviously. But I think it will grease the wheels and help you stand out among other candidates. I really appreciate you sharing that candid LinkedIn message. I think it's something people need to hear.

Chris Webster:
Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it. It's been really good fun, Alex. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me on.

Jan Arsenovic:
That was The Scrimba Podcast, episode 149. Thanks for listening. If you made it this far, please subscribe. You can find us wherever you listen to podcasts. The show associated by Alex Booker, I'm Jan, the producer. You can find both of our Twitter handles in the show notes as well as the ways to connect with Chris. Keep coding and we'll see you next time.