Author: Manuel Lemos
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Becoming a hero for other developers is one of the main topics commented on by Manuel Lemos and Mike Stowe of the NomadPHP fame in the fifth part of episode 89 of the Lately in PHP podcast.
Listen to the podcast, watch the video with manually edited subtitles in English, read the transcript to learn more about how you can become a hero to other developers.
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Episode 89 Part 5 Video
Transcript of what was said in the podcast
List of Transcript Sections That You May Read Below
Quick Preview of the Podcast Episode (3s)
RingCentral Benefits for Developers (49s)
How You Can Succeed Being the Hero of Your Life (1m 20s)
How to Fulfill the Dreams of a Developer (11m 6s)
The Actual Transcript
Quick Preview of the Podcast Episode (3s)
Manuel Lemos: So what I usually do with this is: let's pretend that you rubbed this lamp and I came out of here.
Let's pretend I'm a genie. Let's pretend. It won't hurt.
We are pretending OK? We are being clear this is not for real.
Mike Stowe: I am not gonna lie that I am terrified where this is going.
Manuel Lemos: But OK.
So go ahead and start telling what would be your first wish.
RingCentral Benefits for Developers (49s)
I have to give a shout out to my real employer who is sponsoring today's episode, so I don't get in trouble.
That is a quick thank you to RingCentral for sponsoring the Lately in PHP podcast.
If you have not heard of RingCentral, RingCentral offers full cloud communications, so we're talking messaging, video, phone in the cloud.
And they have a bunch of APIs that allow you to connect and build your own applications on top of their RingCentral MVP platform.
So, definitely check them out at ringcentral.com and the developer platform at developers.ringcentral.com .
How You Can Succeed Being the Hero of Your Life (1m 20s)
Mike Stowe: I'm going to share another quick story and I know we're running close sometime. I want to share the story because I think it's so important because it speaks to what you're talking about with the obstacles.
Yeah moving from being a student of the nursing program to learn about medicine to tech and taking a tech job, I didn't have the credentials to be a developer according to a lot of places.
I didn't have a computer software or computer engineering or computer science degree. And I got passed up by a lot of businesses. I didn't have always supportive managers. You know I had some managers who did not feel I belonged in tech.
And I'm not gonna name places. I'm not gonna name names but one conversation I will never forget is first day on the job, I met with the one person and they said: I voted against hiring you. And I was like: hey it's great to work with you too.
Literally it's like what do you do and I will you know tell people that I wish I could say that attitude changed. I wish I could say that you know I was given a fair shake.
I wasn't and it was a miserable job and again I'm not naming names and then but you know, you have to persevere, you have to overcome that.
And you I empathize people say they didn't give me a shot, they didn't give me an opportunity, they weren't fair they didn't because you know my father used to tell me life's not fair.
And having gone through that, I know how much it's just there's no word how much it sucks. How much it sucks to fall flat on your face again and again and again and not feel like you're going forward.
And I did that really for the first part of my career. I wasn't just one job where I felt flattered and you know didn't feel like I had my expectations.
Thankfully I had people that mentored me that believed in me that pushed me forward but you're going to have adversity no matter what you do in life there'll be adversity.
Know that you're not alone because while there's plenty of people who tell you can't do it, a lot of people say that you can't do it, it's just funny i'm gonna share this last thing.
What's funny is I can tell how good of an engineer someone is how they how good they really are by how they treat others because the really talented engineers in our community, the really really good ones are some of the nicest people I've met.
And some of the biggest jerks in the community can't code to save their lives. I'm just being flat out honest. And same thing in Silicon Valley you get some people you know pick on the VCs.
People in Silicon Valley that talk about business and how to do business right, and they tell you what you can and can't do.
I'm going to tell Larry Ullman story. I wasn't going to do it but you got me talking.
So I'm gonna share this and this is one those things makes you respect Larry so much.
If you don't know who Larry Ullman is, he's the author of the Quick Start Guide Series and he has over I think it's over 30 books. It's some ridiculous number.
And I'm at a conference with Larry and you know Larry and I are talking. And this is how humble the guy is because you're going like man i'm it's so great to see you again like I can't wait if you're talking: oh I'm really interested you're talk to him like dude you taught me everything I know to get started with PHP like you don't need to come to my talk you're beyond me.
But we're talking and this young man walks up and he asks what we're talking about.
And Larry says: well I'm thinking about a new book.
And the guy is like: oh what's your idea? And so Larry shares the idea.
And then as the guy's talking he goes starts asking Larry more questions about the book.
And every time Larry answers the question, this young man goes that's not going to work.
And I kid you not. There's about a 20-minute conversation where everything Larry said, this guy disagreed told him he was doing it wrong and told him how to fix it and after 20 minutes Larry and I kid you not because Larry's a much better person than I am.
He thanks the individual for his time he thanks him for his advice and he excuses himself to go give his talk. And I'm saying you're just dumbfounded. I'm like just like I can't believe it just happened and the guy turns to me and he goes: I kind of feel bad for him and I'm like: well why?
And he goes well I'm writing a book I write my first book and I know how hard it is and he just doesn't have what it takes. And I lost it.
I lost that point like: do you know who that was? He's like no that's Larry Ullman. He was: oh well the name sounds fun. Like it should he's written 30 books the publisher has already paid him for this book.
Like there's no question he's getting published.
But that's the type of people that you're going to deal with you. Tell people who know everything, even though they haven't done it they have the knowledge or they think they have.
Again going back to VC, one more fun conversations I have the VC is you hear these people who are just jerks you know like I got money.
And I've seen at this meetup and talk with this guy. And this guy asked me if he could have a cup of coffee I'm like: oh yeah you help yourself to coffee we got snacks if you want a beer grab a beer and we're just talking.
And this is the nicest guy I've ever met.
And after the conversation's done he hands me his card and he goes : I really appreciate let me hang out. I was kind having plans for the night. I saw this I was curious. I walked in not knowing what it was he was. And I don't really have a use case for your technology.
But I'm pretty sure my businesses do.
And again I am not naming names but he was a major player in the VC space and the nicest guy you ever met. And from the conversation you would not have known it. So when someone tells you how good they are, my daddy said don't tell people how good that you are, let others tell them for you. When someone starts telling you what you can do, what you can't do, chances are they have no clue.
Manuel Lemos: Yes and the value that you can provide to the world it's not exactly you. It's your work. It's the result of your work. So if you code, the value is your code.
Your code it's not you. It's just something that you created, you produced, and you released and made it available to others. And those are important steps for you to succeed.
Those are part of the steps of what is called the hero journey. I don't know if you heard of the hero journey. It's a pattern of stories of the lives of everybody. Everybody can be the hero of others.
But it's up to others to tell. It's not up to me to tell I am the hero. I am just Manuel.
Some people hate me. They think they are my enemies. Oh I have enemies? That's amazing. But what harm have I done to done? Sometimes we have not done any harm. Sometimes you just look for them in a way they got scared.
They felt they were very small compared to but to me. Well, look it's not the size of the person. It's what you can share with them. If you can share good knowledge, that's very important because knowledge is the beginning of everything. Anyway we need to conclude.
Mike Stowe: Yes, if I can really quickly, sorry, because it's really important.
My goal in life is to have a positive impact on at least one person. That's my entire goal in life. If I can accomplish that, I will succeed in what I think my purpose is.
And the one thing that we get lost on is it's not what others think of you. It's not other people's perception. It's what you think of yourself and why you're doing it. And to Manuel's point he's had plenty of haters. He's had, again I'm not going to name names, plenty of haters.
There are alyways people that disagree. There are always have people who have issues. But I'm not doing what I do for them. I'm doing it because my goal is to help other people. And I'm not gonna let them stop me from trying to help others.
And I'm not good by their perception of me, which I completely disagree with, change that. And that's important for you too again. I'm not that smart. You can ask my teachers. They'll tell you, I'm not that smart.
My goal though was, I like coding, I enjoyed it, I want to learn, I want to put a work and I want to grow. And thankfully there's a tremendous PHP community that was going to help me.
And if you want to know code, if you want to learn, I throw this offer. If you can't afford Nomad PHP, shoot me an email and we'll get you a subscription. I don't want anybody to miss out on having the materials having the resources.
We want you to learn. We want you to grow. And I don't care what anyone tells you. If you want to do it you can do it. Whatever you put your mind to which I mean there's some limitations.
I want to be an NBA player. I'm 5"11 and I have bad knees and I can't jump, so some limitations. Coding doesn't have that limitation.
So yeah whatever you want to do, don't let other people stop you. Don't let people get in the way. Don't let people who have take issue with you stop your dreams because there's a reason they're called your dreams. With that Manuel, I will stop talking.
I'll pass it back over to you to close.
I should do a quick thank you to RingCentral again for sponsoring this this episode.
I love what a company sponsor, so that just you and I can just talk for an hour. So get a big thank you to RingCentral on that. And Manuel, again, thank you for letting me join you for this kind of Return of the Jedis. And hopefully, I wasn't Darth Vader.
How to Fulfill the Dreams of a Developer (11m 6s)
Manuel Lemos: I was kidding OK? We are not Jedis.
I have a sword there but it is fake.
I also have something nice.
Do you know what this is? Mike Stowe: OK I'm gonna say that looks like Aladdin's lamp which would be epically amazing if it is.
Manuel Lemos: Yes but it is fake.
Mike Stowe: Oh I was waiting for the genie.
Manuel Lemos: okay that's what I realized.
Some time ago I went to see the Aladdin's movie with my wife.
And I wanted to know what was her point of view. I asked her if I were a character of the Alladin movie, what would I be? She said: oh you would be the genie. Oh you are just kidding, I'm not the genie. I am just Manuel okay.
Why I am the genie? That's part of my my psychological profile.
Sometimes you don't realize that about you because everybody has a potential, everybody has psychological characteristics that could be put in favor of others.
So what I usually do with this is: let's pretend that you rubbed this lamp and I came out of here.
Let's pretend I'm a genie. Let's pretend. It won't hurt.
We are pretending OK? We are being clear this is not for real.
Mike Stowe: I am not gonna lie that I am terrified where this is going.
Manuel Lemos: But OK.
The truth, the plan is: every genie gives some wishes or tries to fulfill the wishes.
Let's pretend I'm a genie, but you are a nice person, you don't deserve just three wishes.
You have unlimited wishes because I think 3 is not sufficient for you. I'm sure you have dreams and you just need to tell me what they will be and I'll try to make them happen. I don't know when. Sometimes making wishes happen takes a lot of time. It's not like in the movie that it's like that. Sometimes it can be, because the wishes were already fulfilled. And so, given that you have unlimited wishes.
So go ahead and start telling what would be your first wish.
I'll try to realize. I don't know how. I don't even know what is your wish but let's listen to you.
Mike Stowe: My wishes? Are you asking me for my wishes? Manuel Lemos: Yes.
Mike Stowe: Man this this is a question I needed prep for.
Honestly, I feel very blessed in life.
There's a lot of things that a person can wish that they have or want to change.
But the reality is at the same time...
for me I can't lose sight of what I have had and how blessed I've been.
One of the lessons I learned from EMS was your life can be very short.
You know actually about 10 years ago now on December 23rd my father had a massive myocardial infarction or basically a severe heart attack. The term of the heart attack, the nickname is called the widowmaker because it has less than a one percent chance of survival.
December 25th my father woke up and he survived the heart attack and the doctor told him he had five years to live and here we are 10 years later and you know, I'm so incredibly grateful.
For that and those are the things to me that there are so many things that can be done but I don't want to lose sight of how blessed I've been and no matter the circumstance how we can always do something.
I was teaching a first aid course and I had a quadriplegic individual. And if you're not familiar with the term he could move his head and he could use a straw to speak and he would do as you type on his computer and that's how he spoke. And that was the extent of his movability.
And I had to break the news to him that because you are physically required to demonstrate the skill of CPR he could not pass the class and I told him that I said you know I'm sorry but you know I can't certify you in CPR.
And the crazy thing is I've had a lot of people who are fully able who just didn't want to be there. They don't want to be in the course. They didn't want to take time to learn.
It didn't matter if it might actually save somebody's life, which by the way, if you haven't taken your first ATP record I could do so because the chance of you having to help one complete stranger it is pretty low it's less than five percent.
So if you think about I'm walking on streets in the class and you do CPR? No, you're probably not. The chance of being a co-worker someone that you work with is 15%.
So there's a decent chance it might be somebody at work. But the chance of being a family member is 80%.
You will run to a scenario sometime in your life and that's why I encourage that but again some people don't want to be there.
So I tell this individual that he cannot pass I cannot certify him and he made me feel like absolute crap because his response was: that's okay because even though I can't do this skill, if someone needs help I can tell someone else how to.
Yeah, he looked at his capabilities what he has how blessed he's been uh not at all the things that he didn't have that other people do.
So going back to your your three wishes...
Manuel Lemos: More, more, unlimited wishes.
Mike Stowe: My first wish is to have a positive impact on others and I'm trying to grow and trying to be a better person and it's so easy to engage in some of the drama.
That happens to me. I'm trying to stay out of that and try to be, I guess, a better example in that regard. That's wish number 1: that I can help at least one person grow, that I can help at least one person and transform their life the way people have transformed mine.
The second is that I can be content with...
not just content, that I can recognize and be grateful for all the blessings I've had in my life. And you know people talk about lives. I'm not gonna dive into it. I'm not gonna tell you my life was hard because there are plenty of people that have much more difficult and challenging times then.
I'm not gonna tell you my life was easy because there are people who've had I haven't had to have some of the challenges I've had. You know it's my life the only thing I can speak to is the one that I live but I do feel so incredibly blessed that at the end of the day those are my two wishes.
And for the other wishes they're icing on the cake.
Manuel Lemos: okay, so the first one is just to make impacting one person? Mike Stowe: If I can make one person, if I can make difference in one person's life, and don't get me wrong, I'm not going: hey I helped one person says you changed my life. I'm like great, I'm going to stop because there's one more person to help, one more person. That's my goal.
Manuel Lemos: You already fulfilled that wish because you already changed my life, okay, because I didn't think of implementing the marketplace until you told me.
Mike Stowe: So, I think you really are your genie here. Sorry for that.
Manuel Lemos: No, that shouldn't count.
I meant wishes for the future because eventually your work in NomadPHP, as we know, was based on work of Cal Heavens, and we should always be grateful to get started because the founder has this a spirit that is very important, the spirit of someone that starts creating something. Here's the courage to move on and then he passed it to you.
For whatever reasons, maybe he didn't have much time to continue, and you are fulfilling that gap.
Mike Stowe: I think he was like: anybody would like...? No? OK fine Mike you can have it.
Manuel Lemos: So I'm sure you will may impact way much more people than just one because I have analyzed what you did in Nomad PHP is a business based on learning and it's paid by subscription and the subscription is affordable those are very important characteristics for success of a business.
So being successful and making positive impacts on people is very very easy that is because it's just a matter of time. That's because we will be collaborating.
Nobody does everything alone. You always do in collaboration. So that one was easy but and of course it will take time because we did not launch yet the marketplace. It is coming. We need to solve a few challenges.
I have to also say that I'm already collaborating with other companies that have products or services for the PHP community. Most of them are already sponsors of the PHP Innovation Award.
And I also have to say there is a new award that was starting recently, which is the PHP development master award which aims to distinguish people that not only provide great components but they also provide great tutorials because tutorials are a very important to teach people how to use their code.
Code sometimes is missing documentation at the minimum and the examples, so people can learn but still that is not the best way to teach.
The best way to teach is give the thing that people commonly call the recipe which is the step by step tutorial and they have the ingredients.
So you need to have this, this, this and that. Then you start going step by step but let's show this in video.
So we you are already doing all that all right.
Mike Stowe: So I do appreciate that. And likewise again all that you've done to help the community, like I said.
You're a big reason that I can be here talking to you today about tech. So I want just express that gratitude again.
Manuel Lemos: Yeah, Yeah . Maybe I have a few things to reveal, not today, but some other time, because this podcast is already long, it's one hour and a half. But what is important is that there is intention to collaborate.
And they have it written in the PHP Innovation Award page that collaborating is better than competing because collaboration aggregates and competition often subtracts. People go to wars because of competition. And in the end it doesn't matter.
It's not about me or you, it's about them, the world community that is outside. And that's a lot of people.
And if you can help 1, we can help 100, 1000, 1 million maybe.
Let's see if we get there.
But there will be a lot of work to be done because it's many, many, many, details. And nowadays I try to understand people to contact us to be a critic, to criticize the site: well this is not well because every time somebody finds a reason to send a criticism it's because something is not well done.
And sometimes we don't even know what was not well done because we don't even know the whole impact of what we do. Sometimes we develop many things and then we realized that there's something that is not working.
Another topic we can come back later in a future episode, is our how can we track the errors that go in the background. I have a very simple method but it's very efficient because every time there is a mistake, often the PHP error log gets filled of error messages.
Mike Stowe: I have to throw us out here because at my team members at RingCentral, I tell my team members that family always comes first.
It's the most important thing.
And I have to practice my preaches. I promised Tanya that, now that some restrictions of eastern California, I'd take her out for a date.
Manuel Lemos: That's great.
Mike Stowe: So I hate to do it but if we can finish up here, that way I'll be able to come back again versus being told no.
Manuel Lemos: Sure. Yes. Well I actually was ending and I was telling that fixing mistakes is important and we'll get back to that in the future episode.
But you had one last wish and you need to remind me what was really that? Mike Stowe: the second one is to be able to be recognized and be grateful for for all the blessings I've had.
Manuel Lemos: Yeah that will be a consequence of your work because you are already doing the right thing. You're trying to be helpful in a way that will reach a lot of people, not just in the United States where you are but, mainly outside.
There are countries that are very delayed unfortunately. They've been in wars. They are still in wars until today. And they are very delayed.
But the people there are very humble and they're really in the need to learn. Sometimes I get contacts from people that want money to invest.
No, the first investment must be knowledge because if you don't have knowledge how well are you going to use the money that you get from the investors? And the best investment is your customer.
So I'll leave it here and then we'll get back to this hopefully next month. And I want to talk more about PHP and less about us and the attitudes and people because for some people this is already too obvious or for other people there they still need to digest, think about what we said I think we said very important things.
And with this I conclude this podcast. I really like to like to appreciate your presence and your comments and also the sponsorship of Ring Central.
That's very welcome that makes this participation in the podcast financially viable which is also important.
It's not so much about the money. It's about the work that it requires, not just to record, to edit it, eventually to transcribe because. We used to do transcriptions but they took a lot of time and we need to spend some money and that's really hard work.
But let's see if we can get back to those transcriptions because some people prefer to read the text rather than watch the video or the audio.
Different people have different preferences. And that's all fine. With this conclude this podcast.
And again thank you, and whoever had the patience to watch for one and half hour people just mumbling about life.
But next time we hope to talk more about PHP, the state of PHP today, the hope for the PHP in the future, and the PHP community, the different projects that PHP developers are putting outside, and what we can expect from the future learning from what we had as experiences in the past.
So with this I think we are all done.
Thank you for your participation. Also thank you for your wife for understanding your delay. But we are done now.
Mike Stowe: Alright, Manuel. Thanking for having me. Thank you everyone who attended as well. We'll see you next month.
Manuel Lemos: Ok. Bye.
- RingCentral Developer site
- RingCentral site
- NomadPHP site
- PHP Development Master Award
- Hero Journey
- PHP Innovation Award Cooperating is Better than Competing
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