I wonder how much tambourine is cost on Amazon. Girl, get together. All right you guys, it's time for another chit chat and we get everything out of the way. And I'm a little bit perturbed because I had my notes down of what I was gonna talk about. I had it down like approximately, girl, approximately. I had it down like a couple of days ago and then I lost it like literally recently. So here we go. I'm gonna show y'all some things that I purchased. Baby, I've been spending a lot of money and this is just, it's too much. I've been overspending. I really have. So anyway you guys, for this chit chat video I'm gonna be setting my hair in twists. Now my hair is in mini twists. And sure enough, I was video chatting with my husband a couple of days ago. No, just yesterday. Cause we were just talking about what's gonna be gonna happen. And he's like, what's that stuff in your hair? Not talking about the twists, but I had the beads and my husband doesn't like the beads. He just doesn't. But he's in his fifties. He doesn't like the beads. So he's like, isn't that something for kids? First of all, I know you don't like the beads.  So don't comment about the beads. Okay. So one of the things I'm going to do is I'm still using this oil this is, look at that. My hair is growing. This is how long my hair is now. Okay. So I'm gonna add some to my scalp. I'm gonna add some to my hands to help to unravel the twists. So all right, y'all. How are you guys doing? Chow. Even though I've not, we've now been in back in Texas. This is our second year back in Texas. I haven't really shared a lot of the area we live in. Those of you who don't know, again, we live outside of Dallas and a small foreign land community called Forney. When I tell you this is foreign land, it's foreign land. So going to go pick up JB at his school and dropping him off at school. Ooh, y'all. Now, it has been a few days.  All right, you guys. So anyway, what were you talking about? Anyway, so I've been here for like almost two years, going on two years, right? And so we are definitely in foreign land. Whenever we drive around, especially taking JB to school, which is the back roads, there's animals everywhere. That's mostly cow stuff, but there's cows, there's goats, there's donkeys, there's mules. Mules are basically donkeys and a horse breed. Basically, I think they are. There's milk cows, there's long horns, there's horses, all types of horses. And when I tell you guys, the scenery, especially there's certain areas in Texas, a lot of people, and I think I mentioned this before, a lot of people assume that Texas is flat. And that's mostly because if you're driving through, let's say you're driving through New Mexico, that area, Odessa, that Lubbock area is flat. That's Southwest. But when you come up towards the North Texas and especially East Texas, it's hilly, and it's very green and it's absolutely very beautiful. That's one part of the city where we go around through the back corner. And I told JB, I said, this reminds me of that scene from Funny Farm. Do y'all remember that movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase and I Forgot the Other Woman, where they purchased this farm and it's basically turns out to be a limit and everything's falling apart, right? But it's very beautiful like that, especially when you can see the animals out in the open and it's just an absolute beautiful area.  We are disappointed in this city for this simple fact that we, I'm not gonna get into detail, but we're just disappointed, either. And I speak to several people that have lived here and they speak to me too, too, child. So, especially the OGs, the old heads, the ones that moved here. I wanna talk to the people that moved here 12, 15 years ago. They're telling me, oh, we're leaving. This is not what we, this is not. And child, don't get them with a real conservative. They're like, all those people coming from California. I'm like, uh-uh, they're not coming from California. They're coming from Mesquite. They're coming from Dallas. They're coming from South Dallas. They're coming from, not necessarily the Carrollton area. What is that up there, Sherman? They're coming from those areas down to, but they are besides the people here which it could be some of the people. And it's getting like this everywhere. I know it is. I know it is for the simple fact that speaking to some of our friends that still live in Phoenix, they're telling us that that neighborhood is a hot mess now. And 12 years ago, that was the place to be it. Now, yeah, you still got houses in that area. They're going for half a million dollars. Girl, I say all of it to say I finally shared some footage of the area that we live in on Instagram and Facebook and people are like, oh my God, it's so green there. It looks so peaceful. Mostly on my Facebook page. I'm like, yeah, it's beautiful. All right, you guys. Look, I've already started taking down my hair. I have to pause for the calls to speak to my husband. I keep going back and forth from when, I'm gonna be going to Houston again, like I stated. But I'm trying to figure out when to go. He's stating if we leave around 10, we gonna get there to two because the traffic's gonna be crazy on Friday. So in order to get there before he leaves for work by one, we have to leave by seven because that downtown Houston area is no joke. Even without traffic, it takes me 45 minutes to get through all that, y'all. Anyway, so that's what's going on. The babies are taking testing at JB's school, like I was saying earlier, I'm sorry about that. I'm all over the place, I know. So JB was getting test and anxiety because my baby is the type of child he hangs onto the details. So before any of this started, like nearly two months ago, he said, mommy, they told me that this test is to determine where we're at. He's getting all nervous. He's like, mommy, they're testing us to see if we can move on to fourth grade next year. I said, baby, you'll be okay. But to help him to feel at ease, I spoke to his teachers ahead of time and asked them, what can I do to help him at home? And so we went through multiplication again and we went through and talked about some things. And the thing with JB is he gets so nervous and round up that he'll read something very fast and skip through it because he has dyslexia. And so he has to read something probably at least three times when I'm working with him and then I ask him if he understands, I'm not even going to base that off of the yes and no, I need him to explain to me what it means no matter how long it takes.  And if he does, there's still a delay. So I spoke to his teacher the week before last week.  And so I guess she's spoken to the principal and they have agreed that JB and another child would be testing separately and they would be basically reading the questions and knowing what they're supposed to do with children that have learning challenges. That was his school. Again, I bought a corn chowder for the teachers, letting them know, I mean, I appreciate what they've been doing. And so they were sending me messages saying, it tastes so good. Thank you, God, I know it tastes good. I could cook hell. No, it's something I came up with, I came up with, I've been eating at Panera Bread and they have a summer corn chowder. When I tell you that thing, it's so good. And one time before I put it in the bread bowl, girl carved the hell out.  Let me save my $8. Actually, I can make this at home for $8 in the last meal whole week. So that's what I did. But I shared it with the kids. I'm with the teachers at his school. So that's what I was, y'all, let me tell you something. These taxes in Texas are no joke. No freaking joke. So we did good when we purchased our house and that we put down so much money that our mortgage, excuse me, is cheaper than some apartments. It just is, because that's how we, you know, what we were able to do. Well, those taxes, when I tell you, it was, how much was it? A little over $8,000. A little over $8,000. I am like, what is this? Absolutely crazy. That's going on. Oh yeah, y'all, that's the, let me show y'all some stuff I've been purchasing because it's a lot of stuff. Girl, it is a lot. All right, so I'm gonna have a little over 60 twists. And so let me put some of this up. Well, first up is, we're gonna do the beauty stuff first. So I went over to my best friend's house. I'd be going through her stuff. I mean, look, let me tell y'all something. We haven't been best friends for, gosh, going on 23 years. So she's like a sister to me. Now granted me, so we, you know, granted we are very careful. You know, it's not like I'm going through her panty drawer. No, but I, I stay back. And then she says, go ahead and come on.  I was over her place as she had this bathroom body works open sky, when I tell you this stuff. So because I'm all over Amazon, I purchase vibes from Amazon. Why does it? Yeah, it smells good. It smells good. Okay, purchase that for my skin. I'm back on the skin. Like I said, this is what I look like up close. Getting better. But see, I got darkness over here, dark sports and definitely over here. You see that? That needs to, so I'm giving myself another month of skin regimen on there. Cause I've only been doing this for about a month and a half. So honestly, it takes a good three months for your skin to get to, in my opinion, to get to optimal health when you introduce some new products. And so I have a couple of things that are new and I will be having a full on updated skin regimen video coming up here soon. Now, y'all gonna find this funny. I call myself Perkinson, the stretchy bands. Let me show y'all and hold on, let me show y'all. Stretchy bands to try to, you know, work out my glutes and my legs and stuff.  So this is what she's supposed to do, right? Now they were laying flat on her. Okay.  I got a medium. Wait a minute, is this all medium?  I'm thinking that it's sizes, it's not sizes. It's the, how should I say it? How's the strength of the actual band? So we got light, medium and heavy. Okay, well, let me show you what the light look like. Okay. Ms. Jack O'Fox. All right, light.  Now let's, girl. Okay, so let's see what Abigail did, it hurts for flat. This right, girl. That ain't working, okay? This ain't working, the light ain't working. So let's move on to medium, okay. And again, it doesn't have to be perfectly flat, but I need for it to be, oh, hell no. That hasn't even started. Hey, medium, yeah. So when I do this, you see there? And then I can do this, girl. Now let's go to heavy. So clearly I'm a medium heavy type of woman. You already know. Yeah, the heaviest words there. Yeah, I think I love y'all so much. Girl, that's my second work out of the week. All right, so we got heavy and medium. Okay, I feel good, I feel good. So we got that, I showed y'all this already. Yeah, that light, Jamie can play with that. All right, so, girl books. I'm still purchasing books. I, y'all, this since January or this year alone, I've purchased a little over 20 books. Now ask me how many have I read. I will say that I've been so busy with work and life in general, I haven't read a lot, but I do take my book when I go pick up JB, a book when I go pick up JB, because I pick him up and I sit there for about 20 minutes and I read, okay? So let me show y'all some books. I think I already showed y'all this. Finley, Donovan Jumps the Gun. I have all her entire series. I really do enjoy this art there, okay? I'm a big fan of support, and I don't know if that's the right word, but of supporting local businesses. So there's a bookstore here and I've been wanting to go in there and so JB and I went in here. Absolutely adorable when I went in. Like one half of it had the old school children's school classroom poster boards and stuff. Great idol place for people who homeschool. I loved it. And then she had a little basket. As soon as I was walking out the door, she had a little basket that says $3 and $5. I say, these books are $3. She said, yeah. So I got some great, great, great pre-teen and adolescent books. Yeah, I'm a big fan of adolescent books. Look, and especially teen. I'm all Christopher Pike. Yeah, that's my favorite, R.L. Stein. Whatcha know about R? So anyway, y'all, I got the tiny mansion. JB said he wants to read this first. Santiago's Road Home. These are so cute. The monsters at Rokehaven. Absolutely adorable. Sometimes some monsters take us, sometimes we become the monsters. Interesting. Let me kind of look in there. I love it. And then the last one is called Maybe a Mermaid. Isn't this adorable? But I'm gonna finish my Finley Donovan book before I jump into these kids' books. Oh, and then because, you know, there's always a side to us that we don't want to tell people about, but we do have a part of us. Thug Mantramoni by Wahida Clark. Come on, Wahida, $3. Thug Mantramoni. And so, okay, because it was $3, but it started off real nasty. It's one of those. I'm like, let me see if I can find a part that I can read for y'all to a ratchet part. It's a lot of cursing and I don't like, I don't look, y'all, I curse, but I don't like to read novels that are graphic like this. So, here's chapter one. If the groom, I'm here for the bride. She's my woman. Can you tell her snake is here and he needs to talk to her? As if on cue, his boys came inside. There were five of them and every one of them were strapped. Snake, your Kenan's, your Kenan, her ex Trina Glaird in disbelief. He gave her this look that said, what the effing, you know what? Maybe I got, no, that's too much. All right, you guys, last thing I'm gonna show you, I got this cute little spring purse that I purchased through She-In, because I don't have a green purse. I don't. So I had, yeah, I think it's adorable. It's a little cheek though. This is a little smaller, I know, but it is. It's a little smaller than what I would like, but this is cute for date night and going to go do something real cute like, yeah. All right, you guys, what I'm watching on YouTube. Now, now, trigger warning disclaimer. I of course heard about that. I'm a curse a little bit more than what you guys are used to. I do apologize, but I can't hold it back. I saw that shit, the Dalai Lama. Let me tell you something. And I agree with what others have said. This is why you really cannot hold certain people to a higher standard. I really do feel that way. I'm not surprised by nothing now. There's nothing that really surprises me. Meaning that I'm not surprised by the actions of someone to do some bullshit like that, but as a parent, I'm surprised that a parent will allow that to happen that long. I couldn't watch all of the video. And matter of fact, I wanted to go through YouTube and I'm gonna put some up here you guys, I'm sorry. I wanted to go through YouTube and kind of flag all the videos that we're showing because technically in a way, isn't that child, isn't that, in a way, isn't that child pee? I don't wanna say the entire word. I don't wanna get flagged. But isn't that, or S.A., isn't that, how the hell is YouTube allowing those videos to, apparently apologize?  I'm still watching a bit of true crime. And what I'm really into now is cold cases. It amazes me how many people are actually aware of a crime and they don't come forward either due to fear or it's mostly fear. So I was looking at a shark that had came up and it was Beyonce's clothing line and it had an almost avant, how do you say it? Avant Guarn, like court contour, basically some stuff that nobody is saying wears, just you know, stylus and stuff they would wear at the, excuse me, celebrities would wear it like the Met Gala. But before I could even, I don't know y'all. First of all, let me just say this. I'm not wanting to jump on the bandwagon up. Oh, that's the money, that's the money, that's the money. I think she's a witch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there are something, I'm just being honest. And so, or there's some things that people do in this industry in Hollywood and we just talked about this, that's very dark and demonic, absolutely. There's no denying it. And it's getting to a place, in my opinion, whether you believe it or not, it's getting to a point to where they are throwing it in our face. Like there's no denying it. They are throwing it all the way out in your face. So, I saw like a few seconds of this line, which is almost, I guess, it's a visual representation of her album. It was very dark, y'all. To me, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable. It was dark, I mean, it was, I don't know. So, girl, moving on. Why I'm watching on TV, Netflix. I got Amazon Prime for seven days. Why I'm watching y'all? So, I'm watching a lot of stuff, actually. And this particular time around, I started to watch a lot more movies. And so, I watch them. At first, I didn't wanna do it because them, in my opinion, is trauma porn, porn. It's basically about a black family that decides to move into Compton when Compton was up on rising and was primarily white. And that's how it is in a lot of areas that are now predominantly black. They initially started off as being working class, working middle class, white people.  So, they ended up leaving those neighborhoods. So, this goes on that to where this is a black family that moves into a predominantly white neighborhood. And when I tell you the woman that plays the mother, she is absolute, to me, she is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. I love her skin tone. She has a nice shape. When she is chocolate, she is absolutely breathtaking, beautiful. So, them is one of those type of series to where there were certain episodes that were really good and other parts were like, what in the hell is going on? This doesn't make any sense. I say watch it again, Amazon, Amazon Prime.    And she's talking to him and all of a sudden, she's like, showing him. And that outfit, if y'all notice, the lingerie set she has on, well, you don't probably don't notice.  The lingerie outfit she had on is black, but then it has like pink patches over certain parts of her breast and a pink patch over her pocketbook, over her cloutiquette. Well, it's not cloutiquette for her. Watch out of time. Oh, another one that was really good is I see you with Helen Hunt. I haven't seen Helen Hunt in a long time. She's older, but it's called I See You. And you would think that it's like, at first, it's suspenseful. And it still is a suspenseful thriller and you think it's gonna be scary. It is kinda scary, but it's not what you think. And I believe that's on Amazon Prime too, but when I see it at, it's either Netflix or Hulu, you guys. I do apologize, but it's called I See You. Really good. Well, not really good, but it's good. I wasn't expecting it. Something I want to watch, but I'm not in the mood to be paying for all these things. Let me tell you something. I'm sick of getting something and it says try it out for seven days. How about I try it out for 15 days? Stars Paramount Plus.  Cause it's all starts there. Cause right now I got, I got Hulu, I got Sling, I got Netflix. Sling decided to up their prices. Netflix decided to up their prices. I think I got something, I was this close to getting Hulu with Paramount Plus for another $8 or $9. I'm not doing that. Y'all not gonna trap me because I want to see yellow jackets. I really want to see this series, you guys. It has, what is her name? First of all, it has Christina Ricci and it has the other actress. When she was younger, she played a national impugn Christian of Christmas vacation. No, she was the daughter. What is her name? I forget her name. I love her about it. There was a movie I saw called Nope on Amazon Prime and it has Old Boy from Wakanda. He was the one that, yeah, I know, I should know people name. I'm gonna be putting the names below. Nope, he's with his sister and they are farmers and his father, the good voice actress, the voice actor, he played the cat. He also played the, look, I told you, I know who these people, I know who they play in. And Princess and the Frog. Yeah, I know what I'm talking about. I'm gonna put his name down below too. So he played as the father, but this is one that's done by Mr. Pill. And when you're first watching it, you think, oh my God, this is gonna be scary when it's about, this is about alien, this is about UFOs. Again, it is not what you think. It's one of those that has different layers. I will probably watch it again because I would just so entertain. Hold on, y'all. I forgot to add the serum. I'm gonna watch it again because I was so entertained by it. And not only am I gonna do this, I'm gonna do these up front. No, I was gonna do them smaller, but I'm not, didn't enjoy it. But the most disturbing thing, the most disturbing scene. Oh, and then it had Glenn from Walking Dead, the Asian God, Glenn. The most disturbing scene, y'all. Are you gonna agree with me if you've seen the movie?  Let me tell you something. You cannot have monkeys as friends. I'm sorry, but you, you need to get some real friends, but very similar, this was very similar to the incident with Travis, that chimpanzee that ended up ripping the face off that woman. And those of you who don't know, because I have a disturbing side to me, part of that woman in the passing a few years ago, the woman who had her face ripped off by the chimpanzee, Travis. Not only that, but the owner also passed away of the, that entire, this just shows you how traumatic things in your life can have a huge effect on you, your mental wellness and your health. And that can honestly affect your immune system. Her family, meaning the woman that owned Travis was riddled with deaths. Because if I remember correctly, when she was married, because she was married, her daughter, she had a daughter at one point, unfortunately died in the car accident. That's when her and her husband decided to get this chimpanzee named Travis.  You ain't, you ain't Michael Jackson. And this ain't, this ain't Bubbles. This is freaking Travis.  Y'all, I messed up. See, that's why I get for talking. So anyway, the father ended up passing away. So then she's left with Travis and herself on this property. But every now and then she has visitors and they all know about Travis. But Travis is also on some psych meds. So he had a little incident, girl not even a little incident, where he acted out and the only person he could get to was the owner's friend.  So y'all, y'all anyway, back to note, there's a scene that's very similar to that. You don't see it, but what makes it, you don't visually see it. You have to imagine it. But that's what makes it so disturbing. Cause you can see what he's doing. You can see it was a little girl, he was doing it too to make it even more sad. You can see the little girl feet moving around and screaming and then you can hear him going to attack another person. Child, I was like, this is the most disturbing thing I've seen in a long time. Snowfall, by now, y'all should have seen it's a couple of episodes. If not disclaimer, spoiler, I'm going to say some stuff. I knew that somebody was going to die. And I told y'all, I felt like it was going to be either Franklin or his fiancee or Hector. I know his name is Hector. The mama, Jerome, Jerome's wife. And it turns out to be Jerome. Y'all, when I tell you, I got a little choked up at that.  This is not real. But you knew what was happening. We all could feel something was going to happen. Now I'm all caught up and I just don't think how, I just don't know how things are going to end out so great for Franklin. I feel like he is, he's gotten to a point to where he's so greedy. He doesn't care about anything but himself. Oh, he cares about his fiancee to a certain degree. But I think if he really cared about her, he wouldn't put her in certain situations.  She's pregnant. She can't be witnessing stuff like that. That's traumatic to her. For her. That's in front of her and her mama. Chill. I'm like, Franklin baby, you need to call somebody. This is too much. All right, you guys, what else, what else, what else? I watched another movie that I love with Blake Lively and Anna something, a simple favor. I like Blake Lively. That's it, y'all. I'm all over the place. My job is very busy so I need to go ahead and answer some emails here. Dennis, thank you so much for watching and thank you as always to all, girl, what the hell? So thank you so much for watching and thank you as always to all of my subscribers. Take care, bye.


recording. So just tell me when you're done. Hi everyone. The talk I'll be giving is the Humane Technical Interview. So as somebody else said earlier, if this isn't your talk, go ahead and leave. Don't feel bad. I like that. I'm stealing it. So, who am I?  So I work at a DC area startup called Speak Agent and I work there as the CTO or as I like to call it last nerd standing. So a while back we realized we needed to hire somebody because I was the only coder and we only had one front end designer and we were extremely beleaguered. So our CEO comes to us and says, okay, well we need to give them a technical interview. And I'm like, yeah, totally. And then there was this awkward pause and he's like, do we have one? And I was like, oh, no, I'm the last nerd standing. I have to make this. And I was horrified.  I can count on one hand how many people actually enjoy technical interviews. So I started asking myself why do they cause so much strife? And this is not a complete list. This is a non-exhaustive list. But, you know, it's one of the things I kept hearing as I talked to people and interviewed people about these, you know, about these problems. And there was one underlying problem. And that's because we're often not testing what we think for testing when we do technical interviews. Because what do we want? We obviously want a skilled coder because we need to know that they can do the job and we need to know they can do the job quickly. And we also want somebody who works well under pressure because business moves quickly and we always have deadlines and our business is especially under stress all the time. So we need somebody who is grace under pressure. We want somebody who gels with the team. So because we want to all get along and we're one big happy family and we'll work better together if we are all one cohesive Borg-like unit. We also want the best candidate because isn't there always a best candidate? There's one ideal candidate out there and you're going to find them and you know exactly how to find them. And since time is money, we need that hunt to be done quickly because recruiters are expensive and interviews are expensive and having a blank spot is also very expensive because your coders are dying because they need another body in the room. So how do we find these people? One quick warning before the rest of this talk. I pulled a lot from real life experiences, both that I went through and that people I know went through. If you recognize yourself in any of these, I'm not naming any names, but you may be able to recognize something. Know that you're not the first person to do this and there's no hard feelings. I don't want to hurt your feelings. This is just something that is usually happening throughout the industry. Just you made the best story, but I'm not naming any names. So you shouldn't be able to figure it out. Hopefully. Don't Google it. So first off, let's start with a skilled coder. One of the first tests we do is we give them fun coding challenges.  So you're not a game company, but hey, who doesn't want to code like some cute little game and isn't that way more fun than like reversing a tree or doing anything boring? Or better yet, you might invite them to come to a hackathon and that way you can buy them some pizza, get to know them. They can write some code for you. You can look at the code. It's a great situation.  Look at it. You know, answer some questions. Here's some silly requirements. You can pop in there. Isn't it funny? We're all very funny. We like fun. So what you think you're testing? You think you're testing to see if they know how to code? And you're checking to see if their code is clean, because we always want clean code. And you're also seeing if they are awesome, because you only want awesome people at your company. You also want to know if they like fun because, Hey, we're fun. Everyone likes to have fun. You don't want some, you know, gloomy guts getting in your works. And fun is important at work. But you're actually testing. Do they know the language they're working in? This is legit. Yes, test for this. This is good to know. You want to know that they can code in the language that you are working in. I am big on this, because people often say, Oh, you don't want to see coding challenges. Actually, I do. I think coding challenges are fine. But I think you can very easily make them suck. So let's not do that. Do they like your fun? I think sometimes we think that there's only one kind of fun and we're having it. And we all have the same fun. But believe it or not, there are developers who don't like Monty Python, who, yeah, I know, right? Who don't like Dr. Who or Star Trek or Star Wars, who don't like science fiction or fantasy, who are just very serious people and they don't have the same fun as us and that doesn't make them better or worse coders. The other thing you're testing is can they fake liking your fun? And I've done this because there are things that are popular in the tech community that I don't care about or that I actively dislike. And when I was a younger coder and more vulnerable to backlash, I definitely nodded and pulled up Wikipedia entries so I could talk about something, but I actually did not care about that thing at all. So you're seeing if they can fake liking your fun. What are you missing? Well, you might be missing people who have a hidden background in your product. If you're coding challenges, don't mirror your product, they're not getting a good chance to get down and dirty with your product. This is one of the things I discovered in my company, we mirrored the product. And we found out that one of the people we were interviewing has a background in the product. I was kind of amazed, but he didn't think of it that way. Our product is for ESL. Children who are learning English as a second language. We didn't realize the guy who was interviewing with us went through ESL. So he actually put that in the code and he didn't think to mention it. Because and I'll go over this later, but it came up in the code. And he was like, I'm like, this is amazing. You know how to do some of these things already. But it's not something that he would put on his resume. So what I suggest people do instead, mimic your actual product, you don't have to have them actually hack on your code, but just mimic it. And it's not a bad idea to mimic the most common day to day tasks. Because let's be honest, none of us come into work every day and build a system from scratch. If we did that, it would be terrible. What we do is we come in and we fix bugs.  And we might do a little bit of planning. But you know, mimic that instead. So they can also get an idea of what it's like to work at your company. Because you don't want to have all this fun stuff, and then hire them. And then they realize all they're doing is making slight modifications to widgets for the next 20 years. Another thing we do is quizzes. So you might like these are usually pop quizzes, and they're usually verbal. So you're like, Hey, do you know the difference between different sorts? Or what a certain Unix commands do that kind of thing? So what do you think you're testing? Think you're testing basic dev knowledge. And you think you're testing basic knowledge of the language or coding. And you're thinking you're testing of knowledge of more advanced concepts. But let's be honest, be trees and sorts, the vast majority of devs don't touch this once we leave college. I have not sorted anything, except for using the sort command in probably 10 years, like that's been it. That's all I've done. And I do a lot of development. I don't even think I have come within 10 miles of a B tree, or any kind of tree that I've had to actually interact with. So, you know, some people do, but I would put money on it that most people are five or more years out of college just aren't going to remember these things. Also, if you didn't take a traditional path, you may not know some of these things. I teach people that are transitioning from one career to another, and they're skipping the computer science degree. And none of us go over this kind of stuff, we just don't we're like, No, no, no, you need to know how to do things in Python, you need to know how to use, you know, Linux and stuff like that. So they would know commands. But I'm not wasting time like teaching them like, here's a bubble sort. No, they don't need to know that. They're grownups. And you also find out who crammed for the interview. I am in several technical slacks. Each one of them has some kind of interview channel. And in each one, at least once a week, we have somebody coming in saying, I have to cram for my technical interview. What are some good resources? And this is kind of crazy because this is not getting you better developers. If they're just cramming for these kind of BS tests, they're not better than somebody who didn't cram. And the last one, people who have the docs memorized. Some people do, some people don't, most of us open up a Google tab like 20 times a day. Because I know almost everybody in this room has had a point where there's so many tabs open, like with search results, you can't actually see any of the titles anymore. Because this is all of us. Real quick, basically wrote, you know, the bomb blows up because you can't do a valid tar file. I can't do that. My husband, who is a sys admin of like 20 plus years, is like, oh yeah, NASA would be gone if this happened in our servers. So what you're missing, you're missing highly skilled people who don't have computer science degrees. And you're also missing people with poor memory for college. I actually took some computer science classes, though my degree is in psychology, and I don't remember half the crap that I did there. And I got straight A's. Like if you put me in a room, I'd be like, I probably couldn't pass the first exam anymore. So what to do instead? Stick to things you actively use on a weekly basis. It is totally fair. If you use virtual amp every day, make sure they know what virtual amp is. If you actually, actually do have to touch bee trees, and there are companies that do have to touch trees and do have to deal with sorts, you know, very intimately, like, yes, it is totally fair. If you have to do that on a weekly basis, go over it.  Sorry to tell anyone that nerd cred is meaningless, but it is. If somebody freezes, and we'll go over this a little bit more as we go on, if somebody freezes, follow up with them later. Because anxiety is real, and this might be what's happening. You might be misinterpreting what you're seeing. And consider not doing them. Like seriously, they're really, really bad. They don't mimic real life.  So you only know how to do something if you are actually touching the keyboard.  It's really hard to explain things. So the text test, whiteboard challenges. Oh boy. I love these.  So what do we think we're testing when we do this to people? Well, we think we're testing how people think on the fly. Like they're not at a keyboard. They can't Google anything. What's their brain working like? And we also think we're testing, again, knowledge of computer science concepts. But what you're really testing is who really who can speak out loud easily. Now, I'm a teacher and not like every day, but I teach for fun and occasional profit. And I am good at thinking aloud. I am not good at thinking loud because I'm a developer. I'm good at thinking aloud because I've taught so many classes. I can do this really easily. It does not bug me often. I'm also a weirdo who talks to herself all the time. So I'm just used to talking a lot and thinking aloud. So it's a skill. It's a very different skill has nothing to do with how well you code. I assure you, I am not a better developer because I'm a weirdo who talks to myself. You're also testing who is a visual thinker. We're not all visual thinkers. Some people just can't do it. They're not better coders. They're not worse coders. They're just people who think a little differently and have maybe trouble drawing things out. And again, people who have crammed for the interview because there are people who will go on YouTube and watch people do the common whiteboard examples, memorize them and wait for the question. They are not better coders at the end of the day because those YouTube videos are just like how to get past this stupid pseudo Google interview question, which by the way, Google's the one that started this terrible, terrible thing. Even they're like, oh, we're not doing this anymore. Like even they're stopping it. So maybe you don't do them. What to do instead? Just don't, just don't.  Like, first of all, if you have a remote job, you've got to pull people into an office. Everybody gets stared at. They're dumb. Don't do them. Like just don't. Hidden rubrics. What do I mean by hidden rubrics?  We all know what we're grading on. You know, you might put in like hidden tricks, like code, like hidden bugs or instructions and wait to see what people do, that kind of thing. So you think you're testing how good a coder is. Again, like everything we're doing is just to see are they a good coder. And you're seeing, you're trying to see if they pass a sniff test. Like you're trying to see, you know, oh, are they doing anything that might make our spidey sense go off or something? And you want to find somebody who meets the criteria for a job and you don't want to be biased. You're worried about that. You're worried that you're biased, that your other people may be biased. You want to be fair. So what you're actually testing is who got lucky that day. Because sometimes you have somebody who is just going to score them higher. Maybe they like them more. Maybe they're just in a good mood. Because if somebody's in a good mood, they are much more, like, likely to score you higher. Maybe they just had lunch. Because by the way, don't ever, ever sign up for an interview before lunch because people get the hangries and the hangries are real and they actually have real world consequences. So, you know, that person just got lucky with their time slot. And this one, who got insider info? So this happened to me. I was interviewing for a job and the recruiter really wanted me in that spot. Just like, you're perfect. I'm going to get you in there. Do you have 10 minutes to talk before your coding challenge? And I was like, yeah. And she called me. She's like, yes, okay, these are not in the instructions, but you need to do A, B, and C. I was like, what? And she's like, yeah, if you don't do A, B, and C, they won't hire you. It's a hard requirement. Like that was one of their hidden rubrics. And I'm like, but okay. And I did A, B, and C. And I'm like, yeah, it's amazing. Nobody has done all three of those yet. And I'm like, I think I know why. And I've had other people that have had that happen to them. And it's, you know, they have a friend that gives them the tips. So all you're checking to see is if somebody actually got insider info. And also, who can get by your hidden biases? There is a great book called Weapons of Math Destruction. And it has a really cute title.  Because it's so depressing. Because it's about big data.  Like you would have been better off going with your racist gut than if you had just instead of this rubric, because the rubric was worst. Because we all have hidden biases. And those biases make it in to the rubrics. When you may have a bias against like people who didn't complete college, who didn't go to college, who don't like the right, who haven't had the same paths, who don't use the same text editor, whatever. Like you have biases. So what to do instead? Be clear. Like tell them what the rubric is if one of your requirements is that you have to have mock tests. Like tell them. It's really weird. But just tell them. In order to pass our rubric, you need to do A, B, C, and D because this is how jobs work. Like in order for you to get paid this week, you need to do A, B, C, and D. You don't come into work like, oh, you didn't pass our super secret test. You don't get a paycheck. Like that doesn't happen. And maybe cut it down a bit. You know, you don't need a huge long rubric to be fair. That's actually not fair. The more things you have on it, the more likely you're going to be end up screwing somebody over unintentionally that didn't deserve it. So cut it down a bit. Because you would be surprised. There's still people, if you have five items on there, there's still people who won't pass it. You know, by the way, the code you submit has to run. I had people that submitted. I'm like, it doesn't, it doesn't run. Yeah, there was an error. And I'm like, okay, well, there we go. Like they already, you're not going to get like 100% pass rate anyway. The next one, gelling with the team. This is not technically something you do during a technical interview, but it is so totally something you do during the technical interview. Because what did the developers do after the interview? They're like, oh, do we want to work with this person? So it's part of it. You have to think about that. The first test is culture questions.  So what does this look like? They often pop up as questions that are not about coding. So what do they do in their spare time? What kind of media do they like? And what's their Hogwarts house? And that kind of stuff.  So what we think we're testing, will this person fit well with our team? Because we want somebody who will fit well and it'll be seamless and wonderful. And will we have something to talk about? Because we are one big happy family and you have to fit within the collective or everything will be terrible. So what we're actually testing who happens to have the same hobbies? And not everyone rock climbs. Not even people who say they rock climb. Not everyone drinks. Not everyone goes to music shows. Not everyone does hackathons. And you're also testing who has a similar lifestyle as you. Because you know you like rock climbing. Okay, fine. But you know you're probably going to over focus on that and start pre selecting for people who you could see inviting out or for a beer or because you know that you like the same band. And you spent 40 minutes in the hallway talking about how awesome their last show was. And oh my God, but did you see this other one in Portland? You see where I'm going with this. So the people you might be missing. People who have different lifestyles. It's amazing. We do exist. Because not everybody has the same lifestyle. Some people have kids or aging parents. Some people have demanding pets. There are people who just don't like to go out. And that's that's fine. Like, that's okay. People who stay at home and sit, you know, so and knit and watch YouTube all weekend are, you know, that's me. That's what I do. That's my exciting life. I don't do much else other than that. That does not make me a better or worse cutter than anyone else. And people who don't care to share because let's be honest. We're a little judgy. You know, we get really judgmental about what people like to do. You know, for years, I actually hesitated to share that I was a crafter because people cut really weird and judgy about the fact that I can make sweaters. And like, everyone needs sweaters. Like, you know, but it's really weird.  So you just don't want to share. Another one is Spoonies. For those who don't know, Spoonie is a term that's used to refer to anybody who has some kind of condition that leaves them with severely limited amounts of energy. So people who are Spoonies, and you can look, the thing is at the bottom, I'm not going to relay the whole story. It's a long story, but they have to spend their reserves very, very carefully. So everyone I know who's a Spoonie who works full time, their weekend is going home and recuperating. Their evenings are going home and recuperating because they're trying to bring as much energy as they can back into the office on Monday. And that's why they may not say that they do all these cool things because they're sleeping and they're resting and they're doing self care. That's why, like not because they're bad coders, rock climbing has nothing to do with coding. So what to do instead, stop putting people on the spot. Like normally I advise people like say, oh, tell us about yourself, what they care to share, they will share, don't start quizzing about weekends, don't do the friendly chitchat. First of all, it's also keeping them in the office for another like freaking hour. And interviews are already long enough and they're going to be able to let them choose what they share. Because when an interviewer asks me what I do on the weekend, I sense a trap. And I immediately start overthinking it. And I'm like, okay, okay, okay, let me do a read on this guy. Okay, I need to talk about, like, you know, maybe movies, he looks like a movie buff. Okay, I'll go with movies. And I'll go with hackathons, maybe sometimes. And I will try to do a read on the person and tell them what they want to hear. They can find out after the interview that I actually sell all weekend. And stop weighing this when hiring, even if it comes up organically, even if you just end up talking in the hallway for 40 minutes about your favorite band. You do not want to penalize candidate B, because candidate A does something you like. That's really horrible. Don't do that. Like, really try to step back, be aware of your biases. And yes, they're cool person, you want to hang out. But you do have to make a choice based on like, I don't know their code and stuff. And also, what I do on my weekend is none of your business. Like, keep that in mind. It is absolutely none of your business. If no matter what you're doing. So anytime you start thinking and weighing that, just have that in the back of your mind. And so I made a nice one. The next is pseudoscience. One thing I like to remind people when they're writing interviews is that they are not a social scientist. And I said this as somebody with a background in psychology. I'm not even a social scientist. I can just kind of fake being one sometimes. And I wouldn't do these things. But we really like to pretend like we're social scientists when we do interviews.  So we think we're testing hidden attributes. Because we want to see if we can suss out any of those things that don't come out on their own. Like, you put a puzzle in the waiting room. And then you have the receptionist watch to see if they touch the puzzle, because that indicates that they're curious.  And that's their profession. Like that's kind of what we're going for here. If you touch the puzzle, then you're inquisitive.  And I've actually seen the puzzle thing. It's kind of BS.  You might also try to be suss out deception. So you're watching them very carefully. You're watching their body language. Do they look left or right when they answer a question? Because, hey, we've all watched the mentalist. And that's like super easy. If they look left, they're lying. By the way, it doesn't actually work. The mentalist is a fictional person. Yeah. And sometimes we try to suss out a true person by eliciting what we think of as a real reaction. So I don't know if any y'all have grandmas that watched like detective shows when you were kids, but oh, I'm sorry. Just yes. Yes. Just one more thing. Okay, so for anyone who's not understanding why this side of the room is nerding out right now. This is Colombo. And he is a detective. And one of the things he would do is he would like to ask a bunch of questions to the perp. And he's like, all right, all right, I'm done with my questions. I'm done. You can go and the person would relax and he turned around. Just one more thing. And he would ask some question and it was always like, you know, the person would like show a reaction.  Colombo is also fictional. Just so just so you know. I had this done to me in an interview. And I watched it happen to someone else. The interviewer asked me when it was at the end of the interview, like I was literally getting my purse, like I was packing together my purse and my resumes. And he's like, Oh, just one quick question before you go. What are your three favorite movies? My first thought was, well, I can't actually say what my first thought was because we have we have a code of conduct. But it rhymes with duck you. And but I he's like, What's your favorite movies? Now he thought that by doing this, he could get a read on me. So he was watching how I was reacting. There's one problem. I actually don't like movies. Like, they're fine. I'll watch them on flights and stuff. But I never seek out movies. They're just I don't like them. But I have learned you never ever tell a movie buff this. I've been on that date. It's a bad scene. They always have a movie they want to show you that'll make you love movies. Oh, no. It's like a dungeon and they don't let you leave until you tell them that you really like like burns that burns the guy and it's terrible. So anyway, I actually pulled to out of the air that I'm like, what do movie buffs like? Okay, I'll say these two because I think I know the Wikipedia entry on them. And I'm a childhood favorite. Like, it was a total lie. Like, but I really didn't want to end the interview on that note where I'm going to say like, yeah, movies suck. His read on me. I asked him later because I worked there. And I later on I was like, what was your read on me?    I don't remember two of the movies. You know, and it was wrong and I actually laughed. But it's still like he thought he had a read on me. And he didn't. And that was bad because he was had garbage information. So what to do and you're not actually testing anything because you're not trained. Even social scientists don't do this.  And and and those are usually real longer, like, yeah, maybe this doesn't work every time. So that's something you've got to keep in mind. You are not a social scientist. Don't do it. Because what you're missing is anyone who doesn't pass your test. And your test was garbage. So you're rejecting them for a garbage reason. You also might be missing out on those people who caught it, who realized that you were testing them, who got peeved about it. And we're like, I'm not going to work there.  If this is how they are, a good candidate just walked away. And you also spent a lot of money getting them in the room. So don't do it. It's not worth the risk. So what to do instead? Just like, don't, like really? Don't do it is I'm not saying don't screen for jerks.  It's that easy. It's great. You don't need a secret test to like suss out the jerk. So another thing we test for is that they work well under pressure, which always kind of makes me laugh because everyone, everyone is like our company. We are always under such pressure. We are a high pressure environment. There is there's deadlines like y'all invented deadlines. And I assure you deadlines have been around for a while. And I've actually never met anybody who's like, yeah, our work is chill. We never do anything, but we get paid well for it. I you know, if you if you do work there. Anyway, first test, you mess with people. You make artificially stressful situations like inserting a weird bug or giving them a system that doesn't work, or you have an alarm go off or you're just extra jerky. There's a Oh, who's seen Charlie in the chocolate factory? Okay, or one. Okay, there's a guy and he's the evil guy. And it turns out he was like a hired jerk, but he's actually nice. And it works in the movie, but also fiction. Don't do it. So what do you think you're testing? You think you're testing grace under pressure, which is important. Developers, there's not a lot of leeway to like, freak out. We do freak out. But you know, we kind of need to have a little bit of an ability to have grace under pressure and ability to work in your high pressure environment, which went over, you're not special. What you're actually testing for is the ability for a person to manage their stress in that situation. And let me explain what that means. When people aren't a situation that is familiar to them, they are able to act under pressure. If they're in a situation that is not familiar to them, they're not going to be as good. So I am a boss at putting on fires in my own kitchen. If you put me in somebody else's kitchen, I'm like, well, I guess everything's kind of burned down today. Excellent. And literal kitchens, like other people's kitchens, I can't even deal with where you put things. And, you know, but if you take a professional chef that moves around kitchens a lot, okay, they are trained for that specific thing. They're trained to be bounced around. I am not, I'm not good at that. What you might be missing are people with anxiety issues, people who have anxiety issues. When they're in a familiar situation, they can put together tools and self care, and they can center themselves if they're familiar with the situation. If they're not familiar with it, they have many fewer tools. So one of the things I recommend, go watch one of Ed Finkeler's talks. He talks about this quite a bit. And they're excellent talks. And he gives numbers and stuff like that, which I'm not going to give here. But go check that out because there's a lot of people with anxiety. Either we're born with it and we enter into the field, or it comes up later, whether biologically or because we live in a traumatizing field, one or the other. And people who catch on, people sometimes catch on that you've made this artificially hard that you put that bug in a system on purpose.  So like maybe just don't do these because I'm going to tell you something right now below your mind. Interviews are already stressful. Everyone is already stressed.  So another test is on the spot thinking, which is goes along with the whole like whiteboard stuff, but you also may be like stopping them in the middle of the stuff, something, asking them to explain something. Basically, if you're ever hawkishly watching someone and making them answer something right there, this is on the spot thinking. So we're looking for ingrained knowledge. This is a very specific skill. Again, I'm a teacher. I am really good at explaining things on the spot. I have a lot of answers rehearsed, but it's not a it does nothing to do with my coding. Like that did not make me a better coder. And you're also testing who is an anxious. If I am anxious during an interview, I lose the ability to explain things. I had that happen where I couldn't explain how to write a Django view. I write Django views all the frickin time. It's my job. And I sat there and I blanked. I completely blanked. I'm sure the guy is like, how has this woman not been eaten by wolves? But that was it.  And I'm just like, no, get me out of here. So, you know, again, you're missing people with anxiety issues. And they once you get them in the office, they're fine. Like once they have a setup, once they're familiar, once they don't have somebody staring at them with their soulless dead eyes, they're fine. Also, people who have finger memory, because as I said before, developers tend to work best when we're staring at a screen and typing and our mouths aren't moving. That's just how we work. It makes sense. Most of us do not code with talking. I've only met one that did that. So what to do instead, make it natural, put them in a natural environment of an environment they're comfortable in, let them use their own computer, let them use a familiar setup, and just, you know, let them work as they normally would work, because that's where you're going to get the best data.  And if you must allow for followups because anxiety does happen, you may want to follow up the next day because what people do when I was at the view thing and I'm like, oh my God, what even is Django?  I know what a view is. And you know, I did end up following up with someone the next day where I explained the answer. And some people are scared like, what if they Google it? It's like, we all Google stuff. Like that's our job is actually to Google stuff all day. And chances are you're going to be able to hear whether they Googled it. I assure you, if somebody is just reading off a Google response, you'll know versus somebody who actually looked into it and actually knows it and just remembered it. So last one, the best candidate for the job. So this is one of those things. We always think there's an ideal candidate. We always do. But I'll let you in a secret. There always, there isn't always an ideal candidate. Sometimes you have a bunch of people that actually would do really well, but in different ways. So the first test we do is staunch requirements. We are going to make it like they have to be an expert in everything we do. We want at least 10 years of development experience, an advanced degree. And you know, they need to like have all these like wonderful things and they need to know how to use the entire stack. So we think we're testing, you know, do they have the expertise for the job? We only want people with the right expertise. We're actually testing who can check boxes.  We're also testing who can tweak resumes. This is something you can actually pay for this. I've had people pay for it. Sometimes you're married to the person who can do it. But yeah, like this is a thing. My father could tweak like anybody's resume to get anybody's job. Like he was really good. It was his job. So what you might be missing experience you didn't know you needed that it comes in every once one, you're like, wait, you know how to do that? Oh my God, we could totally use that.  And yeah, they don't know, you know, compass and they don't necessarily they don't have a strong background in like, you know, as strong a background at Python as we want. But this is worth bringing on. Let's bring this person on. You're also missing under qualified people who aren't like if you are really, really honed in like you're going to get that computer science degree, you're missing people who just don't have a computer science degree, but are still solid developers. And people who just don't check the box is quite right. There are people that will have experience in CSS. But you asked for compass and they didn't like say that they could do compass so they don't check the box a lot of newer developers do this. One of the difference between a senior, senior developer and a junior developer is that senior developers walk into a room with like a how hard can it be? Sure, I could probably figure that out. Just how I got my current job, which is how how I had to learn Angular in a month. So, but that's proper, that's development. So what to do instead, match it down your qualifications. You want those people you want people to pass over a bar. You don't need people to vault over the bar. You can set that bar later. But you want a lot of good people to come in. And you want to look at the whole person, you know, just don't focus on these tiny little attributes focus on everything they're bringing to the table. So running a little bit late on time. So I'm going to start blasting through. So saving time and money while searching, it's expensive. So you might pre screened through a third party, like a recruiter, who loves recruiters, everyone, right? So you just want to see if they meet basic qualifications. But what you're actually testing is who can pass by the service and not all the services are doing this correctly.  So what you might be missing people who just failed their weird tests, which by the way, I've been failed by them. And I'm like, actually, no, I was right. And they're like, well, technically, I've Googled this. And this is the Google says this is the right answer. This happens. People, the recruiter rejected for non tech reasons. And this does happen where the recruiter just does not like the sound of your voice. Because recruiters can be just as sexist, racist, ageist, or any as you can come up with as anyone else.  And I said, if anybody calls him calls me from your company ever again, I swear to God, the tweet storm that will land on your front doorstep will be ugly. What to do instead, consider doing yourself. I understand it's a lot of people, but maybe just considered not using a recruiter. If you and another thing you can do is start with the technical challenge. That is a good way. Like if somebody says, hey, I'm interested in your company, you're like, cool. Here is a coding challenge. Do this. We'll talk. People will self select. If they look at it and they're like, I don't know if I think I don't think I know how to do this, they'll walk away. Congratulations, you've saved time. If somebody says, like, oh, I don't actually know Django, or I don't want to work in Django. They'll walk away. That's fine. Some people will just, you know, decide not to do it. And if you do use a recruiter, vet them often. Call people who have been interviewed through them and say, what was it like? What happened? You know, even if they don't get a job, what was it like? Can we get a few hours a year? Can we get an hour of your time? We'll pay you. That kind of stuff. Like make sure you're checking to make sure they didn't like have somebody else do it for them. Aggressively filtering resumes. This is like having this not requirements. Again, expertise. But you're only testing for surface qualifications. And you're only testing for resume writing skills, which by the way, you can purchase people to do this for you. So you might be missing innate biases, like, you know, who went to college, hidden qualifications, people that have those secret hidden skills you didn't know about, and good kind of candidates with less than stellar resumes. So ratchet down again, the qualifications, chill out and shorten up the process. Because one of the things is we have these long processes because we have all these little tests in there and everybody's got to be in the room. Everybody, you know, we've got to get everyone in and everyone's to talk to each, you know, talk to the person.  So why not just focus on getting some good data, a smaller amount of data in taking up less of everybody's time. So what do we do? I would say make the coding challenge relevant and short. And I would also put it at the beginning, you know, let people see the code, have a quick conversation and see if there's interest. Don't spend four hours of their time before you've even seen the code. And again, do the challenge first. Shorten the interview. You do not learn anything new about the person in the fourth hour than you did in the first. I swear the only thing you've learned is who can smile the longest and keep their cool and not go to the bathroom because you never want to go as to go to the bathroom. Trust your team. If Joe can't be there, don't bring the person back in because Joe needs to talk to them, reschedule or say Joe, trust us, we're not going to hire a serial killer. And Robert, the interviewee is the interviewer. They are looking at you as much as you are looking at them. So you want to put your, you want to put a transparent, you know, everything on the table, everything out there because you want them to love you as much as you want to love them. And with the three minutes we have left, do we have any questions? I've seen people ask that, like interviewee is asking to see his question was have you seen an interviewee ask to see the inter the company's code? I have seen people ask that. I've never like in some companies will do it. A lot of companies, if you're an open source company have like a repo that they can go look at and look at the code.  One of the people I interviewed went and looked at the code. And I was like, don't judge me. I didn't I didn't know angular very well back then. And he was very nice. He's like, I could fix this. And it was great. But yeah, I've seen that and you may offer them the code where it's like, yes, look at us judge us. That might be a great way to pre screen if somebody doesn't want to deal with the hot mess. Yes.  I usually counsel guys to be especially sensitive to the anxiety thing because there's I'm like it is no matter how nice a guy you are, no matter how many Pilates t shirts you have bought, it is a fraught situation. It is a heavy situation. Try to put everyone at ease. And as a woman going in nice lipstick or sorry, that's usually what I do. I don't know what everybody else does.  And it's hard, you know, and also, but with women, I usually say find a community of women and talk to each other and share war stories. Like that's one of the things that really got me through when I had a really bad interview. And I was crying afterwards. I went to one of my fellows and my fellow Pilates. I'm like, I used to the worst and they're like, Oh, oh no, I can beat that. And we all went through our war stories. And they also helped tell me it's like honey, you're not crazy. Good Lord. Why did they do it that way? So find a community, find people you can share with. And it can take the edge off of dealing with interviews. That's good for everyone, but especially women. Yeah. And that's when they're wrong. The idea is that the reason you people coming back over and over again is to see who's really determined to get there. And what you've actually tested for is who's unemployed or who has a job where they don't say, Oh, wait, why are you wearing a suit again? Because I had jobs where I'm like, I can come in for literally one interview because if they think I'm interviewing anywhere, I will get fired. Like, so please do not like make me come in for more than one. So it's like, no, that's what you're not testing for people who are determined. They either have no job or they have really flexible jobs or they don't care. So yes. So searching. I and there's lots of ones where I say, Oh, just hide the names and oh, do this. And I'm like, no, I think the best way you can confront your biases is by like, actually confronting them. Reading books about biases that there's, I wish I can remember, I'm really bad with book names, by the way, I only remember the one book because I prepped myself. But there's lots of books about biases and the implicit biases read up on every kind of like social justice thing you can. Because that's one of the ways you will force your gut to stop reacting in a certain way. So I mean, that's the only way the only answer is not to hide everything. It's to put it in front. I know I'm just holding a zero at me. Sorry. I can I take one more? Don't. Okay, one more. Okay.  Thank you, everyone.


This systematic review examined the accuracy of case identification methods used to select individuals with obesity from healthcare administrative databases. The results showed that ICD codes were the most commonly used method, but its accuracy varied greatly depending on the study. Overall, the sensitivity of these methods was low while the specificity was higher. This suggests that case identification methods may not be reliable for monitoring the prevalence and incidence of obesity within healthcare administrative databases. However, they remain useful for selecting individuals with obesity for cohort studies, especially those with severe obesity or those who have obesity as part of a comorbid condition. This article was authored by Seko Samadalagu, Liana Dzerda, Roxanne Dalt, and others.


Hello to everybody watching the farming podcast brought to you by Private Property. My name is Mbali Nwaka, as always, your host every Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8pm, right here on the Private Property Channel. Thank you so much for joining us, whether you're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Thank you for constantly supporting the farming podcast. And today, I've got a fantastic guest who's going to tell us about his agricultural marketplace called Farm Direct South Africa.  I believe this is one such platform that could really propel your business and put it in the forefront of many consumers out there. And so if you have any questions for our guests this evening, please feel free to comment. We're happy to answer your questions live onto the show and continue to like, share and comment as you please. And let us know we all thoughts on the farming podcast and on our discussion this evening. So tonight I'm joined by Yaku Bartonost, who is the founder of Farm Direct, is saying he's going to tell us about his business and what exactly the platform does. Yaku, thank you so much for joining us this evening. How are you doing? I'm well and you Mbali. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure being on your show. It's a real privilege. Thank you. Thank you, Yaku. You know, I follow a farm director essay on Instagram and I've just been curious about what the platform is about. But before we dive deeper into it, just tell us who you are and how you came about starting Farm Director essay. Mbali, I'm a I'm a boy from the Southern Cape. I grew up on our family farm, Jubilee Scroll down twenty five guys from Swell and Dan. And I've always had a very big love for solving problems, but also for agriculture and tourism and things like that. So I'm very involved in tourism and other projects. So I own a resort on our family farm called Kambati River Resort. And then we also do Una Group, which is a group of tourism properties and restaurants and stuff in the area. And then, yeah, and then this whole project came about as a dream last year when the old covid pandemic struck and we didn't have any guests at the resort. And and I said, I must do something with my time. I can't just sit and wait for this thing to turn around. So, yes, I started making a huge vegetable garden on the farm. And I actually loved it. It's my brother handles all our farming enterprises and the farming side of the business. So I started my own vegetable garden and I thought, well, if this thing turns around, I can at least get the guests to go into the vegetable garden with their kids and pick some vegetables and teach them where their food really comes from. Because most of our guests is from Cape Town and from the cities. So I don't really know exactly how their food is grown and where it's produced and and all that stuff. So so it started as a dream last year and and it's in its game actually very well. I'm married to Dean and we've got two kids, daughter, Linka, which is six and a boy, Jan Rose, four years old and all involved in the business. Yeah. So tourism, vegetable garden, covid and what for direct essay? Yeah. And then I started seeing there's a huge gap. If you not a gap, but I think there wasn't really a platform for for farmers to connect directly with consumers. There's a lot of groups and there's a lot of market places on on on platforms that I can't mention now. But there's nothing specific that's that's really aimed at the farmer and and therefore the right reason. So so then I started this whole idea. The idea I came in contact with someone at Lampo Virgplatz who saw the idea on my Facebook page. And he put me in touch with my with my partner today, Mr. Elmett Druze, who is involved at Acresta, which is a tech company based in Germany. He stays in Cape Town, but his company is based in Germany. And and they they specialize in things like this. And and he loved the idea. We we came we came about the idea last year, March. And I saw him. I think it was in the beginning of April. And when I pitched idea to it was like we both had the same dream. So so he was the perfect they were the perfect company to partner up with Acresta. They are very, very well known in that space. And and then we started building this whole thing. As you as you might know, all these tech projects is all dreams. But it takes a lot of capital and a lot of effort to get it off the ground. So it took a bit of time to get the platform up and running. We started building, like I said, last year, April. And and then I started placing out the dream. How I would love to see it. I think there's nowhere else that I also saw that that you get a platform of a database of farmers in South Africa. They might be one of the other that I've missed. I'm not sure. But I haven't seen anything similar as a database of farmers in South Africa. So what makes our platform a bit unique is that if a farmer goes on, he has to go on to the map of South Africa. It's all in our system. And then he zooms in till he finds these borders of his form. So all the forms in South Africa is on our system. And then he actually claims his form. So then we can connect the story and the farmer and the social profile, everything to the specific form or forms, which is a very nice tool in our old setup that we have. So firstly, it's a database of farmers around South Africa. We empower farmers to tell, firstly, tell their stories, share their challenges, everyday challenges on the farm. And then we help them to market the projects of the platform. So the website is called farmdirect.africa. We started off as farmdirectSA.ca. But we we made our visions and horizons a bit broader. And we really would love to take this whole platform into the rest of Africa and to empower more farmers to connect directly with consumers. We feel that the platform is ideal for making food production a bit more sustainable in Africa and not being harsh against the middleman's. But to cut a little bit of the middleman's out in terms of the farming projects going directly to consumers and putting a little bit more money into the farmer's pocket itself. If I can call it that. So so so it's a big dream and and it's actually it's going well at the moment. Right. So if I understand correctly, you mentioned that farmers can go on to the platform and list their farm. Tell a bit about their story and their products. And, you know, the platform, if I understand correctly, it's supposed to be the number one platform or the top of mind platform, rather, for consumers to buy directly from farmers. Is that correct? You are 100 percent correct. So so firstly, a farmer will go on to our website, farmdirect.africa. He will register himself, put a little bit of his story on Clammy's farm, all of that. We contact the farmers then and we we just color in if I can call it that their profiles and make it look nice. And and their next step is to load a delivery profile. So we get a lot of farmers that already tells us OK, he farms in Khrafernet or in Ladysmith or wherever. And he already delivers to Cape Town once a month, or he delivers down to George every two weeks or whatever. So we load a delivery profile for each farmer so that when a consumer in that area that the farmer chose goes on to the system, they will get an option for free delivery by farmer. So that's that's that's another tech issue that we are not an issue, but a tech challenge that we are to develop in the system to make it work. The main objective of the platform is as we really want to stay true to our name as Farm Direct and not become another middleman. So so we had to really go back every day or five and go back to the drawing board and see if we've become a middleman. And and the way we're doing that at the moment is we've decided we're not putting any commission on to produce sales. We only charge the farmer a small fee to be on the platform per month. And he can load as many products as he's want to. He can use it as his own little online shop. And we will help him to market his produce directly to the consumer. So so yeah, so we don't want to be a middleman. We don't want to become too involved in the logistics, although we are looking at rolling out a premium auction at the end of the year. We will will partner with someone who will assist us in in getting the logistics sorted with farmers and getting them closer to the markets that that they've got the most sales in. So yeah, so it's going very well at the moment. Right. And with the consumers, they would go directly into Farm Direct and they would procure directly from the farmer. So I suppose that there will be a bouquet of various farms and products. And then if the consumer wants beef, for example, they click on the beef item and then they'll buy directly from that farm. And then how does it work in the back end? Does the farmer get an alert that somebody's buying beef from their farm and then they have to deliver? And then you do not enter into any, like you say, you're trying not to be the middleman, right? So does a consumer purchase directly online or they just come from within the farmer's sense and invoice and, you know, that. So so what we've done, Bolly, is to implement a payment system. One of the well-known payment systems on the website. So a consumer will go on and he will be purchased directly from a farmer, but he will put his card details in and do a payment. The payment will go into the Farm Direct account. And then the farmer will receive an email to tell you, like you just said, to tell him that someone has bought a product from him and he needs to get his product ready. So we want the farmers to use the system as their own. So they go onto the system, they log into their profile. They'll see the buyer's name is Mr. X, Y, Z with his address and his cell phone number. And then the magic happens. So then the farmer contacts the consumer directly and tells him, thank you for his order. And then he starts getting his product ready for shipment. As soon as it's ready for shipment, he will he will he will mark it on our system. So there will be an automated message going up to the consumer to tell them that their products are on their way. And as soon as the consumer takes the delivery of the products, we pay the farmer. So, you know, so the farmer invoices us and we pay the farmer directly. We don't take any commission on the cell, but it's just so that we can use one payment system in the middle on the on the platform and and to get the farmers to connect directly with them. What's interesting on our website on the on the homepage at the bottom, you'll see, there's a icon that says Lester Farmer. So anybody can go on there. It's a nice thing to do. Go on there. And you can scroll through the farmers on the system. We've got farmers across South Africa. We've got I think tonight I've just looked. I think we've got 192 farmers on the system. One or two of the profiles is not active because they don't have all their stuff on at the moment. But 192 farmers across South Africa. And I think we in the region of about 450 products at the moment. So any product that comes from a farm, as long as it's from a farm, can be can be put on the on the platform. Yeah. And then so it's. Apologies, you can continue, Jagger. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, OK. So yeah. So it's a year a year since we started trading and we've just gone over the benchmark of a thousand shopping cards. So yeah, so it's been a it's been a very interesting year and a very, very nice year to be involved in in online marketplaces, especially in the agricultural trade. Yeah, because I was going to be my follow up question to say, you know, having started having reached what almost a year now, you know, how is the platform grown? How is the platform grown from having farmers listed, products traded? Maybe other insights, rather, to also pick up to say, what type of commodities are people shopping for and buying, especially during this time? You know, yeah, is it beef? Is it vegetables? You know, what are the consumers mostly buying at the stage? Bollywood, what happened the past year? We started listing and we had to really dig deep to get farmers to register and to trust the platform in the beginning. And and, yeah, and then farmers started listing individual products and we still want them to do that. But what we've seen the past two to three months is that farm boxes are doing very well. So you will get, for example, the farmer in and down in the Kuru called Tukuru and they farm with meat. And what they've done is they put together a bribe box, so a box from their Tukuru farm called a bribe box. And in this box, you will get different cuts of meat from their farm. That's done very well. We've got a Wagyu farmer on there called Zune Wagyu, which is very popular in South Africa at the moment. And he's also got a Wagyu starter box. So so also very nice. But at the end of the day, what we've seen is that boxes are doing well. So it's a bit of that little bit of a food adventure if you're staying in a metro in a city area and you order directly from a farmer. He delivers this very nicely packaged box to your door with all the goodies from his farm. So that's done really well. And the nice thing about a box, it takes a little bit of the delivery costs away because normally we we try to get the farmers to pack their boxes in the 500 to 1000 grand range so that it's not too expensive. It's still affordable. It's definitely cheaper to buy online and directly from farmers. But we also keep it as a free market system. So we we try to educate the farmers on what they should charge for their produce, but we don't limit them. I don't want to tell a farmer he should charge X, Y, Z for his tomatoes or for his meat. So it's still a free market system. And the ones that's priced correctly will do their own selves. So for any farmers that are watching this podcast this evening and are thinking, you know, they heard you say the farmers enlist their products and their farms onto your website or the platform. And there's a small fee that's that's charged there specifically for marketing. How does a marketing element work?  That is amazing. So how do you pick and choose which farm or farmers products to market or to post? It's not it's not always easy. You are right. It's not always easy. We try to keep a balance in the farmer and we try to keep a balance in the produce that we market. We know which ones does very nice sales because of their products that's nicely packaged first of all. And we try to not just just educate, but we try to give them branding tips in terms of how to build their farming brand and to become one of the top sellers on the platform. But it is it is not it's not easy to choose the farmers. The platform is growing daily. So we're getting farmers onto the system daily and something which is very interesting and very nice is that a lot of farmers have got their own brand and branding and logo and they haven't really thought of given too much thought about the selling side on on farm projects. They they know how to farm for sure. They know how to buy and they know how to produce very well. But sometimes they they take the first best option in terms of selling. And that's that's been the interesting part in building this platform. Our farmers have come back to the platform for the third time to change their story on their profile. So they've started thinking about all of this and they started thinking about what what what what's this story and why do they do what they do and why do they love what they do. And that's really what's what's catching the consumers. The consumers love reading about the farmers and who they are and where they form and and seeing how they've they've really thought about the production of their produce in the agri landscape. So which is a very nice thing. Yeah. And I see in earlier on you mentioned that you've changed the platform from.co.zere from.co.zere to.Africa. Are there any correct farmers across or outside South African borders that have enlisted their products on the platform? And is there any cross selling, you know, from country to country? Boli, not yet, but we've had we've had quite a few farmers from Africa contact us, Tanzania, Ghana, Namibia, Zimbabwe. Farmers that want to get involved and they want to do similar things. At the moment, we still we still trying to get our feet in terms of the rest of Africa in terms of currencies and all that stuff. But I don't think there's any reason that should stop us from not going into the rest of Africa and our name is all about that. And I think there's a huge market in Africa for connecting consumers directly to farmers. Even a bigger market, maybe in Africa than in South Africa, which is a more developed country, some senses. So yes, our dream is to really go into Africa and to roll it out and to see what we can do with it. But there's a lot of there's a lot of interest from the rest of Africa in terms of of this platform and the way it's been done. This is amazing, like I'm constantly smiling. Thank you. Oh, thank you.  And I mean, I think as farmers, we always need various or alternative ways of selling our produce, you know, then traditional markets of selling produce, you know, whether that's retail to the first produce markets, suit processes, you know, and so forth. And so I think this is such a fantastic initiative. Did you think it would grow this fast, this quick? No, definitely not. No, definitely not. But we've also realized that the sky is the limit and there's so many farmers in South Africa. And I should anybody know what stock you have on your farm? I don't think there's any other platform that you list your stock on and public can go on there and see that you've got 100 tons of barley or you've got 200 chickens or you've got two tons of butternuts. So I think that's the that was the that was the one thing that also triggered our minds. But the sky is the limit. And we really want to do so. There's quite a few nice dreams that we're also working on in terms of buying better for farmers. But that's a that's a little bit down the line to see how we can how we can assist farmers to buy in better ways and combining volumes and doing clever buying tactics. But like I said, that's a little bit down the line. But yeah, we've just launched a little bit of a campaign where we say to farmers, guys, should anybody in Africa know that you've got stock off cattle or whatever, except if you really put it out there, you need to advertise and you need to plan ahead and start start telling your story so that people buy into your brand and into your story. Yeah. And as as I'm listening to you talk, how do you then close the gates around any middleman putting their products on Farm Direct? You know, yeah. So how do you maybe manage that? It's it's it's not always easy. But we we try to we try to build a relationship with the farmers that we get onto the platform because they claim their farms. We've got a bit of an insight into the farm and the person around the farm. So they're a bit more reluctant to claim a farm if it's not really theirs. And if it's not really there, is the owner of that farm is going to claim it later on. And he's going to say, listen, this is not this is not his form or yours or a form, whatever. But it is a difficult one. If at the end of the day, if we could help farmers to sell their produce, then our vision is is is successful. So it is a difficult one differently. And yeah, it does a platform only when farmers enlisted products, does do the products have to be processed products? For example, I heard you talk about a farmer selling beef, etc. So if I'm a cattle farmer, you know, and I just want to sell my cattle live or chicken farm. And I just want to sell my broilers live. Is the platform one such that could accommodate that type of produce or would a farmer then have to maybe take their chickens or their beef to an avatar, come back to the farm, maybe wrap it and package it nicely to sell it into a box? Like you mentioned, so can live animals be sold? You know, and and also I'm just thinking also like maybe vegetable farmers, you know, you mentioned butternuts. If a farmer can put I'm selling my butternuts in pallets or does it have to be processed? So basically the question is on the platform when a farmer puts on their products, does the product specifically have to be processed or can they sell it live or raw from a from a horticulture perspective? No, they can definitely sell it live and raw. There's no reason why they couldn't. At the end of the day, our aim is to connect the buyer and the seller to each other. So what they trade between each other should just be from the farm. But we've got a farmer down in Worcester who does aquaponics. If I'm if I'm not mistaken, if that's the right word for it. But he sells his live fish that they use in dams and for. So no, definitely live chickens, cows, cattle, anything that you can think of as long as it's from the farm. Our aim is just to connect the buyer and the seller. So at the end of the day, we want to go more into commercial farmers as well and get them to list their stock on there. And the buyers can trade from them on the platform. I think it's an easy way for any farmer to start their own online store is if they just go on to farm direct. And it's a very small fee that we charge us under the 99 and a month per farmer for products. And they can list how many how many products they want to. So it's it's actually it's almost as cheap as you would have hosted your own website. But at the end of the day, we're throwing all the power of all these farmers together and marketing them as one. So yeah, so and I think you said earlier that the platform and the Instagram pages have grown a lot. We're doing our best to get it grown. But I think at the end of the day, the farmers are the heroes and the farmers are the guys telling the stories. And the the the followers on my platform is definitely not following because because I'm a good looking guy. It's because of the farmers and it's because of what they do every day. And it's because of of their two stories and the and the authentic photos that they're putting on and the products that they're selling directly. So so yeah, we've really got to aim to make the farmers famous because they need to be famous. Going through a lot. Absolutely. Farmers are my heroes. So African farmers also are the number one heroes. So, Yaku, thank you so much for your time this evening. But before I let you go, I just want to find out. So what's next for Farm Direct? They say, you know, any future plans in the next 12 months, five years that you are at liberty to share without any surprises. We dream big. So so we would love to have about 500 farmers by by the end of the year. And then and then at the end of the next year, 2,000 farmers, if that's if that's reachable. Yeah, so we would really want to grow the farming the farming numbers and the farmer numbers because the more farmers we get onto the platform, the stronger the platform will become. And the more sales each farmer will do. Because you get former ex down in George, but he only delivers down to poor Elisabeth Kubecha, maybe. So we need to get farmers in each little district around South Africa and we need to get them to start building their farming brands and to get their products out there and to really build their farming brands individually, but also together on the platform. So yeah, so I think the biggest aim is to to get more sales on the platform, but also at the moment we're building stock and the farmers is our stock and they they are the guys that we need to advertise and that we need to build around. The platform was built for farmers. So so yeah, that's the that's the midterm stock. Is there any stock that is not listed that people are in great demand of? That is an interesting question. What we add is when all the cases in riots and stuff happened about two months ago, we had a lot of people go onto the platform and they wanted to buy directly from farmers in KZN, which was a difficult one. And I wish we I wish we had more farmers in that area listed at that time because they would have done really, really well because of all the food shortages and stuff to answer your question. At the moment, I think the biggest seller on the platform is definitely meat sheep from the Kuru quality meat that the consumer can can know that it's it's formed properly and in the right ways. Yeah, I think the biggest seller on the platform at the moment is meat. As we go into summer, I think we will get more into vegetables and vegetable boxes is very nice vegetable farmers down in Philippi area. And yeah, we'll see. We'll let the consumer and the farmer lead the lead the platform. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time this evening. This is a phenomenal business that you've started. And yeah, like we're talking offline, let's get the interest on and let's see how it goes.  And I say, I'm a farmer. They're like, wow, we never meet farmers in the city. So, you know, so it'll be a nice element to throwing there to say, hey, farm director say also in the city that you could buy and directly farm. But thank you so much for your time and all the best with Farm Direct. Thank you, Mubali. I really appreciate it. It was nice chatting to you. And let's get that papers listed on farmdirect.africa. We would love to have you. And let's see if we can bring you some sales. Absolutely. That was Yakub Adonis, the CEO and founder of Farm Direct South Africa, which is an agricultural marketplace for farmers to enlist their produce or products on the platform to sell directly to consumers. And as you heard, they try not to act as a middleman every day or five days or so. They keep, you know, vetting their business model to say, are we a middleman? Yes or no, because that's not the intention. The intention is really to market products and services of farmers to sell directly to consumers that they would not ordinarily have access to. And I guess for consumers as well, this is an opportunity for you to get to know your farmer, where they are, what they're farming and support them and buy their produce because it's coming directly from the farm. And I think this helps in terms of traceability and knowing where your food comes from at the end of the day. That is Farm Direct as say, please go visit their website. And yes, if you're a farmer, enlist your product in there, follow them on Facebook, on Instagram and also reach out to Yakub if you need any additional help. But that was it from us tonight. Thank you so much for watching. And I wish you a fantastic Heritage Month, Heritage Day tomorrow. Have a fantastic weekend and I will see you next Tuesday at 8 p.m. That's it for me. Take care. Bye bye.