Latest / #TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙 / Backstage with BobbyD featuring Meryl Charleston

Transcript

Backstage with BobbyD featuring Meryl Charleston · #TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We're definitely at a crossroads here with AI.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I feel like I would tell people to just you, don't have to jump into it, definitely know how to use it, don't be afraid of it.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I learned how to use GitHub Copilot at work and you can't just let it write everything for you.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: That's the thing.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: It's not replacing us right now, one big thing that we kind of miss with remote is just people like relationships.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: My first advice is definitely keep in contact with your network.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Just meet up with people for coffee.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Your network is going to be really helpful in getting you jobs and just learning things, and also just having people to give you advice is huge yeah.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Welcome, welcome, welcome to our next episode?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: What up player?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: What's going on?
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: D-hustle, guess where we at man, san Francisco.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: We out west player.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Can you believe it?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: We really, we're really far away and I have a special guest that we're going to have a conversation with this afternoon.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: It's one of somebody that I've seen start off from the beginning of time, bro, especially working at Twitter.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, step in the door.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: She was shining so bright at the beginning.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: So we are going to have a conversation with a really cool mentee of mine that I've had a pleasure working with at Twitter See her growth where she's at and we're definitely going to fill that in.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I want to welcome to the stage Meryl Meryl.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Go ahead and give a round of applause.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Meryl, welcome to the stage.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, Thanks for having me.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: What up, meryl, how you doing.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Great, how's San Fran been treating you?
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: It's been treating me well yeah yeah, yeah, you just got off the Caltrain, so you're making moves up from San Francisco all the way down south a little bit.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: We are in the South Bay.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: So those that are going to see me in a later episode when I say I'm in San Francisco, I'm in the South Bay right now, but we're going back up to Salesforce T, but today we're dedicating our time to Meryl.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Definitely, give her a round of applause, round of applause.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: So, meryl, uh, we're gonna just kick our conversation off.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Um, and just like I mentioned to you during our pre-show is, I definitely want to make sure that people hear your voice, hear your journey, um, and definitely like the impact that, um, seeing somebody like me, you know roaming in the streets, at Twitter, you know, at the keyboard, but also how's that you know impacted your journey overall.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: And we'll first start off with just give us a quick introduction about yourself.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Let us know where you're from and definitely when you got started in tech.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm Meryl.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Obviously you know that I would say I got started in tech actually back in high school.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I'm from Chicago.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I had the Chi-town, chicago, yeah, yeah.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Shout out to all my Bulls friends out, there Go Bulls, go White Sox.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: There you go Wow.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: You see, how they call it out like that right.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I like it.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had this really cool computer science teacher.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: He was really motivated to get more women into computer science so he really, uh, aimed his classes at female students um.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I took computer science there yeah I went to a really cool summer camp at berkeley where I got to actually visit twitter way back in like 2009 oh, look at that.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: She was over there before I even touched ground, so technically she was introducing me to.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I even touched ground, so technically she was introducing me to twitter, not me introducing to her.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: It was a camp for black and latinx kids and really inspired me.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: So then I kept doing computer science.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I majored in it in college.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: What school you went to?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I went to.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: University, right, y'all had a whole crew that pulled up, won an internship a summer and I was like dang Brown is kind of deep out there in computer science.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Big shout outs to them.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is that when I first applied to Twitter I think I was a sophomore in college they weren't recruiting at Brown at all, so I just saw the job posting, I applied, I got the internship and then I talked to the recruiters like Faria and I was like you really should be going to Brown, and so I like told all these Brown students to come intern at Twitter because I had such an awesome time.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So then, in 2016,.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: There were so many of us.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's put a pin right there.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Because, first of all, give a big round of applause for sure, because, if you understand what I just heard is that you experienced something, and one of the things we had to challenge, especially working at Twitter on that time, is there was this idea like we can't find engineers that look like me and you, and obviously you taking the initiatives, applying, getting in.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: And then did you hear what she said?
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: She said yo y'all need to pull up to Brown, because this is not just me.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: We got more of them that look just like me coming through.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: So big round of applause to Miro.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for that, because it was a summer that was very noticeable how well diverse our class of internships were Shout out to you man, giving everybody else the heads up too.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, big shout outs, a lot of people do that.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big shout-outs, a lot of people do that.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big shout-outs, you see.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I'm always bringing people that are supporting people you know I hear you?
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, big shout-outs.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: That's what's up.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: So after that internship, or in terms of your tech career, graduating, going to Brown, getting an internship how did everything else fold out for you?
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so during those internships I was on a team called QE, and that's a team I joined full-time when I was first at Twitter yeah yeah, and there were some really well, first tell me what QE stands for quality engineering roger that actually, at the time, it was quality assurance, and so they've rebranded yeah, yeah, definitely Darwin does our other member of our crew, raymond don't call him Ray Ray.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Big shout-outs to him.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: He also used to do a lot of quality insurance too, but I like the fact that we're defining it quality engineering, because it definitely takes it to the next level.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: But go ahead and tell us a little bit about that.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I worked mainly with just one other engineer.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: We were on the consumer side of quality engineering, so there's ads there's consumer.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: We did consumer quality engineering.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So there's ads, there's consumer.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: We did consumer quality engineering.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I wrote backend I would call them API tests for a team at Twitter called the Timelines Infrastructure Team.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, Timelines, you know how important Timeline is, yes, so let me just let everybody else know how important Timeline is.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: When you go into the app and you hit that, that scroll to refresh the timeline.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: That's the service that you're talking about yeah, yeah, big ups to you.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: So it's really exciting.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I wrote tests like oh, when you block someone like do their tweets actually disappear from your timeline?
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Very important yeah, yeah um, and I even got to work on some stuff for gdpr oh, gdpr that it is very scary.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Um, and just to fill people in and gdpr because I'm trying to figure what so uh, I don't know.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: There was an episode we had a few back on our podcast talking about data and the and the mysterious idea that data is deleted rather than uh.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: What, uh, I've always felt like is we need regulation around it because technically, all of these companies say they deleted, but do they really delete it?
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: And that's what GDPR put everybody's hands to the fire, especially out in Europe, is where it really came out Exactly.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Europe started it, and then tech companies were like well, if we don't comply, we can't operate in Europe so that's why Twitter was like we have to be compliant with GDPR, which meant we have to actually delete people's data.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: We're saying we're deleting it and the other thing is we have to let people download all of their data if they want to see it.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And that's the part that I got to work on.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's cool, Isn't that like almost a queuing service too, because it's like you submit it and then be like, hey, I'll tell you when it's downloaded right Exactly.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: yeah, you're not going to get your data right away.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It's going to kick off a job that's going to go and assemble all of that and put it together so you can download it, and my role was to test the tool that everyone would be using to download their data to make sure it could handle the load of everyone being like, oh cool, I can download all of my data right now, if you can imagine how much data that is.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: It's amazing that number one we was able to store that much, but then, as a user, being able to get that query down to the level that validates all of my data, and I really appreciate your skill set as an engineer, because what you were talking about is that you're writing code to confirm that that function actually does what it says it's going to do.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and that's why QA engineering for me.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: I've always been respectful about QA engineering because then they really validate that we can do what we say we do right.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much Appreciate it.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: D Hustle says thank you, especially when I'm trying to delete something For sure.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: So that's your time working at Twitter.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: You went from intern um into full-time opportunity.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: Uh, you did some quality engineering.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Uh, did you ever uh report up to uh thaddeus?
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: You remember thaddeus?
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: yeah, so thaddeus was my intern manager, actually my second internship.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's what's up let's give thaddeus a big round of applause rip, rip, thaddeus he's one of our black engineering managers that passed away and I've always wanted to make sure I give him some space because he helped a lot of you all get through that phase right.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he really did.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: He was so, like I said, he was my manager that summer that I ended up getting my full-time offer, so he was a huge part of that.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: He really advocated for me.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, he taught me a lot, like I.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: You know, we met maybe every other week, but I started to realize, oh, it'd be better if I update him more, and so I had.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I was sending like weekly updates to him on my progress during my internship and in general he was just like a very kind person, a nice person to see around the office.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I would always see him at breakfast, yeah, yeah it's full time, even if I wasn't working directly with him yeah, he'd always check in on great, great spirit and, like I said, uh, he was one of our only few, yeah for sure a few black engineering managers that we had uh, especially the young ones coming up to look up to and, you know, get some support in their development and growth.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Um, and I'll tell you, every time I go to a NSBE conference and I don't see Thaddeus there, it just reminds me of those moments, because he was one of those that was really not just holding the door open, he was like laying there and letting people just go through it, right yeah.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: QE hired so many people from NSBE.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Thad was a huge for nesb and for taking it seriously as a place to recruit from.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah let's give them another big round of applause.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Rip, that is for sure, for sure, awesome.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: So from qe uh to what else did you end up doing at twitter?
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Because you were there for how long total I think five years, five years that that's like in Bay Area time you're like a veteran by then.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Exactly Five years.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: Look at you.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a great five years After QE.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I actually just kind of sideways transitioned to the Timelines Infra team.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, so you actually went to go work for Timelines?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll be honest, yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I knew them.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I was going to their meetings and I thought what they worked on was really awesome yeah that's what's up Now.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: In terms of that team, you all were considered tier one, like if it went down, there was definitely some pager duty type stuff, like the world knows about it right Once your system starts to work.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: But how did you feel about that working on systems at that scale and that potential impact?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I think the way I felt about it changed throughout my career.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So at first I was just like oh, I want to work on the coolest and most high traffic and most exciting thing the place where all the new features are happening and I just saw it as something cool.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: But later in my career I saw it as like a place to learn from really smart people yeah um these people who are on timelines.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Most of them have been at the company for like seven, ten years yeah, they knew so much and they were so advanced in their careers, they were just happy to mentor me and teach me things so um yeah, at first it was like shiny new toy, but it really became like just an amazing place to learn and grow as an engineer.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, and I will say, in terms of services that used to go down, timeline wasn't one of those that went down that often, so y'all were definitely doing some really good engineering over there.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: A big shout out to that whole staff over there because, like I said, it's definitely impactful when you work on something where the world knows about it when it breaks.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: And Asia Taylor, big shout.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Impactful when you work on something where the world knows about it when it breaks.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Um, and asia taylor.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: big shout out to asia taylor, asia, yeah we was down in miami hanging out with asia for a little bit, uh, and with the backstage, with bobby deke, uh, conversation with her, um, and her and I was talking about the impact of compute, like it's like, hey, when compute goes down, all the things go and the whole world knows about it.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: So it's definitely great that you got that experience earlier, um.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: But so you know, um, I'm not trying to jump too much into the whole elon musk coming in and shaking the feathers and then doing all that stuff, but I just wanted to know, in terms of how did that all play out for you?
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Did you kind of, you know, was out before?
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Is it something that you got caught up in?
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: And just, you know, just trying to get a calibration?
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: I spend too much time talking about elon musk, but what happened, meryl?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: yeah, I was there when, in april, he was like I'm gonna buy twitter, um, and yeah, at the time, everyone on my team was like we're just, you know, we really like working together.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: We're not gonna let this change anything about our day-to-day yeah as much as possible, um, but then I was caught in the first round of layoffs, yeah, which is.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: It was pretty sad, and then the rest of my team did not opt in, so the whole, the whole team, the whole team's gone.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah I know, but but we're sending that to his way, right, it's not.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: Uh, because in general I definitely had a lot of colleagues, peers, um, because I was out before, so I've overheard whispers of something going on and I was right and my mindset I've already been through.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: When Jack came and gone and then we had different CEOs, I was like I don't even want to go through that again and I was out and then I heard it was Elon and I was like uh-oh, this is going to be something different and definitely know that in general, it's not you right, it's corporate, it's numbers and reasons why they decide to do certain things.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: But the big thing about that is is that your bounce back is strong, right, because you always moving and we definitely always trying to take us there.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: So after actually one thing I want to talk about at Twitter also is one of the cool things that you and I both had the pleasure of being a part of is employee resource group ERG called Blackbirds, and I'm just trying to get calibrated on or actually let me take it back, because I already know it's to get our audience calibrated on the impact that had to your journey.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: So tell us a little bit about Blackbirds and how that helped you through your journey working at Twitter.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, blackbirds was huge.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're, first of all, just aren't, or were not a lot of black people in the engineering department when I first joined, and so if I knew them it's because they, like, saw me and sought me out, basically.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: So having a group of other black people at work to hang out with was really fun and just the activities and things that Blackbirds did really celebrated blackness and it's a part of my identity that I don't feel like came through as much as an engineer.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: But, when I was with Blackbirds it was like the main focus.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: You were family.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Then it was like yo and she's an engineer too.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, we lit yeah.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just an amazing group.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Like we got to go to.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Nsbe.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Nsbe and like Twitter, would put on this really cool party.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: And we got to talk to students all day at the conference and, just you know, be someone that they can look at and be like.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, there's a place for me in this industry as a black engineer.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, 100%, and I tell you the impact that it had to me because I'm one of those that I mean, people knew about me but I try to stay in the cut a little bit so you can develop and flourish.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: But did having somebody like me in terms of in the engineering organization help you, you know, cope with the challenges that you dealt with?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely Like.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I think I met you at NSBE actually.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: The first NSBE I went to.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And just your, I don't know your sense of joy at being around all these other black people.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a shout out Come on, let me get my roses.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Bro.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Come on bro.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: Come on D, come on bro.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Bro, I'll pay you a mix of $20 just to tell me that you were right, I'm serious.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: You still call me Lil Bit, that's my nickname.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I really like that.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it felt like a family and also just like you're an SRE I have a lot of respect for SREs being on Timelines Infra, and so it was just really cool like a black SRE at.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Twitter like who's really senior and really respected and doing really impressive things.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: That was very inspiring for me.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: See, I didn't have to pay her for that to happen.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: You know that D right.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: You know that D right, you know that right.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Here's the 20.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: He's sliding money under the table.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Come on, player.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: That's the real truth.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: No, I will say that the one thing that I enjoy about my time working at Twitter is seeing the impact that my influence had on a group of you all, because 2016,.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: I was there already about three, four years moving right, and I already figured out the hustle, I figured out the game, and I'm like yo if what I can do is show them how you can just be yourself or be that light and just shine it just a little bit, because I know y'all shine brighter than me, and, oh my gosh.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I will not forget, though, that summer, when y'all came through and just seeing how much that helped y'all develop, and then, obviously, seeing the impact that it has over your time.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: And you are right, it was tough being a black engineer, where you didn't see that many people look around that look like you, but definitely when you found one, we was like oh that mirror what's?
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: up little bit.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: What's good with you.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Everything's good over here a little bit exactly exactly.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: You really brought your whole self to work, which is awesome yeah.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Because I had a hard time with that sometimes.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure so it was inspiring to see.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You're bringing your whole self to work and you're super successful and really smart.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And, like well-known she said, I'm successful and smart.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: You see D.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: All right, I told you $40.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: $40.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: I told you I was smart.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: I told you $50 is.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: I told you, I was smart.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: I told you Because you know what he knows.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to stop when I get back home to tell him what you said about me.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: This is true, no, but it's actually kind of cool to hear just how that helped you.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: And not just you know a lot of the shiny things, but it's actually the low-level concepts and tech stuff that you definitely mentioned in terms of respect, because it's like yo, as an SRE, skill-wise, I'm not just understanding code, but I'm understanding systems, I'm understanding infrastructure, and then the team I'm working on we're orchestrating this whole thing.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: And then it's like yo, one of y'all coming hot on me, it don't matter, I got you type stuff.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: It always just felt so good to make those type of contributions because I knew long-term how it's going to impact your journey.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: So thank you for those kind words.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: For sure Appreciate you.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Big shout-outs to Muriel See that's why I invited her to this.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: The offer still stands, awesome, awesome.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: So we're going to move on a little bit past Twitter and definitely big shout-outs to Blackbirds.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: And you actually helped establish Black.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Engineers at Twitter't.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: You, yeah, actually talked to us a little bit about that black engineers at twitter.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, black engineers at twitter was another employee resource group, but it was really internal facing we didn't have, you know, flash events and stuff.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: It was really just about career growth.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Um baba tunday and chris coco were kind of the first two to start it yeah.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was just like reading papers, discussing them, and then we kind of branched out to more having you know managers come in and talk about performance.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: But the thing I got out of it the most was just visibility into you know who the younger black engineers are and knowing and having me be a resource for them to ask questions yeah, um I had, you know.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So I met with so many of them just to talk about, uh, how to communicate with your manager and like, what is a manager for um, and things.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I dealt with going from swi one to swi two, um, so that was the best part of it for me was that I didn't feel so burnt out, to be honest, when I was able to mentor a lot of younger black engineers and help them grow too.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Big shout out, big shout out to Laura.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I remember one of the meetings that you all had me come in and do a little speaking on and Mike Matano was in there and then.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: So Mike Matano at the time was like the head of all engineering and then he's like, you know, everybody's asking a few questions.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: He's like, all right, does anybody else have any questions?
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: And everybody's getting a little quiet.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, hold on.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: I got one question, mike, and the way that I even said it, he looked at me like all the impact that this group, like black engineers, in terms of ICs because these were ICs, not managers is like yo, when we're going to see stuff like this on the manager side of the house because we only had Thaddeus at that time, right, and that was something that I felt like number one in that moment with all the young black engineers seeing that gave them, you know the, the feeling like hey, we can speak up and talk about really impactful stuff, but then also seeing the results of that, because the results of that is that then we started to have black engineering managers come through um, and most of them I'm not accrediting them to me because they have to get through the interview process and stuff like that, but more or less it's like giving you all the power to talk about that, especially when you have somebody like mike matano at the table.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: I was just so amazed by the results of that right, because it's like I'm not just planting a seed but I'm making sure I pour something in there for it to grow.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: You get what I'm saying.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and that group helped retain I think it helped retain black engineers in general at Twitter.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Like just having a place where we can talk to each other about career development and get advice and just see other people who might be dealing with similar things is really big for all of them.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: We're talking some mile marker type stuff.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: We're changing the orbit of the earth and changing how people think, and definitely mindset-wise.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: So, mero, if anybody hasn't told you, I really do appreciate all you've ever done working over there.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: It definitely is something, especially somebody like me on the sideline watching you grow oh my gosh, I cannot believe where you're at, what you've gone through and the things that you've achieved and the impact that you've made in a lot of people's lives.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: So congratulations to her.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Give her a big round of applause.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Thanks, and you see she didn't pay me for that.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: No, no, All right, mero.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: So definitely want to move on a little bit in topic, because I want to kind of get an understanding of where you're at right now.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: So tell me where you're at in your journey, you know, let us know what things you're interested in, things that you're, you know, really dabbling in.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And definitely talk about some tech because I don't think we talked about know your programming language.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Where were?
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: your proficiency, that.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: But before you start, yeah, the wolf is still a little more.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: A little, you got up.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no no, look at that indeed right, what's up mero?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: yeah, um, in terms of programming languages at Twitter, I use Scala the whole time.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And it was not Scala 3 also, we never upgraded to that.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: So coming out of Twitter and looking for a job, I was like, okay, I need a language that is a little bit easier for people to read like an interviewer.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So I picked up Python and that's what I've been doing a lot of lately is a lot of Python.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: That's what I did in my most recent job too, working at Pilot.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I used only Python there, which was really cool.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: So I have in terms of my contributions now is I do a lot of mentor coaching and one of the organizations that I spend a lot of time with is CodePath.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: You and I were talking about it briefly and one of the things I tell them is, like all those other languages are cool, I get it, they're cool, but of all the hundreds of interviews that I've done, the one that candidates get through the most and I can actually understand a competency level is Python.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Right, and I don't have to worry about semicolon, this, that and this, building all these constructs and building all this stuff and object-wise, it's like yo can you write a function Indentation?
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Now I know, you know what we're talking about type stuff.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, pickups to you, picking up Python, Thanks.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's also exactly how I came to the decision of Python is being an interviewer at Twitter.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I was like this is the easiest.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know Python, but I can read it and I can actually help people debug it.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you are right, it's very readable and also it's like the way that it's written.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: That's the way that it works.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: And then there's too many damn libraries out there, so you can do just about everything.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: That's what's up.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: So tell us a little bit more about your journey.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Where are you at right now in terms of skill-wise?
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: So we went from Scala to Python, and what are you dabbling in?
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Right now I've been trying to learn React mostly just to work on stuff on my own, like maybe some web stuff.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I haven't done a lot of front-end.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I'm very, very back-end focused, so React is making my brain work in a different way.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: But also it's JavaScript, so it's not just like learning straight HTML which would be really hard.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: So I've been taking like an online class, self-paced and React, and I think I'll be able to do some cool things with it.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: That's awesome, big, big up to you.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: And as a technologist obviously working on things on the side or continuing to develop skills I definitely feel like you're embracing that right, because I think a lot of newer you know engineers they think, hey, this is just what I'm going to do.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: And it's like, hey, if you don't keep these knives sharp, they get dulled too quick.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: And then if you want to display you know skill sets, you got to always be working on the next cool thing.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: I'm not a front-end type person.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: I can't even put outfits together.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: All I wear is black on black, because I just cannot really match and and uh, really just get that artistic type outing through stuff like that.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: So I've never really embraced uh, front end like that in terms of, just, you know, user experience, a user uh graph, and I just don't, I don't, I'm a back-end engineer.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: I want just you call this api, this is your expected results and things like that.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: But it's always cool to you know to develop the skills, um, but yeah, so in terms of like, uh, being out here in the bay, you've uh gone back to chicago lately, or how's, how's home doing?
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: how's the family doing?
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: How's all that?
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Stuff going yeah, chicago is great.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I go back a few times a year um.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: When's the last time I went back, I think?
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, I went um in april it's my mom's birthday and we went to indiana to see the eclipse happy birthday mom happy birthday and and you went to go see the eclipse.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we saw the totality in indianapolis, which is amazing oh, that's nice.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Was it like, uh, like a stadium type thing like they had in dallas, where they went to the stat dallas stadium and they had it all open, or you're just outside, yeah, yeah, just right outside a hotel like you could take your glasses off and look right at it, which was crazy, yeah, yeah but, oh my gosh, that that's that just even just thinking about as quickly as it happens in terms of light switch, turn off and gets dead dark and then switch back on.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Um, it's definitely something amazing to experience, yeah, yeah.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: So in terms of the bay, how long you gonna be out here in the bay?
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, you've been holding it down for a minute though I know, I know I don't really know.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I love I live in the presidio specifically like right by baker beach.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful, I love it.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Rent is decent and she said something rent is decent and there don't know where it's at, but it sounds good and she said something Rent is decent and there's free parking.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, look at that City life right, Exactly.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: And I can park my 30-year-old Honda there without it getting stolen.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Shout out to the 30-year-old Honda I'm a big fan, yeah, big fan.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: You're talking to a car guy over here at D-Hustle Anything old, especially if you have to crank it to get it started.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I have the crank windows too.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the DX.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: You see, he didn't know which one it was.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: It's turquoise 1993.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, full door, two-door, two-door, that's beautiful.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: It has maybe 47,000 miles on it.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: What, how?
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: in the world.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: My grandma gave it to me.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Ah, shout out to grandma, she's like I'm driving to the grocery store, I drive it back.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: That's it, wow.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: You see how he already knew what the car is.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I think the price might have to come up for you.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: He's actually now.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: You're negotiating other things, dean.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: I'm going to have to buy the car by the end of the show.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: That is awesome.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: Two-door coupe Honda Corolla they're the best man.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: They don't make those anymore.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: No, they don't.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I had a 91, just like yours.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Four-door DX had to crank that window.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: No sunroof.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that actually makes me want to bring up something In terms of the evolution of technology, right, because we're talking about cranking up the window when you're winding it up, versus just having a button that you press down and up.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I take those all day.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: A regulator messes up on the regular power window.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Shout out to those 90 times.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: So our show is full of tech.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Engineering and the culture.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: You don't have to write any wires, Shout out to those 90 times.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: So our show is full of tech, engineering and the culture and this definitely checks that box for the culture.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: But one thing about evolution is I wanted to get your opinion in terms of where we're at in tech.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: We're definitely dealing with an era where AI is mentioned and plastered off of everything.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: You have still a lot of people interested in getting into tech.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to get your opinion in terms of where you feel we're at and where we're going.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: In terms of where we're at, we're definitely at a crossroads here with AI and I feel like I would tell people to just you, don't have to jump into it.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Definitely know how to use it, don't be afraid of it, like if you're using I learned how to use like GitHub Copilot at work and you can't just let it write everything for you.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: That's the thing.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: It's not replacing us right now.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Do you?
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: hear that, raymond.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: So we got another member of our team Raymond, don't call him Ray ray, uh and he's definitely terrified of ai, right, and if anything talks about taking jobs, he's the first one to jump in front of it.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: But I think you are right in terms of, uh, familiarizing yourself with it because it is around the corner, yeah, like know how to use it.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know, way back when, when word processors came out and typing it's like, don't be afraid of it, it's not going to take your job, just know how to use it.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know, way back when, when word processors came out and typing it's like, don't be afraid of it, it's not going to take your job, just know how to use it get ahead of it.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: So that's my feeling Don't change your whole career.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, build skills in your own area, but also figure out how you're going to have to incorporate AI tools in the future.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Um, and I think companies are doing the same thing.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: They're not just being like, well, we're not going to exist because of AI.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: They're saying, like, how can we use AI to make our product better or to, like, create more content, or something like that?
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: And if I think about just in terms of your skillset, quality engineer right, you can see code that's being written and be like you can't ship this or you can't do this, or the expectation is, is that you have to be more test driven developer, right, it's like, hey, as long as in uh, it must meet this requirements in terms of tests before we can move things forward.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: So I think your past experience definitely is giving you some more insights into you know, the quality of code that's being produced by these ai co-pilots.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Quote unquote do you feel like you have to double check your work when you do AI?
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one time I relied on it a little too much, writing some code and it was just kind of garbage code and the tests were not well written and it can copy-paste things pretty well, but you need to add the human element and be like does this make sense?
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Is this actually testing something?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Will my tests fail if things aren't working?
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for 100%.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Listen to that, definitely A lot of people just go with whatever the AI does.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: That's not how it is Right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And just because your tests are green doesn't mean they're good tests, that's actually a really good gem.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: Let's give her that If your tests are green, that doesn't mean it's a good test.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: That's actually a real funny one, actually a little key.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I was watching this um coding competition and it was at some university and it was the first time I saw it and I was like, all right, let me see them.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: They're using python to answer some leet code style questions, right, and I'm like all right, and one of the first tests that, or one of the first lines of code that they added was, uh, just return false.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: And they returned false and 25 of the tests passed and I'm like what?
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: Like how in the world is that even possible?
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: It's like mindset wise.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: You are right, you know.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Just because it says it's green doesn't mean the code is good right so I definitely want our audience, especially those that are getting in the tech, to keep that in mind.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Um, and I think that's a really good segue in terms of like what?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: What advice would you have for the next generation of you know, like minded people that were at Brown or, you know, in high school, interested in computer science?
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: What advice would you give them in terms of getting into the field now?
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like one big thing that we kind of miss with remote is just people like relationships.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Like running to Bobby D at the office, you know what I'm saying.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really miss that and I would say keep in contact with your network, Like one thing that happened this year was that I was feeling like I really missed my coworkers from Twitter and I was like my friend was like why don't you just reach out to them?
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: And everyone was really happy to meet up with me or Zoom with me.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: They missed me too.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: So my first advice is definitely keep in contact with your network.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Just meet up with people for coffee.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Your network is going to be really helpful in getting you jobs and just learning things, and also just having people to give you advice is huge yeah um, I think another thing is along with that uh, find mentors.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: It's harder in the remote world we live in now to find mentors, like I just met you at NSBE.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I met Chris Coco around the office.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I met Susan around the office.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: These are just people I had random encounters with, but we don't have as many random encounters now.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so for sure.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, reach out to people, see if they'll mentor you.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Like, don't be afraid to put yourself out there, but mentors are really important and yeah, it's a little hard to find them now, but they're out there and they want a mentor yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, and I did want to give a big shout out to my guy, chris coco.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: What up, chris coco, my god, my god, my god for sure.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: And and I tell you, uh, one of the things that I really take away from this advice in terms of just your, your network, is your net worth, is something I've tell a lot of people right, and keeping connections with them, with them right, it's even when I was thinking about you know, pulling up to SF, who I'm like, yo, let me go highlight Murrow's like having that connection and definitely helping you on your journey and you're helping me on my journey.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: That's how we get to where we're trying to go, right, and it's it's.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: There's a saying like.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: It's like hey, uh, to get somewhere good you go to in a group I can't remember the exact saying, we'll get the wording right somewhere in there but in general, it's like we have to really just have that type of connection to really develop and grow and truly like.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Even me, like as an engineer, one of the things that I always needed was somebody that I looked up to and I had to push myself, even though people looked up to me.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: It's like I had to have something or someone to look up to, and that's why I always shout out Chris Coco, because, in terms of me, I always looked up to him in terms of skill set and his contributions.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: It's that that community is so powerful and definitely words of wise and y'all have heard it from Meryl first.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Definitely really much appreciate that.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Good shout out, good shout out.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: All right, meryl.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: So we're getting close to the end of our conversation here.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: No more money on the table D $80.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: $80.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll take it All, right, wow.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: Can you believe that?
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: $80.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: That's wow, wow and a free ride, free ride, of honor, free ride of honor.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I got you.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: But, meryl, before we close out, I want to give you an opportunity to ask me any questions.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: This is, like you know, at the end of the interview they're like, hey, do you have any questions for me?
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Right, it's like do you have anything you know you want to throw on the table?
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: Ask me about?
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: this is your space and definitely if we're done we'll close it out because we've got music queued up and ready to go.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: But what's up, Meryl, I have I don't know, I kind of have a lot of questions.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: The clock is not.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: There's no stop on the clock.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I think it's really cool that you are not behind the keyboard anymore and you're doing a podcast.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: That's really inspiring.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: The stuff that you learn and inspiring tons and tons of people instead of just the people you work with by having the podcast.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: So one, how did you come up with this?
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: How did.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: I come up with the podcast so late night I was dreaming.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: So one of the things that I've always felt about my experience at Twitter is that a lot of people ask me like yo, what type of mentor were you?
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that I always tell them is that I felt like I was a cultural mentor.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Right, I was only just here to help you figure out what's going on on a keyboard.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: But I want you to change your mindset about you, because I can see you be you, not you be you in front of them.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: No, I want you to be you right.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that really just helped me embrace that even more is like the results in terms of impact.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: Like you, bobby Tunde, teyu, asia Taylor like just seeing those results is like yo, I got to find a way to impact my community as directly as possible.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: Like how can I take what I've done at Twitter and turn it up to 100,000?
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Right, so I do speaking on stage.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I do a lot of public speaking.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: I do community outreach with mentorship and coaching, but nothing comes through more fluent than me being right here in front of the camera, being Bobby D and just being myself and really just taking that as the next level of the type of impact I want to make globally, because I want, globally, to get this type of sauce and I'm dripping like nothing new, right, it's like I'm trying to do the best that I can to just reflect that, and then obviously the credibility comes with.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: You know, I tell a lot of people like, hey, um, you may not know who I am, but you've definitely been impacted by the things that I've done, right, and I say, hey, have you ever worked on that?
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: Or use that social media company, the one with the little blue bird, remember that one?
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you didn't know that I was back there doing this, doing that, and overall that just helps that continued flow of making the impact.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: So that's the real reason why I'm in these streets and the more I give, the more I will receive eventually, because I'm poor.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day it's just the results and definitely having opportunities to see the world become a better place, so that we can be viewed differently.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying yeah, exactly, but if a better place, so that we can be viewed differently.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know I'm saying yeah exactly, but if you want to tell us now ah, come on.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: But no, that's that's the reason why we started the podcast and we do, you know, community development um newsletter.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: We do a published monthly newsletter, but yeah, that's that's the reason why yeah, thank you for the question looking around getting me to really almost drop a tear, Almost almost.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: The other one, related to that, is just what was it like taking the leap, like leaving Twitter, leaving the keyboard, leaving the tech career, at least for now.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Doing something totally different and not tech.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And yeah, what was that like for you?
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: You don't know how many nights I was dreaming and manifesting about this stuff, and I'm one of those that I tell my wife that I have a superpower, like when I get obsessed about something, I get too obsessive about it, and for her it's like you're just too damn obsessive.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: All right, but it is something that I really dreamt of seeing.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: So I'm still working towards the thing that I've envisioned, and one of the things that I had to do was take that leap.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: I talked to my mom about it and she was like you know what?
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: You've always been somebody that I've never had doubt that you're not going to be able to get to where you got to go.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: And she told me when you jump, just jump with your eyes open, so don't be afraid of it, right, um, and with the support of my family, uh, supported D hustle, saying he's going to ride with me and hold it down, even though he's trying to pay somebody off on the side, though it's just that that support that I have around me has really just given me, um, uh, the feeling of you know, like hey, um, they're going to hold me down as we go on this journey, because it's going to be tough, and I will say I miss the keyboard.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: I do miss it, especially at that level of engineering.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: It's once in a lifetime, right.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: And the experience of, you know, blackbirds, black engineers at Twitter that's once in a lifetime, right.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: So I was definitely grateful for having those experiences.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: But I needed to tell the world, right, I needed to get out there so that other people can see, number one, what we've done and we can get credit for it, instead of somebody else be like yo, it's all crap.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden like hey, I want to build everything on it, like I don't even know what Elon's talking about, but anyways, it just was really tough to make that decision.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: I knew what the impact would be.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: And then you said something earlier that I can get back at it because I they ain't got nothing on me, because I'm an 80s baby, I came up from a different type of era.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: I can get back anytime I want.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: So I'm not really, you know, thinking that I'm retired and never going to be at the keyboard again.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: It's just right now.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: It is a pause, um, and at that time, um, my family is what gave me that support.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure yeah, family's huge support or I be stressed Even though I got all these gray hairs.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: Can you believe I got grays like this, mero?
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: I don't see any.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: You don't see any.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Ah, you see, you need some dye.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: Thank you, mero.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you so much.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Awesome, that was a really great question and thank you for that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Anything else on the top on my mind, but yeah, really inspiring what you're doing.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much, and I do want to say thank you for being a part of this journey.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: We're writing this in time and nobody can take it away from us, right?
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: So definitely very much appreciate you making a trip out here to come and holler at us, laugh a little bit and have a really good conversation, because I think it's definitely going to be impactful, not just to me I've got a tear coming out of my eye but impactful to our audience and definitely those that are going to come and hear us later.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: So big shout outs to you, mero.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Little bit, little bit is out of here.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: Cue up the music D Hustle.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: I have a question for both of you, bro.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to cue up the music.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: Man, I gonna give it to you all right.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: All right, go ahead.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: What's up?
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: As being both of you are being x twitter.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Do you guys ever think that there will be another?
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Black bird another one now that elon musk is there.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, not there, not, not in that building not in that building um, and I don't really think there can be another one, because it was something that was really really special um and it was really the group that came up to help reignite and develop it.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: And then the impact that we had in terms of our community outside.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: What would you say, meryl?
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Just the timing of the Blackbirds community growing at the same time, that Twitter was growing so much, and all these things that happened at the same time, like going to see the Black Panther movie, I feel like that just built up the excitement.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: And there is yeah, there is Black Twitter like it existed outside of the building so.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you'd create those uh conditions.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: That's either.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know either, and and talk about Black Twitter.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Did you see the Hulu episode of Black Twitter yet?
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: No, so the Hulu just did a micro documentary.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: It's a few different parts about black twitter, which they did bring in some people from black birds, but it's mostly black birds out in new york, they ain't coming.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Holla at us over here, where we really started, and stuff like that and we out here engineering and stuff like that.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: But much love.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: All I want to say is hulu, yo write me, write me a check.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: I'll do a whole Blackbirds, black Engineers and Mero will be starring in it.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Bobby D will be there, chris.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Coco will be there.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: D Hustle will be holding it down, bobby Tune, all of us will be there.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: So, hulu, I'm putting in a plug, I'm manifesting that in the future.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: But yeah, thank you so much, Mero, for that great conversation, enlighten us on your journey and, man, I'm so grateful.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: I'm so grateful.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: I'm grateful for you.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: D-Hustle where we at with that music player.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yo, I don't know about y'all, but all of the things that we've just been recording, hit that button right there.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: You know the Raymond, don't Call Him Ray Ray.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, them gems right, all the gems that we've been dropping today.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: I want y'all to continue to tune in.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: There's a button that's called rewind.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: You press that button, it goes back and then you play it again, because Mero was dropping some gems for sure, for sure.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: And then you heard a few good things about me too.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: You know, bobby D, thanks a lot.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: D always holding it down, but always, uh, definitely.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: Thank y'all for tuning in to Backstage with Bobby D.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: We got more episodes coming through, meryl, little bit, keep doing you.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: We appreciate you.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: All right, all right, take care of yourself.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Turn it up, turn it up.