Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Jeffrey Scholz, founder of RareSkills.io, a remote only web three bootcamp focus on transforming Junior Web, three engineers into senior ones. Jeffrey, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm excited to learn about your background, your experience and not only you know, what you're doing at RareSkills, but what you've done in your past and previous experiences.

That is, really inspiring to me as a founder as well. And in terms of the educational component that you're now kind of focusing on, but before we get into all that good stuff when did you first get into machine learning? Tell me the story behind that, because I know you've been in the within the technology and working with tech technology for a while now.

But tell me a little bit about you know, how you first got into machine learning in particular.  

Jeffrey: Sure. I kind of got dragged into it. , when I joined Yahoo, I joined as a normal backend engineer coming out of Columbia. So back there I studied theoretical computer science, which is something pretty hard to get a job in.

So I just become a regular backend engineer. My boss at the time he had, he was ahead of the curve, to be honest, so he. I noticed that some momentum was starting to pick up in machine learning. So this was 2016 and machine learning was making some waves in the academic world, but not too much in the real world yet.

So he had, okay guys, let's start building out machine learning products for video specifically, we had worked on APIs for serving video, but doesn't really use any deep learning to help with ranking the videos or anything like that. He said, okay guys, we're gonna do this. And I was kind of skeptical at first because there's this joke like, oh, I want to build an app.

And like, okay, if it's in a park, it'll tell me where I'm, okay, great. I'll use the GPS coordinates. And when I pointed out a bird, I want to tell me what kind of bird it's gonna be. Well, that'll take me five years. So we still had this, I still had this impression back then that these things are too difficult for machine learning.

And now there's chat, G P T how fast things change. Right? Yeah. But yeah, that was totally up to him. And I followed the lung and yeah, it paid.  

Julian: Yeah. For those who don't know it, it describe the relationship between AI and ml.  

Jeffrey: Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on who you're talking to, but I tend to consider them the same thing.

Some people will say AI is a more general form of ml, but I use them interchangeably.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess at your time at Yahoo, you know, you were there for like six years and. And tell me about what I'd like to ask a lot of founders who've worked at larger companies is what are some companies like Yahoo doing?

Right? And had, did you take any of those lessons that you learned from that larger organization into you know, founding companies? I know there's company, a couple companies that you founded previously, but in particular you know, what were they doing right and what did you learn from that experience?

Jeffrey: Yep. Well, definitely the most important takeaway that I took was. These large companies in Silicon Valley have a they don't advertise it, but they have a built-in mentorship model where you're working on a relatively small team, generally under the guide of a very experienced engineer.

And at least once a week, you'll be meeting one-on-one with the engineer who will be doing code reviews with you. Now the purpose of these code reviews is for quality assurance. They don't want junior engineers pushing bad code into production. But the effect of it is that people learn very fast because you get the way to learn quickly is to get feedback on what you're doing wrong so that you can correct it as soon as possible, right?

But so that's what ends up happening, even though that might not be the primary. Yeah. So that heavily informed how I run RareSkills nowadays. The one-on-one component is very important to me. Yeah. And I, that's what I get the feedback on. So I mean, it is good to learn about how to have good processes and things like that. But that's the one that I think ended up having an effect on me the longest.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And what are some things that, you know, larger companies, I guess, inherently can't do that you know, you can do as a startup?  

Jeffrey: Hire contractors overseas for random stuff. . Yeah. I don't know. Without having, being able to pay someone relatively cheaply to like, edit videos and stuff, that would, it would, there would not be enough time in the day.

Yeah. What in what can a smaller company do more easily than a big company Can't, I mean, I, I don't know if I have any additional insight on it, but a lot of people know you can be more agile as a small company, right? You can form partnerships faster. You can sign deals quicker. You, if your strategy's not working, you can adjust it faster without committee. I mean, I'm sure most of your listeners already know this, but it's definitely true. Have. I've experienced it firsthand.  

Julian: Yeah. And in you know, can think about your background and your experience, what initially inspired you to start RareSkills and was it the first stop in your founder journey or was there more to kind of creating you know, the company and behind it and when did you.

You know, initially decide, okay, it's time to take the leap into RareSkills and really invest, you know, all your time and effort into it.  

Jeffrey: Yep. I mean, I'd been do, I'd been doing consulting for part-time since like, I'd say 2018 for different startups, so, RareSkills is still ultimately selling expertise, right.

You can, this, a student comes in, an engineer who wants to have access to that kind of senior mentorship that I was describing earlier, and. having a person to person kind of service wasn't new to me. But in terms of taking the plunge, I mean,

I don't know if there was ever a point where it came, okay, it's time to take the plunge. It's just more like, okay, we're getting traction, so let's push this. Yeah, so I mean, I do other kinds of consulting too. Like I am a fractional CTO for a couple companies, but RareSkills definitely takes up the most time.

And I do feel like I've seen definitely a much better market fit with it than other forms of consulting I've done. Much better product market fit.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do wanna get into RareSkills in kind of the you know, the structure and mechanics behind what it is.

But just real quickly on, on the consulting piece super fascinated to kind of dive into this , because you know, a lot of companies and a lot of founders that I speak with you know, they don't have necessarily a CTO or engineering, you know, structure to where they feel that it can kind of maximize their efficacy of their engineering team.

And what do you see that a lot of. Are needing to improve upon in their structure and how are you helping them improve on that within the engineering motion?  

Jeffrey: Right. I would, in, in terms of helping say non-technical founders manage their engineering best, I'd say probably the most important component is communication and expectations.

Like, I want the app to be built by this certain day, and I want it to have a certain quality. Well, that's not real. Or I mean, sometimes engineers, if they know that they have an asymmetric information advantage, they can take advantage of that. Like, no, you guys are pulling, you guys are pulling our legs work harder.

So there's, I so I would say it's just largely being a translator who understands you know, human intentions to a certain degree. So here's. , the engineers are coming from, this is what their priorities are. This is what, where the founder's coming from, this is what his or her priorities are. And yeah. Trying to reconcile the two.  

Julian: How do you set better expectations as a founder? If it's not, you know, this is what I need to look like by this date, is it going more granular into what you need? Particular functions to have maybe making a more clear roadmap. What in particular do you think or would be in terms of setting expectations?

Jeffrey: Right. Well, I mean, you always have to start with prioritizing business needs, right? Because, I mean, I love the engineers, but if the business isn't working, then nobody has a job, right? So, when. The founder is saying, Hey, this is the direction I want to take. I want this done. You mean the first thing is, okay, first of all, you need to tell me what's the highest priority and you know, we're gonna, cuz you, you're not gonna be able to get everything you want all the time.

Yeah. And then on the engineering side it's like, okay, now which of these tasks are gonna take the longest and the shortest? Because the shorter task, ideally we want to prioritize cuz the sooner task is done, the sooner you get business value out of it. You're trying to reconcile which tasks are the easiest to finish with, which tasks are the most important, and then prioritizing that way.

Now maybe some tasks have dependencies and you have to make exceptions, but I, if I were to put it into a simple framework, that's how I would describe it. That's not handling every consideration, but Sure. I think if I were to summarize it quickly, that would be it.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And shifting now to RareSkills. What is particularly I guess, inspired the idea to start, you know, upskilling developers in particular Web three. Obviously, you know, I see it as a founder who works with a lot of web three startups you know, needing essentially skilled web three developers, but it's either that they're too they're too skilled and too expensive, or they just come out of a bootcamp or, and maybe even have, don't even have structural foundational knowledge within the software development process or good habits in the process.

So what, first, what inspired you to, you know, go into this skills training function, but also what in part. Did you see the gap in, in, in other boot camps alike?  

Jeffrey: Sure. Yeah, no, this is a good question. Back at Yahoo, I really was a strong believer in upskilling developers cuz the, let's say you make a developer 20% better at something.

, it's, I mean, I mean, during 2020 to 21, people were having 20% salary increases. But normally the engineers don't get a 20% salary increase year over year. , and so you get 20% more productivity for a five, 10% increase in salary, then that's good business, right? Yeah. So I I would make sure each developer spend at least an hour a day working on some upskilling, which that's a fairly big investment, right?

The supposedly the time committed is eight hours, so you're spending 12% of your time on a very long term investment. I think it paid off. I mean, I became the youngest senior manager at Yahoo at the time, so I like, and then I was in charge of some very big partnerships, so I like to think I was making the right choices, or at least they were validated.

So that experience definitely instilled in me the value. It's really important to make the people who are working for you more skilled. And Andrew Groen high output Management says, you know, the only two levers you can really pull are motivation and training. That's what's gonna determine the productivity and, okay, so motivation is one aspect, but training I think is something that is oftentimes left a chance.

Like, okay, you know, with enough time you're gonna learn by osmosis. But if you have a strategy, then of course you're gonna do better than random chance, or at least you're looking paying attention to what's working and what's not, and you're setting. Goals for where do I want you, this newer engineer to be in 1, 2, 3 years?

Yeah. So if you're deliberate and intentional about it, then you can get some really great results. And I honestly think that this is something that a lot of engineering managers undervalue. So, because it's, you look at it in the short term, like, wow, we just lost an hour each day. This is a real cost.

But you don't see, okay, well the benefit will come if you stick with it for, you know, six months. Yeah. So, so you feel the pain in the short term, but you get the thing in the long term. I guess I really have a lot of faith that in the long term it will pay off. So in terms of RareSkills, the, so at work we operate prime only in the web three space right now, but just in general, I've noticed during the machine learning hype cycle, there was a machine learning hype cycle around 2018 or.

In 20 17, 20 18, 20 19, and there were a lot of these relatively junior engineers. They would go on some web platform, take a course, and send an application to work on my team. And it, it got kind of frustrating after a while. Like, dude, you have the same resume as everybody else. We've worked on exactly the same project and I've taken that course.

It's wonderful. But I know you have a lot of knowledge gaps. Yeah, and I could see these. Courses popping up. Like if you become a me machine learning engineer, you're gonna make six figures now to now pay $39 to take our course and then watch our videos and pass our quizzes. And I'm like, I will definitely not give you a job if you have that, if that certificate is all that you have.

So that really that really grinded my gears back in the day. And then I saw the same thing happen again with web three where it was very much. You know, take this course and we'll get, and you'll get a great career afterwards. Making a hundred thousand dollars or whatever, which, okay, first of all is silly because engineers generally make a hundred thousand dollars if.

If you're good. So like, what's so special about learning blockchain if you're gonna earn the same amount or less? So I felt like that was a bit of a some silly advertising, but it was also this really big disconnect between the expectations of what it takes to get this skill to be really productive and a really valuable contributor for the.

And what people were saying, the effort that it takes, because I've upskilled engineers from someone who didn't know anything about machine learning to people who are making very valuable contributions. It's a long and hard journey and these people were already coming in prepared. But I do believe that people are out there who really, Hey, if you show me how to make the journey, I'll make the journey.

And I've seen. A couple of, one of my students had no blockchain background and got a job offer at one of the most prestigious auditing firms. So it took him like four four months of really intense work to get there. And he was it was more than a part-time job studying under the program I put him through.

But it, the journey is doable, but it's not, oh, here, complete some assignments and get a certificate. So I think giving people the option of. Look, I know what the journey's like. I've done it myself. I've helped other people go through it. If you want to take it here it is and I'm not, you know, the scale is an issue cuz it takes a lot of effort to help people get to that point, but that I think that's a problem that could be figured out later.

Julian: Yeah. What is how do you screen for having that? I don't know if it's a personality or attributes of individuals. You know, a lot of founders, I think, you know, struggle with, they would love to have the person they would love to, to pay for engineer. Engineer who they knew they could invest a lot into and become a part of their team.

But the default is to go with somebody more. Experience because of the, you mitigate some risk, but they might be less flexible or they might be even less polished and have not necessarily the best habits. That's not all senior engineers, of course, but there, there is a risk involved if you go that route.

Right. There's the risk on both sides. . So how would, how have you been able to identify those attributes? Well, is it by experience? Is it by some certain methodology? What in. Gives you the confidence when you're selecting someone as a student or as, as a hiring?  

Jeffrey: Well, as a hire, I think it's well, working for a company that's funded while you  

have the luxury of just, I'm gonna de-risk it and go for someone who who has a good track record and I think will do well.

Yeah. So we would just put people. The coding, if you have the right kind of coding test, it's pretty accurate. I would say. Yeah, you can forecast someone's skill level pretty darn well. Maybe you can't forecast their motivation, but the In terms of whether or not they're capable of doing the job, the coding tests are pretty objective if done right, in terms of the student motivation, that one.

Well, we don't, we I mean, we do require a certain amount of technical maturity coming in. That is people do have to go through a coding test also, because I want to see are you able to get a regular software job? You know, if not, there's, then getting a web three software job is just gonna make it more complicated.

Yeah. That's a, but in terms of motivation, you, I mean, part of it's intuitive, so I couldn't really tell you. I mean, how do you distinguish between someone who's just, you know, web, everyone's excited about Web three even now after the prices have crashed, so I just wanna ride the. Yeah. Versus this is something that I really want to do.

I don't know if I could describe exactly what is the distinguishing feature between , those two. But you can kind of talk to people and get a pretty good sense of it. Now, I don't know if I could turn this into a systematic process, and there are a couple students I've taken on who turned out to be less motivated than I had hoped.

So it's not a perfect one, but but if you ask people, Hey, what is your motivation? Most of the time people. . If they say something about being like, curious for the purpose of knowledge, that's usually a really good tell. Like, oh, I don't want to be left behind. So they're kind of just motivated by fear.

That's not gonna sustain you through the long journey. You might just go through the journey, man I'm a loser. I'll get left behind anyway. Versus Yeah, I really want to learn new and interesting subjects and that makes me excited. So, and those kind of people, no matter how much you challenge, the more you challenge them, the more excited they get.

Yeah. So that's what the harder the journey get, the more rocket, the more fuel they put into the rocket. and the better they do. So those are the kind of people that I try to select for.  

Julian: Yeah. Makes sense. What advice would you give, I guess, engineers looking to work in either blockchain or machine learning or anything that requires a certain level of investment outside of, I know you mentioned just consistent learning over time with just, you know, develop into into just dividends, but what other advice would you give them?

Jeffrey: That's a good question. Well, I mean, you definitely hit on the most important one if you. I, if you love learning for its own sake, then being in new fields will be exciting for you because there's always a lot to learn and it changes fast and the tutorials are not that great. So you'll have to, if you're the sort of person who's just stubborn and is determined to figure it out, even when you don't have the solution, then that's great.

There, if you're working in a field that is going through a hype cycle you definitely have to keep both eyes open about who you partner with and who you work for and what cus and what kind of partnership like business partnerships and you have and whatever. Because some people are there to cash out on other people's excitement.

Let's just be honest. So watch out for that and. find your niche within the subject. I would say cuz machine learning is very broad. Even back when I was doing it full-time there, we had Okay. And natural language processing, computer vision different kind of forecasting stuff. Those are you can't be good at all of them. You have to pick one.

So within the field of blockchain, you know, there's security, there's decentralized finance. There's you know, building like NFT communities these are all different fields that you can specialize in, and I haven't listed them all. I mostly focus on low level programming and the actual, what the runtime in which smart contracts are executed.

So it's just the subfield of, it's just the computer science subject that's very relevant to blockchain. Now, I study other things, but that's primarily it, like the consensus algorithms and the actual executions of the smart. and focusing on that is the blockchain field. When you have a new field like here, imagine this is all of the backend and front end engineers.

This would be like machine learning and blockchain, and then here's the niche with inside of that. So when you pick your niche, it's easy to be the expert in it just because nobody else is doing it. Not because you're smarter than everybody else. . Yeah. So find a niche and and get good at it.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. When you talk about this progressive learning over time what should a developer focus on learning is there, you talked a little bit, I think earlier you mentioned something about structure within learning which is super beneficial and reason why you have positive compounding benefits.

But if it's sporadic, I could see how it could be a little bit more convoluted. Less productive. But if I'm a developer, what should I be focusing on learning every day as there's, should I choose a subject and dive into it? What, in your advice should I focus on?  

Jeffrey: Yep. Two things. One is what are you interested in? And three, what knowledge is evergreen and foundational? So it's pretty it, people like engineers are kind of shocked like the, to learn that the sorting algorithms that they're quizzed on have been around for decades. So it's like that stuff is not a lot of, computer science is surprisingly old.

Yeah. And that means that knowledge is not gonna go away. So the stuff I require people in the program to have already a good understanding of algorithms and data structures. And I know a lot of people that, that's not a pleasant subject for some people because they associate them with these 45 minute tests, which are very stressful.

And I do agree that those tests are badly conducted, but they're not wrong to be conducted even if the method is wrong. Yeah. You, because that being able to think computationally, Is going to benefit you in whatever field you pick. Like I joke that I studied a useless major, which was theoretical computer science but knowing what the first principles of computation are allowed me to learn anything fast afterwards.

Really? Yeah. I thought I was able to pick up ma go from zero to leading a machine learning team at a major company in less than two years and how I. Able to create the only expert level blockchain courses on Udemy on the topic of Ethereum programming in a pretty quick amount of time. Yeah. Just because I have the foundations in place, so if you're in doubt, study the foundational topics.

Yeah. So you should know about operating systems, networks compilers DA data structures and algorithms get the fundamentals right. And then pick a subject that interests you and you'll be surprised at how fast you learn it if you learn in the order of first foundations and then your favorite subject.

Julian: Yeah, yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. What, what makes you so particularly passionate about upskilling engineers?  

Jeffrey: I, well, I think that's real on many reasons. For one thing, I think the world really needs it. Like there's this, it. We don't need more software engineers. We need more qualified software engineers because if.

It's one thing like, okay, I, I can follow a tutorial and build an app, but when you're connected with a founder is just like, okay, I need this problem solved so that the customers get their needs met. If you can't do it, then it doesn't matter if you can code or not, you're not able to create value for people, so you really have to hit a certain threshold first.

Yeah, before you can. Really be a contributor to the company. So I think that's important. And it doesn't stop after that point. Like, you know, in Instagram and WhatsApp we're sold to Facebook, the teams will quit pretty small. So I think it's exciting that a small group of people are able to accomplish a lot if they're very skilled.

I think that's what will. Create value just in a general economic and societal sense. So people need to do that. I mean, in the blockchain space, I think it, there's definitely a lot of potential for blockchain, but a lot of the technology is very underdeveloped. Yeah. And building another nft, which is cool, is not gonna help because like those, that's not the fundamental problem that needs to be solved.

The problem is more stuff around scaling and ux, right. Those are the big issues that we have. So we. People who can really solve that issue. But that means they need to be at the cutting edge of, they need to go on a journey to the cutting edge of knowledge and then continue to take on a leadership role after that.

I think that's what is gonna be a much bigger impact versus, okay. Let's take you part way through your journey so you can build a couple cool laps here and there.  

Julian: Yeah. And in, in your opinion what are gonna be the effects now that, you know, I think with covid and remote working culture, it's such, there's such a disperse access to not only talent if you're a company hiring, but also just information generally, especially with blockchain and all these web three technologies creating, you know, even more substantial infrastructure that is inherently decentralized.

Right there, there's less silos to or barriers to getting access. What's particularly exciting or where do you think the world's gonna go now that more and more countries, more and more individuals and there, there's more, I guess, a demo, almost like democracy around getting access to information because there's just o there's just more access in general.

What's some exciting things in your opinion, that you're looking forward to? .  

Jeffrey: Well, to be hon, I mean, I, I don't want give a negative answer to a positive question, but the, I think what actually kind of shocks me is with all of the access to information, the shortage of developers still exists.

, right? Like millions of people have gotten certificates online, but there's still thousands of unfilled. I think there is, it's really important to get the messaging right, that there's a whole lot more to being a developer than taking classes online. Yeah. That's why I think the human component is still important, which is something that I really emphasize at RareSkills.

Like, okay, I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire until you build this up to a quality that I think is acceptable, because that is what I. Your, is yours going to be required of you in the real world? Pathing a quiz is not the same thing as building up a skill that's useful out there. Now I do think having the knowledge generally available is a really fantastic first step, and I've met some really amazing self-taught programmers.

But I mean, I do think the college model is very broken, but being, but it's still the reason why there is a much higher success rate from four year from graduates from. Bachelor's degree students, they tend to do better coming into the computer science workforce than bootcamp graduates or people who have largely taught themselves.

Just because being in a structure where we know that this works and we've been knowing that it works for a long time, it's pretty reliable versus something that has not evolved as much yet. And where the expectations are not clear, and there's a lot of hype. Like, take my course, make a six figure salary, which is not good career advice.

So I do think that this is, I do think RareSkills is taking it in the next step. Like, yeah we'll make access to information free, but you also need access to people who are gonna mentor you because Google can't tell you what you misunderstand and your career advice needs to come from someone who's done it and not from a company's marketing.

That is something that I really look forward to in the future is just giving engineers a more rising perspective, engineers a more trusted source of, okay, this is what it really is. Like you can do it. We're not here to share any bad news, but we want you to work smart and hard, so this, these are the steps you should be taking.

Yeah, so I do think we're get, I do think we're moving towards that cuz the first step is the democratization of information. Having people all over the world being able to take on jobs, I do think things are moving in the right direction. But there's still a few crucial steps that need to be taken before we can really unlock all of the potential.

Julian: Yeah. Tell us a little about about the traction of RareSkills. How many students do you have? How many do you support now and what are your future growth plans?  

Jeffrey: Yeah. Well, we take on five students per class and Way oversubscribed for January. So we split it into two classes and we still have a log line of applicants but we don't accept most of the students who apply.

One thing is cuz it's just not smart to scale too fast. And two, I'm very keen about the quality of people that we take in. In terms of the amount, oh gosh, I should know this number off the top of my head. about 25 who are in the program right now. And in terms of. Yeah, we're, I mean, I am trying to I'm in, there's a couple more instructors that I'm trying to hire and do, I do hope that will allow us to scale.

The more important scaling that I want to have is not just having the core course, which is solidity for Ethereum development, but I wanna follow it up on more advanced topics like zero knowledge, proofs consensus algorithms, how to actually create work on the protocol client work on another blockchain like Solana and program in Rust.

So these, I would rather have the students stay with the program for a long time and become very good versus, yeah, putting a bunch of people through a class or two. So that is, that, I guess that wouldn't traditionally be called scaling because you're not bringing on more people, but I mean, you do make more money for one thing, so that still counts as scaling.

Right. And the engineer. I think the payoff is much higher. I'd rather have one engineer who the potential contribution of one engineer who has been seriously well trained versus two engineers who are decently trained. The guy with a ton of training is able to accomplish far more cuz he knows. What the other two engineers don't know that they don't know

Julian: I love that. What are some of the biggest risks that RareSkills faces today?  

Jeffrey: Well, since we're dependent on, we only offer Web three curriculum right now. Like what if the market gets even worse and people are don't want to just completely loose interest. That's that's something that keeps me up at night.

At some point I do want to expand beyond. Web three but I don't want to do too many things at once. Yeah. So those are. Yeah. Yeah. And it is a pretty niche product, so marketing it is hard. Yeah. Because for one thing, it's only developers and only developers who are interested in web three, and their first thought might not be to take a boot camp because boot camps do have some kind of a stigma of like, oh, it costs a lot of money and you can learn it online for free Anyway.

Which is frankly true a lot of the time, but that's not what we're trying to offer. It's, you're gonna have direct access, you're gonna work with someone who's gonna personally tailor to you what is best for you and what you need to stay motivated. Yeah. And what your knowledge gaps are. So, so even just coming up with the wording for how to communicate what exactly the services is challenging.

Yes. I think we've definitely made some progress in that. But the primary thing is def that concerns me is, Yeah. What if things in web three get worse and then by osmosis it affects developer training too.  

Julian: Yeah. If everything goes well, what's the long-term vision for RareSkills?  

Jeffrey: Replace college . The, I guess if I guess I'm gonna be honest, I mean the You know, apprenticeship used to be the model for how people would upskill themselves.

Yeah. And then for some reason it fell out of favor and got, it didn't actually fall out of favor. College was used to be a very boutique thing that only like rich kids would go to, to learn a very specific set of skills that were relevant to their socioeconomic situation. Right. Yeah. But then when, which is fine.

But then I think, you know, somewhere after World War II when the GI Bill came out, then college became a normal thing and people started forcing this model on people that was probably not beneficial. Moved away. And people need skills training nowadays. Like, yeah, reading Cicero is cool, but like, it's not a good investment to pay $60,000 to study Cicero and then earn a, have a $50,000 salary after that.

Right. So I do think that the apprenticeship model will make a comeback just cuz I don't, unless college colleges can somehow pivot and bring their prices down. But we talked about how big organizations aren't agile earlier, right? Yeah. So, , I do think long term that is kind of the ultimate North star.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I like to ask this next question for our audience, but also for myself to, to learn some gems of knowledge. But whether it's early in your career now, what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Jeffrey: Okay. Well, if you haven't read High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove, the one I referenced earlier, definitely do yourself a favor and.

What other books have influenced me? So this entrepreneur, like, Dennis Felix or Felix Dennis, I believe is his name, and he wrote a book called How to Get Rich. So he's was a very big like magazine publisher. There's actually another book by that name, but it's the guy's name was I think Dennis Felix.

It could be Felix Dennis, whenever that's the author. He gave some really raw feedback about what it takes to get a company off of the ground on your own, as well as what it's like. Manage people because I thought it was interesting as a manager. Okay. Managing engineers is straightforward as long as you're good at technology, but managing managers is tricky and he gives some really raw feedback about how to do that, which I think was I thought that was very insightful and I felt like at the time I was reading that, wow, this guy was more about me than I know about myself.

So. But just, you know, a typical book with a title of Get Rich or something like that is going to be to the effect of yeah, just work hard and grind, bro. But it's, that's not there's way more to it than that. Yeah. So those any other books? . Yeah, and I mean, material by Peter Drucker is always gonna be good, so Yeah.

Yeah. If you're wondering if you should pick up a book by him, you definitely should.

Julian: Amazing. I love that. I love that, Jeffrey. I always like to give my, my guests a chance to let us, the audience know where we could support you, where we can find and even get involved in RareSkills.

So give us your plugs, your LinkedIns, your. Where can your Twitters, where can we be a part of RareSkills? And if we don't make the first cohort, how can we get involved in the next one?

Jeffrey: Sure. Yeah. Well, the website is RareSkills.io. We're pretty active on Twitter rareskills_io. And yeah, if you go to the website, you can apply.

We run cohorts once a month or once every other month. So I would say if you're not able to join, don't be in a hurry. Because you should, if you don't, are not able to start right away. You should have some preparation going in cuz we have some professional solidity developers who join the course.

They already have the job programming solidity and even they find it to be challenging sometimes. So, It's a long journey. Don't worry if you're not able to start away right away.  

Julian: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Jeffrey, for being on the show. I hope you enjoyed yourself and I'm excited. You know, I run a community of developers, so I'm excited to share this with the audience as well as they get an opportunity to learn and develop their skills and and I can't wait to see as various skills progress, the influence it'll have and the impact it'll have on quality development.

You know, talking to founders all the time, that's the biggest issue is fundraising, hiring and then hire amongst hiring is high in quality employees and people to join their team. And so I'm excited to see where things lead. But thank you again for being on the show.  

Jeffrey: Really appreciate it. Thank you.  

Julian: Of course.