Summer 2023 Life Update (Recorded 2023/08/26)

[@dl1470]

I'm officially a software engineer, your advice really helped me when I was in uni and clueless thanks so much Dave! Congrats on getting married :)

[@DaveXiang]

That's great to hear, good luck with everything

[@designpatterns8168]

Dave i am developer for a few years now. I am not very good and have alot to learn but you are one of the main reasons I managed to teach myself to code

[@DaveXiang]

Hey that's awesome to hear, keep it up and all the best

[@MLHP37]

Good to see you. Hope all is well. Stay safe and be cool. All the best…

[@DaveXiang]

All the best

[@WoWbob396]

Glad to see you posting again! Watched your stuff right around when I started my first internship. Really found your content super valuable and no BS

[@KallMeChris]

Omg thank you for the update

[@aacodes]

Always good to see you. I hope all is well with you and your family!

[@DaveXiang]

Hey Aaron! Hope you and your family are well, take it easy

[@aacodes]

All is well, thanks Dave. Keep doing your thing!

[@gunhound45]

I just want to thank you for making these videos, especially the ones on soft skills/mindset like dealing with people better than you. It really resonated with me and helped focus my progression as an engineer. The tech scene where I'm from is only 10% the size of whats in America, so it's easy to fall prey to impostor syndrome. I owe a lot of my success to your videos, if I'm ever in NYC area I'll need to buy you a drink as a token of thanks!

[@fseckou]

When I started college back in 2015-2016, your videos helped me a lot... Thank you!

[@DaveXiang]

Great to hear that! Take care

[@KuylimTith]

I'm happy to see you back 🎉

[@recursion.]

Dave man I love you. ❤

[@DaveXiang]

Thank you

[@recursion.]

@@DaveXiangSay it back bro 🥺🤪

[@vincentnnyc]

Wow…thank you for your life update. You are one of the few KZbinrs that came back and do a full update on yourself. Like you said, I’m one of the few that used to watch your video about being a software developer long time ago. Much appreciated on your recent update and good luck in your future with your career and your marry life.

[@edsmartin7]

So glad to see you again man; your videos helped so much in getting my CS degree and SWE job! I would love to hear your stories on starting and running a KZbin channel and the reasons for ending it. Also, there are a lot of SWE KZbinrs now posting the same content (a day in the life of... etc). Wondering about your thoughts on the current tech YT scene?

[@DaveXiang]

Congratz on your progression! I'm not a fan of the day in the life style of content, but YT is still great for tech content. I still watch a lot of lectures via YT, but not too many other KZbinrs

[@alihaq2097]

Hey Dave, glad to hear you're doing well! Your videos were instrumental in helping me learn fundamental computer science, I had never even taken a single CS course in high school and college and your videos helped elucidate so many concepts for me. I'm currently a Software Engineer at Google and I don't know if I would be here without your videos. Hope the married life is treating you well and you're enjoying all that life has to offer, and thank you again!

[@MultiChinglish]

I’m self taught and your videos back in the days really helped me get on the right track. I’m doing not too bad professionally now so just wanted to thank you!

[@DaveXiang]

Happy to hear that, best of luck

[@simpleandminimalmaybe]

thanks for the update mate. been a minute, i got rejected by datadog earlier this year funny enough. Congrats to you.

[@DaveXiang]

Thank you, all the best to you and good luck if you're job searching

[@simpleandminimalmaybe]

@@DaveXiang, thanks, just a question, how many in your team have Master's Degrees.

[@theunbearables]

Interesting journey going from low->high level software! Usually people have issues going from high -> low since the skill ceiling is a bit higher for low level stuff.

[@wilsonlimsetiawan]

Thanks again for all the content and help you've provided David, love the update and to just hear everything is going well

[@DaveXiang]

Thanks Wilson! Take care

[@URtoast-1]

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOo your tutorials are so GOATED im so glad u doing good =

[@nonya69]

Glad to hear you're doing well! Congrats on the marriage!

[@Shan224]

Nice to hear you are doing well. Thanks for the update

[@DaveXiang]

Hope you're well too, take care

[@jasoneddy5298]

Because of you I became a software engineer! One of the topics that would be interesting to talk about is work life balance (no rush) And congratulations on the marriage!

[@DaveXiang]

Thank you!

[@jazzy364]

Wow i used to watch your videos in college! Im a PM now and one of my classmates is at datadog. Really glad you made an update video ❤. Really cool to hear what you’ve been up to.

[@DaveXiang]

Congratulations on being a PM! Take care

[@Geodendronitrian]

Glad your back!!!!! Your videos are awesome, hope you're doing well.

[@DaveXiang]

Thank you! Take care

[@Shepard2295]

Thanks for the update, Dave. Very informative!

[@DaveXiang]

Hope it was helpful, take care

[@supr_]

Appreciate the update bro! Good to see you doing well! Still very inspiring!

[@DaveXiang]

Appreciate the kind words, take care

[@kryob1]

Best wishes for a successful time!

[@rustyglen7708]

Hey Dave, thanks for the update. Been watching you since 2016 when I was a junior in college with little software experience but hungry to learn. You and your videos were tremendous in helping me get into the field of software engineering. I found my passion in software quality/ testing and recently got promoted to a senior software engineer in test. Glad you're doing well at Datadog! Cheers

[@DaveXiang]

That's great to hear! Congratulations on your promotion and take care!

[@napalm_exe]

Your videos used to motivate me back in my college days. Glad to hear you're doing well! I'm happy to say that I'm now a Software Engineer myself, so thanks for all the helpful content you made back then.

[@DaveXiang]

Congratulations!

[@vrishabcommuri]

One of your videos on CMU ECE convinced me to go there for undergrad back when I was choosing betweeen a few different places. (You even replied to an email I sent you which meant a lot to me back then!) Those were the best years of my life so far, and I have you to thank for giving me that push. Glad to hear all is well with you! Such an insiring and down to earth guy; we could learn a lot from you :)

[@DaveXiang]

Wow! Amazing! Thanks for sharing that! Please take care and be well

[@darshj.7642]

Appreciate the update Dave, went through the entire 37 minutes

[@aesthetik_e]

Glad to know things have been going smoothly for you. You are one of my favorite tech youtubers. By the way, what do you think of the recent developments in the computing field (as in AI like ChatGPT and their effect on web dev jobs & their impact on startups)?

[@greggallo9906]

Hey Dave. Thanks for the update! All the best to you and yours.

[@DaveXiang]

All the best to you too!

[@jaymine1616]

Sure man, we're here because your videos saw us through the hard times. Lol. Welcome back, Dave.

[@busyrand]

Hey Dave! Thanks for checking in... I've come such a long way sense I initially found your channel. I'm currently tracking from Web Development into Cloud CyberSecurity... I remember not understanding any of this stuff. Now I run Linux as my daily driver with a bunch of different Windows boxes, and I'm code agnostic...

[@DaveXiang]

Crazy to look back after years of progression right? Congratulations on your career

[@thew00ted]

Wow. Been some time.

[@DaveXiang]

Hope you're well

[@MgytlFwY]

Glad to see you're doing well, your videos are some of my favorite :). I graduated in 2019 and recently hit senior at Google and left to Meta. Joining Meta has admittedly not been the best experience, which has made me think more about what I actually want to do in my career. I have a general interest in many infra areas, but nothing in particular "wows" me. Have you felt that you were more of a generalist in your career?

[@DaveXiang]

Yea, I've enjoyed being a generalist. I believe it fits my personality better. Congrats on your career so far

[@voidtemp979]

your videos are gems still

[@majdkhasib8030]

maybe if you can add your opinion about the tech layoffs that are happneing today and how would you approach them if it happened to you? this would really help a lot of people

[@BladeAurora]

nice update dave! in the last few years, I got an offer from qualcomm and amazon. any recommended resources to improve in system design? what do you think of large language models?

[@shubhamn2690]

Welcome back big brother, just yesterday itself I was thinking about your channel, couldn't search for your channel bcz I completely forgot the name (sorry I'm bad with names). I used to watch your videos back in college and when I joined my first job. It felt so good when i saw your notification. Glad to know you are happy and doing good in life. Lots of love bro.

[@DaveXiang]

Thank you for the kind words and take care

[@emmanuelkofyagyapong6382]

Hey Dave, I've been a long-time follower of yours. I saw you the first time you did a video with another tech dude when you announced your book and told us about Amazon. I think you were looking to work for a big tech and reliable company (it was after the startup that moved.) Wow, time flies, man, even your mannerisms (you do look like a manager, by how you are talking). I have a question; I knew you were at SQPS. Is there any advance on how you lent a job there as a dev? I know you must have been hired as a signor developer, but do you have any advice for a junior? I have been invited to one of their job fairs and loved it, so I am working on getting my resume and CS skills checked. Congrats on your position at DD.

[@DaveXiang]

Hey, great to hear from you. Honestly for any position, my recommendation is interview prep. For any level of role, you still need to do a solid job on the interview. So I would just do a lot of prep and many mock interviews if you're able to. Try to interview at as many places as possible for practice and when you feel pretty good, go for your target companies. Best of luck

[@emmanuelkofyagyapong6382]

@@DaveXiang Thanks a lot Dave, gook luck on your endeviours. Will for sure keep watching if you ever post!

[@Decoy22x]

I'm now an engineer, used to watch your video a lot. Unfortunately, I got put as a hardware test engineer. Not sure if it will lead to anywhere.

[@SuperFinGuy]

Welcome back, I personally like these kind of off the cuff videos more. Pretty informative. Could you talk more about your experience with FPGA's and today's AI? I first heard of them in game emulation.

[@DaveXiang]

I don't have enough experience with FPGA or modern AI to really talk about it. My only experience is working alongside other HW engineers. I only did a little FPGA work in college I remember, maybe you could find some courses on it

[@AnonymousAccount514]

wow....youre grown up now

[@user-wr4yl7tx3w]

But why aren’t cloud companies providing such services?

[@DaveXiang]

Cloud companies also provide similar services. The services themselves (like log management or apm for example) are quite commoditized these days. The benefits of services like Datadog is the experience and bundling of many products in one experience. Another value-add is that Datadog is a layer above cloud providers. It works regardless of your infra or whatever cloud provider you use-where as cloud companies would probably never bother monitoring infra that isn't on their own cloud.

[@lennycarlson1178]

dude hasn't aged a day lol whats your secret? Glad you are well man watched your videos years ago and became a jnr web dev recently.

[@DaveXiang]

Thanks for the comment ! congratz on the job. my secret is eating lots of fruit and putting on sunscreen

[@sumaiaakterkhushi]

nice talking