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Cassidy Williams
Cassidy Williams

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I’m Cassidy Williams β€” Developer Experience Engineer & Content Creator. Ask Me Anything!

Hi CodeNewbie Community!

I'm Cassidy Williams β€” Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify and maker of developer-friendly content across the internet. I also love making memes, mechanical keyboards, and music in my spare time!

I was a guest on this week's episode of the CodeNewbie Podcast with @saron. It was so great chatting with her about creating developer content and building communities.

I hope you enjoy this episode!

play pause CodeNewbie Podcast

I’d love to answer any questions you might have about my career, anything we touched on in the episode, or anything else that’s relevant to you!


Ask me anything (AMA) in the comments below!

Oldest comments (13)

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gracie profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Question that's directly from the episode, @cassidoo . . .

Is your first-ever website, "Super Randomness" still online?? πŸ˜„

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cassidoo profile image
Cassidy Williams

Hahaha sadly not! It's deep in the internet archive somewhere, I haven't been able to find it for a while. The nose picture gallery will be forever in our hearts.

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gracie profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

πŸ’”

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raq_dev profile image
RAQ DEV

Hi! in the episode you talked about how networking helps you in your career. So then my question is: What's the best way you know/recommend to start networking in tech industry?

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cassidoo profile image
Cassidy Williams

I highly recommend the book Build Your Dream Network by J Kelly Hoey! It's a really awesome start for getting motivated and in the right mindset for networking:
goodreads.com/book/show/34927426-b...

Really, it's all about finding a community, supporting it, and asking questions of folks to help support you. It's a give and take, and really powerful relationships can come from it!

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raq_dev profile image
RAQ DEV

Thanks you so much!

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao

What was your first ever mechanical keyboard, and how'd you get it?

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cassidoo profile image
Cassidy Williams

My first ever board was from wasdkeyboards.com! It was a fullsize board with Cherry Brown switches, and was my main driver for a long time... until I started going custom in 2016/2017-ish and haven't looked back since πŸ˜…

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Nick Taylor

I just finished the podcast episode. So many great knowledge nuggets in there. I'll drop what I posted on Twitter so as not to duplicate myself lol.

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Nick Taylor

I was listening to one of your streams recently and I believe it was there you had mentioned that you were an angel investor in Supabase.

I'm curious what criteria you use to invest in a company. I'm certain part of it is the product or services fills a need, but beyond that, what else do you look for?

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holdenmad profile image
Holden

So cool you're doing this AMA. I saw you at the Next.js conference last year and your badass interactive story. Your newsletter is great too.

Anyway, was there ever a point where you felt actually incompetent? I don't mean imposter syndrome or whatever, I mean, how do you work through your actual lack of knowledge or incompetence of something? I'm 5 months into my first job frontend job (yay), and I know I'm doing the best I can, I know I'm improving, but I'm not a natural at programming, and am factually and objectively just not very good at this. There are times when I know I should be thinking more critically about a problem, asking more questions, etc., but I can't seem to make any statement with confidence. My knowledge is just not there, and I don't have a natural ability.

I know your background is totally different, but maybe you still have some advice.

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Lee

Hey Cassidy,

Your short videos on the socials are great and funny, are you generally a shy or more of an out going person? If the latter do you have any advice for people that are a bit too shy to put their content out like that?

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mccurcio profile image
Matt C

Hi C,
Loved your interview. So positive.
A few things you talked about resonated with me.

  1. I love, Lift while you climb. That is such a teacher's mindset. That mindset is lost in so many places. I have taught in middle and high schools in the US, and in many schools, children do not help each other, and/or teachers don't help each other either. If I might jump out on a limb, the 'I know better than you and I can't explain it to you' has gotten so political. [Old man, says 'Hrmph.] :))
  2. Ask questions, Soooo underrated.