Hey! this is Overpass Insights my name is Eric
and I make apps now today let's ask the question
should you record Youtube videos as a software developer the answer is yes
alright! so today I want to answer a question
that came in a couple of days ago from
Mio Lao Zai Nielsen, New Zealand daily
and he says he or she says does being a Youtuber
affect working in mobile apps now I've had
variations on this question in the past and I know
I've talked about it before people ask you know
well first of all we got the whole Youtuber thing
I do not consider myself to be a Youtuber
I'm an app developer, I'm a software developer who happens
to do Youtube videos my main source of revenue
is not and probably will never be the Youtube channel
right what I do is you know I talk about stuff
that I'm interested in right I should get I have
the opportunity to share things with you guys when
I'm interested in new technology or I'm working
on something or something that I've had trouble
with in the past, we could talk about it here and
you guys tell me all kinds of cool stuff I get to
talk about what I do and you know so that's kind
of what I do although when I was at comic-con last
week, I just said my kids went to go see this
this Youtuber like I guess he's a famous Youtuber
but I was like not it he's like a gamer kind of
guy, so I was like kind of like maybe I'll go
watch too because you know I'm a Youtuber too
right and the kids are always going whatever dad
so like I don't consider myself to be a
Youtuber nobody considers me to be a Youtuber
I think at one point I put it on a bio somewhere
which might be on social media somewhere but like
yeah I'm not a Youtuber I'm an app developer I'm a software developer
but I get this question a lot about
how has Youtube channel affected either
the business or my work life or the app downloads
let's talk about app downloads first because a lot of people think that
I do Youtube videos so I get more app downloads but a lot of the times
I don't really talk about my own apps I mean I do
with the ones that were really well but I never
said like go download it and aside from a few
people who left reviews saying I downloaded this
because I like the Eric whatever like there's
nothing that really ties me to my own applications
except for the company name so that's like never
really been the motivation behind it how has it affected my work life
every so often like I might talk about something I might talk about
a difficult client and then in the back of my head as I'm saying it I'll start thinking
well like I hope this I hope other clients don't think I'm talking about them because
I'm never really specific about it and that kind
of adds a weird dynamic to the way things work
because I might you know because basically
I'm talking to you guys about stuff that it's not
you know so I'll mention something and I wonder
I wonder if they think I'm talking about them right so then I have to be like a bit
like you know but if they even bother watching it
and the third thing is like how's it affected business
and I have like that's one thing where
it really has helped right because I was but I read that question I was going to
say no they're pretty much separate the Youtube channel
and the app development are pretty much
separate but that's not really the case right
I have had client work come in because people found me on Youtube
they were searching for something I've done like I've done thousands of videos
I don't know how many is it's well over a thousand it might be close to
two thousand but I've done a lot right so lots of different topics
lots of different things so people find me by various keyword searches and
stuff like that and they might watch they might subscribe like might
leave a bad comment they might think I hate this guy
whatever but there's stuff out there and so a lot of times
I've worked with clients they already decided they want to work with me before
they even met me because they already feel like
they knew me because they knew that I know what I'm talking about and
I you know I just have this experience right also with you know just getting
jobs right you know this is what I want to say
to everybody out there and I've said this before and
it's kind of one of those things you hear and then
you think yeah yeah I probably should but whatever
I think everybody should in the software-industry should be putting out
content putting out content of some kind
it could be blog posts if you're not good at doing videos
it could be you know whatever podcast or whatever
you know whatever but for me Youtube works
really really well right you know you learn
something new like you learn you know stuff now
you know depending on how long you've been doing it
you know in software you know stuff now that you
didn't know a year ago and there are people
who are where you were a year ago that could benefit from that content and
you might think well there's already loads of tutorials out there about this I want you
to think about it in a different way right there's something about creating
content about putting down your opinions
and your thoughts and whatever your skills on something
which helps it solidify in your own mind right you start to think yeah I know that you know people
say hey Eric what do you think about I don't know what do you think about Flutter what do
you think about React Native what do you think I have opinions about all those kinds of things so I
think about them I've done videos on them right I you know my opinions might change but I kinda
I know the industry really really well I pay attention to it we talk about it here you
guys tell me stuff I tell you that kind of stuff and the reason I say that everybody should put out
content and it's not so that you can get millions of views I mean this channel has been at
36,000 subscribers for like a long time it might stay at 36,000 subscribers but that's not the
reason I do it right it would be I mean honestly I would love that silver Youtube button just to hang
on the wall for my ego and everything like that but you know that's not the reason I do it right
I met okay let's say you're looking for a new client you're looking for a new job
you need to do whatever right when you put your CV in front of somebody
a lot of the times they're gonna google you right and I've done this like I've you know when I'm
thinking about hiring somebody you know I look at the CV is the first thing I look at and if
I'm a bit more interested let's do a quick google and most of the time most software developers
has been I'll find a LinkedIn profile maybe and it's really really sparse like no effort
been put into it you know if there's a picture it's a picture a like a mug shot picture
and then you know there might be a website with a coming soon page on it but nothing else right
if you were to google my name like let's say for some reason you know you were hiring me right and
you were to Google my name you would find loads of content you signed loads of videos you like find
loads of stuff because I put the work in like I just sort of like you know I made it a habit right
just I'm gonna start doing some stuff and it's not something that came easy right and also I'll have
clients that ask me questions again and again and a lot of times I could just go oh let me send you
this video I did a couple years ago and I could just say okay this is young we need to annotate
the screenshots or whatever like that would be better and I go what does that mean let me send
you the screenshots of this video I did about you know creating annotated screenshots as opposed
to just normal screenshots on your apps and stuff like that kind of stuff comes up all the time
so and here's the thing when I do talk about this kind of stuff like you know just picking
up the camera and filming stuff, there's a lot of people who say yes I should and I've had
conversations with people who said you know what you've convinced me Eric like even in person like
not necessarily this Eric you've convinced me I'm gonna do it and then months go by and then you
ask you know like I don't want to ask because I don't want to be rude but after a while, it's like
so have you done any videos yet and it's always like an oh yeah no I'm going to
get a new camera or I'm going to like I'm going to make a new like intro whatever and I'm looking for
an editor to edit the videos for me and all the you know and all this kind of stuff and really
what it is because I know I experienced it too is that we all hate the way we look on camera
oh my god do you want to see an awkward looking person turn your camera on and try to film
something of yourself talking about a topic that you're into right and then and then you get more
and more self-conscious for me it was like there were so many videos that I recorded that never got
published and finally when I did start to publish them there was this kind of like a screw it this
is just going to be good enough right and so there was like a lot of stuff and I started doing videos
each and every single day and sometimes the videos really sucked some may argue that most of the time
they sucked but it was kind of like putting the reps and getting used to doing that kind of stuff
right and it's something that I'm always surprised that when you talk to other software developers
about it and you might disagree with it because I've heard this before like dude I'm not I'm not
into all that social media stuff I'm not into all that you know the Youtube stuff there's always so
many stuff so much stuff out there right but if you were just to like just to record your thoughts
just to record your opinions about the software you're working on you know you learn something new
you demonstrate how to do it right it doesn't have to be a daily thing or you know you're looking for
the likes or the subscribers or whatever as you're putting out content like that and like somebody
somebody's searching for you they'll find that content and then you demonstrate that you know
what you're talking about more than that you demonstrate that you're a player in the industry
right but also you just you know it helps solidify it in your mind right sometimes you go
back and look at videos that you've done like I'm thinking I've done that and gone
back to god what was how did that work again like and I know I did a video on it and I have to
go through and do a quick search through all that kind of stuff now we've tried other
stuff too I've tried to do the Instagram stories like if you follow me on Instagram or you follow
Overpass on Instagram you know we've got a lot of content going out there but like the uptake
on that has been eh it's different Instagram is different Twitter is different we've done the
Twitter stuff for years you know TikTok, TikTok is the new the latest thing we're doing
kind of how we do the shorts on Youtube we're doing the TikTok thing on TikTok and
it's like dude it's like you know tumbleweeds blowing through that account like nobody's
interested in watching me on TikTok right it's just but you know we we try it we put stuff out
there right and it's not about it's not about the views it's about you know it's you know there were
times where I started putting out content and more people started watching and I got stage fright
and then I started thinking I'm just gonna talk about what I think you guys want to talk about
and then it became not fun it became you know I had no personality I was just you
know I was trying to do something like you know just boring right and the nice thing about video
nice thing about video and even through writing or audio is that your enthusiasm for the topic
gets to come out right when someone's hiring somebody or someone wants to work with somebody
it's not just how technical you know how good their technical knowledge is a lot of times it's
like is this somebody I could work with is this somebody that I like and through video you
can demonstrate that I mean we're all the reason you guys watch this channel I hope is because you
are excited as excited about the technology and what we get to do as software developers as I am
I mean think about it we can have any job and we get to you know make software we get to do
stuff that makes the world work better we get to automate things we can like put stuff out there
that actually helps people I mean I think that's awesome we have a great profession right we could
do we could create something out of nothing through a blank IDE we could code something
that we could put out onto the market or we could you know automate to run on a server somewhere all
that kind of stuff right if you're as excited about it as I am and nobody knows about it
then you need to put yourself out there I'm rambling here big time right but you know and
I've talked about this before I'll continue to talk about it and I know I know it's scary it's
scary as hell to like think you know if you've never done it before to go on camera it's scary
like if I haven't done it for a couple weeks I get scared again I'm like oh man like you know you
know so if you just force yourselves like today I'm gonna do a video I'm gonna publish it I'm
gonna figure out how all this works it is gonna suck like if you know it's gonna suck and it will
at least when you're first getting started then yeah you're fine with it just keep putting the
reps in and get better at it and then you get to the situation where like you know after a while
you have this library of stuff that you've put out there and that you've created and anybody
who's looking to hire you are going to be able to find that but ideally anyone looking to solve the
problem that you solved they're going to find that too and you're giving back to the community this
developer community that we're in anyway I've rambled on long enough right you know like
like I said this is a small channel I'm so glad you guys are here I'm so glad I get to talk to you
about this kind of stuff and I encourage you like and I want you guys to experience what it
feels like to go through that and get over those initial hurdles of recording something and just
putting something out there because a lot of people really want to do it but they're just
it's intimidating and then there's supposed when you put something out there doesn't get any views
that doesn't mean you should stop that should just mean that you know okay well just you know
keep doing it right anyway I hope you guys have a great day yeah record something hit
record do it do it I'm telling you that is it for today I'll talk to you guys again nextime