Charlie Chapman, creator of Dark Noise app and Launched podcast.

Jeroen Leenarts: So I'm sitting here with Charlie Chapman. On my next episode for my specializations of my podcast. Charlie is actually somebody who does a lot of things as a podcaster, actually, but also as an iOS app developer. And he has had a tendency lately to interview fellow content or app creators and and just let them tell their story. But what I was lacking in his feet was really his own story. So let's do something about that. So Charlie, how are you today? Charlie Chapman: I am doing all right. How about you? Jeroen Leenarts: Pretty well. Being doing some recording this week. So pretty busy, but that's always good. So just to get things started, your Charlie Charlie Chaplin actually, it's a it's a fun name to actually pronounce, I must say, it has a ring to it Charlie Chapman: satisfying. It sounds like a comic book hero, you know. Jeroen Leenarts: I know we'd like this red shorts, and then big S on your chest. And your case should be a big C actually. But what did you actually do? When you were younger? When you were like a small child? What did you do to actually get into technology? What was the spark that lit your fire? Charlie Chapman: For me, my obsession was always like visual effects and film. That was the thing I was obsessed with. Yeah, as a kid ever since I got the Star Wars special edition, VHS set. And it had that that intro feature at about all the things that they added that everybody seems to hate now, but for me, seeing the behind the scenes of how they did that, just like completely got me obsessed with it. And I spent most of my childhood obsessed with with that. And one of the consequences of that is use computers a lot. And like, I had a friend whose dad had a, I think, the iMac, g4, the the one with the like, Pixar, you know, arm on it, and he had QuickTime on it. And in QuickTime you can, you know, at least then you could like edit video together. And that got me obsessed with video editing software. And then I went down, you know, the visual effects after effects all that side of things. And so that sort of, like snuck me into the computer side of things. And it turns out, they're all very intermingled. And at the same time in college, like, or in high school, me and my friends, we all had the, you know, graphing calculators. And you could write little TI Basic programs on there, which I didn't think of that as programming. But we were making little things in there to like, do our calculus homework for us and stuff like that. And that kind of lit the bug combined with my obsession with visual effects in computer software to like start programming. And eventually I got talked into by the dean of the college that was going to just going into the computer science department, because here in the middle of Missouri, film and animation and visual effects aren't huge industries. And so that started me down that route. And then I just kind of stayed in that lane while doing all the visual effects, motion graphics stuff kind of on the side. Jeroen Leenarts: So then, if you would look at your education, I reckon that you did that. Somewhere locally you're living in Missouri was did you go to college or university there? Charlie Chapman: Yeah, there's a university in southern Missouri that I went to. And got out computer Computer Information Science degree, which is like a business degree, computer science degree kind of combo thing. Jeroen Leenarts: So And currently, you actually created a couple of apps, dark noise and alpha fewer. Can you at least that's the those are the two most known products of your name. Can you like tell in a few words, what dark noises and in few words what over viewers? Charlie Chapman: So dark noise is a white noise app? So it's, it makes white noise and other like ambient sounds and then over viewer that's the more complicated one to explain. But basically, it turns your or it lets you use your iPhone more easily as a document camera for teachers to be able to show over zoom or something like that. Their tabletop so that they can show what they're writing or something like that. I just made it for my wife who's a teacher and was trying to figure out the virtual learning thing. Jeroen Leenarts: Okay, yeah, cuz I still remember that I had like, this was a history teacher. And he was always scribbling on this like, contraption that had like a mirror on top of it and a lot of light and it was like, beaming behind him on on a whiteboard, actually. And then he could just like, he was like graphing timelines for all kinds of images. And he was just basically illustrating what he was talking about. was really cool. So the dark noise thing, why a white noise app? Charlie Chapman: Well, so let's see, not last year, the year before 2019. So I, like my software career was not an iOS at all, until I had the opportunity to switch at the company I was already at to an iOS team, despite having literally never, like opened Xcode or anything like that before. So I knew I needed a project of some sort to, like, help get me going, so that I was at least somewhat helpful to my team sooner. And so I I'm a dork. And so I have a list of app ideas, as well as lists of all sorts of ideas. I keep in Apple notes all the time. And I was going through my list of ideas. And the reason I landed on the white noise thing was the reason it was on my list was because when me and my wife switched from Android to iOS, one of the few app categories that I felt like was actually worse, I couldn't find one that I liked was the white noise app that we would use, whenever we went to sleep, just you know, so we could have sound in the background, it wasn't a big deal, because you could download one that kind of felt old and junky. But really, you're just having it play a sound. And then you don't think about it much. But I was like, Oh, that might be cool. And so it got added to my list. And then when I was going through my app ideas and wanted to pick one, that was the one that required no internet connection, it didn't need to go out and you know, fetch something, I didn't need to stand up a server. And I had been doing web development and back end development. For a long time. Sounds like I don't need to spend a bunch of time doing that. I want to spend all of my time on the actual clients iOS side of things. And so foolishly, I thought, Oh, this should be really simple. But I wasn't thinking about how complicated an audio app that runs in the background and has to deal with all of the different interruptions that can happen on the system nowadays. But yeah, the reason I chose it was literally because it seemed like it was the simplest and I could go really deep on understanding iOS development on it. Jeroen Leenarts: So it's actually you scratched again. So you were actually somebody that scratched his own? Ah, again, with an app idea. Charlie Chapman: Yeah, yeah. Or my wife's, I guess, I didn't really use it too much. Although I did notice that. Because I, like she's been playing it for so long. Whenever we go to sleep, the rare circumstances where I go to bed like before her or something. I'm like, It's really quiet in here. And then I started using one myself. And so yeah, I guess I do use it for that. Jeroen Leenarts: So but that does mean that you had like a very dedicated beta tester for your product when you were creating it, right? A very Charlie Chapman: opinionated beta tester. I'll say, I didn't actually put it on her phone until very deep into the development cycle. Because if she was going to bed and something didn't work, right, she would let me know right away. When I did add her somehow she found the most obscure bugs through the simplest way of using it ever. I every time we went to bed, and she hit the play button, I like tensed up, like afraid something wasn't gonna play right. Or it wasn't gonna smoothly. devaluating smoothly come up or something like that. Jeroen Leenarts: It's interesting. And so but you also run a podcast? Can you like, tell us a little bit about that? And people that are listening to a podcast, definitely have a look at or actually listen to Charlie's podcast. It's called launched? What's the concept behind it? Charlie Chapman: Yeah, so I just my theme for last year, before, you know, the world kind of fell apart was a year of community I really wanted after a year of learning iOS development and making an app and it kind of getting attention in some coverage. My real goal last year was I want to meet all these people and really embed myself in the community and go to conferences and all this stuff. And so one of the pieces of that idea was I should make a podcast where I'm interviewing people, and I'm sure it'll be really hard because scheduling people is really stressful, and yada, yada. But I just want an excuse to get these people to talk to me for an hour. That's not me just like cold emailing them to be like, Hey, you want to talk on the phone? Like, that's just not me. But for some reason, podcast, even though other people will be listening, it was like an easier way to sort of get to meet all these people. And then I'm also just a person who's deeply interested in people's backstories and just letting people talk about things and asking questions. And so it kind of fit my my personality a little bit too, I think. Jeroen Leenarts: And I watched your first podcast that you created. Charlie Chapman: So I had one that I ran for a couple years with a friend this this is connected to my other side thing of visual effects and stuff. I had a nascent idea once of trying to make a educational YouTube channel but I found that my my weak spot was audio and I wanted to make myself better at that. So I convinced my friend to do a podcast with me. So I could slowly learn the ropes on processing and how to get better like voiceover recordings. And then I never did that thing. But Jeroen Leenarts: it's a bit of a Dutch proach actually, that you took there, because one of the reasons that I started this podcast was because I did like an online prepared talk, it was recorded, like in March 2020. So right at the start of the whole lockdown and Pandemic thing. And I was getting really some form of stage fright, even though there was no audience, she just speaking into a microphone, and it was so awkward, so uncomfortable. I was thinking, Okay, I need to do this more. And what's the best way to do something like that more, and that's just doing a podcast. And it's, it's been going since October now. And I'm really enjoying it. So, so far, so good. And I'll just see where it ends up. And who knows? Yeah, but just to, yeah, go Charlie Chapman: ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say, yeah, it's, it's one of those things where it feels sort of silly, because you're like, who's gonna care about what I say or whatever. But the amount of lessons that I can take out of this, and have taken out of this and brought into other stuff that I've done, are really high. So any any weird project like this, this sort of pushes you out of your comfort zone feels like it's a it's a worthwhile thing to consider. Jeroen Leenarts: Some something that I've also seen on your website is that you are quite open about how your projects and your podcasts how they are doing in, in the sense of numbers and statistics. Why do you like publishing all those things about the work that you do? Charlie Chapman: A lot of that comes from? Well, some of it comes from the company I used to work for was just had a very, like, open mindset of like, share everything. And that sort of seeped into my personality, some, but a lot of it is from Jordan Morgan, if you're familiar with him, the former person who ran spin stacks. And whenever he released, I guess, the first version of spin stacks, like a month before I was planning on releasing, and he did a big blog post, basically doing exactly what I've done now, just sharing all the things that he could share. And I found it just incredibly helpful, because I had zero frame of reference for what to expect, and not that I expected to get the same level of success that he did, but like just to have any sort of something to hold on to, as far as expectations. And so I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna make that a habit and try and share everything. And the fun thing that came out of that was, people would comment on on the things that you're sharing, and you'd make new discoveries about your own data, just through those conversations, or just through collecting it, so you could share it. And so I find writing those up to be really valuable for me to kind of do post mortems or even to go back and reference myself. And so I've just kind of kept doing it since then. Jeroen Leenarts: So the feedback that you're getting from people online is obviously quite positive, and mostly also thankful that they actually now have something to compare themselves against. Because I actually also looked at your statistics, and I was quite impressed with the numbers that you were running, which podcast interact, actually right from the get go. And so how was that for you to actually launch a new podcast and then actually discovered that, hey, you're onto something and people are listening to this to certain numbers that are actually from podcasts are quite impressive to say. Charlie Chapman: Well, so the interesting thing about the podcast thing is, I don't have the same example as I had with Jordan, or other people's and southern iPhone for the upside. So I actually don't really have still to this day, I don't really have a good measure of like, what my numbers look like compared to others. I do know that the numbers were maybe a little higher, maybe around what I was expecting right at the beginning. But then, it seems like it's totally it did not go in the direction I was expecting it to. Based on some things that I've heard and some sort of like intuition, my expectation was doing an interview podcast where every single episodes of different guests I was going to get a wide variation in every episode that came out based on who the person is. And the first week that I came out I did an episode every day is sort of this thing to try and I don't make the launch big. And that first week that's exactly what happened. Like some people had really big followings on social media some people had decent followings, but not necessarily in the same social media areas or whatever. And there was quite a lot of variation that first week but after that, it pretty much behave like what any other podcast what it seemed like there was a there was subscribers and every episode was close to the same, you know, little bumps and little valleys but not the variation that I was expecting. And then the other thing was, I was kind of hoping that, you know, each new guests would bring a different audience, and maybe a small amount of that audience would stay. And then slowly over time, you'd see this growth from like, each guest, you know, leaving a couple people that now subscribe, and they kind of hang on for a while. And that didn't really happen either. I haven't really seen a lot of growth necessarily. It's kind of stayed somewhat static. And I don't really know what the lesson to take from that is yet. But it is interesting. Jeroen Leenarts: So you went to university in Missouri? How many years ago was that? Charlie Chapman: Let's see. 2000 and fall of 2008, and then graduated in 2011. Spring of 2011. So yeah. Jeroen Leenarts: And you also mentioned like your previous employer for a couple of times that they had an open atmosphere and all kinds of positive things. What, what company was that? Charlie Chapman: Um, I've worked at a couple companies since then. I, I don't know. I feel weird. I don't know. I mean, obviously, we're from different countries, too. But I feel really weird about saying the company I work for, because I'm super paranoid, like on online. And I've mentioned that, like, I'll say I work at Stitch Fix now. Yeah. Which is amazing. But I've been here since October. But I don't know I, I feel weird about the whole thing, what company I work for thing. And I'm just curious enough to turn this on you. But I can't help myself. What are your thoughts on that, because I don't have a good frame of reference. Because some people just seem to talk about it, and others don't say anything about it. Jeroen Leenarts: Me personally, of course, there's, there's a balance you have to keep. Because it's it's not cool to like to dish out on previous employers, because in some form, in some way you had like a meaningful relationship with this company. Because it was mutually beneficial. You got a salary and they got your work. And I think it's fine to actually talk about where you work, because it's all something that you share on a resume with people. And the thing there, I think, is that you have to be careful with like disclosing any NDA covered that aerials. Charlie Chapman: That's why it's not that I am saying bad things. It's that I'm so paranoid of breaking some NDA or it's, you know, it's not like I was working for Apple, I haven't worked for like, government agencies, or super secretive anything, but it just, it makes me like scared. Jeroen Leenarts: Yeah, it is, of course, you can tell what you worked on, especially if it's if it's published products, it's always cool to be able to share that, hey, I worked actually, on this specific product. And then people ask you, quite quickly, okay, what did you do on the product? And then that's something related to networking and did some screens, and then you have to, like, keep it at the surface, you know, not like really divulge what kind of technology stack they use internally, how the security is managed, all that kind of things. So yeah, I think it's like, just, if you just keep at the generic level, it's, it's, it's fine. And it's an interesting, it gives some interesting information, because it also indicates, in what kind of environments you actually have worked as a, as a software developer, because software developers who've mostly worked in small teams have had a very different experience than people have worked at, like large, top 500 companies by us. Yeah. And, and all that, that's just so different. And, of course, you do the work with the people that you work with. And that's actually the most important part of your own self growth and development. I think, just finding the right people in your facility to be able to actually gain the experience, shared experience, just have a meaningful working relationship with with the peers around you. So that's actually the most important part part of working at a company with a team with colleagues, I think. Charlie Chapman: So I guess, to that vein, then I worked at three different companies. So the first was an insurance company. Oh, and all of them were in the Microsoft stack, in some form. So the first was an insurance company, which was not necessarily the most stimulating on the product side anyway. And then and then I had the opportunity to go to a consulting company doing Windows Windows eight and Windows Phone apps, which was absolutely delightful and so much fun. And it's kind of what sort of lit the fire under me on mobile development. I really liked building something that was you know, built around touch and sort of the the care you get to put into the touch interactions and animations and stuff like that. But that wasn't exactly the most long for this world. And so I fell back into the web development side of things. And I got to do a lot of like, JavaScript frameworks, you know, with the backends, being in the Microsoft stack. And that's mostly what I did at the last company I was at, until I got that opportunity to, to jump over into iOS, but all of them were, were smaller companies. And two of them were consulting. And so, you know, I wasn't working for like a fang company or anything like that. And the company I'm at now, this is the first time I've really been on a sort of big consumer facing product. Jeroen Leenarts: So for people that that are not situated in the US, what does Stitch Fix actually create as a product. Charlie Chapman: So it's a, it's like online shopping. But the main thing is that it's it's like us, there's a personal stylist, like we have a whole team of stylists. And so you basically sign up for getting a box. And you give them a whole bunch of information about you. And a combination of like, a really intense algorithm side, and actual, real people come together. And they pick out clothing for you based on you know, what you say you're doing. So like, the first one I did, it was, it was the fall, and we're in a pandemic. And so I was like, I just want stuff that I can go on walks, I want, you know, I want to be comfortable all day, but I want to be able to go out for walks or whatever. And so they sent me like some sweaters, and some nice jeans and stuff like that. Jeroen Leenarts: Okay. And what is interesting is that she actually mentioned that you worked in Microsoft technology, mostly at the beginning of your career. What made it that you opted to go with Microsoft technology, right after school, Charlie Chapman: because that's where the jobs were here in in the middle of America, or at least where I'm at. It's very much enterprise II kind of area. And almost everything around here seems to be or it was anyway, Microsoft stack or Java. And so the first job just happened to be Microsoft sec. doing like, you know, well, what was it called before? Their, their web, ASP web or whatever was called. And so that's kind of what I fell into. And I definitely liked it more than Java. So I kind of stuck stuck with that side of things. But C sharp and dotnet was what I knew. Jeroen Leenarts: Yeah. Okay. And so then you took a while to actually go to the motions, go through the motions of these, these technologies like developing backends. And also some front end you you mentioned web front end, actually. Right. And then you made the switch to do iOS development. But you already mentioned that you landed in a team with iOS developers that you didn't open Xcode before. How did that happen? Charlie Chapman: Well, that was that was the result of being on a decent side, you know, it was a project with many teams that I'd been on for years, in many different areas of that same project, you know, all working for the same client. And so I was very familiar with all of the workings of that broader architecture, between all the different applications. And I served the, the iPad, or the iOS team, as part of, you know, what I was doing on the website. So when there was, well, I just happen to be in a meeting where somebody was like, hey, you know, we're shrinking this team. And we're gonna add one Junior iOS developer, and I just sort of jokingly offhand said, how Junior Are you willing to take? And they're like, Oh, well, what do you mean? And I was like, Well, I, it'd be really fun to learn. Like, I love doing mobile development, but I've never done any iOS stuff. And on the spot, he like walked over to the person who was running the iOS team at the time, and he's like, Hey, would you consider working with this person, then we had worked somewhat together. And he's like, Oh, sure. You know, I don't know if he really was okay with that or not. But that's what ends up happening. And then a couple of weeks later, I was sitting down open, you know, learning Xcode with these guys. And it was kind of amazing. And really, it was like cheating. In a way I didn't have to learn from scratch, I got to sit down and pair all day with people who were amazing at UI kit, and really learn the ropes from them. And so it was an amazing way to learn something quickly. And I could provide some value to the team because I at least understood all the services and stuff that we are hitting while I was ramping up on the actual, you know, iOS side of things. Jeroen Leenarts: So the initial failure that's brought to the team was actually if there was some kind of back end or API issue you could say Yeah, that's that's somewhere there. And it's it's easy. You talk to this guy and it's get fixed, right? Yeah. Very important, actually, Charlie Chapman: at least that's what I told myself. Jeroen Leenarts: It's always good to self motivate, right? Yeah. So, um, so. So considering how you learned to do iOS development, how would you consider the learning curve of iOS development? Charlie Chapman: I mean, it was weird. So I've worked in a lot of technologies. And coming over to the Apple world was like, Xcode is so bizarre. It a lot of things in the iOS development world felt to me anyway, like, it had been developed in this pseudo silo from the rest of the development world. Everything was like similar, but they solved things in totally different ways. You know, like the way that memory they deal with memory with aarC now and stuff versus everything else I had been doing was always garbage collection. Yeah. Little things like how breakpoints work in Xcode, and how, at the time, you know, there was no tabs in Xcode, and like, Everything felt weird in that way. But also really interesting. And, you know, there's been much ink in podcasting, waves spilled over the lack of documentation from Apple, and I, I would agree with that coming from other places. But the flipside is the third party documentation, the like hacking with Swift, and Ray Wonderlic, and stuff that was I was just blown away with how much better it was than the stuff at least in the Microsoft world that I had been working with. Jeroen Leenarts: in the Microsoft world, do you have this MSDN thing? I think, yeah, it was cool. Because I, I did some ASP dotnet back in the day, I'm actually certified Microsoft Certified Application Developer. But that was unlike ASP. Net 1.1, I think, with this concept of code behind, which was quite interesting, what people could actually do with that, what was not the purpose of it? So, so the learning curve was quite alright, because you were embedded in a team, with experts. And that's actually for learning new things, actually, the best place to be like surrounded by people who know more about something than than you do yourself, for sure. And looking back, because how long ago? Was it that you made the switch? Charlie Chapman: That was like January of 2019? Jeroen Leenarts: So that's quite recently, actually. But if you now look at yourself, what kind of what level of iOS developer would you consider yourself? Charlie Chapman: Well, that is a, especially when you're in the process of switching jobs, which I just was, that was an interesting thing to think through. Because there are ways where I very much feel senior. In certain areas of iOS development, I very much do, like, I feel like I understand them really well. You know, I'm on somewhat of the cutting edge, sometimes when new stuff comes out. And I'm, you know, because of, of dark noise. But then, you know, specifically on the iOS side, I don't have the same level of experience as a lot of other people in terms of yours. And so, there's, there's quite a lot of, oh, what's it called imposter syndrome? Or well, maybe not imposter syndrome, but imposter reality? I don't know, that can go along with that. So it's, it's really hard to say, because my overall coding experience, I very much feel very strongly as a senior. But then there's certain areas on iOS specifically where it's like, I didn't know that that's how UI TableView used to work. And that affects this one thing, because I haven't been doing it for, you know, six years or seven years or something. Jeroen Leenarts: So you actually mentioned something interesting, they actually consider yourself to be a senior software developer, obviously, based on the amount of experience that you have. And I can agree to that in the fact that seniority is not based on how long you have worked on a specific stack. But it's more based on the diversity of problems and challenges that you faced, I think. So how do you look at people that are working, and that have been in a position for two years and that's the complete total programming experience, and that that feel that I need to get to a title a job title, which contains senior as quick as possible? Charlie Chapman: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, you're saying you're saying no programming experience even outside of that, Jeroen Leenarts: yeah, just fresh out of university or college and then, so they had some formal education, and then two or three years in their life dying to get the senior title on there on the job description? Charlie Chapman: I mean, I don't know. It feels like, I mean, you could obviously spend all of your free time also building things, right? Or consuming books or whatever. But I feel like part of the levels, you know, is is just time not necessarily in terms of how people should hire. But in terms of like, looking at your own personal personal growth, it's, it's just going to take time to become a senior as something right. Yeah. Jeroen Leenarts: So, but then if you look at yourself as as Charlie, what were the biggest challenges that you had to overcome with growing and developing yourself as a, as a software engineer? Charlie Chapman: Um, I think, you know, I naturally will spend a bunch of time working on things that are fun for me, which for me, it's that's the front end and the UI, I get very little personal joy. When it comes to, you know, complicated, elegant architectures or, you know, highly unit tested or automated tested stuff. Automation itself is not something that, you know, gets me all excited, like, it does a lot of people. So, I found that everyone's while if I was having too much fun, sometimes that was a signal that maybe I need to like, step back and think and be like, Okay, have I am I starting to regress on these things that, you know, like the meat and potatoes, the things that are important that don't necessarily make me super excited, have I started regressing on some of that. And then maybe try and get myself on a team doing more just straight back end coding for a little bit or something like that. I don't know that I did a good job of doing that on purpose. But because I lived in enterprise world for so long. That's sort of what naturally happened. But the times that that happened, I was always frustrated, and also came out of it. Thinking that was a good thing. You know, it's good that I have the the backend experience that I have, I think it makes me more well rounded developer and, you know, have a better understanding of how to architect a big system. But it's not something that I enjoyed while I was doing it, either. Jeroen Leenarts: So would you say that's having the backhand experience helps you interact with your current API providers, if there's issues or new features that need to be developed? Charlie Chapman: I think so. You know, it's also possible, it's one of those things you tell yourself, because it is the reality. And, you know, it's like, looking back on your childhood and being like, you know, it was good that we got in fights in school, and now they don't let kids get in fights anymore. And it's like, are, is that really good? Or were you? Are you just saying you like where you're at in your life now. And so you attribute all of your life experience to be positive. It's very possible if that's what's happening here. But I do think it was helpful, especially, especially first coming over to iOS. Because, you know, I would not have naturally understood memory management in terms of garbage collection, which is different, obviously. But like, I wouldn't have had any of that understanding or real knowledge, if I was just doing the front end development stuff that I really liked. to the level that I did, which helped get up to speed on iOS faster. Then again, if I were to switch over to iOS sooner, I would have gotten up to speed on that, too. So I don't know. I think I'm just reaching. Jeroen Leenarts: So you actually mentioned that the you currently work at Stitch Fix, but you started iOS development on a previous position. And you also mentioned the job hunt. So the challenge is related to that. So how was the experience for you with like, being a software developer with a reasonable amount of experience, a minor amount of experience as an iOS developer, and then aiming for another iOS position at another company. Charlie Chapman: I mean, that was that was really, everything about that was really painful. But the biggest reason was because the world was in a global pandemic, and my children were at home with me. And I sometimes was, my wife's a teacher. So there's times where I was watching kids while doing interviews, you know what I mean? And I had to start interviews with like, just so you know, you know, a kid might walk in while we're talking and sorry, this is just the reality. That was That was intense, and then, you know, not being able to do them in person meant that they were and everybody was figuring this stuff out at the same time, right? meant that my what may have been a series of multiple interviews, you know, as like a half day or whatever, ended up being A bunch of separate interviews over the course of many different days. And so it kind of stretched this whole process out. I think that kind of stuff is not the same now that more stuff has been figured out on how to do this all in pandemic world, but it was a, there was just a lot of anxiety with the world. And then combine that with the anxiety about, you know, am I really qualified for this? Am I do I think more of myself than I really am? I remember coming out of the interviews, and always saying to my wife, like, I just hope that if I'm not what they wanted, that they got it now. And they'll just say no to me now, instead of going to the next stage. And then then realizing, you know, the reality the imposter that's talking to them, I want them to realize that as soon as possible. Jeroen Leenarts: You actually mentioned that you were like interviewing for new position, like, that's pretty much the start if the pandemic was the case of that it was something that you've decided to do, and that you wanted to keep on pursuing? Or was it already things set in motion? So you had to keep going with it? Or how did that work out? Because I can imagine that if you're ever sort of like a corporate job, or pretty much safe space to be if if this pandemic hits, because that's what I'm hearing a lot from people, if they have a big employer, they're doing pretty okay, it seems. So how, what what was the deciding factor to like, keep at the job hunt, really, because it's, it's, it's a tough thing to do like you, as you mentioned, the world is in a kind of a new phase, and you're considering or actually pursuing a new phase in your own life? Charlie Chapman: Well, so I wasn't, I wasn't looking whenever the pandemic started. Actually, in large part, it was because of the pandemic that I sort of opened up to it more, because I became a remote worker whenever the pandemic started. And I didn't think that was something I would be able to tolerate, because I like, you know, interacting with other people and going into an office and all that I'm a weirdo in software development, who actually enjoys that. So I didn't think I'd be able to take it. But all the companies that I was really interested in working for, we're not in Missouri, you know, being more interested in the consumer side of things, it's, it's kind of Slim pickins where I live, and so, you know, remote was becoming a bigger thing before this. And so I'd sort of toyed with the idea in my head, but I never really considered it as the thing that I would really do. But once I was forced into it, and realize, you know, what, I think I can do it. And if there's no time to try it, it's now and I'm gonna have to be anyway, that's really what open opened me up to doing it. And then, and then the other thing was, you know, being in consulting, job stuff changes a lot, right. And it, it was kind of looking, you know, reading tea leaves and seeing what was happening, I was getting the impression that iOS was not native iOS development was not an area that we were maybe necessarily going to have a lot of opportunities in the future. And me being primarily not an iOS developer, the way I was hired there, it would be totally fair of them to be like, Hey, let's put you back on a dotnet project. And I did not want that I totally fallen, fallen in love with with this platform and being able to write software in this way. And so I wanted to sort of solidify myself in a iOS position specifically and have that be a sort of safer thing. Jeroen Leenarts: You've seen the other side, and you didn't want to travel back. And yeah, Charlie Chapman: I'd done that once with Windows Phone, and didn't want to go but Jeroen Leenarts: it's actually great to hear that some horrible thing that's actually happening worldwide, the whole pandemic thing can actually be a catalyst for good things to happen in personal lives of people. Which I think that's very inspiring to hear. And so much of the late news has been focused on all these horrible things happening. So it's, it's wonderful to hear something positive that that comes from something so horrible, really. Charlie Chapman: Yeah, I mean, I, I've, since the beginning of this, I've told my son this a couple times, I'm like, we're living in a chapter of a million people and 1000s of companies story, the way that you know 911 is a chapter in so many companies and industries like stories if you were to tell their story, you'd have to mention how how things changed when that happened or or World War Two or World War One. Yeah, it's that's a that's a pre era and the post era. Yeah, and like so much innovation and lifestyle change is forced upon you that you know, lots of new ideas and concepts and just directions people go are happening to so many people around us. And it's, it's really weird when you step back and think about, you know, your current time period in that lens. I find it very fascinating. Jeroen Leenarts: So would you consider that all due to all the things that have happened in your personal life and on a global scale, and everything that's going on that you had time to reflect on? The positive things that are happening, and also the, the good place that that you and your family are able to have in this whole thing? While it's happening? Charlie Chapman: Not as much as I probably should. Having to two young boys in the house all the time with us has been, you know, trying mentally, I think is a good way to phrase it. So I think tendency to interrupt right? Yeah, a little bit, something like that. So, but yes, I, I mean, I have it so easy compared to 99% of people. And I'm very aware of that. But that doesn't mean I don't make room to complain at the same time. Jeroen Leenarts: No, it's that there's always so many people who have like, a way worse hand in this whole ordeal. So just just out of curiosity, two boys, how old are they? Charlie Chapman: Oh, gosh, see, this is the thing. Now, I have to sit here and save a bunch of words so that I can like mentally run the calculation. Because I don't even know my own age at this point. We can edit it. Yeah. That's the key, isn't it? Okay, so one of them's four. And then the other one is like a month away, or two months away from turning six. That's pretty sure. I guess that's a Jeroen Leenarts: nice eight, because I have a three year old and a five year old at home. And especially the five year old is like very much aware of everything that's happening. Oh, yeah. And also the impact that it has on her personal life. But I must say she's been she's been a real trooper. Some, some, some days, it's like, a bit much to handle, just to keep her in check. And just to keep her like stimulated to self develop and grow. But I must say she's doing really, really nice. And I hope same for your boys, that they're like, having fun, even though things are happening. Charlie Chapman: Oh, yeah, other than not getting to see family. I don't. I mean, it's weird how much this is just their life, right? Like, to them, this is just the way things are. And sometimes they'll hear them talking to each other. And they're like, did you know that when we get the vaccine that you can go to the store, and you don't have to wear a mask. And it's like, the idea of going somewhere not wearing a mask is novel. And it's like that is bizarre like Jeroen Leenarts: that, that's that complete and full reality of the world right now. Because they at that he do tend to forget the things of your that that like one or two years ago already. Charlie Chapman: I think that's why they do better. Uh, you know, we were all afraid like, they were gonna, like how are you can convince, you know, four year old to wear a mask. And it's like they do really well. And I'm like, oh, right, because unlike us, they aren't comparing it to their whole life of not having to do this. It's like wearing socks. Like it's just what you do, right? Okay. Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Mom. Here's my mask, you know? Yeah, this one has Dinosaurs On It. Jeroen Leenarts: That it's about living in the moment, I think. Yeah. Um, so just to start wrapping things up. Is there anything that we've forgot or anything that you wanted to mention or that we needed to touch upon? Charlie Chapman: No, I think we've, we've captured the entirety of me as being in this in this 45 minutes of audio, and there's really nothing left. Jeroen Leenarts: Like that. If that's really the case, then I must have done a wonderful job. Yeah. Charlie Chapman: So it was just an empty shell of a human. Jeroen Leenarts: Let's, let's leave it to the listeners to decide. Let us know on Twitter, what's the what's happening Charlie Chapman: here? Sounds good. Jeroen Leenarts: Okay, Charlie, thank you so much for your time, and have a great day. Charlie Chapman: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Jeroen Leenarts: I hope to see you in person sometime in the future. Who knows, Charlie Chapman: man? Yes, that that is the unofficial ending. incap to my show now is it seems like every single show ends with Oh, and I hope maybe one day we'll get to see each other and then we will start commiserating on, you know, the things we haven't gotten to do. Jeroen Leenarts: Yeah, and yeah, beer is involved. And yeah, yeah. Cool. Okay. Thank you so much, and talk to you again. Awesome.