Open Up With Brad Frost: Episode 1

There are a lot of feelings in tech. We feel a certain way about our jobs. We feel certain ways about certain web development techniques. We feel certain things about the landscape of web development and our place in it as developers. But we rarely talk about those feelings. Nay, they usually take a back seat to discourse about the specific things we use in our work: what’s that library you’re importing? What Figma plugins do you use daily? Why would you ever write CSS in JavaScript (no, seriously, why?!).

That’s the bent behind Open Up, a new podcast I’m co-hosting with the unimitable Brad Frost. Our first episode dropped yesterday.

I’ll be darned if Brad doesn’t have an incredible knack for articulating touchy-feely stuff and striking the right nerve while he’s at it. We covered a slew of topics ranging from job layoffs to dealing with lack of purpose at work and Brad not only knows how to capture the sentiment of someone’s issue, but he offers incredibly practical ways of looking at that issue while exercising a high degree of empathy that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. That’s why his name is on the marquee in lights!

I’d say I’m there for a smidge of additional perspective and color commentary. But honestly, I really jumped at the chance to be Brad’s cohost because I’ve felt an indirect sense of connection with him for many years, dating back to 2013 when we both decided to become independent consultants. I remember reading his blog post announcing his move and writing my own not many months after that. Funny enough, it was just two months before that blog post that I wrote another one in response to one of Brad’s tweets… and he responded to it! I’m not lying when I say I feel that our lives have been on parallel tracks for all these years, so getting to hang out with him in a venue like Open Up is a real thrill that feels a lot like coming full circle.

Anyway, please enjoy the episode! These things are live and — like it says on the tin — opened up for audience members to contribute directly to the conversation. You can join in the reindeer games yourself when we shoot the next episode, currently scheduled for April 23.