Paul: Hi there, and welcome to PodRocket. I'm your host, Paul. And today, we have Aaroh Mankad, who's going to be talking to us about TikTok and the amazing outreach that we can get via this platform and how the modern generation of developers and people are learning through TikTok, outreaching through TikTok. So Aaroh is a developer experience engineer at Plaid. Welcome to the podcast. Aaroh Mankad: Thanks, Paul. I think it'll be a fun conversation today. I'm excited to talk about TikTok for a bit. Paul: Yeah. Me too. It's kind of a different type of topic. I feel like usually we're delving into open source libraries and frameworks. But we're going to be talking, I think this is more like meta experience. Right? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. 100%. Paul: What's happening to the field and stuff? So you're a developer experience engineer at Plaid. Right? Is that how you say it, not played, Plaid. Aaroh Mankad: It's Plaid, yeah, like the plaid [inaudible]. Paul: Like the Tesla, got you. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. Yes. Also like the Tesla. Paul: So how long have you been at that place? Aaroh Mankad: I've been working at Plaid for about a year and a half, and I joined as a developer experience engineer. And it's been a really, really fun time so far. Paul: So as a developer experience engineer, are you sort of helping people who are getting on boarded into the company? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. So developer experience has kind of two sides to it, and this is where a lot of people get confused. There's internal and external developer experience. Are you helping the experience of developers at the company or developers using Plaid's API tool? So I work on the external developer experience side. That's further broken up into different stages, where ... I won't go into all the stages, but the stage I work on is developer build, which is specifically helping developers while they're building their integration with Plaid's API. So we own a lot of stuff like the sandbox, the open API libraries, that kind of stuff. Paul: Okay, so this is starting to come together. So you're a developer experience engineer who's helping with the external outreach of the Plaid project. And you're using TikTok as a medium. Did you originally start using TikTok just for the job? Or are you using it for a lot of things now in just general education and outreach? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. So actually, Plaid, my day job at Plaid isn't actually related to my TikTok at all, other than the fact that experiences I have while working at Plaid, as you would at any company, I do talk about on my TikTok, so stuff like my performance review ratings, or how I'm gunning for a promotion, or trying to get a promotion, how that works. But yeah, I don't do any outreach specifically for Plaid. Plaid doesn't have a TikTok. I think it'd be interesting, but it's a little harder for B to B companies like Plaid to have a TikTok presence than it is for B to C companies. Paul: So TikTok seems like it's just sort of your dumping ground of thoughts about being a programmer and working in the tech field. Right? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, pretty much. I kind of use it as, let's say like a visual Twitter, where people on Twitter don't just post about their jobs. They post about their lives and what's going on, that kind of stuff. I'm traveling around, even if it's personal stuff, that also goes on the TikTok because I think as we'll talk about later, TikTok is very authentic compared to other social media platforms. So I don't feel dis-incentivized from sharing things outside of my professional life, even though the TikTok is a very professional page for me. Paul: Got you. That's an interesting phrase. TikTok is very authentic. I think you would start a lot of conversations with that phrase because people will say, "Oh, well, TikTok, you just got people doing the same dance and stuff." And it's like, "Yeah, but if you go to the right niche of content that you're looking for, there's things you find on there that you won't find on YouTube or anywhere else." Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. 100%. I think I very quickly when I downloaded it saw that there wasn't tech content, but there was finance content, and that's kind of how I got started on TikTok in general, was if you think about on YouTube, there's a CNBC Money Make It series, where they post about people who basically vlog a week in their life of spending. And so they'll say, "Here's how I spend my $100,000 salary as a 23 year old in New York." Right? And usually, they'll have really bad spending habits, for me, from my perspective, I think they have really bad spending habits. Let's say they make $4000 a month, but they'll have $2000 in car payments. That's an outlier, but that exists. And that's kind of the people that they portray more because it's click bait to get to viewers. But I thought kids and people, very impressionable people are watching these videos and thinking that it's okay. And then eventually, I saw people who work in tech who were also on the CNBC Money Make It thing. And then I was like, "Well, this is something that I could patient post." I make money. I can post about how I spend it. And I don't spend like this. So it kind of started with me potentially being a better role model. And so I've vlogged a week of my spending on TikTok. And just every day was its own video. It was super basic. I just talked to the camera and said, "Today I spent $60 on shorts. And the next day, I spent $2 on a soda." And that was it. Then at the end of the week, I just went over my typical monthly expenses. And then yeah, that actually generated a lot of interest because it started with this personal finance thing, which was popular on TikTok at the time, and tech wasn't. I think if I'd gone in and just posted strictly technical content right away, at that time, I don't think it would've gotten as popular. But because I posted finance first, and then people asked about what I did for work, how I got the job I got, where I went to college, all this kind of stuff, it eventually turned into a tech and finance channel. But now the niche exists. Now tech exists on the platform. And you can totally just go in, post strictly technical content, explain Kubernetes clusters and rests versus gRPC APIs and become very popular on TikTok showcasing that kind of stuff. Paul: So what's your TikTok handle? If people want to go look at this transition of normal to tech, finance and tech, it's a combination. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. So my TikTok handle is Seattle Tech Bro. And I primarily chose this handle, even though it feels ... I don't know. Tech Bro typically isn't a good term, but it was the catchiest term I could think of that wasn't my name because I don't think if I asked you personally in two weeks to spell my name, I don't think you'd be able to, whereas I think you'd be able to remember Seattle Tech Bro. And all those words are pretty spellable. So it was more like it was a better marketing name. And it kind of fit this idea of potentially being a better role model, where traditionally people think of tech bros as toxic people. And so I was like, "Yeah, people in tech aren't just tech bros. They can be nice people too." Paul: I think that actually drives a point home that, that's your handle name. So of the videos you're posting, it sounds like you're getting people posting comments. And they're like, "Hey, what about this? What about that?" Is the culture very intro level? Tell me about rest? Are you getting things like ... Can you tell me the differences between the CICD orchestration tools? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. So it totally gets as technical as you want it. The way I think about it is on TikTok, you can kind of watch this video to give you a high level understanding of a term, or of a field, or technology. So CICD orchestration for example, they might talk about: What's the difference between CICD? What's the difference between all the existing CI providers? And why do I use circle CI over something else? Whereas YouTube is like, "Here's how you actually set it up for your system," because that can't be done in the maximum three minutes that TikTok allows. And also, you're not going to have your phone open while you're coding. It makes a lot more sense to have your laptop open. And so I think certain types of content do very well on TikTok and should live on TikTok first, or short form video first, I guess as a genre. YouTube Shorts is also great. Some people have privacy concerns over TikTok, and that's totally fine. And if you do, if that's a major concern for you, then don't post on TikTok. But I think short form video in general as a genre is here to stay. Paul: Totally, yeah. It's taken over. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's like ... I don't know. People's attention spans are getting shorter. Right? And so you kind of have to adapt to it. But also, there's a trade off because you can post what goes viral on TikTok, which is usually a seven second video. There's some trending song in the background and you're doing some trend, which a lot of the times is usually just there's some intro to the song, and then there's a beat drop, and that's when you display the information on the screen. That kind of content can go very viral on TikTok. The three minute informational content is what I call nurturing content. And it's what I post once something goes viral. So if a video gets 200,000, 300,000 views, and then for the next week, I'll pretty much say, "I don't have to post viral content anymore because it's there." And now users will see the three minute, one minute, two minute pieces of content that I create afterwards because the algorithm just kind of works like that. You're like, "Oh, you really liked this one video of this person's. Let's see if you like their longer form content." And that's where you break through this TikTok is a dancing app only and start presenting informational content to viewers. Paul: I mean, that's a practiced science. If you want the customers to get the stuff they would say no to, you just get them hooked and then they'll keep buying. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. I guess it is very similar in that sense. Paul: Yeah, because the algorithm works that way. You really want to get their attention and get them to subscribe. Enjoying the podcast? Consider hitting that follow button for more great episodes. Do you find that engagement ever drops if your ... Do you have a happy place ratio of short form to long form? Long form, I say one to two minutes. That's still short form. Aaroh Mankad: Long short form, yeah. Paul: Within the sphere of TikTok, you have some ratio of, okay, I'm going to post this short form, then this long form. If you suddenly disturb that ratio and you have more long form, does that manifest itself as a drop in subscribers? Or do you find you have unbeatable retention once you hook people into your content? Aaroh Mankad: I actually don't think I've ever net lost subscribers week over week, month over month, anything like that. I think TikTok subscribers are sticky in the sense that they'll follow you. And then if they don't like your content, they'll just swipe it away because it's so easy to churn off a video that they're happy churning rather than the extra effort it takes to go and unfollow someone. Yeah, that's kind of been my experience. And also, I follow people whose specific content I like. They post multiple niches, basically, which I think is another really cool thing about TikTok is that you can post multiple niches and have different target audiences that both still subscribe to you. Whereas, for example, on YouTube you have a very specific niche. You post about that niche and that's it, unless you're a lifestyle blog content kind of YouTuber. Whereas on TikTok, I feel like I can post tech content, I can post finance content. I can post personal Indian cultural content. And I have different followers for these three niches, so the people that follow me for the in depth finance videos don't really see my in depth tech videos and the other way around. The high level stuff kind of gets to everyone. But in that way, I feel like I can bring my more authentic self to the platform. I don't have to narrow myself down to a specific niche. I can just post what I want to post and what's going on in my life at the time. Paul: Yeah. So does it do tags? TikTok does the tags. And does it use that to sort of differentiate? Or does it do ... Aaroh Mankad: I have no specific insight on how the TikTok algorithm actually works. Right? Just like anecdotally, when I post tech content, which usually has some tech hashtags that I put in there, and finance content, which usually has finance hashtags in there, that content goes out to different people. I think the reason I'm able to know this I guess is I kind of have super followers in both of these niches, AKA not anything official like Twitter super followers, but just people that you always notice in the comments, or are always interacting with your videos. And so the tech super followers are never really commenting or engaging on the extreme high level finance stuff. And similarly, the finance super followers are not posting on my tech videos, so that makes me think the audience is kind of targeted in some way, and bucketed into different niches. Paul: Got you, that could make sense. I mean, hey, you don't want to show somebody something they don't want to see. Aaroh Mankad: Exactly. So the algorithm's double pronged. Right? They want people that are viewing to view videos they're interested in. And they want to make sure creators have their videos viewed by people who are interested in those videos, so that you get higher engagement, higher views from that niche of people. If they showed ... If I posted a fashion video, where I've done this before, I posted a similar to what I spend in a week. I posted what I wear in a week, or I just showed this is what a tech bro's closet looks like. That kind of stuff kind of went to fashion TikTok, and they were like, "Who the hell is this guy and why is he posting about clothes when he's a tech bro and just has three black T-shirts and four black pants or something?" Because they didn't understand the persona that I was putting off in that video. Right? But my normal followers did understand what I was doing. It was kind of a joke there. Paul: Do you ever have videos that just completely flop? Aaroh Mankad: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I follow also people on TikTok that post content for creators on the platform, kind of how to think about your content and stuff. And one thing that stuck with me is if a video flopped, then that means that no one saw it, meaning you shouldn't feel bad about it. So if a lot of people saw it, and then said they hated the video, that's when I think you can think about deleting. But if a video flops because I expected it to get 100,000 views, or just I expected it to go viral, and it only got 1000 views or something, that's totally fine. That means only 1000 people saw it and they probably scrolled away pretty quickly because it didn't get more viewers. So I didn't really make a fool of myself, they just decided the content wasn't for them. Paul: There's another element where you want to build up a library on your channel. The more videos you have, the more likely you're going to show up in certain indexes. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. Totally. I think SEO is such a fascinating area of TikTok right now because I think relatively recently, Google started indexing TikTok videos and showing them on the search pages. So if you were to search I think Seattle Tech Bro, or my name, or something, it actually starts showing you individual videos of stuff that I've posted. And that's super interesting because now people are like, "Well, now that general SEO has come to TikTok, a lot of people have changed what their usernames look like." Right? Mine has always just been Seattle Tech Bro. But my display name has also been Seattle Tech Bro. So a lot of people keep their handle as the marketable name that people can quickly search up, but they'll keep their display name as something that's very SEO friendly. So they'll say something like, "Paul, podcast extraordinaire," or something. And that way, it shows up when someone Googles Paul podcast, or podcast host. Paul: It's like the website head element or whatever. Yeah, got you. So you must need to post a lot of these videos because I did TikTok for a little bit. Right? And after I posted 60 or 70 videos, that's when I started to see success. And other people I know who did TikTok started to see success. And so it's the element of iteration, consistent content, constantly flooding onto the platform. And I mean, personally from my side, I stopped doing that, even though it was picking up because it just takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort to plan the videos and then edit them. How do you tackle that? Because tech content in particular is, you want to show maybe some screen casts, a screenshot. What do you use to edit? And how do you plan your process out before you post something, if you plan at all? Aaroh Mankad: Totally. So a lot of points to touch here. First off, regarding the editing, I think I actually don't edit my videos specifically for TikTok. I edit in the app. And if anything, I'm doing screenshots, or the green screen effect, where you have something in the background and you're talking over it. For example, for a period of time I did resume reviews, where people would send me their resume, I would screenshot it and then just kind of dissect why or why it might not be the best resume they could make. And those did well, but I noticed the authentic videos, at least for me, where I just propped my phone up on this charging stand and talked to it about something that's happening right now in the moment, are the ones that do the best. For example, one of my recent popular-ish videos was one where I talked about quiet quitting when I was at Facebook. And so I was like, "Yeah, I was working at Facebook and I was aiming for this promotion that I wanted." And yeah, I didn't get it. Right? It happens. But what really hurt was the fact that my manager didn't even bring up a promotion to the committee or whatever, and told me after the fact that he didn't bring it up, which hurts. And so this is very authentic experience, and I'm just kind of sharing the experience and no other editing or anything else. So the platform actually feels like this person's just talking to you. There's some visual guidance on the screen, but it's not a whole visual experience of a platform, where I think YouTube kind of has to be. Right? There's this expectation of very highly edited videos that are almost always scripted. Right? And yeah, high quality, all of this stuff. And so just the setup of a YouTube video might take 30 minutes, getting the lighting right, making sure you have the right audio, that kind of stuff. I don't know how long it takes. But TikTok, I post in between meetings. I have five minutes in between meetings, I'll post a TikTok and it'll do really well. Paul: But you're a pro now. Right? It takes some muscle too, to be able to sit in front of the camera, or a personality. You need to be able to sit in front of the camera, just go candid. If you're candid and you're relaxed, as you said, that's the best content. And to put yourself in that head space takes practices. It takes practice, yeah. Aaroh Mankad: When you look at my first videos in comparison to what I post now, there's a marked difference in let's say stage presence or camera presence, and that's a good skill for people to learn now too, even as software engineers. You're in Zoom meetings all day. Your presence on camera is your personality at your company. It's how people recognize you. So if you can kind of build that on the side on TikTok, that's the personal gain to it. Right? Sure, you're putting out content that helps a lot of people, but you are becoming better engineer, better whatever, employee, by posting this kind of stuff. Emily: It's Emily again, producer for PodRocket. And I want to talk to you, yeah, you, the person who's listening, but won't stop talking about your new favorite front end framework to your friends, even though they don't want to hear about it anymore. Well, I do want to hear about it because you're really important to us as a listener. So what do you think of PodRocket? What do you like best? What do you absolutely hate? What's the one thing in the entire world that you want to hear about? Edge computing? Weird little component libraries? How to become a productive developer when your wifi's out? I don't know. And that's the point. If you get in contact with us, you can rant about how we haven't had your favorite dev advocate on, or tell us we're doing great, whatever. And if you do, we'll give you a $25 gift card. That's pretty sweet. Right? So reach out to us, links are in the description. $25 gift card. Paul: I think it's amazing what difference having good stage presence makes. If you can be heard clearly and very precisely by your coworkers, it makes a paramount difference, especially in the Zoom world we live today. And enunciating on a digital medium, that's an art in itself. Hey, yeah, if you're trying to get into tech, go make TikToks. Why the heck not? See how people react to them. Do you post some YouTube Shorts? Aaroh Mankad: I don't. I have a friend of mine on TikTok, his name is Phong, he is making this platform right now. And this isn't a sponsored shout out or anything like that, but he's working on making this platform right now that automatically syncs the TikToks that you post to YouTube Shorts. And so that way, I just post on TikTok, he pulls the video out without the watermark, and then uploads it to YouTube Shorts via their API, which I think is really interesting, and probably something that I'll be hopping on once it's more polished off and start using because I do think there are people who have privacy concerns over TikTok. And I'm not the most informed, and I don't want to go off making claims that I can't back, or haven't read the sources on. But if people have these privacy concerns, and YouTube shorts is probably the place that they're going to get short form content. And they're already probably following tech creators on there who have hopefully also pivoted over to short form content as well, so definitely something I want to post on. I think it's a very different audience though. The YouTube Shorts audience is going to expect a similar quality out of the shorts that they do of the videos, and so there is going to be this more scripted aspect to it, this highly edited, high quality HD bouquet in the background kind of expectation, and that's just not the videos that I make. Paul: I've recently in the past month stopped kind of watching TikTok. And when I wake up in the morning, I'll go on YouTube Shorts instead. I just got curious. I was like, "What's going on in this side of the universe?" And it's actually remarkably similar to TikTok. Of course, granted, grain of salt, there's algorithm, I'm going to see different things than you see. But I'm getting videos of people using the green screen effect of somebody wrenching a thing, and they're like, "Look at this," and start [inaudible. They're using a screwdriver wrong, and then the video just ends. I'm seeing very similar things to TikTok. I think maybe it's a little less childish. I'm seeing less dancey dancey, or people just doing their one niche. I think the thing is the one niche. That's holding true. On YouTube, you have one niche and you stick to that, on YouTube Shorts. Aaroh Mankad: You stick to the same thing your channel is posting about. Paul: Right, exactly. But the quality is still, I film this on my phone in 10 seconds, so that's cool. Aaroh Mankad: Are people posting to YouTube Shorts native? Or are they posting to TikTok and then posting to YouTube Shorts? Paul: Because the cool thing about YouTube Shorts right now is talking to one or two firms that recently got on YouTube Shorts, it's a gold mine because of the fact that it's mostly native. If you go on there and you start posting something that's of one niche, you're going to blow up because there's just so little volume on there. They're still ramping up. If anything, when you're like, "Oh, my friend's building this thing to synchronize," it's like YouTube Shorts was waiting for this. They were just waiting for this one person somewhere just to go, "Oh, I see an opportunity," and build the connector for them. You know? Aaroh Mankad: Right, yeah. Yeah, totally. I think it'd be really interesting to see content proliferate on both and then see how they make space for themselves, or if one takes over the other. It's possible that for educational content, YouTube Shorts becomes the go to. But I probably won't be posting to YouTube Shorts natively. I'll probably stick to TikTok and use the sync-er just because I believe in the authenticity of TikTok over the authenticity of YouTube Shorts. Paul: It's definitely very full of bots right now, so not as authentic for sure. Cool. Back to the TikTok realm. What's going on right now in the communities? Do you think there's any ways that companies are taking advantage of the tech space on YouTube? And if they're not, do you think there are places where advantages could be taken? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. I think tech companies are kind of doing this in two ways right now. You can always sponsor individual creators. You can have partnerships and stuff. The recent big names I guess that are getting into this are Blind and Notion. They both sponsor tech talk creators all the time. And the Blind videos will literally just be like, "We'll sponsor you because you are a recognizable face on the app," where a lot of the times, the thing that makes users churn out of a video is the fact that they don't recognize the face. If they recognize the person, then they're like, "Oh, I'll watch it," even if it's a sponsored post, they won't realize until you're hooked into the post already. And so they'll basically partner with these creators and say, "Just literally read a blind post on the app," because there are some crazy things on Blind. And so they'll just read the post and react to it, and then ask people what they think. And then that way, they get engagement in the comments. That's one way. The other way for Blind works is the social media site, that's what they want to do. They want to drive people to the site. The other way for companies, and this is specifically B to C companies, is they'll use TikTok as kind of the top of their marketing funnel. And I think it's really taken that over. I'm not a marketing expert by any means, it's just what I've seen companies do. And those are the sponsorships that I'm getting requests for, which is basically make this viral piece of content that gets people intrigued on the product. And this could be a tech API. Right? It could be like, "Look how quick this API is to integrate because I can do it in a TikTok." Right? It can be something like that, and it can be something that's a physical good as well, like a Logitech mouse, or a new webcam, or a new mic. And so they use TikTok as a top of funnel to then get people to go to their website and potentially eventually buy something. How marketing typically works is a very oversimplified version of how things work. Paul: Do you think they're using it for talent in any way? Because this is very much consumer side of here's a funnel. There's a very clear ... I was more thinking is there a coalition of people coming to the comments, and they reach out. Have you gotten recruiters going on TikTok? Do we have people looking for jobs on TikTok? Is that something that's happening? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, that's also definitely happened. People post about their layoffs on TikTok. So a lot of the times, for example, this summer when the news broke that Facebook wasn't extending full-time offers to their interns, at the end of the internship, how they typically do. They basically said, "Wait until the end of the year and we'll tell you then." When that news broke, for me the first place I heard about it was from an intern on TikTok. And so this person posts the video, and then immediately gets people asking, "Do you want referrals for internships next year?" In the comments themselves. And so from sharing this authentic experience that they had, getting laid off, or not getting an internship offer, they then get referral recommendations in the comments, similarly to how they do on Twitter. But again, video in general is just more engaging than text. And so I think those posts go a lot more viral or they get a lot more popular in that sense. I also, when I first started posting TikToks, got TikTok recruiters DM-ing me and asking me if I wanted to work at TikTok, considering I was a software engineer who was- Paul: Oh, on TikTok. It's not recruiters on TikTok, it's recruiters from TikTok. Okay, got you. Aaroh Mankad: From TikTok, on TikTok, yeah. From and on TikTok. And that was really interesting. I said no obviously because I wasn't interested. I was very happy where I am. But it's interesting that recruiters have actually DM-ed me and DM-ed other people that I've talked to because they want someone who, if you're working in dev-rel, who understands the platform because a lot of people don't, and in other sense is they just want engineers wherever they see them. And they're like, "This is a good engineer. They hold a good camera presence. They're probably a good communicator." All these qualities make for a good engineer, so we should probably reach out, cold reach out and see what happens. And sometimes it's successful. Right? Recruiters also post on TikTok. So recruiters will post about their days in the life, what they do for work and how they recruit tech people. Those are the people whose advice you should listen to about getting jobs in tech because they're the people who are the filters, which is why I don't do the resume review stuff anymore because there are now a lot more tech recruiters on TikTok, so I defer to them for resume advice. And so they'll be posting and then people in the comments will be like, "Can I have a job? Can I have a job?" Right? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But there are recruiters on the platform itself who if you befriend them and actually for a real connection, don't be super spammy, and just asking for jobs, but if you actually befriend recruiters on the platform, you can totally reach out to them and ask. And it's a much more meaningful way to connect than a cold LinkedIn message, for example. Paul: LinkedIn almost feels dead in some ways because of the amount of junk that sort of comes through. It's hard to sift through the [inaudible]. So I can imagine if I was on TikTok and I connected with a recruiter, that's like, "Wow, there's a human here that took the time in the comments to actually interact with me." That's substantial. That's something I don't think about. On TikTok, it takes more effort to interact sometimes because you have to go back into the comments, which is not the most hospitable list to scroll through sometimes. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. I think the UX there is definitely not super great. Paul: Yeah. It could use some help. So do you think that any tech companies besides ... You said there's Notion. And what was the other? Aaroh Mankad: Notion and Blind are some of the recent ones that I've seen really upping their sponsorship game I guess on TikTok, or their paid partnership game. Paul: Is that something you're expecting to see more of in the coming year? Aaroh Mankad: I think so. I don't know if it's a good thing because I guess for Notion and Blind, it's relatively harmless. Right? You're telling people to potentially use Notion for their note taking, or use Blind to post about their experiences in tech, or share secret details, or whatever you want to. I think the more harmful side of the sponsorship comes when boot camps start sponsoring TikTok influences, which I have nothing against boot camps. A lot of the people I work with are boot camp graduates or people who've pivoted into tech, and they're fantastic people to work with. However, I think when these boot camps sponsor people who did not go down the boot camp route, it's very dangerous to recommend something that you have no experience with. And so if I were to respond to one of the boot camps that's in my email, asking me to do a sponsorship post, and I said yes, I post this video and I tell people if you want to pivot into tech, this boot camp is a great option, or the option, if you use stronger wording. And then someone actually does that, spends let's say thousands of dollars on a boot camp, and that derails their career, it actually doesn't work out for them, I would feel terrible saying, "Oh, yeah. I said yes to $2000, but I now lost this person tens of thousands of dollars potentially." And now they don't have the career that they wanted. Right? That I think is very harmful and I don't think people should accept sponsorship posts from companies that they don't have experience using. But Blind and Notion, these kinds of product companies, it's very harmless to accept a sponsorship post and say, "Yeah, sure. I'll post about it." Paul: So in general, you see it might grow a little bit in this sponsorship light, but remaining cautiously optimistic because we want to make sure the content remains truthful and clear. I think that's one thing we're seeing on YouTube. There's a lot of trash sponsorships out there. And at least people who get really into them, I'm thinking about Linus Tech Tips channel for example, they're very obvious about it, and they're like, "Listen, these people paid us money and here's who they are." I think there are a lot of creators out there who are like, "I want to be the best sponsor for this person who was giving me money." And they're like, "Listen, this is the answer, this is the thing." You have to take responsibility if you're a creator to walk that fine line between being a corporate goose and a good creator. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. Absolutely. It's a fine line to walk, but hopefully not a hard one. It should be very obvious when you're selling out, and you're like, "Yeah, I'll post whatever content you want me to. If you tell me to say it's good and you'll pay me money, I'll say it's good." And then you go to the boot camp website and they're like, "Yeah, it's an upfront $20,000 and our job placement rate is 70%." And then you want me to recommend this to someone, absolutely not. Paul: I think if you're a creator and you'll know if you're selling yourself out when you make the content because making content, if you're making good content, it's a product of the heart in the end. You actually need to feel what you're saying and you'll know if it's not what you originally wanted to say deep down. Listen to your heart. Listen to your gut. We'll make this less emotional. Listen to your gut. If it doesn't feel right, it might not be right. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, absolutely. Paul: So I have a question. One of my favorite tech YouTubers on YouTube, that was a double word. One of my favorite tech YouTubers is Fireship. Have you seen any Fireship io videos? Aaroh Mankad: I have not, but I think I've heard of Fireship. Yeah. My YouTube is very not tech focused. I don't follow programmers or anything on YouTube. Paul: Okay, got you. I think he just stepped into the TikTok realm. And his videos are just ... They're also incredible and they have all these ... It looks like a PowerPoint with really nice animations made in after effects. And I'm just thinking, "Wow, this must've taken so long for this guy to make," but I guess you're also getting tech people coming onto TikTok who make these high quality videos that have after effects animations. And then they do sync, that you're going to do, but reverse. They bring it onto the TikTok platform. Aaroh Mankad: Right, yeah. It's all about repurposing content. Right? I guess you should also repurpose the podcast. If you already have video on, for example, I think it's pretty hard to set up for the first time, but then pretty trivial from then on to say, produce one long form piece of content, which is a podcast, we have say for example, blog posts, with any affiliate links or anything you want to do there. We have that can go into multiple tweets, which can go into a YouTube video, which is this video itself. It can go into TikToks. I can go on YouTube Shorts. You can post screen caps on Instagram with specific quotes that you might want to post. It can get very detailed and it's possible to just get all of this content from one long form piece of content itself, which is what a lot of people do. They'll post a YouTube video or make a video podcast, and I'll see that on TikTok. They just took the podcast. Instead of having the video side by side, they put it top down, so it's in vertical format. And then they put really fancy captions on there, which is probably automated at this point for them. And for that, they get content for free. Right? Paul: That whole process, I call the CICD of content. Right? Taking a video, putting it into your after effects, your premier, or whatever it is, having the script. I don't know what ... If you find the script, please email me and let me know if it's an auto subtitler because that is a pain in the butt to do, thank the key frames and all that. But that's amazing that people can develop these processes to repurpose content and continually use it. And this brings us back full circle to TikTok. This is one thing that's beautiful about TikTok is this is for many people, ground zero. It's where the initial seeds kind of get created, and some, a lot of times where it stops because it's short content. And I think, like you said at the beginning, it's original and you can't find the stuff anywhere else, and that's why people keep coming back to the platform. In the next year, what are your plans for either changing your channel, pivoting it? Is there a specific niche you're trying to go hard on? Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. For my channel, I think if I could give advice to tech creators on the platform generally is that I think a lot of the times, I don't post my actual hot takes about things because I'm worried about people reacting extremely negatively. And so that, let's say, quote, unquote, hurts the brand. Or in general, if you think of video presence on TikTok, there's video presence at work, you typically don't share these hot takes at work either. Right? You kind of try to please everyone, make sure everyone's on board with what you're saying and share good advice. But I have hot takes I want to post, and I don't know if I'm comfortable enough posting them yet in the evolution of my camera presence on TikTok, or my character presence on TikTok. Paul: You're going to get hate. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, exactly. And I don't know, I haven't gotten hate at all, really. It's been actually a really, really nice community. And even on the posts where I'm like, "People are going to make fun of this, I kind of went too much into the dancing kids side of the app with this post," people are generally pretty happy to see a variety of content, so yeah, I guess. That's my only advice to myself and what I want to do over the next year is just be even more me, and post the opinions I have that might not make some people happy, but that's totally okay. Paul: Being more you is just going to make your channel better. That's what we all hope. Right? It's how it should be. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. Exactly. And then it turns out you're like Tech Lead, and you being you is actually the worst thing you could do for your platform. Paul: That channel is a meme, that channel is so funny. I still don't know what to make of the Tech Lead channel. It was like you start watching, and you're like, "Huh? Okay." And then you just get confused and angry all the way a little ways down the line. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, absolutely. I think I don't want to speak on the Tech Lead too much. But it's been a really interesting journey for him, I think. I don't really follow tech people on anything other than Twitter and TikTok. And I guess LinkedIn, but no one really goes on that platform now. So I never really followed Tech Lead, and I didn't know what was going on until the super viral videos that happened last year or the year before. Paul: They're still informative and they still have great information. It's just there's a lot of controversy surrounding those videos, and kind of brings you out of the element of why you're watching the video. You want to focus on the tech and the advice that your superiors have to give out to you, or people who have done things you haven't done. I don't want to say superior. Anyway, we're kind of running up on time. I could continue to pick your brain about how you're manicuring this channel and organizing everything. But in the interest of keeping the podcast between 30 and 40 minutes, let's close out and just one more time. What is your TikTok handle? So if anybody listening who wants to learn more about tech, finance and ... Do you do other stuff? Aaroh Mankad: Other random stuff. Paul: Do you do fitness stuff? You said a bunch of random hodgepodge. Aaroh Mankad: No, I don't do fitness stuff, probably could. I think you're just guessing that based of all the shit I have in the background here. No, I don't post fitness content. I just don't think that's the thing for me. I'm very average in the fitness realm, so I don't know if that would be worth posting. I do just post random stuff that's going on with my life, like I'm going to a wedding in India in November, and so I'll post outfits that I'm planning on wearing. And that's fun to post to break up the tech barrage of content, I guess. The handle is Seattle Tech Bro, if you'd like to follow it. It's much more I guess handy than Aaroh Mankad and easier to spell over audio. Paul: It's the Seattle Tech Bro, or just Seattle Tech Bro? Just Seattle Tech Bro. Okay, awesome. Aaroh Mankad: Just Seattle Tech Bro, yeah. We dropped the, the, just like Facebook did. Paul: Okay, Aaroh, well, thank you for your time and for letting us pick your brain about being one of the first people in the TikTok tech space. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah. So basically, I need your help. My background in tech has been very cookie cutter. I started CS when I was in high school. I did it for all of high school. I did CS in college. I did all the typical stuff. I joined clubs. I worked at a FANG, and now I work at a startup. I've had unique experiences in my own right. But in general, I am not the picture of the diverse tech industry. And I think a lot of you people listening have a lot more interesting backgrounds getting into tech and working in tech that I think the next generation of people who are considering working in the tech industry, they deserve to hear it. And so I think I would ask you to post or consider posting either on TikTok, or if you have privacy concerns, post on YouTube Shorts because it's really important for people to hear this and understand that it's not just all tech bros in the industry. Anyone can join regardless of what underrepresented minority, or gender, or race that you're part of. Paul: Yeah. That's an amazing message, Aaroh. And thank you for that because I have one peer that I'm trying to get into tech right now, and they're like, "Well, it's hard because there's no groups of people like me," and actually seeing it on a platform where you interact with on a friendly, daily basis would really help expand that reach. Thank you for that. Aaroh Mankad: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Paul: Okay. Well, once again, thanks for your time. And hopefully, people can hop onto TikTok and see you around. Emily: Hey, this is Emily, one of the producers for PodRocket. I'm so glad you're enjoying this episode. 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