Foreign Devs Podcast

Our second episode for Season 2 kicks of by celebrating Victor’s Best in Competition and Best Website Award wins in the marine industry. Jani and Victor debate shotgun approaches to marketing, versus tailored and focused strategies - along with the challenges of trying new strategies when the current methods work. Jani continues the one-percent-gains discussion from the previous episode with a karting story. Trying to find a new habit for working out from home, he also finds himself attempting hip-hop dance moves. Victor shares car modifications that you shouldn’t attempt at home, and returns to Coder’s Tape with new episodes.

Victor and Jani are back for the second season of the Foreign Devs podcast! The two discuss what's happened since season 1, how Victor ended up in the middle of a hurricane, creative marketing in today's world, Victor's promotion, mental health, project iterations, Adobe Flash, and take a trip down the first-internet-experience memory lane.

Jani shares what's been happening recently and what happened to Victor

After a small hiatus, the guys catch up on a brand new episode of Foreign Devs only to find the world has turned upside down in the meantime.

Victor discusses his secret project and the boys dive into serverless image processing, responsive images using srcset, and the large price differences between Imgix and an AWS Serverless Image Handler. The guys share stories of companies being cheap in a new segment: The Cheapest Things That Companies Have Done. Jani takes a quick detour to talk about his experience with MasterClass courses. And the duo take a quick look at the new features in Laravel 7.

Racing straight out of the 2020 Miami International Boat Show onboard some electric scooters, Victor and Jani fly into this episode. While in Miami, the guys were determined to figure out which brand of rental scooters were the quickest - and promise to revisit with a more in-depth examination during this year's Laracon in Atlanta. The duo discuss the Good to Great book from Jim Collins, and how it aligns with both of their visions and values in elevating companies, and dive deeper into: - Hierarchy differences in teams made up of the right members, vs the wrong ones - Hiring cheap vs hiring the correct fit - How tolerating bad employees can kill great ones Victor shares a motivational story of how quality customer service led to an unexpected career opportunity in a new industry. Meanwhile, Jani considers buying another vehicle (yes, another vehicle) after a disappointing service visit.

With an open position on the marketing team, Victor struggles to find a good candidate and shares some job application tips. Jani talks about a former co-worker, Sergio, and how he was hired with zero experience - but plenty of drive. Victor asks the question: if you can choose only one, do you hire a videographer or a photographer? Diving into the past, Jani shares a story about millions spent on software that completely missed the mark, and the importance of understanding how end users will interact with what you are creating. ... and the boys continue the countdown to Laracon 2020 in Atlanta.

The guys chat about their current project's challenges and talk about going to Laracon in Atlanta.

The boys take a look back at the past 10 years and compare how many cars each has owned. First though, Victor shares the internal tool/software project he’s working on which enables co-workers to submit ideas and voice their opinions - awarding the best idea each month with paid time off.

The duo return from a short holiday break for the 10th episode of Foreign Devs. Victor and Jani discuss the outrage over the new Peloton TV ad. Jani shops for a Sleep Number bed and unearths some clever marketing strategies, and the power of customer feedback/reviews online. After weeks of waiting, including a damaged delivery, Jani receives his new 13" MacBook Pro just as the new 16" debuts. Victor touches on his Mac setups, performance upgrades and debates dual-screens vs. a large single screen. As a follow-up to his first and successful Laravel API Development & Vue JS SPA from Scratch Udemy course, Victor launches a 10-hour series: Facebook Clone with Laravel, TDD, Vue & Tailwind CSS. Jani takes a look at technology advancing quicker than perceptions in society, and Victor looks at how phone upgrade cycles have changed since mobile phones became mainstream and the role marketing has played in them. Finally, Victor shares the story of why he showed up with a mohawk for his original interview with Jani.

In this episode, Victor discusses power of web scraping and real world applications for it. Jani shares his thoughts on investing in advertising vs. spending on advertising. The two explore memorable marketing and how some companies can miss the mark on ads.

In this episode, Jani lands a $300,000 sales thanks to a year-old video to a customer across the country. The two meet up at this year's Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, and Facebook's SDK knocks Victor out with a bad headache. On the marketing front, we get thrown a curveball with a printed catalog from one of the biggest technology trendsetters. Jani discusses the cat-and-mouse game of marketing destroying communication mediums, before sharing how too many SEO companies destroy ROI by ripping off customers. Finally, the two discuss how anything is possible with proper preparation and Jani explains why and how he took one of the world's largest car manufacturers to court.

Victor & Jani taking marketing efforts to the next level using web development skills to create custom tailored solutions. Victor uses real estate information and APIs for retargeting his printed brochures and maximizing his Return On Investment. The two touch on the dangers of not testing and leaking sensitive data through open API endpoints In a new developer job application tips segment for the show, Jani throws developers with weak contribution counts under the bus, while Victor shames slackers. Finally, Victor works on refactoring an existing Laravel website add support for multiple languages with separate domains.

With Mailgun having restored access to Victor’s original account, he transfers data to a new one and upgrades to Laravel 6.4 with one eye closed. Jani struggles with charging his new MacBook Pro, and the two discuss IDEs, Tailwind CSS, naming conventions, and the cons of being a sole developer on projects.

In this episode, Victor gets a left-field solution for fixing his compromised Mailgun account, we discuss how support plays into the pricing of web services, and the importance of quality documentation. Jani shares his Hacktoberfest project for Laravel relationships. We also brainstorm solutions to abandoned open-source packages.

In this episode, we talk about marketing strategies, the importance of understanding your audience, and how print media is not dead.

In this episode, Jani tells the story of how his startup, Distinct, failed and the lessons learned from it. We discuss web services getting hacked, and how companies can fail to meet customer expectations in today's day and age.

In this episode, we talk about Jani driving fast boats and our first experiences in a paying dev job.

In this episode, we talk about the struggles of hiring outside developers, refactoring with a solid test suite and connecting with your audience while marketing your product.