Leah Thompson is speaking at Epic Web Conf 2025

Hello, everybody. I am Kent C. Dodds, and I'm excited to be joined by my new friend, Leah Thompson. Hi. How are you doing, Leah? Hi. I'm doing well. Cold, but well. Yeah, yeah. Leah was just telling me you're from Colorado. I'm in Utah, and it is really,

really cold right now. My phone is telling me it's 22 degrees outside. Do you know where abouts it is for you? I know. When I checked earlier, it was six degrees. Oh, my gosh. Let me check. It's eight degrees right now.

Oh, my goodness. Holy smokes. Yeah, yeah. Cold, cold, cold, and that's during the daytime. It's two in the afternoon. My goodness. Yeah. It was, I think, zero last night, and then the night before that, it hit negative seven at six in the morning.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah. We get a couple, maybe two weeks of around zero temperatures sometimes here in Utah, but yeah, that is wild. To be clear, for those of our European listeners, that is Fahrenheit. Yeah, I forget about that, but I was tweeting about it,

and someone's like, 15 degrees Celsius isn't that bad. I'm like, no, Fahrenheit. Yeah, I say 22 degrees, and they're like, oh, that's perfect weather. Oh, yeah. Well, Leah, I'm so excited to meet you for the first time in person. You're going to be talking about live streaming and networking, which I think is really useful

information for people to have because we can't always be in person, and so building up those relationships when we're not together can help make those experiences when we do get together even more deep and rich and everything, but before we get into kind of fleshing out what you're

talking about, I'd love for people to get to know who you are a little bit. Could you give us an intro to yourself? Yeah, so my name is Leah Thompson. I like to post on Twitter, Blue Sky, a bunch of different places under the username LeahTCodes. My background is actually in education

and mathematics, so I don't have a CS degree, and I actually was a career switcher, so before getting into software engineering, I worked as a high school geometry teacher for a year and a half when I was in Florida, too, because I'm from Florida originally. Oh, and now you're sitting

there. It was six degree weather in Colorado, and I'll talk to my family. They're like, it's really cold here. It's 60 degrees, and I'm like, Mom, please, please. You don't understand. Yes, I'm from Florida, originally taught, and then I did 100 Doves with Leon Noel, which was a free program

to teach full stack web development doing the Mern stack, so MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. I did that, and during doing that program, I started posting on Twitter, and I started live streaming my process and everything. I started making connections with people in tech,

and that is how I ended up landing my first dev role in November of that year, which was 2022, and since then, I've just continued to share my journey online and build in public and stuff like that. I love it. I love it. I think that that's very relevant for folks who are looking for a

way to differentiate themselves and make a space for themselves on the internet, so I'm very much looking forward to that talk, and I love hearing that you're a career switcher. I know that there will be lots of people who are at the conference who kind of feel like maybe they're the only career

switcher around, so it'll be good for people to connect with other career switchers and kind of see what different people's paths into the industry are. I think it can be kind of ... I didn't career switch. I started as a software developer, but I imagine it can be a little bit

isolating or imposter syndrome-inducing to switch careers. Has that been your experience? Yeah. It's also funny because I'm married, and my husband and I met in high school, so we're from the same town, met in high school. He always knew he wanted to major in computer science,

so we went to the same college. I majored in math. He majored in computer science, so he works as a front-end developer, so it's very different in how stuff has been for me and how my mindset is and then how his is as someone who has never switched careers, doesn't build projects outside of work, doesn't post on Twitter or anything. It's just in his own little tech

bubble. It's really funny seeing that. I feel like I get imposter syndrome sometimes because it's also being able to see how we think about things differently as someone who has that background and someone who doesn't. It's just very different. I will say being in 100 Devs and posting on Twitter and stuff helped a lot with imposter syndrome because you're able to connect with

other career switchers, so you're not just by yourself. But I would say going to in-person meetups was really intimidating at first, too, because these people are throwing all the acronyms at you because there's so many tech acronyms, and they're throwing them all at you. It's like, I don't know what they're talking about. I'm doing HTML and CSS.

Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, anybody who's watching now can know that if you're a career switcher or even if you're just getting started in the industry, that there are plenty of people at the conference

who are just open arms welcoming you into this community. It's a beautiful place. I love it here. Actually, on that, because you're going to be speaking about live streaming on Twitch, and that's a lot of what you do, what is it that gets you to come out of the house to

actually come to an in-person event? Especially as you mentioned, going to meetups is a little bit hard. What motivates you to come out of the house? Maybe you could just do everything from home. What is it that brings you out? It's actually funny you ask that because

I actually hadn't gone to any meetups or any conferences until last year because I was super scared to because it's like, okay, I met all these people online, but now I have to meet them in person. I always think I'm really awkward, so I got really nervous. My first conference was with

Laracon US, which I know you talked to Josh, so you heard all about Laracon, but it was Laracon US last year. When I first walked in, I got so overwhelmed. I had to hide behind a trash can. I had to stand in the corner behind a trash can because I was like, oh my god, what am I doing? But I would just say I had such a great experience at those conferences last year,

especially my last one I went to, Commit Your Code. I was able to connect with a lot of people that I've already talked to online. I met Leon, Leon Noel, who ran 100 Devs. I met Leon in person. I met a lot of 100 Devs people, and I had people come up to me and tell me me posting helped push

them to keep going. What I was doing helped motivate them and asking if I would ever think of talking at conferences and stuff like that, and that really pushes me to keep doing what I'm doing and also apply to speak at conferences like this one, which will be my first conference I'm

speaking at, actually. I feel like you get more of a connection with people in person than you even get online. You can build that connection, but you strengthen it when you're in person. I feel like you get, at least me, I always get inspired to actually build things when I go.

For a while, I had quit building projects outside of work, but when I went to Laracon and I saw all the cool things people were building, I was like, you know what? I want to do that. It made it fun again. It just can inspire that passion again. Oh, I love that so much. So many things that you said, I just completely agree with.

I think that deepening of that bond, it's worth feeling like you need to hide behind a trash can. I did not hide at Commit Your Code, I'd like to say. I was able to break out of that. I don't know. It went really well. Everyone was like, oh, you're really easy to talk to. I'm like, maybe

all of my anxiety is just internalized. You just feel like, oh, I'm so awkward or whatever. People are just like, no, you're great to talk to. I'm so glad I got to meet you. I was like, you know what? I just need to quit holding myself back because inside, I'm telling myself all these things and no one else is seeing that. That is very wise. I would like to play

that back to one of my children, actually. Feel free to. Yeah, it's good stuff. We got to be very conscious of our inner voice and everything and how we talk to ourselves. I think that is good. At the conference, you're going to be

talking about streaming on Twitch and networking that way. Can you give us a spoiler-free summary of what this is going to be about, what people can expect and how it can benefit them in their regular day? Basically, just talking about

how you can network through streaming on Twitch, how through streaming, because I think it's specifically about Twitch, you can build bonds with people. It's not just you streaming and doing whatever content, but also building connections with people and how that can

lead to you getting a job because I've gotten both of my jobs as a developer through streaming on Twitch. Just how you can really use that to your advantage as someone who might be trying to break into tech and get your first job or just if you're someone who's trying to build more

technical connections because you work from home and you feel really isolated, just stuff like that. Yeah, that's perfect. There are a lot of people who feel in an isolated position. Lots of people who say, well, I would love to go to conferences, but there are none that are close by. We have no

meetups. I'm in a small town in the middle of Nebraska. I don't have a community around here, and it takes three hours to get to an airport. Having some sort of mechanism or guide for

getting into building a community online will help a lot, and that's why I'm excited to have you come and speak. But you're not speaking the whole time. You're going to be also at the event, and we have extended breaks and everything, so when you're out just talking with people,

what is one topic that somebody could come and talk with you about that would get you really excited? Something that you really just love to talk about with people and you could really connect with people on? I love to talk to people who are also career switchers or who are maybe trying to

get into it. I love talking about that and helping people whenever I'm able to. I also love math and my dogs, so any of those I would love to talk about. I was about to ask you about your dogs, but I'll let the people who come to the conference come and ask you about that.

That's great. Leah, thank you so much for being willing to come and speak at the conference. I know it's, especially this being your first one, I hope that I don't ruin everything for you and that everything goes very well for you and that you continue to speak at meetups and conferences

going forward. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to having you in Utah. I'm looking forward to it as well. Even if you ruin it, you won't ruin it. Even if you did, I'm already committed to speak at React Miami and commit your code. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's exciting. Yeah, I saw that you were

going to React Miami as well and commit your code was such an awesome event. I heard it was just really great. So maybe I'll find my way over there one of these days too. I recommend it. You should. Oh, good. I love Danny. He's fabulous. So that's great. Thank you so much, Leah. Thanks everybody

for tuning in for a bit to get to know you and we'll see you in March in Utah. See you in March.

Leah Thompson

Full stack developer at Rugged Software

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