taylor desseyn

36 hours in dallas for @commityourcode.bsky.social packed out @torcdotdev.bsky.social community meetup. momentum right now is real for what we’re building.

when your buddy @dkthompson calls you out on a livestream for looking less than thrilled 🤣🤣

we've had people start a process at 150 and finish at 200. the ones who blow it surprise the recruiter at the end: "they need 50k more." other offers moving? say so as it happens. i write about this weekly in my email community: taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com

talking career changes with @ryancarson.com tomorrow morning. treehouse got a million+ people into code. untangle is putting ai to work on family law. what does building from zero look like right now? wed 9:30am ct · live luma.com/torcdo-430c

microsoft buyouts are all over my feed. weighing one? don't start with your resume. > list 20 teams still hiring for what you do > have ai pull each one's recent news > keep the 5 where your work fixes a real problem then decide. weekly plays > taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com

me and my daughter are the same. school called me and said “she ate her entire lunch at 9am” girl i feel that 🤣

thursday on ai and yap: the prompt that tells you what to do every day to land the job. how to set it up, keep it honest, and turn a vague search into a daily plan. thu 10/29 · 9:30am ct · live luma.com/torcdo-eyjw

build your target company list with ai. then ask it to pressure test the list. the first answer isn't always the best one. taylordesseyn.sites.tab.bot/podcast/epis...

"i'll take 125." offer comes in at 125. then they see the health insurance and the raise is gone. i've watched it happen so many times. four words to add to any range: "dependent on the benefits package." give a range. keep the door open.

9:30am ct today, greg lasseter joins me live. ops leader, sre by trade. he took the ai tools he trusted at work and tested them on his own job search. the honest do's and don'ts. luma.com/torcdo-gtz6

15 years of experience at your fingertips. i've been a recruiter for 15 years and helped 5,000 people get hired. i can't help everyone 1:1, so i put everything i know into a text line. text taybot > (628) 246-5885

easiest way to not be a stranger on linkedin: their activity tab. find something they posted recently and open with it: "saw your live on networking last week..." now you're someone who paid attention. i write about this weekly in my email community: taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com

a surprise job search, handled like a production problem. that's greg lasseter: sre by trade, 20+ years in ops. he joins me tomorrow to share where ai earned a spot in his search and where it didn't. tue 9:30am ct, live luma.com/torcdo-gtz6

its not surprising in person events are coming back everything in tech is now commoditized so the only want to really seperate yourself is vibes. throwing an in person activiation and making people feel apart of something is more important now than ever

@ryancarson.com founded treehouse and helped 1 million+ people learn to code and switch into tech. now he's building untangle, ai for family law. wednesday: career pivots + using ai to get more done. wed 10/28 · 9:30am ct · live luma.com/torcdo-430c

a sr. backend engineer laid off oct 6 messaged me: "i have gotten multiple offers and i've only been actually laid off since oct. 6th." under 3 weeks. hard market. not an impossible one. every guidance counselor 2.0 episode in 5 bullets, free: gc2dot0.com

i had an ai assistant call my eye doctor to book an appointment. when i called back, they said the ai kept hanging up on them. ai is great at the legwork. it's not great at being you on the phone. let it find the people. you do the talking.

the 30-min sunday reset for your job search: 1. log the week (apps, dms, replies, calls) 2. find the one leak 3. pick 5 moves. each = a person, a channel, a day "follow up with sarah" doesn't count. "dm sarah monday for 15 min" does.

greg lasseter was running agentic ai in production ops before it was mainstream. then an unexpected job search hit. so he pointed the same ai toolkit at his own hunt. tuesday: what moved the needle, and what didn't. tue 10/27 · 9:30am ct · live luma.com/torcdo-gtz6

sunday ai experiment: copy your last 20 inbox subject lines + senders. paste into chatgpt, claude or gemini with one email you wrote: "sort these: reply today / this week / archive. draft the 2 replies that matter most, under 80 words, in my voice." check every name it uses.

applying and hearing nothing? stop dming the hiring manager. dm someone on the team instead. - under 300 characters. people don't read. - no job ask. - find the one thing you have in common. ask claude to write it in your voice. the job conversation comes later.

in 3 days: guidance counselor 2.0 with greg lasseter, sr. technology operations leader with an sre background. he used ai to get traction in his own job search and shares what moved the needle. tuesday, october 27 at 9:30am ct. sign up here: luma.com/torcdo-gtz6

buddy got a bath and he’s so handsome

weekend ai experiment: paste your resume + one job description into chatgpt, claude or gemini. "you're the hiring manager. give me the 3 lines a recruiter would skip, the 3 doing real work, and 5 questions you'd ask me. invent nothing." 15 min. tell me the dumbest thing it says

one thing to do this week: brain dump your entire career into claude with voice mode. resume pdf, linkedin pdf, all of it, in one project called 'job search.' then tell it: 'honest counselor + recruiter. no flattering.' the rest of the playbook > taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com/p/the-whole-...

don't read 577 transcripts. have your ai do it. paste an episode link into claude or chatgpt and ask: "what are the 3 things i should do this week?" taylordesseyn.sites.tab.bot/podcast?utm_...

a recruiter with nothing for you is still worth 5 minutes. ask: "based on the other resumes you see for my role, where does mine stack up? what am i missing?" they see hundreds. that's free market research you can't get anywhere else.

still asking ai for a negotiation script? ask for the points you have to hit, then practice out loud.

the people are the whole thing the talks are cool the trips are cool but this is what i actually remember the hugs in the hallway the "we finally met in person" the friends who started as a dm if you're in one of these, thank you you make this job feel like not a job

follow is a wasted click. hit connect, add a note: "hey eric, i was at the meetup in raleigh, don't think we met. i'm looking at ai roles and saw yours posted." mention something real. when they accept, your dm sits at the top of their inbox.

aws is never asked for alone. 33,787 postings mention it in the 90 days to oct 17, demand share up 1.0% (per skillenai's postings index, multi-country). beside it: python, azure, kubernetes, ci/cd, gcp. deploy the same container to aws + one other cloud. write up the 3 things that surprised you.

"early in my career... gave me a fresh perspective." that's the point. a personal ai assistant can run the grind of your job search so you get to do the human part. more ai job search setups in my newsletter > taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com

11,000 applications a minute on linkedin (nyt, june 2025). a better ai cover letter won't save you. use ai for the legwork: - watch 20 career pages - score every posting first - draft the 7-day follow-up - brief yourself on the interviewer then go talk to humans.

most networking dms die because they have no ending. end every one with: "want to see my resume, or should i chat with someone else?" a yes gets your resume read. a no gets you the right person. i write about this every week in my email community: taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com

truly believe personal ai assistants you text are the new unlock for your job search. the 1-2 punch: > claude is the brain. it holds your story. > your assistant is the hands. it watches, researches, drafts. whole talk in 5 bullets + the slides > taylordesseyn.beehiiv.com/p/the-whole-...

every guidance counselor 2.0 episode since 2017 is now on my site. 577 episodes. every transcript. free. taylordesseyn.sites.tab.bot/podcast?utm_...

everyone in data eng claims python + sql. the postings agree: python in 57.7% of 6,678 data engineer roles, sql in 57.3% (per skillenai's index, 90 days to oct 17). table stakes. stand up one end-to-end pipeline in databricks community edition, write 5 lines on what broke. that beats the filter.