#046 - Ben Awad: Becoming the Internet's Most Impactful Programmer

<p>Ben Awad is a YouTuber, software engineer, and the founder of VoidPet.com. He has 500k YouTube subscribers, 800k TikTok followers, and is known for his legendary coding tutorials and humorous and authentic videos. We discussed numerous topics. Check the timestamps below for topics and enjoy the audio, or you can watch the video over on our YouTube channel: <a href= "https://youtu.be/BKhV-kPavnk">https://youtu.be/BKhV-kPavnk</a> <br /> <br /> <br /></p> <p>Ben's YouTube: <a href= "https://www.youtube.com/@bawad">https://www.youtube.com/@bawad</a> <br /> Ben's TikTok: <a href= "https://www.tiktok.com/@benawad">https://www.tiktok.com/@benawad</a> <br /> Ben's Twitter: <a href= "https://twitter.com/benawad">https://twitter.com/benawad</a> <br /> Ben's startup: <a href= "https://voidpet.com/">https://voidpet.com/</a> <br /> Ben's GitHub: <a href= "https://github.com/benawad">https://github.com/benawad</a> <br /> Ben's Discord: <a href= "https://discord.gg/benawad">https://discord.gg/benawad</a> <br /> Ben's programmer outfit: <a href= "https://youtube.com/shorts/-P418Qerexs?feature=share">https://youtube.com/shorts/-P418Qerexs?feature=share</a> <br /> <br /> <br /></p> <p>00:00 Teaser <br /> 00:40 Intro (Guest & Co-host)<br /> 03:40 Ben's first line of code<br /> 06:00 Turning down FAANG and Leetcode<br /> 11:33 Layoffs / Finding jobs<br /> 13:15 Skin in the game<br /> 13:58 Interviews are broken<br /> 16:44 Advice to technical content creators<br /> 22:05 Being authentic online<br /> 27:57 Coding on Twitch vs YouTube<br /> 30:10 Why you should create on TikTok<br /> 33:25 Hating Android development / Loving React<br /> 36:00 Tech stack<br /> 38:18 GitHub Copilot<br /> 39:35 Tech stack again<br /> 40:39 Deno<br /> 42:30 The AI discussion<br /> 44:10 VoidPet (Ben's startup)<br /> 49:40 Rejected by YC / fundraise vs bootstrap<br /> 56:29 Career advice to newbies<br /> 1:00:09 Ben's drip<br /> 1:01:42 Saffron App<br /> 1:04:29 Ben's mentors<br /> 1:06:25 Wrap up <br /> <br /> -<br /> <br /> Get in touch with us