the reason i'm so chronically online on X is that i owe my entire career to it. every job i've had has been through relationships i've made here, and as i hit 50k - a number i never thought i'd see on my profile - i can't help but feel a little emotional. you see, i started building up my profile when @wifelette and @tomdale took a chance on me many years ago - a nobody in melbourne who was still learning how to code in js - and invited me to speak at @EmberConf. i had never been to a conference at that point in my life, let alone speak at one. they found me through my tweets sharing my blogposts about learning the framework. i'm not exaggerating when i say that my life changed after doing that talk. public speaking was my greatest fear and i was visibly shaking for the first 5 minutes of my talk, but somehow i managed to remember everything i had practiced. that talk was how i got my first real job (and moved to the US) at @DockYard, thanks to @bcardarella also taking a chance on me. throughout this time i continued posting on twitter and building up my profile little by little. after you've done one talk, the next one is a little easier and so i kept doing more of it - seeing the world i had never been exposed to before. i got my job @netflix the same way, through doing a talk, and people taking a chance on me. some of you may be surprised to know that i never majored in CS and that i'm a self taught programmer. so going through a FAANG interview was inconceivable to me at that point in my life. i actually tried to back out of the interview, but they convinced me to do it anyway, and im glad that i did. i then got my job at facebook through Dan Abramov (i miss him here!!), who i met at a conference talk i did in London. we stayed in touch on twitter for a while before he reached out to me asking if i would be interested in working on the react team (uh, hell yes?! but wait, me??). massive imposter syndrome has followed me everywhere. now at @cursor_ai and @SpaceXAI, i feel so lucky that i get to work alongside such crazy talented, driven, and ambitious people who want to build beautiful products for everyone. and i'm also still in disbelief that this many people care about what i have to say here. thank you everyone for taking a chance on me, and thanks @X for being there for me this whole time 🤍