Software Engineer Turned Youtuber – Jarvis Johnson

Jarvis Johnson was previously a software engineer at Patreon, Yelp, and Google. He’s now a YouTuber.

https://www.youtube.com/user/VSympathyV
https://twitter.com/jarvis

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

https://twitter.com/craigcannon

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

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Topics

00:00 – Jarvis’ intro

00:30 – Where his videos first got traction

1:10 – Being part of the software industry while critiquing it

3:45 – How he got into programming

6:10 – Moving to California

7:30 – Interning at Google then Yelp

9:00 – Interviewing multiple times at the same company

10:00 – Moving from Yelp to Patreon

14:10 – Switching from individual contributor to manager

18:15 – Learnings from managing that he applies to himself

21:25 – What made Jarvis want to do YouTube full time?

30:00 – Investing in yourself

31:05 – Making what you want vs talking to viewers

35:35 – When did things really start to click for his channel?

38:00 – Choosing to make multiple genres of video

43:40 – Nathan Allebach asks – Are content creators responsible in any capacity for their audiences?

50:45 – Taylor asks – In what ways do you think content creation can benefit one’s career in the tech industry?

54:20 – Jarvis made a podcast when he was a teenager

56:10 – Octopus Blues asks – What lessons did improv teach you/who would you recommend it to, if anyone?

58:25 – Predictions for YouTubers and content creators