Daniel Reis on Creating Real-Time Learning Experiences That Stick

Daniel Reis doesn’t just teach developers—he also builds communities, curates challenges, and creates learning moments that people remember. Known online as DanielHe4rt, Daniel is the founder of Basement Developers and a leading voice in Brazil’s developer community. From live coding on Twitch to mentoring aspiring engineers, his work sits at the intersection of passion, purpose, and perseverance.

In this episode of What the Code, Daniel shares how a stranger’s generosity shaped his teaching philosophy, why livestreaming helps him stay accountable, and why he’s excited to build open-source communities powered by people.

Learning in Public and on Purpose

Daniel’s first coding breakthrough came with the help of someone whose Minecraft server he accidentally hacked. “He just came to me and said, ‘Dude, let me teach you how to code.’" That moment defused the tension and changed Daniel’s life, inspiring him to pay it forward.

Today, Daniel is best known for his live coding streams. These livestreams didn’t begin as a content strategy. Rather, he was trying to motivate himself to do his job. “I just started to think, what would put some pressure on myself to study and deliver what I want,” he says. “Live coding is basically tons of people … watching you do your code. And this puts a lot of pressure."

That accountability tool became a daily habit and, eventually, a career. Today, Daniel teaches others by showing the process in real time—even the mistakes.

Forget the Script—Show the Struggle

Most online video tutorials will polish away the rough edges, as if there were no obstacles on the way to a solution. Daniel isn’t a fan of this approach. “The real world is not like this,” he says. “You’re going to spend hours and hours until you find the best solution.”

He builds his content around honesty and improvisation. “I don’t need to worry about how it’s edited. I just need to worry about the message I’m trying to pass.”
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This raw, authentic approach has earned him a loyal audience and helped him connect with other engineers who crave something more relatable than flawless walkthroughs.

Community as a Career Path

Daniel’s pursuit of growth encompasses more than himself. “I have two major dreams,” he says. “The first one is to build the greatest community. … The second is to become a reference in what I do, which is live coding and teaching people."

He’s already well on his way. From leading the Heart Developers community in Brazil to contributing to open-source projects, Daniel has built a reputation for sharing knowledge, lifting others up, and helping aspiring developers believe in what they’re capable of. Importantly, building community for Daniel isn’t just something fun to do. It’s a way to help people help each other, stay connected and avoid loneliness. During the pandemic, they achieved this with online communities, Discord, WhatsApp, and other tools. But in-person also became important. 

“When it was over in 2023, most of these people were trying to get together, because they just spent so many hours in the call, studying programming or just watching some videos or series, and they wanted to be together,” Daniel says. “And when they just got together, I think that it just made them closer than before.“

Transcript

Amit Sion:

Hello, and welcome to the What the Code show. I'm really excited today. I've got a very special guest. Daniel, please introduce yourself. Very interested to hear about you and where you're from.

Daniel Reis:

Amit Sion:

Daniel, I wanted to start and talk about developer training, because from what I've seen with you, it's not just about doing the programming yourself, you have quite a passion for sharing knowledge, as well. Where did that start?

Daniel Reis:

When I was like a kid, when I started to learn programming in 2011, well, we know that we don't have too much content about the development itself on the internet. Most of that was in English and well, I'm Brazilian, English is not a thing here for most of the country, and I just found a couple of friends on TeamSpeak and GamesRelated that were teaching that. I started to learn the wrong stuff, the script kiddie stuff that you can just copy and paste some link, do some DDoS and blah, blah blah.

And then one of the guys that I just fucked up a couple of times, his Minecraft server, he just came to me and said, "Dude, let me just teach you how to code, and then you can just use what you know, your current knowledge, and improve yourself." It was like two or three years after I started with my first script, which was 2011, and then this guy just changed my life. So I'm really glad to meet him somehow. And after that, I just saw, OK, this guy just stopped his time to teach a random guy on the internet how to code. Well, I think that it was the best thing that happened to me. So why not keep that legacy?

Amit Sion:

Is it that appreciation of paying it forward, right?

Daniel Reis:

Yes.

Amit Sion:

That you can give something of yourself and share it. I think that there's something quite wonderful about giving. When you give, you get the sense not only that you’re doing something good, but that you have something yourself, something that's worthy. And sometimes we give of our time, sometimes we give of our money. But I think it's really interesting when we're able to give of our knowledge, something that we've gained that we're able to pass on, because with that, we're still able to pass it to a lot more people at one time.

Daniel Reis:

And knowledge is something that no one can take out of you. It's yours, and you decide whatever you want to do with that. And since I just discovered tech communities, it was 2015, I always was trying to find people to teach me something. And at a certain moment, I just decided, “OK, maybe I can just teach other people.” When I just entered my technician course, under my high school, and then I was way above in this part of programming than the whole class. And then the teachers just came to me, "OK, can you just help me? Since we just have 40 people here in the class, can you just help me with a couple of ones so I can just focus on the more newbies, so to speak?" And I was OK, and then I just decided that OK, I like to teach and I like to teach programming, and then I started to learn and try to teach right after. That's one of my things today. I do daily live coding streams for at least four or five hours a day.

Amit Sion:

How did you find transitioning the educating from doing that classroom feel to moving it to social media in order to reach thousands of people? Was that transition smooth for you, or was that a journey, a hurdle to get?

Daniel Reis:

OK, that has also a story. In 2018, I got my first job, but then also was addicted to a game called League of Legends. Yes, you probably know that. I was playing for hours and hours, and my boss just came to me at the time. It was my first months working, and he told me, "Dude, this PHP that you're building," I was building my own framework by the way, "It'll not work. You should take one of these." And he just gave me a list with CakePHP, Laravel, and Symfony. "Pick one of these, learn, I'll help you with the basics, and then we can just rebuild what you did from scratch." Then I just went home and started to play League.

Then I just decided, “OK, probably, I can get fired if I don't do the task.” With that, I just started to think, “OK, what would put some pressure on myself to study and deliver what I want?” Because one of the things that I actually hate, and keep hating, is someone that is behind my back, watching me doing stuff. And doing live coding is basically tons of people, maybe, or maybe one person, behind the screen just watching you do your code. And this puts lots of pressure on myself at the beginning. So I just took a couple of steps of maybe watch a course, read some blogs, create basic functionalities and documentation, everything, and then I just, “OK, this is way helpful to my career. This is amazing.” And then I start to do that daily and then OK, maybe I'm not creating content for the others. I'm just trying to help myself not be kicked out of the company, and it kind of worked. So I just keep that for the last six years.

Amit Sion:

How did it transition from being something that you're doing for yourself to expanding and getting an audience and a following? Because I'm sure that there's a lot of people out there that watch you and follow you and are wanting to be like you. What sort of guidance would you give to them to have a similar journey?

Daniel Reis:

I think that everyone has a best match for this part of the content creation. I hate to create videos, and everyone thinks that I should just be a YouTuber to raise more popularity, but I can also start to take notes on your studies. It's how I just started. Maybe doing live coding, learning something, and then post on YouTube or other platforms. Maybe trying to apply some class that you just have a lot of knowledge about, but you don't know how to pass this forward, without or with someone on Discord call or anything else that you want. But you need to find and try, because I tried for two years until I found out that “OK, livestream is my thing, maybe community is also my thing, but videos, dude, I hate that. I don't want to do that.”

Amit Sion:

What's the difference with doing it in livestream for you that makes it comfortable rather than filming videos?

Daniel Reis:

It's because livestream, it's just like here, we're not acting, and most part of the videos, programming videos itself, you're just going to put your ID and then magically, the solution, it'll be popped there. Dude, the real world is not like this. You're going to spend hours and hours and hours and hours until you just find the best solution, or even to find a solution for your problem. This is something that people sell on YouTube that I actually hated. Most part of my videos that I just posted what was like my livestreams, live coding and showing my line of thought to solve something. And when you have a video, you need to have a script. Without a script, you don't know what is the beginning and when you have to finish it. I like this way of just get improvising on top of something.

Amit Sion:

It's interesting. Some people would feel more pressure on it, because you don't have the script. You don't know how it's going to start and end. You're just launching into it, but there is something more real about it, isn't there? Because there's no re-record. I think so much of things that are prerecorded, whether it's YouTube or TikTok or anything like that, what you're seeing, the final result, has probably been recorded like 6, 7, 10 times until they were happy with that one recording that they put out there. So you're not actually getting the real authentic material for that reason.

Daniel Reis:

Yes. One of the things that I'm just try to get better for the time is, “OK, I hate to record videos, but I have to because it's part of my job.” I have to create lessons for the university. I have to create videos, doing some showcases of our product, and I also have to get good at that. Because if I’m doing that task for too long, I'll not be delivering it, I know that. So I just started to create my own tools, integrating with my operational system, and also trying to do the same takes without any cut.

So when I was doing this Euro trip that it was last year, I just started to put my phone in random spots with my microphone and then started to speak something. The best take, I was just posting, and things were just exploding on Instagram. And I was OK, I was not expecting for that. Sometimes it was two takes, sometimes it was five takes, but most part of the time, it was just one in a totally random place. I don't need to worry about how it's added at. I just need to worry about the message that I'm trying to pass, and that's all. I just need to put a feeling there, so I try to make that the best way possible.

Amit Sion:

Do you find that there's something to authenticity that engages more with people, or is it about the polish. Something that you record once and you put it out there versus something that you go, no, that version wasn't right, let me do it again, let me do it again, let me do it again? Which one do you think engages more with an audience and gets something to really get a lot of reactions?

Daniel Reis:

OK, you just asked me to deliver all my goals here, but OK. We have something which is basically, you know a topic that contains a call to action. On one of my trips, I was talking on how I just heard about my colleagues that work for the foreign companies, or companies in the U.S. or even in Europe, and they were complaining that most of these companies don’t respect the time zone. So you know that it's a trigger, and the moment that you just accomplish this new job and you have to work at their time zone. OK, it's how it's supposed to be, but well, depending on which country you're working with. If you're working with maybe Poland, which is my case, I have to wake up at 3 a.m. sometimes to just jump into the meetings.

But this is something that rarely happens, but with my friends, it's just something really, really common. Sometimes I have to even work more hours, and then I just got all of this content about working remotely from other companies and then just tapped it first, you present the problem. After, you just present the public that you're just trying to aim, which is Brazilians that want to work out of the country. And then we just had the problematic, which is basically they don't want to work with a good time zone for both, because it would be amazing. Or even if you can just make your own time zone to be working at. But the way that you just maybe put some rage or maybe a couple of other feelings, you can just trigger people to maybe drop more comments or maybe send it for other people. So depending on the feeling that you just put there, you're going to receive a different reaction. And when I just realized that, my videos just started to grow in views and likes and so on, but this takes time, and that needs planning.

Amit Sion:

I want to go a bit back, like your origins. What was the thing that inspired you to move into development?

Daniel Reis:

So as I said, I'm quite a player of any type of video game. And in 2009, I just entered the internet mostly by accessing a couple of websites and playing some games like Warcraft, maybe Age of Empires. And I just found out that had some types of multiplayer games, and I was, "Nah, it's not possible." 

And then I just entered one multiplayer game called GTA, which is “GTA: San Andreas,” but in the multiplayer world, which was my first contact with programming itself, just because one of the game masters tried to not push me to the other servers, because I was playing this game for too long, this specific private server for too long. And then one day, I  remembered to ask this game master, "Do you know if there's any other server because this one is too laggy? I cannot play that. It was 300 milliseconds to do anything.” And no, but basically it is just us, and it was, "OK so I don't believe you." And then I started to Google it, GTA servers, and then I just found out that has a programming language to create a GTA server. I just started to tweak with that, and at the time, I had a machine with 112 megabytes of RAM. It was not even running the game itself, but I just managed to open a local server to create my first script. And when I just type it like /kit, I just got all of the items in the game, and I was “OK, that's amazing.” And then I just decided, I want to do that, because if I just could do that with GTA, maybe I can just do that with other games, and then I just started to jump into this private games network itself, forums, and so on.

Amit Sion:

I like how it was driven by passion. It was driven by something where you had this experience of creation of taking from some idea, some challenge that you wanted to solve and then branching into something that you go, "Wow, I did that. That's real now." That I think is enough to show you a spark that this feels right. Before that, were you thinking of different careers, or was it like blank slate before you got into programming?

Daniel Reis:

No. Actually, I really wanted to follow as a musician. I did musical classes for 10 years straight, since I was a kid until I just turned 17. I just went through a couple of instruments, like classical guitar, guitar, violoncello, violin. I tried drums, but I suck at that. Any instrument with strings, I could handle it really easy. But then I just remembered that one of the guys that was my inspiration at the time that was doing musical lessons with me, he entered in one of these colleges for musicians, and then he just came back six months later saying that, "Dude, forget about that. You're not going to have a good career unless you just create something really, really good and become like a rock star. Besides that, you're going to be teaching music." And I mean, I'm not against that, but I have also life plans. So one of the things that was my hobby, which was programming, turning into my main passion.

Amit Sion:

It's so interesting that in life, we have these different turning points where someone taps you on the shoulder and gives you this great insight that, sometimes it's to inspire you to go and do something, but sometimes, and just as important, is to tell you not to do something. And you had that person that warned you from something. Do you feel that it was the right thing to take that step back and not proceed in that direction?

Daniel Reis:

Yes, I actually feel that if I followed that other path with music, I could turn it into something, but I'll never know. So I'll not be blaming myself. I could make that work, but I also made this work. I mean, I'm just at X-Team podcast at this moment. I just accomplished it to be in amazing places that myself of six years ago, when I was just entering the field, was never thinking about. So yes, I feel that I did the right thing.

Amit Sion:

And that's the right attitude to have. That one of the other branches could have worked out as well, it doesn't matter, because you're on this one, and this one is working out well, and you hold onto that. I don't know if you have this, when I was a kid, we had these books, the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, where you're reading this, and it tells you you've reached a lake, do you stop and turn around, or do you go and swim inside? And depending on what you choose, you have to turn the pages, and some people would hold on just in case they want to move back. And my thing was always like, “No, you make the decision and you go with it.” And it might work out, it might not work out, but at least you take that step forward with confidence. Do you have that sort of attitude in your life?

Daniel Reis:

I mean I practically just went off my house, I just decided to take a couple of shots. My first shot was in 2017 when I just abandoned my parents' house and tried to enter it and found a startup with a couple of friends. It just went totally wrong. Don't try that at home, kids. And then six months later, I tried it again with a couple of the same folks, but it's also just didn't work out. And then I just stepped back and went to the university. Then at that moment, I just started to apply to other jobs and so on. At a certain point, I didn't pass a couple of classes at university more related to hardware, because I hate hardware. Weird, but OK. And then with that, I just realized that I had a job offer, but I can also follow with the university, so I had to choose.

My parents were already really pissed with me, because I just went out my house two times and well, trying life, and then I stepped back, and then tried, and then step back. But at the moment that I got that job offer, I decided that I will not be coming back home again. So I just made that work. So it was a really tough time. This is something that I talk with my viewers a lot, because it's just basically you start by playing Pokemon. In Pokemon, you have to choose one of the three Pokemons at the beginning. And if you're an expert experience player, you know that if you just go with Charizard at that beginning, you're fucked. But later on, it's going to be helpful. So it's just how it goes. We have to choose a path, and after that, you know to contain the damage.

Amit Sion:

At X-Team, the company motto is to “Keep Moving Forward.” It's this approach that, whether it's something that's positive that you're heading towards, or something that you're leaving behind, you keep your focus on that path, and that will guide you along in what you do. And it's something where there's elements where you need to learn in order to move forward. You need to get new experiences to move forward, but you figure that out, and you lay those tracks for your train to keep progressing in that direction. Something that we look for a lot is having the ability to be supported by mentorship and community. Have you had that in your life, where you've had someone or a team in your life that has helped your journey so far?

Daniel Reis:

Yes. I like to think that everything that I just joined in every company, even the ones that I got fired, they were there to help me somehow and sometimes show me that, OK, you're not ready. I had one challenge once in 2011, when I was just learning Laravel, as I said at the beginning. And then I started to go, I went to my first tech event, which was PHP São Paulo. It was like a huge conference, and there was amazing talks that I wanted to watch, all of that. But at that moment, I was thinking, OK, I'm a good developer. I know everything, and I can solve anything, because I do that on my job. And then I just stepped on that event, and there's a challenge there, which was basically you have to solve that, you make this test pass, the test suit, and you can earn a bag full of things.

I had really liked the bag, so I just seated there at the beginning of day one and left at the end of day one without solving that. And then I just got pissed, went home, and then texted a couple of colleagues of mine and explained about the test and they, "OK, dude, you're going to watch these videos. You have 24 hours to solve that. So these videos, these links, these articles, you can do that." And OK, I was not so sure if I could, but they sent me everything. I just opened a livestream and stayed until 3 a.m. with my viewers and a couple of colleagues, and they're trying to explain me and give me more information about that.

And then I came to day two, and I failed it totally. I just spent the two days that I would be there watching stuff. Even with help of everyone trying to make that work, I couldn't do that. So with that, I just saw that, OK, people are there to help me a lot. My colleagues, my work colleagues just made what they could, but it was like a technical barrier or a technical, there's a term for that, but I don't remember. OK, it can be a barrier. So I still lack some knowledge, and I have to go out and study, try to do POCs and so on, and my team was there backing me up. And then one month later, I tried the same challenge, and I made it, but I did there in the back.

Amit Sion:

I like that even though you hit barriers, even though you fail, you can see those as gifts because those are the learning opportunities, those are the times where you're growing. And you become a more mature, more experienced person for those things. Do you see that that's the steps that have guided you to keep improving in your career and its direction?

Daniel Reis:

Yes. I mean, every time that you do step into something, I just decided to put as a target. So after this event, since I was not even aware that had some unit test exists or feature test exists, I just got the guys and asked them, the guys that was applying the test and say, "Which company would I learn that? Because I want to learn that." And then at the time, I was working for Brazilian Nike and there, OK, it was a good software, but it was lacking a couple of steps, and I was a mid-level engineer. I was not a senior, and I was just trying to deliver as fast as possible. And then just joined Leroy Merlin, which is, I don't know, which is they just sell furniture and all of other stuff for your home, and they have a huge system with 90% of coverage, and they were just legends at that event.

So I just, “OK, it is ecommerce, just working on ecommerce. I'm going to learn all of the business logic to jump into this new company, and I'm going to apply and I'm going to pass, but I'll need time.” So at that moment, I just put one year in this company where I'm going to try to learn everything and then jumped into the other company, and I succeeded in the first try, which was, “OK, I can do that, I can do anything.” And then I just started to put that as something to work at. So if I can just do a really good planning and study the company that I want to work, the technologies, also the business rules, I can join there. And then I started to do that in companies that I would like to work at, and it completely works.

Amit Sion:

I like your attitude that you're comfortable facing challenges, and you don't approach it from a position of fear. Right now, the big conversation of 2024, of course, is how AI has exploded and is it going to end lots of different jobs, different careers of people that were doing things that AI can now do faster, and all that? Do you have that similar sort of sentiment? Do you have that fear, or do you see it as a way to leverage? Where is your view with this new change?

Daniel Reis:

I was also talking about that today, I guess. One of the viewers just entered and asked me about Cursor.ai, and he asked, "OK, what do you think about juniors using Cursor?" And I was, I think that's going to be a problem. Not for them, but the product that they're shipping. Because if they just trusting blindly that Cursor AI can't do the right tests and do the right code, it can work for a moment or for, I don't know, a week or two, but in the moment that you have to put some effort to do some maintenance on that code, you don't know what that do, you don't know which line does what. So for me, as a developer, I know that jobs will start popping up to fix this kind of crappy code from AI.

And one of the things that I was talking yesterday with Tatakita was that I saw a video on the internet from a specific company that was doing some job recruiting, and they were allowing people to use AI to cheat, but instead of that, the only rule that it should be followed was you cannot be caught because if yes, you'll not be passing. But they got things from LeetCode and a couple of other platforms, the exercise itself, but also exercises from custom ones, self-made exercises. And the rate of people that was passing on the LeetCode exercise was really high, but for the custom ones, it was only like 15% or 20%.

So if you just put a problem which is not on Google, people just start to freak out, and AI also doesn't have knowledge to solve that problem. So this will show which type engineer you're going to be hiring for your company. So I'm totally OK for that. But related to the other areas, they could first adapt to that and use AI to their advantage, or they could just try the basics of programming to also use AI, base it on their business rules. I think that everyone should learn programming. It's just amazing, and you can do amazing stuff, even the most older person for the [youngest] one.

Amit Sion:

It's interesting. It sounds like what you're saying is that there's elements where AI can create tech debt by, if a junior developer is driving it, they could be creating code that then a senior person needs to come and clean up. Because they're giving it the prompts, the things being created, they don't know that it's not the right way to build the fundamentals, and then someone needs to come and undo that to build it the right way. Is that how you see it?

Daniel Reis:

Most part of the time, yes, because I mean, I'm around quite a while in this part of teaching people, and I'm doing code reviews of my viewers, trying to help them to achieve better companies, past five years. And most part of the time, they just ship code. The juniors, they have to ship code, they don't need to know if the code is ugly, if the code can be enhanced, they just need to make it work. So if you just start to think junior should deliver it in the most obvious way and without knowing this technical jargon, it just turns into a mess.

But when you just started to learn about that with the AI, like how a design system works, how the design pattern should be applied, and why you should apply each one, OK, now you're evolving, and you know what you're doing. And then it's OK to use AI to generate your code, because the logic's all in your head. But when you're a junior just trying to implement a cache layer, you just don't know what is cached, you just know that the job test is asking that. OK, the AI will do that for you, but when you just go to a technical interview, you don't know how to answer, so it'll be a shame, I guess.

Amit Sion:

We're really in this first year of its eruption. Of course, AI has been around for a while, but this year, it's really growing quite a lot. Do you have a view of where things might come to next with the evolution of either AI and technology? How will this change the profile of the current programmer, someone like you? How does that change your role, your job in the future?

Daniel Reis:

I mean, I work as a developer advocate. My job is to create content, mostly. I tried a couple of, many times to generate scripts for videos or even challenges, anything else, but most part of the time, when I was trying, it was never what I wanted. And code itself is never going to be the thing that you want if you just don't put the same thing. So until people just learn what they're trying, I don't think that the AI will be going further. I don't think that is going to be having world domination or they will take all of our jobs. I don't think that, it's just impossible, because someone needs to code that. 

But one of the things that I highly believe will be happening is that these huge AI who start to scrap the whole world, every website, every content, and it'll be something really cool in the, I think, the health area, the health field. So you can just follow with the more precise research about disease and so on, and I hope that this works. AI needs to be used for these right things, but please just stop copy-paste JavaScript things. Just use that for a really better thing in the world. And I hope that this evolves a lot in the couple of next years.

Amit Sion:

I love how you switched it from the question what scares people with AI? And you changed to what excites? This ability to progress faster because we've got more processing power, we've got more analysis of the content. So in the medical space, I've read that our ability to move towards hopefully finally finding a cure for cancer and for early detection and all that sort of stuff is going to be moved so much quicker than what we anticipated. Do you see it happening in those fields or in other things, as well?

Daniel Reis:

Yes, I can see that happening, because if you can just train a really large model of something, you know that you can just get a better percentage of, “OK, you're right on that.” So this is how machine learning works. So if you can just give simple prompts or ways to make things easier for the researchers of different fields, I can definitely think that it'll be a thing soon. But that's the thing, I cannot trust what AI just said to me blindly. I just need to do tests on top of that. It'll just give you some hints. It's just like how I use that, and I'm not afraid of that unless someone just copy and pastes AI code to a healthcare facility, that will be a problem. OK, please don't do that, just go with the flow. But I'm not scared of AI at all. I'm just trying to see the good parts, because the bad ones I already know about, and I think about that constantly.

Amit Sion:

I like what you say that it has got to be in the right hands. I relate it to a very, very simplified example. I remember back in high school, there was this kid who wanted to do really well in his assignment for English, for senior year. And what he thought was, “Ah, in order to make my piece, my profile sound better, I'm just going to change every single word with a thesaurus to a bigger word.” So he thought, great, I look much smarter, all my words are big. And I looked at his piece, and I couldn't understand any of it, because neither could he, just taken big words. In the same sort of idea, you take AI technology, and you apply it without your own fundamental knowledge, then you can create a whole lot of junk, right? It's not something that's usable. It has to be in the right hands of someone who's already had the education, had the experience, had the knowledge to know how to apply it properly.

Daniel Reis:

Yes, I mean, that is just here in this podcast right now. You have a grandparent or someone older than you that doesn't know about technology, just do one test. Give the ChatGPT text, and ask this person to search for something that will be useful for her, for them. So you're going to learn something really, really new, because everyone has different necessities and different backgrounds. So if I just reach my grandpa or my grandma, they're just going to type stuff about maybe new recipes to do in Thanksgiving or something like that. Weird stuff, but OK, it's what they want. So based on that, it will just open a new world for them to learn new things. This is what I'm just trying to show for regular people, not a developer, or that is just trying to learn about the world but hate the tons of the ads that Google just add on top of you. There's a really good way to do that, and it's really simple. It's just a chat. You just type what you want, and you get that answer.

Amit Sion:

You're currently working remote, is that right?

Daniel Reis:

Yeah.

Amit Sion:

And how long have you been working in a remote?

Daniel Reis:

1 year and 10 months, almost 2 years.

Amit Sion:

How do you find a difference to working in office?

Daniel Reis:

Yes, and it's kind of funny, because when I went to that event that I mentioned, whatever were talking about, I was trying to reach a way to visit the company in Poland, because the event that I went, it was in Cyprus, and I will be flying back to Brazil. So I just made a couple of stops, and one of that was in the Poland office. There's no Slack. There are no Teams. You just knock and someone, and then, "Dude, can you help me? I need your help." Now, you are not going to be answering me two days later or just forget that I'm stuck with something. Because when you work remotely, and someone from your team is just asking for help and you don't help, that one part of your delivery is just not going to happen.

We should not expect everyone to know about that. But when you just know how to work remotely, that's just amazing. But if your team doesn't know how to work remotely or from the different cultures, it's going to turn into a problem. And when I went to that office, I learned so much in one week that I just stayed there. I'm just saying that to go back to and work in an office. Now, maybe once in a year to twice in a year just do a major event, maybe a technical R&D event to make people get together and talk about how they do things, how they do the work, how they can just improve documentation, and how they can just improve the quality of their jobs. And that's what I'm just trying to aim by doing everything in my ability to go to that office. So I just enjoy it every day with all of my teammates because here in Brazil, I just work alone the most part of the time.

Amit Sion:

For us at X-Team, we were remote from the beginning. So from 2006, before anyone was even thinking about remote, any lockdowns, any sort of stuff like that, and the tools didn't even exist. We had to build chat tools and things like that, because it was before these things were widely available. And one of the most important things was to maintain this feeling of community, to make sure that people, whilst working remote and had that flexibility of timeframe and all that, didn't feel that they were on their own. That they felt that they were part of a community that was going to support them, and it links to something that you said. One of the important things that we did was to have this opportunity for people to also meet in person.

So once you meet in person, and you get that direct human connection with someone, when you go back to remote, you work differently, because you know them. And when they ask you a question, you're honored, because you know this person, and you want to support them. We've maintained that all the way through that. Now, we're on year 18. Tomorrow is our annual X-Team Summit, where over 160 people are going to come together and be side by side. We have this throughout the year. We have outposts where they work together in different locations, and we find that not only do we get better retention of our engineers than most companies, we also get people who actually care about each other and are supporting each other. So it's not just the dependency on management, because there's that link that they have with each other, which is really quite beautiful.

Daniel Reis:

Yes. I like in-person events. I ran a community in Brazil, called it He4rt Developers, for five years. And we just achieved amazing things during the pandemic. It was a moment that everyone would be sticking together into small communities, Discord, WhatsApp, and anything that would make them not feel alone. And then we just make magic by adding tons of people on Discord and calls and reaching content, and many other streamers just did such an amazing thing. But when it just was over in 2023, most of these people were trying to get together, because they just spent so many hours in the call by studying programming or just watching some videos or series, and they want to be together.

And when they just got together, I think that it just made them closer than before. And one thing about this is that this is the community side, but when you just come to the company side, I think that the first thing that would be good for any remote job, if possible, is to get this new employee closer to the team for a week or two, as fast as possible. Because you have coffee breaks, you have happy hours, and you have every possibility for this person to just know the other one besides the work itself, besides the code.

As I said, when I just entered on the stage in Cyprus in the company event and started to sing, my boss was just, "OK," and the whole company was, "OK." And then everyone just knows me, like the singer guy, and teams from the other countries and everyone know who I am right now. But then I also just got in touch with people that also knows how to play some instruments or like to sing or like music. So we just connected, and I constantly ask help from these people for different things, which is amazing. They answer straight away. It is just, dude, there's no other experience. You need to balance these two. You would not be good or in touch with the team only by staying remote. I mean, of course, you know that.

Amit Sion:

Oh, at X-Team, we have a club for music, for books, for film lovers, and all that. It's because we want to make sure that everyone's got their own different passions, everyone's got different elements. We're not singular focused. We're not just about the work, and we want to make sure that people have an opportunity to have a conversation, connect about different things. And when you have that, it's beautiful. It opens up to friendship, and you always want to support a friend. We want to make sure, also, that our people are both feeling supported but also not feeling lonely.

I think that loneliness is a really important thing for us to battle in this community. I think we have a responsibility to that, because especially as people start to work more remote, to start being not visible, then we need to check in on each other and support each other, because it's as important as eating vegetables and going for a run and everything is to make sure that you have that social interaction. It's part of our health, really.

Daniel Reis:

Yeah, totally.

Amit Sion:

Final question, Daniel, I'm really been enjoying this conversation. I want to understand what excites you about the future. What do you see in the next few years in the tech space that you're just really keen to see its evolution and it coming out?

Daniel Reis:

OK, I have two major dreams. The first one is to build the greatest community, because when I just did that in Brazil, I just built, hell, good community. I was, OK, I have right here in this Discord, 400 people just watch me do random stuff with a random meeting with random subjects, to maybe help in open-source projects or open-source initiatives. And I was, OK, if I just ask these people to contribute, I can ask. I can just do amazing stuff, because it's 400 people. So when I just got this glimpse, I just decided that when I had time and a proper team to build that again, I will do that. 

And the second one is to become, I think, a reference in what I do, which is do live coding, teach people, and I don't know, help them to achieve better things. I know that this is too much abstract, and I don't know when I'm going to achieve that, but it's what I'm kind of excited of, because you don't know what to do and don't have a pre-concept of what to do, but you just keep doing it.

Amit Sion:

I love that part of having the vision with the goal. That you don't necessarily know the steps to reach it, but you know it's there, and you'll figure it out as you go, right?

Daniel Reis:

Yeah, just keep going.

Amit Sion:

That's wonderful. Just, hey, X-Team's Keep Moving Forward. That's our mantra.

Daniel Reis:

Yeah.

Amit Sion:

Daniel, this has been such a great conversation. Before we close, where can people find you? What's your socials? Give us your links so that people can read more and see you more.

Daniel Reis:

Amit Sion:

Daniel, thank you for joining us. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure our viewers have, as well. It's been a pleasure having you on What the Code show.