#124 - Jarvis Johnson

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is with Jarvis Johnson. Jarvis was previously a software engineer at Patreon, Yelp, and Google. He's now a YouTuber.
You can find him on YouTube at Jarvis Johnson and on Twitter at Jarvis.
All right, here we go. All right, welcome to the podcast.

**Jarvis Johnson** (0:21)
Thanks for having me.

**Craig Cannon** (0:22)
So today, Jarvis Johnson, who is a software engineer and YouTube creator, recently independent YouTube creator.

**Jarvis Johnson** (0:29)
Yeah, it's almost like the reverse now. Now I'm a YouTube creator and a software engineer.

**Craig Cannon** (0:32)
Yeah, I've been wondering that. So like I was first drawn to you because you were posting these software videos.

**Jarvis Johnson** (0:39)
Right.

**Craig Cannon** (0:39)
So Matt Hackett, who is Casey Neistat's co-founder, he posted one of your videos.

**Jarvis Johnson** (0:43)
Oh, I didn't know. I know he followed me on Twitter. I didn't know he posted one of my videos, but yeah, yeah.
That was, I think when I started out, I was trying a bunch of things. And the first video that I had that got any traction was actually on Facebook where I posted a video that was making fun of the technical interview in the software industry. And I posted it in a Facebook group called Hackathon Hackers or something like that. And they kicked me out for self-promotion, but before they did, it had started going viral. It got 300,000 views or something.
So I was like, all right, guys.

**Craig Cannon** (1:20)
Yeah, there's so many things I want to cover, but this is an interesting angle because you're both the beneficiary of the software industry, but then criticizing it too.

**Jarvis Johnson** (1:28)
Yeah, yeah.

**Craig Cannon** (1:29)
I'm wondering how you tow that line.

**Jarvis Johnson** (1:32)
Well, I think that the way I think about it is that the software industry is extremely popular and has gotten off kind of scot-free and extremely glorified for a really long time. And being in it and being someone who had this dream of entering the industry and being a productive, contributing member of it. And then coming and doing that, I both was really gratified with the work that I've been able to do, but also realized that there's a lot of stuff that people aren't talking about for whatever reason.
And just liking to make fun of things or liking to try and be funny and criticize things, it seemed like a good sort of opportunity to do that.

**Craig Cannon** (2:12)
Yeah, it's kind of like a softball.

**Jarvis Johnson** (2:13)
Yeah, yeah, because I was like, wow. Everyone complains about this stuff. And a lot of comedy is just connecting with what people are already feeling and thinking, so.

**Craig Cannon** (2:25)
Yeah, that's when we did Comedy Hack Day, we put out this video called Well Deserved, which was a place to sell your privilege. I don't know if you ever saw that video.
It was really good, but basically, this was of the time when Sandwich Video just happened and every company was putting out the same kind of soft music video with the big sweeping shots of San Francisco. And it was like, put it out, immediately works.

**Jarvis Johnson** (2:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think that that's what things like Silicon Valley, the show, do really well. And like, if you...
I think I benefited from the fact that I was coming from the inside, and so I had a lot of information that I could then condense down, hopefully, to something that was like palatable to people who were both in and outside of the industry.

**Craig Cannon** (3:08)
Yeah, but I mean, in spite of the criticism, I think you're actually doing a lot of good for the world, like getting people into programming.

**Jarvis Johnson** (3:13)
Yeah, yeah, and I, thank you, I don't, I think that I don't think about that as much when I'm making this stuff, but I do still, to this day, get a lot of messages from people who tell me that, and I'm super grateful, and I feel a little guilty because nowadays I'm not talking as much about tech stuff, but I think it's because I needed a bit of a break from it, because I was like spending all my time, you know, working my tech job, and then if I was going home and working on tech videos, it felt like my whole life was consumed by this industry when really there's more dimensions to me as a person and also what I wanted to do creatively.