2024 has been an exciting year for our company, and one of the biggest highlights for us was bringing amazing new talent on board.
If you're a no-code builder on YouTube, you probably already know the name Doc Williams from his channel, where he posts excellent no-code tutorials, reviews, and more. But now he's added another title to his already impressive resume.
Recently, Doc joined the team at XRay to become the program manager of LowCodeEngineers, XRay's service for matching people with expert low-code support on a convenient hourly basis. In October, Doc and XRay CEO Tom Nassr had the chance to chat for a bit at the No-Code Summit in Paris.
They talked about Doc joining the team, how LowCodeEngineers changes the game for freelancers, and what they're looking forward to in the future. Here's the full conversation.
Interview: Tom Nassr and Doc Williams at NoCodeSummit 2024
Tom Nassr
You're sporting the XRay.Tech flag now! How does that feel?
Doc Williams
It feels good. I was a little bit nervous when the announcement happened, but I'm excited to be officially on the team. And so excited about all the things we're going to be doing with LowCodeEngineers.
Tom Nassr
LowCodeEngineers is going to have a lot of work to do after this. Obviously, there's just people asking to join as a low-code engineer. There's also different companies coming up and saying, “hey, I could hire somebody for an hour or two.”
What are some things that you're excited about for LowCodeEngineers now that you're shaping the program?
Doc Williams
A lot of things. Number one, I think helping the customers – helping all of these different businesses.
But also, I think I'm more – or equally – excited with the engineers themselves.
I've been a freelancer. I've run an agency. I know trying to have both hats on: trying to build and build my business. That's very stressful.
Tom Nassr
Very.
Doc Williams
And so with LowCodeEngineers having all of the communication with the customer figured out, having all the tools with Guardian, having Debrief, all these different tools that were announced as well. That really helps the freelancer be at their best with their customer, focus on building and then leave everything else out of it. Done. Automated.
So that's what I'm really happy about, because now I can just help find these great, amazing engineers that want that hourly rate locked in. They can just build, and then they can leave and do whatever they want with their life outside of it.
And they don't have to manage an agency and do all of these other things that are really stressful and time consuming.
Tom Nassr
Well, it's totally different from Fiverr or Upwork or any of these other marketplaces. I mean, those marketplaces really create a competitive environment for engineers or talent generally. It's a race to the bottom.
Clients often don't know exactly what all of these fancy tools can do. They don't know exactly how it can transform their business or what they even need to ask for.
But LCE is a total shift in how work goes. Instead of the general market saying, “Hey, fend for yourself. You find the right person to hire. You vet them in a technology you don't understand, and you manage the project, LCE is saying “This person can actually help you.”
That little bit of high-touch helps a lot, and LowCodeEngineers takes on the expense of actually doing the vetting and pairing. It’s a total paradigm shift for the client and the engineer.
Doc Williams
I love how you brought that up because a lot of times people think, “Oh, I know what I want, I'm going to go to Fiverr or Upwork.”
But they don't know what question to ask to find out if the freelancer they’re evaluating is actually an expert. Yes, they can be in Fiverr Pro, or you can see that they have a certain number of reviews, which is excellent, but that just means that they're hitting the bare minimum.
A lot of times, the clients don't know how to articulate what they need for their project.
And then they're mad at the developer or the engineer because it's like, “You weren't listening”. And the engineer is like, “Well, you asked me to do this, and I did exactly that.” But they weren't given the right context and the scope and all of those things.
With LowCodeEngineers, before they even get that customer, the engineer gets all of the context. They get everything that they need to know to be successful to go into that session.
Tom Nassr
A lot of that happens in the sales process, right? I'm wearing that hat right now. Hopefully I'm not wearing that hat forever, but I'm happy to hand that over to the next person. But the big difference is that the sales process on XRay's side is that we meet with everybody for 15 minutes.
If someone thinks they have a problem worth solving, we'll get on the phone with them for 15 minutes. When they explain their problem, they often frame it in terms of specific tasks - like 'I need to move X data into Y application.' But we help reframe the conversation to focus on their desired outcome: 'What output do you need? What are you trying to decide on or act on based on that output?’
And you know, there's usually a couple different ways to create that dish. We tell them, 'Hey, we have experts on the bench here who will give you the recipe and bake the cake for you. Let's focus on the style of cake you want, rather than making you direct it every single step of the way.’
You know, you'd never go to a restaurant and tell the chef how to cook your dish, right? It just wouldn't happen. And no-code/low-code is an emerging discipline that I think will follow suit.
Doc Williams
Absolutely. Absolutely. No, this is just the beginning, and it really does feel great. I'm really excited to see what's going to be happening in the next couple of months or a year down the line. And to see what we can bring to market to really shift the industry with this product, with this service.
Tom Nassr
I think it's just going to be one client, one engineer at a time. It's going to be an exciting ride. 2025 is going to be fun.
Doc Williams
Yeah. Good times.
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Note: some portions of the interview have been edited or paraphrased for clarity.
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If you’d like to learn more or book time with LCE, just check out lowcodeengineers.com to get started.
To learn more about automating your work with no-code and low-code tools, be sure to check out the other posts on our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
