Podcast Awesome
On Podcast Awesome we talk to members of the Font Awesome team about icons, design, tech, business, and of course, nerdery.
🎙️ Podcast Awesome is your all-access pass into the creative engine behind Font Awesome — the web’s favorite icon toolkit. Join host Matt Johnson and the Font Awesome crew (and friends) for deep dives into icon design, front-end engineering, software development, healthy business culture, and a whole lot of lovingly-rendered nerdery.
From technical explorations of our open-source tooling, chats with web builders, icon designers, and content creators, with the occasional gleeful rants about early internet meme culture, we bring you stories and strategies from the trenches of building modern web software — with a healthy dose of 80s references and tech dad jokes.
🎧 Perfect for:
- Icon design and content-first thinking
- Creative process and collaborative design
- Work-life balance in tech
- Remote team culture and async collaboration
- Internet history, meme archaeology, and other nerd ephemera
🧠 Come for the design wisdom, stay for the deep meme cuts and beautifully crafted icons.
Podcast Awesome
Hiring Is a Two-Way Street — Here’s What Most People Miss
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Job interviews aren’t just about proving you’re a fit — they’re about figuring out whether the company deserves you, too. 👀
In this episode, Matt chats with Font Awesome founder Dave Gandy about why hiring is a two-way street. They unpack the red flags candidates should watch for, what healthy companies actually look like, and how the interview process can reveal way more than a polished mission statement ever will.
Dave shares practical advice for job seekers on asking better questions, spotting dysfunctional hiring practices, and approaching the search with intention instead of desperation. They also dig into trust, team health, and why the best workplaces tend to value character just as much as capability.
Whether you’re job hunting, hiring, or just trying to avoid ending up in a workplace that feels like a corporate escape room, this episode has plenty to chew on. 😅
What we cover:
Why hiring should be a two-way evaluation
The biggest red flags in interview processes
What healthy organizations prioritize
Why trust matters more than pure talent
How to ask smarter interview questions
Why job seekers need a strategy, not just a stack of resumes
How to identify companies that are actually worth your time
Timestamps:
00:00 – Why hiring is a two-way street
02:00 – HR screenings, weird assessments, and early red flags
05:10 – Desperation in job hunting and why standards still matter
07:00 – What healthy companies really look like
09:20 – How to flip the script and interview the company
12:00 – Big companies, bad filters, and missing great candidates
16:00 – Why knowing yourself matters before you start looking
19:00 – Why spray-and-pray applications usually fall flat
21:00 – The value of being “double T-shaped” in your career
24:00 – Why the best opportunities often come through side doors
25:00 – Building relationships before you need a job
27:00 – How companies communicate values in the hiring process
29:00 – The one thing a company needs to do differently
30:00 – Wrap-up and outro
Credits:
Hosted by Matt Johnson
Featuring Dave Gandy
Produced and edited by Matt Johnson
Theme song by Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials by Zach Malm
Video editing by Isaac Chase
Watch this episode on YouTube
#Hiring #InterviewTips #JobSearch #CareerAdvice #Leadership #CompanyCulture #WorkplaceCulture #TechCareers #PodcastAwesome #FontAwesome 🚀
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