From Geek Squad to MongoDB Advocate | w/ Jesse Hall

In this episode of HTML All The Things, Mike sits down with Jesse Hall, Staff Developer Advocate at MongoDB and creator of the popular codeSTACKr platform. Jesse shares his journey from working at Geek Squad to becoming a self-taught developer, educator, and now an advocate at one of the biggest players in the database space. They discuss the principles that make technical concepts “click” for beginners, how to help teams move from relational-first thinking to designing flexible MongoDB schemas, and the pitfalls to avoid when working with document databases. The conversation also dives into MongoDB’s role in the AI landscape, including Jesse’s “AI in Two Lines” approach and what it really takes to go from toy chatbots to robust agentic systems. Show Notes: https://www.htmlallthethings.com/podcast/from-geek-squad-to-mongodb-advocate-w-jesse-hall Powered by CodeRabbit - AI Code Reviews: https://coderabbit.link/htmlallthethings Use our Scrimba affiliate link (https://scrimba.com/?via=htmlallthethings) for a 20% discount!! Full details in show notes.