We need to be able to talk to people. Talking to the computer is the easy part.” That’s Java developer advocate Trisha Gee at JetBrains. Trisha speaks worldwide about career development for programmers, including soft skills, communication skills, and what it means to really progress your career as a developer.
Ahmad Nassri is a force in the open-source world. Any given day you can find him leading advisory groups at the Node.js Foundation, kicking off OSS conferences, or masterminding technology communities like TechMasters. Ahmad discusses the grey areas between software engineering skills, and open source as a place to grow and professionally develop whether or not your day job contributes to the space.
Google Staff Developer Advocate Kelsey Hightower is tech community famous for his down-to-earth and refreshingly funny keynotes. Kelsey discusses the importance of putting people first and tools second on the path to engaging and authentic engineering practice.
Karan Zaveri, CTO of 24/7 Software discusses the balance of engineering vs entrepreneurship and shares the learnings and failures he learned along the way in his tech journey. Karan is responsible for driving the delivery and development of 24/7 Software platform’s long-term technology vision, as well as driving innovation across the company
Three-time CTO, Rich Brown, put in his Fortune 500 time across the enterprise sector at Bank of American, SAP, and others. Rich discusses the trade-offs of native and hybrid, cloud and local, and the true experience end-users are looking for. As well as the evolution of Microsoft and the company’s re-evolution in the developer ethos with the acceptance of .Net Core.
Steve Cumbia, VP of Technology at ACS Technologies shares the inspiring story of how their company has adapted to changes in the industry over more than four decades, a lifespan atypical of software companies. He reflects on how he’s personally adapted to these changes and talks about how he’s transitioned from writing code to managing a full technology organization.
Caleb Ontiveros, who left the University of Notre Dame’s PhD program in philosophy to pursue a career in tech, is often asked by people studying philosophy how he transitioned to software engineering and programming. Caleb created the Facebook group, Philosophers in Software Engineering to help others like him. The group’s members collect and share advice for philosophers interested in learning how to program or in careers in software engineering.
Software engineer or engineering leader? What’s the difference and where do you fit? Corey Nichols, Director of Engineering at SonoSim began his career in the tech industry as a software engineer. He anticipated working on technical aspects of software engineering but instead, coordinated different teams. Corey tells us what’s involved in a leadership of engineering role that differentiates it from the software engineering seat.
Communities are people who not only share common principles but who also develop and share practices that help individuals in the group thrive. DevRel means building communities for technical audiences. If you want to know about DevRel and community building, you need to know about Mary Thengvall, Founder and DevRel Consultant at Persea Consulting who provides a host of curated, authored, and spoken content covering these critical topics.
Ravi Sahu is the founder and CEO of Strayos, a VC-backed computer vision and deep learning company that’s improving the mining industry by using 3D aerial intelligence to reduce costs, and to improve safety by providing highly accurate data. Ravi discusses the importance of creating a culture of customer empathy, and how that focus has allowed for better feedback and understanding from their customers.
Software quality is like integrity - it’s doing the right thing even if no one is watching. That’s according to Merlin Quintin, Director QA Engineering at Redbox. Merlin discusses her unique approaches to engineering leadership as a veteran team member at a disruptive media company. Merlin says engineering is about who you are as a person, working together with other people, to make a difference.
Philipp Svehla, software development manager at Workday helps us explore the other side of the coin: bringing a team to a close. To set the backstory, his company had been acquired by a larger firm that decided to wind down the engineering office he oversaw while consolidating overseas. Philipp had to shepherd the difficult work of rallying a product team to deliver their final project before being let go.
Ravi Lachhman, Technical Evangelist at Cisco company AppDynamics discusses perspectives on production outages, operating what you build, and "Netflixian" organizational design all come back to one root idea: keep learning, and keep growing.
Imagine this: you get a call for a CTO job. The company has never had a CTO. It's a global company with boots on the ground in every country and all 50 states. What would you do next? Sherri Hammons knows the answer. She's the CTO for The Nature Conservancy and that's her story. Sherri discusses technology leadership, coming to terms with managing and leading when you like being an engineer, and how to keep your team emotionally safe so they perform better under pressure.
There comes a time in almost every engineer's career where they may need to communicate with a customer, train a teammate, pitch a project, or prove they are credible to a potential client. Poornima Vijayashanker was the founding engineer of Mint.com where she launched v1 of the ubiquitous personal finance platform. She went on to Found Femgineer, an education firm that trains technologists to improve public speaking skills, presentation skills, and soft skills.
Eric Hunter, Managing Director for futurist consultancy firm Spherical Models, LLC, about how having a stroke sparked his interest in how we process information and the intersectionality between future technology and human behavior.
Liz Fong-Jones is a 15-year Site Reliability Engineer. She’s a former Google and current SRE and observability advocate for Honeycomb.io. Liz evangelizes “Building Excellent Systems” that both lookout for the people who use the system, and for the people who work on it. She discusses wide-ranging ethical issues in engineering, and about how it’s a business advantage to say you’re an ethical engineer.
ou might not recognize the name Kevin Nether, but chances are you've watched at least one video by Kevin The Tech Ninja. If you haven't, fire up your YouTube app. A self-described "guy who's just always loved technology," Kevin's videos have won acclaim and following for his creative, down-to-earth unboxings, product reviews, and the occasional rant. In this episode I talk to Kevin about being a creator, letting go in order to scale yourself, and the hard work of creating content you can be proud of in any discipline.
Rusty Wilson is a Certified Ethical Hacker, and a Hacking Forensic Investigator, among 10 other professional certifications. He's carried the titles CIO, CTO, and VP of Technology. All the while he pursued his passion for providing strategic career development coaching for IT and engineering professionals. He discusses professional development tools and the importance of soft skills for engineers.
Eric Rodwell, VP Worldwide Solutions Engineering at Conga discusses the importance of self-awareness when starting the journey of professional development. He shares helpful tips on putting yourself in the shoes of your customer to keep quality high and deliver an exceptional experience.