Essential Cast

On this episode of the podcast, I sat down on the floor — Japanese style — with Josh Dzielak, a Burner and Dev Relations lead at Algolia. As we do, we start off by getting into Josh’s career history (Accenture, Togetherville, VP of Eng Keen IO) followed by a conversation about Burning Man. Josh has been through 6 burns. This has given him some perspective on how the Counter Culture and Burning Man have influenced culture at technology companies like Google, Apple, and Keen IO. We discuss this and more: - What is Burning Man and why would you want to go - The importance of principles for Burning Man - Decompression (integration back into the default culture after the burn) - Minimalism (why Josh has reduced his physical footprint) - Synchronicity and unlearning Causality - An epic sunrise with glow frisbee and grilled cheese sandwiches (this is how Josh bonded with founders of Keen IO where he was later hired as VP of Eng) - How the gifting economy maps to open source software In the second part of the show, we drop into a discussion on Developer Relations (PR for geeks). Josh leads the developer relations team at Algolia. You’ll learn: - The importance of the geek-to-geek protocol - If becoming a developer advocate is the right role for you - The importance of “the vibe” for your developer events - The value in creating a speaker training program - Tips for becoming a great speaker (breathing, grounding, storytelling) - How to bootstrap and build a developer community - The orbit model for thinking about the layers in your community Algolia is the best way to build search into your mobile app or website.  The Essential Cast explores how outside hobbies and interests of engineering leaders influence leadership philosophies, processes, and tactics. https://medium.com/essential-cast/josh-dzielak-ca685992e1d6

In the first part of the show we discussed Brad’s career history (Apple, Palm, Inkling, Mixmax) and his love of aviation.  We had a great conversation on why engineers make great pilots: analysis of accidents, checklists for everything, monitoring, and communication protocols. In the second part of the show — as we always do— we got into a discussion on a range of engineering leadership topics. * Why situational awareness is important as a manager * How to use Mixmax to manage your hiring process * How to create a hiring honey pot on GitHub for new talent by open sourcing by default * Why new engineers should join a startup instead of a big company * How to stand out as a sponsor at hackathons (Brad offers Lego kits as prizes and will stay up coding all night with students!) * How to create an internship program that adds real value and converts to full-time gigs * How to interview interns vs senior candidates * Why to hire for entrepreneurship (Brad wants his engineers to eventually quit and start their own companies!) * How the eng co-working meeting shares knowledge across the team * Why to conduct stay interviews (Brad wants to know what would cause/entice an engineer to leave well before they do) Brad Vogel co-founded Mixmax in 2014 and leds the engineering team. Prior to that: he led the Web Team at Inkling, worked on WebOS at Palm, and was an engineer on the Software Updates Team at Apple. Mixmax is the one product your company would use to communicate with the outside world — the future of email and external communications. Just like you use Slack to talk within your team, you use Mixmax to talk to people outside of your team.