Podcasts about codeland

Manuel Alberto Pérez Coutiño es presidente del Clúster Puebla TIC y co-fundador de las empresas Codeland, Vi360 y HUB2i. En este episodio, Manuel nos habla sobre la combinación de una carrera científica y de emprendimiento. A lo largo de su carrera profesional, Manuel ha creado diferentes empresas que le han permitido adquirir una amplia experiencia en proyectos tecnológicos. Su papel, ha sido fundamental en el desarrollo de las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicaciones en el estado de Puebla. Con gran entusiasmo Manuel nos da una visión del Clúster Puebla TIC y de la importancia del desarrollo de empresas de base tecnológica.Manuel Alberto Pérez Coutiño cuenta con más de 25 años de experiencia en diseño, desarrollo e implementación de soluciones para la gestión de información y conocimiento en diferentes sectores productivos, así como en el desarrollo de negocios de base tecnológica. Sus intereses son el desarrollo de soluciones de negocio para los sectores productivos nacionales, mayormente con soporte de tecnologías emergentes, cómputo cognitivo y sistemas ciber físicos, así como el comercio electrónico y estrategias para digitalización.Es Co-Fundador y director de desarrollo de negocios de la empresa CODELAND_ especializada en desarrollo de sistemas Ciber-Físicos; Co-Fundador y director de Innovación de Vi360 Estrategias Integrales, agencia de consultoría para desarrollo de negocios con base en estrategias de comunicación; asimismo, Co-Fundador de HUB2i Tecnología y Negocios, cuyo propósito es la cocreación de soluciones para el desarrollo sostenible y empoderamiento de las organizaciones.Es asociado fundador y actual Presidente (2022-2024) del Clúster Puebla TIC, donde presidió el Consejo Directivo del 2014-2018. En 2018 impulsó la creación y primera edición del programa InnovaPuebla, iniciativa para la estructuración de emprendimientos de base tecnológica, a través del Clúster Puebla TIC y sus aliados, Universidades y clubes de inversión ángel. Ha colaborado en diversos proyectos con laboratorios de alta especialidad en la UNAM, INAOE, BUAP, y UPAEP. Participa activamente en el ecosistema de Innovación y el Consejo Nacional de Clústeres de Software y Tecnologías de la Información (mxTI); colabora con IES y centros de investigación a través de diversos comités y consejos técnicos; es asociado fundador y miembro activo desde 2018 de la Asociación Mexicana de Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural, así como de los Consejos del Clúster Puebla TIC y del Consejo Nacional de Clústeres de Software. Obtuvo los grados de Maestría (2003) y Doctorado (2006), ambos en Ciencias Computacionales, especializado en Inteligencia Artificial por el Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica; y la Licenciatura en Ciencias de la Computación (1998) por la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla.

In this episode we talk with Tracy P Holmes, technical community advocate at Isovalent and Pachi Parra, developer advocate at Github about getting a conference talk proposal accepted. Get some tips and advice from their own personal experiences and a glimpse at this year's Codeland 2022, since both of them will be speaking at this year's conference. Show Notes (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) CodeNewbie (sponsor) DataStax (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Swimm (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Stellar (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Ali Spittel- Yes, You Should Write That Blog Post OS 101 Notion Obsidian Linux Foundation Mercedes Bernard- How to Write a Great Abstract Proposal

Since CodeNewbie is doing a learn in public challenge this month, in this episode we talk all about learning in public with Gift Egwuenu, Frontend Developer, and past CodeLand speaker on the topic of learning in public, and Shawn Wang aka Swyx, head of developer experience at Temporal Technologies. Show Notes DevNews (sponsor) Duckly (sponsor) CodeNewbie (sponsor) Compiler (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Scout APM (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) CodeNewbie Challenge: Learn in Public [Keynote] One Rule to Rule Them All: Learning in Public Shawn Wang (Swyx): Learn In Public Why I switched from Atom to Visual Studio Code

Since CodeNewbie is doing a learn in public challenge this month, in this episode we talk all about learning in public with Gift Egwuenu, Frontend Developer, and past CodeLand speaker on the topic of learning in public. Gift talks about why learning in public is the fastest way to learn, what learning in public can look like for different people, and getting over the hurdle of the anxiety of putting yourself out there. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) VeroSkills (sponsor) Appwrite (sponsor) CodeNewbie Challenge: Learn in Public [Keynote] One Rule to Rule Them All: Learning in Public PHP HTML CSS JavaScript Angie Jones Ali Spittel James Quick Shawn Wang (Swyx): Learn In Public

In this episode, we talk about software mistakes and tradeoffs with Tomasz Lelek, senior software engineer at DataStax and co-author of the book, "Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: Making good programming decisions." After listening if you want to get a copy of the book, go to the link in our show notes and use offer code devdsrf-38BF for a 35% discount. Show Notes Scout APM (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) CodeLand 2021 (sponsor) Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: Making good programming decisions

In this episode, Ben and I talk about the conception of CodeLand, last year's CodeLand, which had to switch to a virtual conference due to covid-19, and the biggest differences between CodeLand 2020 and CodeLand 2021. Registration for CodeLand is pay-what-you-want -- starting at $0. Grab your CodeLand 2021 ticket today at codelandconf.com. That's codelandconf.com. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (sponsor) Retool (sponsor) CodeLand 2021 (sponsor) CodeLand 2021

In this episode, we talk about Visual Studio Code with, Jonathan Carter, principal program manager at Microsoft, and Cassidy Williams, director of developer experience at Netlify. Show Notes Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Scout APM (DevNews) (sponsor) CodeLand 2021 (sponsor) Visual Studio Code GitHub Codespaces Vim ASP.NET Active Server Pages C# documentation Visual InterDev .NET Firebug C++ Microsoft Visual Studio Atom TypeScript Monaco Gitpod CodeSandbox CodeTour CSS Diner

In this episode, we talk about the cloud with Erica Windisch, principal engineer at New Relic, and founder of IOpipe. Erica talks about some of the history of the cloud, some of the major cloud providers, and what things as a newbie you might want to consider when deciding to use the cloud. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (sponsor) Retool (sponsor) CodeLand 2021 (sponsor) New Relic IOpipe AWS Google Cloud Gatsby Cloud Microsoft Azure Netlify DigitalOcean API Amazon EC2 Virtual machine Serverless CI/CD Bitbucket Git Apache HTTP Server What are microservices? Docker Amazon S3 What are containers? SQL CRUD VS Code Visual Studio GitHub GPT-3 GitHub Copilot

In this episode, we have updates about more Apple App Store drama, and Apple's planned surveillance features to battle child sexual abuse material. Then we speak with Lydia X. Z. Brown, attorney, disability justice activist and policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, about a study that found that automated resume filter tools exclude millions from jobs, including those with disabilities. And then we speak with Craig Silverman, reporter at Propublica, about an investigative piece he co-authored that details how Facebook undermines its privacy promises on WhatsApp. Show Notes Scout APM (DevNews) (sponsor) CodeLand (sponsor) Japan Fair Trade Commission closes App Store investigation Apple: Expanded Protections for Children Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent How Opaque Personality Tests Can Stop Disabled People from Getting Hired Report – Algorithm-driven Hiring Tools: Innovative Recruitment or Expedited Disability Discrimination? How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users

In this episode, we talk about web performance with Todd Underwood, senior director of engineering and SRE at Google. Show Notes Scout APM (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) CodeLand (sponsor)

In this episode, we talk about how to transition into development after over a decade in your field, with Christine Fletcher, UI/UX developer/designer at capSpire. Christine talks about experiencing burnout working as a nurse and deciding to take the leap to learn to code, what her experience was going the bootcamp route to learn, and how she landed her first coding job. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (sponsor) Retool (sponsor) CodeLand 2021 (sponsor) capSpire HTML freeCodeCamp Lambda JavaScript Edabit Flexbox

In this episode, we talk about an the expansion of government facial recognition software and an Apple App store settlement. Then we speak with Yafit Lev-Aretz, assistant professor of law at Baruch College and the Director of Tech Ethics program at the Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity, about Apple scanning iCloud images and iMessages for child sexual abuse material. Then we speak with Anunay Kulshrestha, Princeton Computer Science doctoral candidate, whose team had built a similar child sexual abuse materal scanning system, about the potential privacy and cybersecurity risks that implementing such a system creates. Show Notes Scout APM (DevNews) (sponsor) CodeLand (sponsor) Facial Recognition Software: Current and Planned Uses by Federal Agencies System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot Apple Settles With App Developers Without Making Major Concessions The All-Seeing "i": Apple Just Declared War on Your Privacy Apple: Expanded Protections for Children Opinion: We built a system like Apple's to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous Identifying Harmful Media in End-to-End Encrypted Communication: Efficient Private Membership Computation

In this episode, we talk about proof engineering with Talia Ringer, researcher and incoming assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Show Notes Scout APM (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (DevDiscuss) (sponsor) CodeLand (sponsor) seL4: Formal Verification of an OS Kernel Formally Verified Software in the Real World The CompCert C Compiler Formal Verification of a Realistic Compiler Finding and Understanding Bugs in C Compilers QED at Large: A Survey of Engineering of Formally Verified Software BP: Formal Proofs, the Fine Print and Side Effects Proof Repair Talia's Ph.D. Thesis Defense: Proof Repair PL/FM/SE at Illinois Proof Repair and Code Generation Galois BedRock Systems How AWS's Automated Reasoning Group helps make AWS and other Amazon products more secure A Solver-Aided Language for Test Input Generation Satnam Singh Silver Oak Project Proof Repair across Type Equivalences Adapting Proof Automation to Adapt Proofs Emily First RanDair Porter, Yuriy Brun Removing tokens in gallina.py LASER-UMASS / TacTok Developing Bug-Free Machine Learning Systems With Formal Mathematics Matthew Dwyer Refactoring Neural Networks for Verification Alex Polozov Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code

In this episode, we talk about Amazon Web Services, or AWS, with Hiroko Nishimura, AWS Hero, instructor on LinkedIn Learning and egghead.io, and creator of AWS Newbies. Hiroko talks going from IT to cloud computing, creating AWS Newbies, and some of the major cloud concepts newbies should know about that would make their journey easier when diving into cloud engineering. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (sponsor) Retool (sponsor) CodeLand 2021 (sponsor) Amazon Web Services (AWS) AWS Newbies AWS Heroes Cloud computing Egghead.io Lissa Explains it All Notepad++ Software as a service (SaaS) CSS HTML #100DaysOfCode jQuery AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner LinkedIn Learning AWS Lambda Amazon S3 Amazon EC2 Virtual machine Google Cloud: Cloud Computing Services freeCodeCamp: Andrew Brown A Cloud Guru

Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) and Rich Gall (@richggall) are joined by Saron Yitbarek, Founder and CEO of audio learning platform Disco and co-host of the brilliant Command Line Heroes podcast, to discuss the virtues of audio learning in age of excessive screen time and the importance of highlighting the stories of the people that have shaped the technology and software landscape today. Saron talks about her background and some of the challenges she faced when starting out in the software industry, explaining how they informed the work she has done since. She describes the thinking behind Disco, and how her earlier venture CodeNewbie (which has now been acquired by the team behind Dev.to), has laid the foundations for the types of work she is doing today. She also explains why she believes audio learning can be an important addition to the wide varity of formats available for people learning technology skills. We also discuss Command Line Heroes, with Saron talking about one of her favourite episodes, and touch on some of the parallels between that podcast and this.Saron also explains the importance of thinking carefully about how we onboard people into the tech and industry: she points out that we need to  better support systems for people moving into the industry from any background and at any point in their career.Follow Saron on Twitter: @saronyitbarekLearn more about DiscoLearn more about Code NewbieListen to Command Line HeroesWatch Saron's talk on CodeNewbie at Codeland 2020

Scott talks with Joe Karlsson about Document Databases like MongoDB and how they differ from classic Table-based (ER) databases. Can this next generation of WebAPI and JSON-powered cloud DB allow more beginners to get into programming? Is this the death of select * from table?NOTE: Scott met Joe while speaking at Codeland. While Mongo is a sponsor of Hanselminutes, this interview isn't related to that sponsorship in any way. Hanselminutes doesn't do "sponsored guests," only awesome guests.

Have you ever been scared to contribute to a conversation or publish a blog post because you were worried you weren’t qualified enough? Wondered how you got to the point you’re at in your career because you feel you don’t belong? Or that you’re a fraud? You’re not alone!In this episode, we discuss how we have experienced impostor syndrome and our personal strategies for combatting it.0:36 How have we experienced Impostor Syndrome Job Interviews (0:48) Quitting Computer Science & feeling like you stick out (2:04) Speaking for the first time at a conference (7:19) Feeling like you’re not qualified to teach something (11:46) When people say mean things about you (13:11) Running a company as someone young (16:32) Getting criticism (17:56) 21:21 Impostor Syndrome as a Business Owner21:55 Impostor Syndrome pushing us to be better24:40 Combatting Impostor Syndrome * Tracking your wins * Focusing on your personal journey instead of others’ * Being open about it and community w/ others37:24 WINS Cecilia who just graduated from the full-stack software engineering boot camp at Georgia Tech and landed her first job as a junior software developer. Emma - Coding Coach Team is doing incredible things Lindsey - Survived 106 heat index for her engagement pics! Kelly - Started her own online store! Ali - Spoke at CodeLand which was her most difficult talk to date because of how personal it was Additional Links: The truth about impostor syndrome Why I keep an 'Accomplishments / Good Stuff' List Check out the full shownotes and transcripts on our site!

Allen Holub on Deliver It, Jason Tanner on Drunken PM, Mary and Tom Poppendieck on Unlearn, Saron Yitbarek on Greater Than Code, and Dave Karow and Trevor Stuart on Deliver It. I’d love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email podcast@thekguy.com. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting July 8, 2019. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the fortnight when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. ALLEN HOLUB ON DELIVER IT The Deliver It podcast featured Allen Holub with host Cory Bryan. Cory started out by reviewing an article by Ron Jeffries called “Story Points Revisited.” Allen’s take is that the negatives around story points are more than just the potential for misuse; he believes story points have no value at all. He says the most important thing is to narrow your stories, not estimate them. He says estimates exist because of fear. The software development process is opaque to certain managers and, as a result, they want estimates to alleviate their fear, but when you are delivering every day, you can eliminate the fear without resorting to estimates. Cory asked Allen what product owners need to know about Agile architecture. Allen said that one of the mistakes that he sees product owners make a lot is they try to do a miniature up-front design and expect that to be implemented. When this happens, he says there is too much information captured up-front of what is going to be built during the sprint and not enough information captured during the sprint as a side effect of releasing code to users and getting their feedback. This leads to inappropriate architectures because when you do anything up-front, you start doing everything up-front. Your sprint planning starts involving architecture decisions, UI decisions, and UX decisions that may be wrong and you will not know if you are wrong until you release. In Allen’s view, the most important thing a product owner does is answer questions that come up during the course of development. He uses a “two-minute rule”: if a question comes up during development, the product owner needs to be able to answer within two minutes. Allen talked about how the constraints of a bad architecture can prevent you from ever being Agile. He says, “Agile has nothing to do with standup meetings and backlog grooming and all of those. The important thing is to get stuff into your user’s hands quickly.” Allen says that the architecture has to be focused on the domain. Where systems that are wrong go wrong is that they don’t map to the domain but to the technology. A change at the story level, which is where the majority of changes come from, ends up touching all the modules or layers of your system when your architecture is mapped to your technology instead of your domain. Allen says that when he does a workshop on Agile architecture, people raise their hands about halfway through and say, “All we’re doing is domain analysis!” The fact is, if the domain and code are matched to each other, domain analysis is architecture. One of the questions Allen asks when he gets a bunch of product owners in a class is, “How many of you talk to multiple customers multiple times a day?” Maybe 5% raise their hands. So he says, “Who in the organization does talk to multiple customers multiple times a day?” This is often met with silence. He asks, “What about Sales? What about Tech Support?” He says that if you can’t respond to customer kinds of issues as well as a salesperson or a tech support person could, you don‘t know the domain well enough to be helpful to the engineering team. Cory asked Allen what he thought of the distinction between regular stories and “technical” stories. Allen says that there is no such thing as technical stories. A story describes the users of your system performing some kind of domain level work to achieve a useful outcome. Fixing some technical thing like changing the color of a button in no way makes your end users’ lives easier; it does not help them do their work. Allen says that the role of the architect in an Agile environment is very different from what we traditionally think of, just like the role of a manager in an Agile environment. In Agile environments, the job of people who are in a leadership position is to make sure that you can do your job, not to tell you what to do. They communicate a strategic requirement, provide support, and remove the obstacles. The same, he says, applies to Agile architects. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ep90-agile-architecture-with-allen-holub/id966084649?i=1000441313352 Website link: http://deliveritcast.com/ep90-agile-architecture-with-allen-holub JASON TANNER ON DRUNKEN PM The Drunken PM podcast featured Jason Tanner with host Dave Prior. Dave started out by asking Jason why he believes the daily scrum is broken. Jason said that the daily scrum is broken because, first, most developers hate the daily scrum because most daily scrums take the traditional weekly project status review meeting and do it five times a week with the Scrum Master filling the role of the project manager. Second, he says, is that it is being done backwards. The center of attention should not be the Scrum Master, but the team and the sprint backlog. He says that the purpose of the daily scrum is misunderstood. The three questions don’t result in a plan but result in just an exchange of information. For what real daily planning looks like, he uses an analogy of driving down the road and seeing a bunch of plumbers’ trucks from the same company parked outside of a McDonald’s. Inside, they’re planning things like, “We’re going to the Johnson’s house at noon. Can you come over and meet me because it’s going to be a two-man job.” Jason says he hates the three questions. He says the subject of the sentence is not helping us in collective ownership of the sprint backlog. “I have my user story. I have my Jira ticket. I have five team members and we each have a ticket.” Shifting the subject of the sentence to “we”, he says, changes the behavior dramatically. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jason-tanner-is-on-a-mission-to-fix-your-daily-scrum/id1121124593?i=1000441958371 Website link: https://soundcloud.com/drunkenpmradio/jason-tanner-is-on-a-mission-to-fix-your-daily-scrum MARY AND TOM POPPENDIECK ON UNLEARN The Unlearn podcast featured Mary and Tom Poppendieck with host Barry O’Reilly. Barry asked Mary and Tom what we may need to unlearn since the Agile movement began. Mary says that Agile started as a reaction to what was going on at the time. The vast majority of people doing software engineering today weren’t around back then. One of the things Agile has to do is grow up to be not a reaction to bad things that happened in the past, but to be something that talks about, “What does it take to do good software engineering?” She contrasted the software engineers she speaks to today that expect to be handed a spec with the engineers she worked with early in her career who treated engineering as problem-solving. Tom talked about how many who are working to make organizations more agile attempt to solve problems with process. This assumes that the organization’s problems are process problems but they are actually architectural problems. This includes problems with the architecture of the applications they are evolving, problems with the structure of the organization, and problems with the structure of the relationships between the supporting groups and those who are benefitting from said groups. Mary talked about how Amazon AWS was one of the early organizations to understand that you need to give teams of smart, creative people problems to solve. As a result of having this insight, they organized the company in such a way as to optimize for this, such as by eliminating a central database which was heresy back in 2005. She called out AWS Lambda in particular because this product did not optimize for short-term shareholder value and would never have been approved at most companies because it reduced what Amazon was charging customers by five times. She attributes this ability to self-disrupt as being essential to Amazon AWS’s success. Tom talked about the fact that when you attempt to scale things up, you reach a point where complexity dominates any future gains and wipes them out. He says you instead need to de-scale: figure out how to do things in little chunks that are independent and don’t require coordination. He says that this is how cities have been organized for thousands of years. Mary said that she has been doing software since 1967 and has never seen anything last two decades and still be current. Agile is two decades old and cannot be current unless it is constantly adapting to what is current today. She brought up continuous delivery as a fundamental change in agile thinking. It changed the way we thought about how we structure organizations and teams and what kinds of responsibilities we should give to them. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/solving-problems-safely-with-mary-and-tom-poppendieck/id1460270044?i=1000442018979 SARON YITBAREK ON GREATER THAN CODE The Greater Than Code podcast featured Saron Yitbarek with hosts Arty Starr, Rein Henrichs, and Chanté Thurmond. They talked about the annual Codeland conference Saron is running and how it offers free on-site childcare this year. Saron says free on-site childcare at conferences today is where codes of conduct were a few years ago. She says that if her conference wasn’t making it easier for parents to attend, it wouldn’t be living up to their promise for inclusion. Chanté asked Saron what she learned in her transition from being a code newbie herself to the present day where she is running two podcasts, a software job, and a conference. Saron said she learned that it is important to be consistent in all your efforts, whether it is community work, your personal projects, or a project at work. Nothing gets built overnight and, for a while, nobody will care what you’re doing. If you want to do something great, it takes persistence and it takes you believing in yourself especially when you’re not getting external validation. Arty asked about what expertise in “newbie-ism” might look like. Saron says that it is about being comfortable in a state of frustration. She pointed to a study on the difference between those who finish a computer science degree and those who quit. The study said that those who finished the degree were comfortable being in a state of confusion: they knew that things were not going to make sense for a while and they were ok with that. A second thing, she says, that helps you become an expert newbie is realizing that almost all problems in coding are solvable. By contrast, in writing, there is no perfect essay. In journalism, there is a search for truth, but is truth attainable? In life sciences, we study nature all around us that we may never fully understand. She also says to keep your frustration external, avoid internalizing your failures, and she says to distance who you are from your work and the things you produce. Saron’s comment on being comfortable in a state of confusion triggered a Virginia Satir quote from Rein: “Do you know what makes it possible for me to trust the unknown? Because I've got eyes, ears, skin. I can talk, I can move, I can feel, and I can think. And that's not going to change when I go into a new context; I've got that. And then I give myself permission to say all my real yeses and noes, because I've got all those other possibilities, and then I can move anywhere. Why not?” Rein asked what Saron learned about teaching. Saron says that teaching is storytelling in disguise. She says that if we frame teaching opportunities as storytelling opportunities we can be better teachers. This reminded me of Josh Anderson’s comment on the Meta-Cast podcast that I referenced way back in episode 3, “Taking The Blue Pill Back To Sesame Street.” Rein brought up a theory of learning called conversation theory. In conversation theory, teaching happens as a conversation between two cognitive entities. You have to come to agreement and build a bridge with that other cognitive entity. It deconstructs the teacher-learner binary. The teacher themselves has to be a learner too. Chanté asked about the ethos at Code Newbie for being a learner and a teacher. Saron says they look to the community to pitch in. When someone asks a question, they encourage the community to answer. She contrasted Code Newbie with Stack Overflow. Code Newbie attempts to teach the learner from where they are and avoid the condescension that is common on Stack Overflow. She said that to create an environment where people are not afraid to ask questions, we have to be unafraid of being vulnerable ourselves. Go first, share your vulnerability, and share what you’re struggling with. The moment you start doing that, other people will be much more likely to raise their hands as well. Chanté asked Saron what resources she recommends for code newbies to learn to code. Saron said that the hard part isn’t finding resources but sticking with them when things get tough or boring. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/135-intentional-learning-with-saron-yitbarek/id1163023878?i=1000442022293 Website link: https://www.greaterthancode.com/intentional-learning DAVE KAROW AND TREVOR STUART ON DELIVER IT The Deliver It podcast featuring Dave Karow and Trevor Stuart with host Cory Bryan. They talked about running experiments to learn about your customer. Cory asked how people can run such experiments at scale. David pointed out that having a way to run the experiment is one thing, but you also need to be able to rapidly make sense of the results in a repeatable, authoritative way. Trevor says it is all about assumptions, hypotheses, and documentation. Before you even start your experiment, you need to understand why you are running it in the first place. In other words, you need to establish what is going to change as a result of the experiment. Trevor says that much of the market is already doing experiments and they don’t know it. They just call it “using feature flags” and rolling things out incrementally. They just need to move one step further to slice and dice their user populations, roll things out for longer time periods to those users, and bring the resulting data into a form that facilitates decision-making. David talked about dog-fooding by starting your rollout of new features with your employee population, giving examples from Microsoft, where it takes a few weeks to go from the employee population to the full customer population, and Facebook, where it takes about four hours for the same kind of rollout. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ep91-product-experiments-with-trevor-and-dave-from-split/id966084649?i=1000442844631 Website link: http://deliveritcast.com/ep91-product-experiments-with-trevor-and-dave-from-split FEEDBACK Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing podcast@thekguy.com. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKGuy Website:

01:24 - Saron’s Superpower: Being able to figure out what people need + read people. 02:26 - Codeland Conference (http://codelandconf.com/) July 22nd, 2019 in New York City! Episode 026: Codeland, Capitalism, and Creating Inclusive Spaces with Saron Yitbarek (https://www.greaterthancode.com/codeland-capitalism-and-creating-inclusive-spaces) 03:23 - Offering Free Onsite Childcare at Conferences 07:02 - CodeNewbie (https://www.codenewbie.org/) Base.cs Podcast (https://www.codenewbie.org/basecs) The CodeNewbie Podcast (https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast) 08:18 - Expertise in Newbie-ism 14:55 - Learning and Teaching Conversation Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_theory) Virtual Reality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality) Oculus (https://www.oculus.com/?locale=en_US) 22:27 - Encouraging Asking, Psychological Safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety), and Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable 29:48 - Building a Supportive Community and Advice for Code Newbies Dev.to (https://dev.to/) 34:12 - Dealing with Bad Actors Episode 038: Category Theory for Normal Humans with Dr. Eugenia Cheng (Congressive/Ingressive Behavior Conversation) (https://www.greaterthancode.com/category-theory-for-normal-humans) 42:35 - Coding as a Reflection of People 49:23 - Lexicon and Creating a Shared Language Mitigated Speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitigated_speech) Reflections: Chanté: Everyone is a Newbie, and the living room metaphor. Rein: How much ego investment in our work is appropriate? Arty: Growing the magical living room. Saron: Thinking about mitigation speech. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316017930/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0316017930&linkId=7d8a44b649d1a6249361310db4c2a8ac) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Saron Yitbarek.

Abadesi is back to host this episode with Saron Yitbarek, founder and CEO of CodeNewbie and the Codeland conference. Saron is a former journalist who started working in the tech industry and then pivoted to a technical role after learning to code from scratch. Aba and Saron talk about... What inspired her to get into tech, and the story of going from journalist to software engineer “Cold emailing will get you far in life.” Saron describes how reading the Walter Isaacson book about Steve Jobs showed her that tech can be about design and storytelling and that tech had a human side that fit with her liberal arts background. She explains how she got her first job at a tech company without any tech experience by cold emailing several founders in NYC. “Transitioning into a new career is hard. It’s a lot harder than we’ve been telling people that it is.” Her journey learning to code, including what she learned from the failed attempts “I said to myself I’m going to do this full-time, I’m going to give myself a month to see if I like it and I’m not allowed to quit until the month is over. This time I said to myself, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to suck but let’s give it a month and we’ll see if it sucks less at the end of the month. And it did — it sucked less, so I continued and went about my coding journey.” Saron talks about some of the resources she used and why having the right resources made a big difference in her eventual success. She also talks about starting the CodeNewbie community and why having a supportive community around you when learning to code is important. How to get the most out of coding bootcamps and how to find a great job “Your network is absolutely everything. When you’re hearing the success stories, what I’d like to know is how did that person actually get that job? Did they know a friend at the company? Do they live in San Francisco? Are they already working at a tech company in a non-technical role?” Saron points out that it's important to manage your expectations coming out of a coding bootcamp. “I think there is this expectation oftentimes that if I go through the bootcamp and graduate, I’m going to automatically get a job without having to go through the job search. If you go into it with that mindset, you’re going to be frustrated if it’s been a couple months and you still don’t have a job.” How the landscape for learning to code has changed She explains how bootcamps have evolved over time: “I think that there is a deeper understanding of what it really takes to learn how to code and what it takes to be job-ready. Some of the programs are a little bit longer and more in-depth. They’re not trying to cover all things but instead the fundamental things. There’s a maturity in the space where we have a better understanding of what companies are actually looking for.” She also talks about some of the communities and resources that have popped up since she was learning how to code. Her unique formula for staying organized and productive “Any time someone gives me a task I pull up my calendar and I will give myself a block of time to do a task. I end up with a timesheet for myself with everything I’ve been doing in a day. At the end of the month, I can tally it up in a spreadsheet and see exactly how I’m using my time.” She also talks about some of the apps her and her team uses to stay on top of their time and their work. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Monday.com and Embroker for their support.

Saron Yibarek started the CodeNewbie community because it was hard to find truly welcoming places for new coders. Now she's made CodeLand and let me tell you, it's an amazing developer conference that sets a new bar for what it means to be welcoming. How did she do it and why? http://codelandconf.com

How do you code without actually coding? What tools can you use to build apps and automate workflows without using any code? Joanna shares the power for these non-coding tools and how you can build amazing solutions with tools like GSuite. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Codeland 2019

Tim Heuer really wanted to be a police officer, so he started down that track and became a police recruit. But after facing the reality that police recruits don't get paid much and wanting to settle down with a lady he was seeing, he decided to look for other ways to make money. He got a temp job doing basic data entry, and that kicked off his long winding path to the world of coding. He tells us how he eventually became a principal at Microsoft, and what helped him navigate his career. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Codeland 2019

Starting something new can feel super overwhelming…and kind of terrifying. The good news? A lot of us feel this way—no, really, that’s the good news! That, and we’re all in this together. On this week’s show, we talk with Saron Yitbarek about how she started, grew, and nurtures CodeNewbie—the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. It all started with one little (but powerful) sentiment: be nice. We also talk to her about what it’s like to be new at something, making a place for yourself at the table even if you’re not sure there’s a seat for you, and living up to your own potential. > I don’t think I’ve ever taken a piece of feedback that I didn’t immediately inside respond with, like, intense anger and, you know, taking offense to it. But…we’re not optimizing for my feelings. And we’re not optimizing for me patting myself on the back. That’s not the point. We’re optimizing for creating a really strong and amazing community and to be a resource for other people. > —Saron Yitbarek, founder of CodeNewbie Also in this episode, we: Swap stories about first jobs, finding office advocates, and gaining the confidence to take the reins at work. Get pumped about summertime vibes and vow to spend a little more time outside, even if it means sweating a little. (A lot.) And don’t forget to check out CodeNewbie’s Twitter chat, podcast, and Codeland conference. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you.   Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off your first paid month. Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher [Ad spot] Do you want a workplace where you can hone your craft and make an impact? Then you should check out Shopify. Shopify creates commerce tools used by more than 600,000 merchants around the world—and they’re looking for smart, passionate problem solvers to help them grow even more. Learn more about Shopify and see all their current openings from Toronto to Tokyo at shopify.com/careers [music fades in, plays alone for 12 seconds, fades out]. Jenn Lukas Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. Katel LeDû I’m Katel LeDû. SWB And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. KL Today is all about being new. How do you find your footing; adapt to new environments; and, ultimately, get a place at the table; and how can those of us who already feel comfortable in our industries or our jobs just do a better job of holding the door open for those who come after us. Our guest today has lots of experience with that. Her name is Saron Yitbarek and she’s the founder of CodeNewbie, an organization that’s all about, well, supporting people who are new to code. But before we get to Saron, do you all remember what it was like when you got your first sort of grown up job? SWB I had a couple of like semi-grown-up jobs where like I still had to do a lot of like customer service but they were—like I had a salary. But my first proper grown up job, I was just about 23, about to be 23, maybe something like that, and I got a job as a junior copywriter at an ad agency. And let me tell you what: they really emphasized the “junior” [Katel says, “Aw!”] whenever they could. It took me a few months to figure out, like, who wielded power and who I could turn to, and who everybody secretly hated. And that always like—that always takes time in a job, but in that particular moment I felt like in a lot of ways I felt like really vulnerable. Like I was trying to build at the time what I thought was going to be some kind of writing career and that morphed a lot in ways that were awesome. But I was like, “Ok, this is my chance to get my foot in the door in—in some kind of industry that I want to be in,” also it turns out I don’t like advertising but, you know, I was like so kind of anxious about fitting in and performing. And it was really tough. I mean I felt I was like super tucked off by myself. I didn’t necessarily know who I could trust or who to go to. And I learned a lot while I was there but I remember feeling like such an outsider. And that feeling sucks. KL Looking back on that, I mean I think one of the sort of nice things about getting older and growing in your career you can kind of look back and say, “I wish I had known this,” or, “If I could tell myself something.” Is there—is there anything you look back and think, “If I had known this or if I had had the confidence to do this, I could’ve gotten by a little bit more easily?” [2:58] SWB I think in that particular environment the thing that I wish I had realized was that they were optimized to like wring whatever they could out of their junior staff on the creative team, but also the account management team. Like that was really how they operated, and I couldn’t see that at first, right? That that was the entire structure of the business was such that you would work the hell out of the most junior people, because those people were so desperate to want to fit in and want to succeed. And not even that that would’ve like changed my behavior necessarily, because obviously I was using that as my own stepping stone or whatever, but I think what it would’ve changed is the way that I looked at it, because I think that I internalized a lot of weird shit for a while that looking back I want to be like, “Oh, baby Sara, that was some toxic bullshit that had nothing to do with you.” JL Agency life [laughter]. My first real adult job was actually a pretty good experience. I made Navy training simulations at Lockheed Martin. KL Woah! JL I know [laughs]. It was different but you know what? I just worked with a really great group of people. It was a interesting scenario that a bunch of people that graduated from the same college as I did we all like went and worked there. And so it just started like someone worked there and then they were like, “Hey, you should hire my other friends,” and like they just kept hiring all of us. My first boss, his name was Bob Eagle and he had a sign outside his office that said “The Eagle’s Nest” and Bob was awesome. He’d walk around with a stress ball and he’d just be like, “How’s it goin’?” And he’d like come by and like see how things are going, and like he just genuinely cared. Like if you needed something he’d like help you out and, I don’t know, it was just like one of those things like it definitely wasn’t going to be the job for me for life. For instance there was another woman that worked there who was not in my department. I’m not sure what she did but she would come down and she—all the time she would look at me and say, “You look like the coroner chick on NCIS!” [Laughter] Yes! The super goth one [laughs]. SWB Ok sidebar: I love that she’s still super goth even though that show’s been on [laughter] a very long time. I really like that she’s like a permanent goth. I’m pro living a permanent goth lifestyle if that’s your truth— KL Completely. SWB —like you should do it. KL It sounds like Bob Eagle was kind of like a coach figure though. JL He was awesome. KL So that’s, like, that’s amazing. I think when you have that early that—that makes you feel like, “Ok, if I can identify the advocates in this scenario or if I can kind of like figure out who the people are who are going to help me either make the right connections or like get involved in the right areas or the right groups or whatever.” That is so helpful. [5:49] JL And the other thing was like, really like, for that… how I left that job was really important. Because you’re working on confidential information, you sort of like get stuck in a—like how do you get another job after that? Because you can’t really show anyone anything you’ve worked on, because it’s all classified. And so I was in a position where I was like, “I don’t want to stay here longer than a year.” There’s other stuff I did want to like get more into agency and design life. And so I like applied for—I didn’t—I wasn’t sure how to do that because I didn’t, again, I didn’t really have a portfolio because all of my stuff was classified. So I applied for internships, honestly, as my next job and I decided to take one and so I went to put my notice in, and when I went to tell Bob he was like, “Huh. How many days a week you working there?” And I was like, I think it was like two or three at the time. He goes, “Why don’t you stay and work here the other two or three days til you’re ready to leave?” And I was like, “That would be amazing!” And it was just one of those things that because I was honest with my intentions and I think like I didn’t like leave in like a blaze of glory. It made it that like here was someone who was able to like look out for me who wanted me to stay and work as long as I could, so it was like beneficial for both of us. So I think like an honest conversation ended up working out really well. SWB You know it’s interesting there’s something else that you mentioned when you were talking about that workplace. Like one of the things that made it really great was also that you—it sounded like you didn’t ever really feel like an outsider, because you had these connections to people from the college you’d gone to going in. And I think for a lot of people that’s just not going to be the reality. And obviously, like, hiring only people from one college is kind of problematic in a lot of workplaces already. So I always think of like, “Ok, now that I have a little bit more sort of like stability and some amount of context about how my industry works, how can I help other people feel less like outsiders? Because they’re not necessarily all going to have that kind of experience, and like, so what do I do with people who come in who don’t have the connections or the network or the like, “Oh I worked at my uncle’s firm last summer and learned the ropes of this industry”—like, what do you do to help those people? And I’m thinking about that a lot when it comes to the people that I encounter now who are in their twenties and who are trying to get their footing and get that door open a [chuckles] little bit. I don’t want them to feel so, like, at sea. KL Yeah. I love this idea and I—we just hired somebody, you know, part-time at A Book Apart and she’s amazing and she’s wonderful, and I mean I think completely aside from this, she is wonderful. But a big part of when she came on board that I wanted to make sure I had in place was—and I know this can sound sort of like prescriptive, but I made sure to do a lot of planning work in the onboarding, because we’re a remote company. And I wanted to make sure she felt like she was part of a team, even though it was, you know, everyone’s remote and she didn’t know anybody she was going to be working with. So I just wanted to make sure that I introduced her to everyone and that she knew sort of what everybody did and there were some expectations for the first month and the first three months and sort of like there was a roadmap that we could follow together. And it wasn’t just like, “Ok, you’re hired! Like here’s your computer and [laughs] like you’re on your own.” [9:05] JL We have a summer internship program at Urban that’s starting next week and one of their managers on our team will be this woman Dee, and Dee was suggesting to call them summer associates instead of summer interns because “interns” you get the obligatory coffee jokes. And so I felt like it was like nice that she was like looking for ways to like make them feel more included right away instead of like, “Oh the interns are here.” SWB Right, like they actually work there and they matter. JL Yeah. KL Right. SWB One of the things that Saron talked about in her interview that I also thought was super interesting was feeling like she walked into rooms and didn’t feel like she had a place at the table, and she had to make space for herself. And I know I’ve had that feeling a lot, too, and I think it comes back to that same concept of making space for people. And I’m—I’m curious: have you ever had that feeling of, like, finally realizing that you had a place at the table? And how did that come to be? KL Yeah. I definitely have. I think I sort of felt it in a couple different ways in my career, you know, in the last couple jobs I’ve had. When I worked at National Geographic I was there for a really long time and sort of worked up this, you know, ladder of management and I was getting invited to executive-level meetings and I was getting a chance to sort of like be part of those conversations but even though I was invited and I was sitting at the table, I never felt confident enough to really like say everything I wanted to say. And I think that was, you know, a combination of things not having someone who sort of made me feel empowered to do that and also I think just some general cultural stuff that was going on there. But by the time I sort of felt confident enough to do that, I was switching jobs and when I went to A Book Apart, I was facing a completely different scenario where I walked in and I had a seat at the table immediately and it was sort of like, “Here you go.” Sort of, “here are the keys.” And like, you have a seat at the table and you’re also allowed to make all these decisions, and that was sort of scary in a different way. [11:18] SWB Like how did you get to that place where you were new at A Book Apart and you knew you were supposed to be in a leadership role but you didn’t necessarily know what like the boundaries of that are because it’s a small, you know, small company. How did you get to a place where you like kind of took those—took the reins? I don’t know we’re talking about keys and tables but let’s throw [laughter] reins in there too. Where you like felt like you could take the reins and just be like, “Ok! I’m—this is what we’re going to do now.” KL I felt like it was sort of double-edged for me and how I work because, like I said, I sort of came into this scenario where we were all sort of figuring out what the job was which was super exciting. It was like figure out what this role is and you make it what you—you want it to be. And that was extremely exciting but it was also terrifying because I was so used to having structure and boundaries and clear expectations. So it was like, “Ok, what do I do?” [Chuckles] Like, “What do I next?” So I think just becoming aware that I had to set some of those was—was super helpful. And I think that you don’t recognize that right away. JL It’s interesting that like the freedom to like do these things is based on the fact that you are responsible and capable of doing these things and it’s like weird that we have to like remind ourselves of that sometimes but it’s good to know that. Be like, “Yes, I can do this.” I remember back when eventually I did start going into agency life as a junior developer and, again, that junior word. Ugh. It always really grinded my gears [laughs]. Really, really working in the vocab swaps today, ladies. You know I would like, there’d be—I’d be working on like an email campaign, let’s say there’d be an issue, but I couldn’t just tell the client what the issue was. I had to tell my manager, my manager had to tell the project manager, the project manager had to tell the account manager, and then the account manager could tell the client. The email would get forwarded, and then an email would get forwarded back down the chain to me, and by the time it got there it was like a bad game of telephone where they didn’t even describe the right problem anymore, and I was like, “But that’s not what the problem was.” “Oooh.” And I remember when I went later on to my next job I was like working on something and I was like, “Ok, you know, this is ready for the client.” And they were like, “Ok, email them.” And I was like, “What? You want me to tell the client that their templates are ready?” And they’re like, “Yessss. You are a capable adult [laughs] like who can do this.” And I was like, “Oh! Thank you for trusting me to be able to email a client,” like again not something like we’re all capable of sending an email and leaving out like expletives like of the email and writing a response. SWB Well [laughter] speak for yourself. JL [Laughing] “Here are your fucking templates. Have fun!!” [Laughter.] That’s exactly how I would’ve written it. You know of course we can do this, but because of the fear I think at the last job it like instilled in me of being junior, it was like, “Oh! I don’t know if I can write an email.” [14:14] SWB You know it’s interesting this whole concept of being a junior or whatever. I think obviously everybody has to be new at their thing at some point, like there’s no escaping that. But in some cultures I think that that labelling of somebody as the “junior” person and the way that they then get treated can be really problematic. And so something that I really loved about talking  to Saron was the way that she sort of celebrates being new to something as being a really powerful place to be. And I was really excited to hear about the way that she has built that community, and it—it’s specific to code for her community, but I feel like so much of it applies to like literally anything. Can we listen to the interview? KL I can’t wait [music fades in, plays alone for five seconds, fades out]. Our sponsors SWB [Ad spot] But before we get to the interview we have got to tell you about two awesome companies that make No, You Go possible. First up is Harvest, an awesome online tool designed to help teams keep track of time they spend working on different projects and client work. I started using Harvest when I worked at an agency, one of the good ones, and it made it easy for us to see who was working on what and whether we were on track and on budget. I also used Harvest as a consultant because they make it so easy to send invoices and get paid fast. Harvest also has a super sweet timer feature which helps you track how long tasks take and bill accurate hours. You can start the timer on your desktop app and then stop it on your way home from the iPhone app. It’s super easy. Start your free trial now at getharvest.com and when you upgrade to a paid account, enter coupon code no you go for 50% off your first month. That’s getharvest.com, coupon code no you go. KL We’re also supported by our friends at WordPress. They’re the platform we use for noyougoshow.com, and we’re not alone. Nearly 30% of websites run on WordPress. With plans starting at just four dollars a month, they make it easy to get your website, portfolio, or online store up and running in no time, and their friendly customer support is there to lend a hand 24/7. It’s true. We’ve tried it and they’re awesome. So what are you waiting for? Start building your website today. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo for 15% off any new plan purchase. That’s wordpress.com/noyougo for 15% off your brand new website [music fades in, plays alone for four seconds, fades out]. Interview: Saron Yitbarek KL I am so excited to welcome Saron Yitbarek to the show today. Saron is the founder of CodeNewbie, which is the most welcoming, supportive, just plain fucking awesome international community for people learning to code. We are going to talk about how she built CodeNewbie; what it’s become; and what’s next for her and her company. Saron, welcome to No, You Go. Saron Yitbarek Yeah, thank you so much for having me! KL Awesome. Well, let’s start at the beginning. How and why did you start CodeNewbie? SY So I started CodeNewbie as a reaction I guess to my own learn-to-code experience. So when I decided to first learn to code four or five years ago now, I started by doing it on my own. So I quit my job, I spent 12 to 16 hours a day couped up in my apartment, doing online coding tutorials, reading books, doing courses—anything I could really get my hands on—and it was just hard. It was really, really hard and it was hard in a different way that I expected. It was really lonely, it was frustrating, I found myself internalizing a lot of failure because, you know, when it’s you versus the computer, the computer is always right which means that you are always wrong [chuckles]. And after about three months of doing I said, “You know I think I need a little bit more structure in my learning,” and so I applied and got accepted into a bootcamp and all of a sudden I had 44 other people in the room who were going on that exact same journey with me and they—they got it. They understood it, you know? We cried when things didn’t work, we high fived when things did work, and it was so interesting to me that the biggest thing, the biggest difference, biggest bonus of having—of being part of a bootcamp is that community and that community really made all the difference. And when, you know, it was near the end of my time at the bootcamp I thought to myself, “Wow! This was one of the biggest benefits of this but I only got it because I could afford to take three months, you know, without continuing to not work and I could spend, you know, thousands of dollars on this program and that’s not accessible to most people. So how do—how do you provide that same community, that really essential community if you, you know, are not in that position of privilege.” And so I at the time Twitter chats were like a huge thing. You know people—I think people still do them now but like back then like everyone had a Twitter chat and so I thought, “Wow! Twitter chats are a really great format to, you know, to—to reach a lot of people all you need is a Twitter account and an internet, and to be awake during the time of the chat, and with just that you can get a bunch of people in the same, you know, quote/unquote “room”, virtual room and get people talking and connecting and sharing resources and that’s what happened. [19:14] KL That sounds really amazing and I love the fact that you built something based on sort of like a challenge that you were running into. So I want to ask a little bit about you. You’re an Ethiopian woman who’s become somewhat of a public figure, you know, working in tech and—and running this company. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and your journey? SY Yeah, for me my experience has been less defined by specifically being Ethiopian and more defined by being an immigrant. Like I feel like growing up as an immigrant, I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. You know? And even though I was raised in this country, I was raised in America, I came to the US when I was almost three years old. We always talked about Ethiopia as home. You know? You say, “I go back home.” You know which like even now when I think of like the word “home” I’m thinking like, “Oh! Obviously Ethiopia.” Never lived there. You know [chuckles] I’ve—I’ve been here my whole life but like in my mind there’s always this sense of occupying a space versus belonging in that space. You know with my family we were—parents are very strict, and I also like raised Jehovah’s Witness. So like there’s a whole other strictness and, you know, don’t be a part of the world that comes with that religion. My dad was very much about you know, “Get your education. Be, you know, a doctor, a lawyer. You know, don’t get—don’t get distracted by boys.” You know that whole thing. And so, yeah, I—I feel like I was very much watching the world around me and didn’t really feel like I could actively participate until I became an adult, until basically [chuckles] I like left home. And that’s my worldview. Like my worldview when I walk into a room is never like, “I own this.” Or, “This is for me.” Like there—there are very, very few times I’ve ever walked into a room or been in a place and felt like, “Yes, there’s a seat for me here.” I always feel like I have to make a seat or take someone else’s or just be loud enough that even if I don’t have a seat they can’t ignore me, you know? And I think just that element of—of always feeling like the outsider is something I’ve carried with me and has been, you know, a good thing and a bad thing in different situations but that’s probably been like the—the one part of being Ethiopian that has very strongly shaped, you know, definitely being in the tech industry and really everything else that I do. [21:29] SWB That’s so amazing to hear you explain it in that way, because it makes your desire to do something like CodeNewbie make a lot of sense to me. Where it’s like, oh you were out there thinking, you know, “There wasn’t a space for me. Ok, I have to figure out how to create one.” SY Mm hmm. SWB So I’m curious like you mentioned that CodeNewbie started out as being this Twitter chat and then it’s really grown and expanded a lot since then. Can you tell us a little bit more about that piece of it? So like once you started creating that space for you and for people like you to have these conversations and to feel more supported, how did it evolve? SY It evolved by mostly just listening and reacting. We did the Twitter chats every Wednesday night at 6pm Pacific Time, 9pm Eastern Time for one hour, using the hashtag codenewbie and the general structure is that I would tweet out questions usually based on some type of theme and everyone in the community would answer and the value of it wasn’t really in the questions and the answers, it was more in the opportunity to hear other people’s thoughts, opinions, perspectives, stories, and the chance to connect with them. You know when you say like, “Hey, I’m going to ask a question everyone gets to answer,” you’ve kind of given permission to the community to have them talk to each other. Actually we explicitly encourage that. We say like, “You’re more than welcome like, you know, use the hashtag but you’re more than welcome to respond directly to each other.” And so that’s the real value of the Twitter chat. And so we did that for five, six months and it got to a point where I still had to kind of promote it. You know I still had to ask for retweets and, you know, push it and, you know, and all that, and then at about five, six months I said, “Huh! I don’t really need to push it anymore. Like people—people get it. You know they already know what it is, they know what it’s about, and they—they keep showing up.” And that was the moment when I was like, “Ok I think I have something. I don’t know what it is but it’s—it’s something.” And what I realized about a year into doing the Twitter chats is that—if you’ve been on Twitter you probably know that Twitter is a great way to start conversations, it is not a great way to have a conversation. 140—I guess 280 characters now is just—it’s just not enough to—to have people understand you before you piss them off [laughing] and so I kept thinking to myself, “You know what’s—what’s a good way to dig deeper into a topic if you want to unpack a particular story, a particular problem, what’s a better tool for that?” And my first job out of college was actually working at NPR and so I thought, “Oooh! Audio! Podcasting! That’s a really great medium to focus on a story, a problem, a person. To dig in for, you know, 30, 40 minutes, an hour, and, you know, just kind of live in that world for a little bit and extract as much value from that as you can.” And so, you know, that was a direct response to how—understanding limitations of the Twitter chat led to the creation of the podcast. And then I think at some point after doing the podcast, people kept asking for, you know, a—a place to meet physically which, frankly, I was kind of opposed to because, you know, I thought that the whole beauty of CodeNewbie and kind of, you know, the point was to connect people who aren’t connected. And so when I thought of meetups there was like so many limitations. You have to physically be there. You have to be able to drive there. You have to be available for a set number of hours, you know, doing nothing but the meetup itself. So it felt very exclusive in—in a way but I had like too many requests and too many who said like, “I just need in-person physical support. Like I, you know, online is great but it’s not—it’s just not the way for me.” That I kind of gave in and said, “Ok, let’s do some meetups.” So we did that in response to the community but I guess the last like big thing that we did was the conference. So when I graduated from my bootcamp two months after graduating I applied to speak at a conference which I had absolutely no business doing. It was RailsConf 2014 and I had this what I thought was a really shitty idea and I was talking to a woman, Vanessa Hurst, who is one of the co-founders of Girl Develop It. It was a really, really big really amazing non-profit teaching women to—to code and I told her my idea and she’s like, “Oh! It’s so good! It’s great!” And I’m thinking like, “Ok. If she thinks it’s good then, you know, I’m going to listen to her.” And—and then I said to her, “I’ve never spoken before, you know, do you think I should do it at a few meetups first and then, you know, maybe like sometime down the line, you know, pitch it to a—to a conference?” [25:36] SY [Continued] And she looked at me and she said, “I don’t believe in stepping stones.” And it just gave me chills and I was like, “Ahhhh! I too do not believe in stepping stones.” Like [laughing] it was—it was amazing. And so because of her I submitted that idea. I think it was that day—I think it was like the last day to—to submit talks and I remember so vividly being on the train, you know, on the way back home from work. And this was maybe like a month later and I—I saw the email and it said, you know, “We’re excited to offer you a position, you know, a—a speaking slot at RailsConf,” and I literally—I gasped, I laughed, and then I cried. And I was sitting across from these two little old ladies and they were very afraid of me. I looked very—I looked very unstable [laughs]. And so that was my first speaking opportunity and also my first conference. And when I got there it ended up being an amazing experience. I’ve done a ton of speaking since but what I recognized is that tech conferences are not made for newbies. They’re made for industry people. You know the idea is that you want to level up, you want to learn more about your framework, your language, your particular domain, and you go to level up. If you don’t have a solid foundation first, if you’re not up with the trends, if you just don’t even know enough to know what the trends even are, then it can be a really hard place to find value and—and to feel like you belong. And so when I was there I kept kind of making little mental notes of like, “Ah like this didn’t work for me,” and, you know, “This—it would’ve been so good if they—if they had this and that.” Everytime I go to a conference I’ve kind of just been adding to that list of things I would do differently and things I like, things I don’t like. And so I—I said to myself, “You know at some point I would love to do a conference but if I do it’s going to be super newbie friendly and I’m going to make sure no one feels lost or overwhelmed or like they don’t know what’s going on.” And I guess it was three years after my first tech conference, I produced CodeLand which is our conference specifically designed for newbies and that was also a reaction to my own experiences. So that’s a long way of saying it’s been a lot of listening. It’s been a lot of listening to the community, figuring out what the best solution is, figuring out how to hopefully execute that well, and give people the tools they need to succeed. [27:46] KL That’s so cool. I feel like when you were talking about that advice that you got of, you know, not believing in stepping stones it was like that was the message you needed to hear in that moment. I really love it. When you were getting into tech and into this industry and building a huge community there, has that shaped your experience in your work and your life in general? SY It’s made me a lot more tolerant of [chuckles] people’s differing opinions, meaning like, you know, when they’re different from my own very strongly held opinions. It’s really—you know we talk about inclusion a lot and, you know, to be clear CodeNewbie is not, you know, a diversity effort, it’s not a diversity initiative but I think that everything should inherently be inclusive. I think we should always strive to include as many voices and perspectives as possible, regardless of, you know, what industry or what problem you’re trying to solve, and so in the efforts of doing that I’ve learned that I have a ton of blind spots. You know even being an Ethiopian immigrant woman, you know, non CS holding, you know, person. Like I have a ton of blind spots that I didn’t realize that I had and it’s from being very open to being critiqued—actually that was—I had like a little closing talk at CodeLand and the message of that was please call us out. If you see us do something that you feel like is a little off brand. If you see a better way that we can do something. If you see that we’ve excluded someone. If you see that we’ve, you know, done something that it just doesn’t follow our values, the values that we’ve stated, please send me a message. Send me an email. And people have. People have over the years and, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s never fun to be called out. You know especially when you pride yourself on certain values and someone’s like, “Mm mm! No. You didn’t—you know you did that thing and that thing is not the thing.” So you’re—you know, it’s—it’s hard to—to listen to that and kind of not—and I don’t think I’ve ever taken a piece of feedback that I didn’t immediately inside respond with, like, intense anger and, you know, taking offense to it. But then I say like, “Ok that’s not—that’s not what we’re optimizing for.” Right? Like we’re not optimizing for my feelings. And we’re not optimizing for me patting myself on the back. That’s not the point. We’re optimizing for creating a really strong and amazing community and to be a resource for other people. And if we’ve decided that that’s the goal, that’s what we’re working towards then it’s a lot easier to, you know, feel your feelings but then put ‘em aside and tell ‘em to shut the fuck up. And then go about and, you know, go about and, you know, listen to the things that people say and implement those changes. So just being more open to being critiqued, being more tolerant, and just understanding that even though I’m a double minority or a triple minority, it’s probably, you know, quadruple I’m sure if we think harder. Everyone has their biases, everyone has their blind spots, and, you know, and I’m not an exception to that. [30:37] SWB Gosh, that is so important. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, because I give a lot of talks that are about, you know, the way that bias gets actually built into tech products, right? Which means that I have to talk about all these issues and like I’ve had to really come to terms with the fact that I’m going to fuck it up sometimes or like I think that for me it’s been like this process of saying, “Ok. I’m going to talk about things that are difficult and uncomfortable, and—and the reason that they are difficult and uncomfortable is that they are not talked about enough and that like we are bad at talking about things if we don’t practice it [chuckles].” So, guess what! You’re going to have to do this and sometimes you may do it badly because you won’t be able to do a good job at it without some missteps along the way, and like to try to look at it as like this is—this is just what you have to do now. I also feel you though, oh my gosh, Saron, I like—[sighs] I get that same response. That first like immediately like— SY “Who do you think you are?!?” SWB Right! Like, “Can’t you see—can’t you see—” SY “I’m trying so hard.” SWB Yes! Exactly! “Can’t you see I’m trying so hard here?!?” And then it’s like, hmm, nope. Not—valuable. Like, you can have that feeling but like that doesn’t add anything to the world. And it’s so hard and it’s so important I think to like acknowledge that that’s like a super normal response. We can all have that feeling and then like you can’t make that the important thing of the conversation, right? Like I’m so tired of—I think so many of the problems we face are like people putting their feelings at the same bar of like actual harm being done. SY Yeah!!! Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And what I’ve learned is that the tendency is to justify it, right? The tendency is to explain yourself, the tendency is always, “No, no, no, no. That’s not what I meant.” What, you know, like, ok, fine, I, you know, I keep saying the word “guys” that I know that it’s not inclusive but like I’m not a bad person, you know? Like [chuckling] that’s really what it comes down to is you convincing, frankly, usually like this stranger on the internet that you’re not a bad person, and what has—there’s two things that have kind of helped me not do that and number one is, you know, people have done that to me and I’m just like it just looks so bad. It looks so bad. But also I’ve learned to recognize that when someone takes the time to give me constructive feedback, it’s because they trust that I’ll do something about it. Like it’s a sign of faith. You know I’ve never given feedback to—and I see a bunch of questionable things all the time in the tech community and when I give feedback it’s usually because I know the brand didn’t mean to, right? Like if I saw a brand and they’re obviously sexist and then they, you know, do something like that’s a little questionable, what’s the point? You’ve already decided that you’re sexist. It’s risky for me to put my neck out there and it’s not helping my life, like I’m trying to help you be better. And if I think that you actually don’t care and I think you actually are sexist, racist, whatever-ist, I’m not going to bother. But if I email and say, “Hey, I noticed blah blah blah blah. You—you know I know you really care about blah blah blah so you might consider doing blah blah blah.” That’s a huge sign of faith. That’s a huge sign of me saying, “I trust that you actually care. It probably wasn’t intentional. It’s probably a blind spot you weren’t aware of and, you know, and—and I want—I want the best for you and so I’m going to try to be helpful.” Like that’s actually what that means. Recognizing that that’s usually what people mean when they do it to me really helps me get over myself. [34:01] SWB Totally! I’ve referred to it before as, like, that kind of feedback doesn’t feel like it, but it’s actually a gift. SY Yeah, absolutely. SWB It’s somebody doing you a kindness. KL Mm hmm. This makes me think of, again, that—the idea that the things that are—are driving this community and what you set out to do with this community are really baked into, you know, every piece of it. Are there a set of values and principles that drive the community? SY Oh yeah definitely. We start every single Twitter chat with our three rules: be helpful, be supportive, be nice. We—we declare it every single week and we really try to embody that as much as possible. So if you—it’s so funny, if you look at, you know, the CodeNewbie Twitter account compared to like my Twitter account, it’s very different brands. Like it’s very different branding. [Chuckles] I think that, you know, especially with the CodeNewbie account my—my goal was to be your biggest cheerleader. This characteristic—this like quality, you know, really came out to me I think it was two years ago? Yeah I think it was about two, three years ago. I was at work and I had this—this terrible, terrible pain in my right shoulder and I write with my right hand. So I had this terrible, terrible pain on my right shoulder and it was actually like my first week at a new job. So it was very bad timing. And it hurt so much that I ended having to go home early to see a doctor. That day—that night, it came back again really, really strong. It just it hurt—it hurt so bad that my—my shoulder was like frozen, meaning I just I could barely move it. Like I just physically couldn’t move my arm and it hurt so much that I was crying. Like I was just—just howling in pain. And this was two minutes before the Twitter chat was supposed to start. And so I’m sitting at my computer and I’m like, you know, like holding my arm and just, you know, crying and howling, and my husband’s looking at me and he’s like, “We have to go to the emergency room.” And I said, “No!! It’s time for the Twitter chat!” And so I—I said to him, I was like, “You are going to type. I am dictating to you. You’re going to type and you’re—we’re doing this chat together.” And, you know, he knows better than to—to mess with me. So we sat at my desk and opened the computer and, you know, I’m—I’m dictating to him and that’s when I realize like how seriously I take this because, you know, he’ll type something that’s pretty friendly and I’m like, “There’s not enough exclamation points!” [Laughter] “You need three exclamation points minimum!” You know? And—and Suzy will be like, you know, “I—I just contributed to my first open source, you know, request.” And I’m like, “Congratulate Suzy!!!” You know? [Boisterous laughter] “With–with smiley faces!!!” [36:28] KL It’s so obvious to me that you do such a great job of bringing people along with that and an explicit sort of member criteria of being nice and I think that that’s so incredibly important and it draws other people who value that into the community. Did that come from a specific place? And like how—how do you maintain it? SY I really—I wanted it to be very clear the type of behavior that’s expected. Like very, very clear. Like there’s no question of who we are, what we’re about, and—and what we will, you know, put up with, and what type of behavior we encourage which is why we start every Twitter chat, you know, for the last four years has started with those three rules and we embody that. We, you know, we—we show that in every tweet that we do and every post and the podcast—in everything we do, we try to be as supportive and positive and inclusive as we can be. And so I think that when you are showing the values that you declare and you’re like showing them off, you know, and—and really just pushing them really hard, you tend to, I think, kind of gross out people who don’t believe that. Like it kind of becomes annoying. You know? Like if you’re like, “Everyone’s amazing all the time!!!,” you know? That can be annoying for assholes. So I think what I found is that by being aggressively positive and kind of over the top with displaying these values and these qualities, we’ve given people an opportunity to self-select. And if you are mean, you don’t believe these things, I think you just don’t want to sit with us. You know? I think we would just annoy the crap—like it’s not fun to hang out with us. And that was very intentional. SWB I was also thinking about it as like, I think that it’s so intensely positive that that might seem over the top, except that when you step back and you realize that so many people are plagued by self doubt and also have, like, other voices that are not positive. It’s like, I think people are really hungry for that. And it’s such a gap that they don’t—they don’t have. And so if you were a person—like if CodeNewbie was literally just a human person, like it was just you, coming from your voice, it might feel like, “Ok, ok. This is a little much.” But coming from this other entity and kind of making it this bigger community feel, it feels totally right. [38:50] SY Yeah! That’s—you absolutely nailed it. It’s what people need, and if you don’t need it, then you won’t be with us. It’s just that simple. SWB So, I think it’s pretty clear people needed that because CodeNewbie has grown and grown and grown and become this big, massive thing and it’s now your full-time job, right? SY Yeah, I’ve been doing it full-time for almost two years. SWB That is really amazing. KL Yeah. SWB So can you—can you just tell us, how did you turn that into something that you could really like leave your job for and be able to make not just a supportive community but, like, something that could also sustain you? SY Yeah. So I think it was three months maybe after doing the—the podcast, the CodeNewbie podcast, that someone emailed and said, “Hey, can I give you 200 bucks to run an ad on your podcast?” And I thought, “I can paid for this? That’s crazy! That—that’s amazing!” You know? And so I—I took that and I said yes and I thought like, “Oh. Like maybe—maybe there’s a way to—to like turn this into something that’s actually sustainable.” And so that was kind of the—the beginning of that. You know I found that a lot of community leaders—I think one of the fundamental mistakes that they make is that they tend to undervalue what they have. So I remember this was maybe a couple of months ago I remember seeing—I don’t remember if it was a tweet or like an email in a mailing list. I remember seeing something where this person was or—was trying to organize a conf—her first conference, I think it was her conference, for a community and she was looking for sponsors. And the way she was pitching it and talking about it was, you know, “Oh! I—I just need a little bit more money to—to be able to, you know, pull this this off and if you all work at companies that could possibly help me out, I’d really appreciate it.” And I was like, “Oh no. Oh no, no, [laughter] no, no. That’s not—that’s not how you do that.” You know? And her community was women in tech or something. And I, you know, I’m thinking to myself, “Do you know how valuable that is?!? Do you know how many sponsors, how many companies, are dying to get in front of, you know, badass women in tech? Like that’s—you have—you have an asset! Like that’s what it is. You—you have so much value in your community leadership and you need to—you need to at least recognize that, you know, whether you use a thing about it is another thing but you need to at least see that.” And I think what I’ve been—why I’ve been, you know, more successful than most people who start communities is recognizing that and thinking, “Ok. Who else would find this valuable? And how can I turn that into something that allows me to support myself and to do more projects and dedicate more time to it?” And I think it’s understanding the value that you bring. I think that is the key to—to sustainability. [41:37] KL Yeah, absolutely. So I have a question for you, and I’ve just been thinking a lot about, you know, everything that you’ve been talking to me sounds like it takes a lot of energy and drive. So I wanted to ask you about a tweet that you had pinned to your account for awhile and it read, “I struggle with depression and a year ago I made this video for myself. Totally forgot about it, made my night.” And the video is sort of a video note to your future self giving yourself a pep talk. Why—like why did you make that video and how did you find yourself being so open to talk about that? SY I have a hard time being by myself. I have a really hard time being by myself and I think that I have unintentionally unknowingly been distracted by the fact that I’m always thinking about other people, whether it’s my, you know, before I did CodeNewbie full-time, whether it was like my—my quote/unquote “real job”, or whether it was doing CodeNewbie. I feel like I’ve always been in some way doing some type of community work or just something that just involves a huge amount of collaboration and just, frankly, putting everyone’s needs first and I think that that has been a really awesome distraction from my own problems [chuckles] and it wasn’t until I uh so I used to work at Microsoft before I—I quit to do CodeNewbie full-time and it wasn’t until I didn’t have Microsoft anymore and I was working on my own that like quote/unquote “all of a sudden” all these mental health issues kept coming up and I—I just found myself, you know, upset for no reason, sad for no reason, just, you know, just depressed. It was, you know, and—and it got, you know, it got really bad last year. Like 2017 was such a shit year. I mean for many reasons but like personally just like easily the worst year of my life. And and it was really, really, really fucking hard and it was—it wasn’t hard because I had to do CodeNewbie and kind of like put on this persona of taking care of everyone else but it made it weird. It made it weird to kind of like, you know, spend all day in bed crying hating my life and then right at 6pm Pacific Time: “Hey, everybody! Welcome to the CodeNewbie Twitter chat!” You know? Like that’s weird. It’s really weird. And I’m—and frankly I’m really proud of myself for still, you know, maintaining my duties during that period but that was—it was very, very bad. It was a very, very dark year. And it’s really forced me to reevaluate really like every part of my life. Like I’ve changed my eating, my exercise habits, I’ve changed like the way that I work. I really felt like I had to rebuild myself. I felt like I had to rebuild it thinking like, “Ok you—you need to consider this—this new friend of yours now, called Depression, and you need to—like we have to address this. We can’t just, you know, pretend it’s not there and just kind of, you know, hope it’ll leave. It’s—it won’t. So, we need to—we need to like actively work on it.” It became like a—I think it got really bad in like June, it was like right after CodeLand, I think it was like June. So it became like this six, eight month project that I was actively working on. I’m super, super—I mean, honestly, like the—my greatest achievement is, you know, being able to address it and get to a place where I can manage it now but, yeah, it’s—I find that when I’m—when I’m alone with my thoughts that’s when I have to deal with my thoughts. And that has been the hardest part. [45:04] KL That’s so incredibly encouraging to hear and I—I completely I feel so much of what you said. I think just becoming aware of it and knowing that it’s this new thing that is in your life that, you know, you have to manage. You have to, you know, deal with. So I think that’s—that’s really great to hear and I mean personally I’m—I’m really glad that you’re—you’re in that place that you can support the amazing thing that you’re building. So we have just one last question for you, you know, on that note, what drives you to keep pushing at this and keep growing and nurturing what you’ve built? SY My drive really comes from answering the question, like, “Can I live up to my potential?” You know the way I was, you know, I—I was raised like I mentioned really strict parents actually my mom was—I think she was pretty lax. I think it was really just my dad. But, you know, a strict upbringing. It was all about like, you know—like my dad would make homework for me. You know what I mean? Like—like that type of family. Like he would like create his own homeword. And so I think, for me, it’s just always been about just internalizing, frankly, what my—what my parents taught which is that complacency is—is not an option. If you want to be great, you have to work super fucking hard, and you have to work super fucking hard forever, and that’s like—like that’s life. Like that’s just how life works and so, you know, whether it’s CodeNewbie, whether it’s, you know, something else, whatever it is that I do, if I care about it, it really comes down to like, “Can I live up to the potential of this thing that I’m doing?” And that’s—that’s my biggest driver. SWB Well, Saron, I think it’s very clear that you’ve worked very hard on CodeNewbie. I think it definitely shows [Saron laughs]. So can you let our listeners where they can find out more about you and about CodeNewbie? SY My Twitter handle is @saronyitbarek, just my first name and last name. And you can find out more about CodeNewbie at www.codenewbie.org. The CodeNewbie Twitter handle is very, very active, so @codenewbies with an ‘s’ because someone already took codenewbie but, yeah, those are the places to learn more about us. SWB Awesome! It has been so great to chat with you today and we _really_ appreciate you being on the show. Thanks, Saron. KL Yeah, thank you so much. SY Thank you! This was a lot of fun. Thanks so much for having me [music fades in, plays alone for five seconds, fades out]. [47:18] Fuck Yeah Of The Week SWB Well, I know it’s time for the Fuck Yeah of the Week, because Katel has a huge smile on her face. JL And she’s dancing. SWB She just shimmied, actually, in this room. I swear to god. Katel, what is the Fuck Yeah this week? KL It’s true I was shimmying, and that is because—so I just had a nice cold, refreshing glass of rosé when we started recording tonight, and it was wonderful, and that made me think of how it’s sort of the unofficial official start of summer. And I’m so glad because I just love being outside. I think a lot of us do. And I’ve been thinking about just—not just being outside and kind of walking instead of taking a cab or whatever but sort of reconnecting with nature [laughs] as, you know, sort of cheesy as that might sound. There are a lot of nice hiking trails around here and I really want to take advantage of more of them and, I don’t know, I just—I hope that we all take a little bit of time to explore our own cities, and towns, and neighborhoods, and I know we’ve talked a lot about doing that a little bit more now that the weather’s nice. I also vow to not complain about how hot it gets this summer because this winter so cold and so long. So if you catch me complaining, feel free to—to stop me but I’m just glad it’s so nice out now. SWB I make no such vow [laughter] to not complain about how hot it is. KL That’s ok. SWB I gotta be honest: I’m really glad that you can’t like see me on the podcast, because I feel like I’m just a sweaty person [light laughter]. But I’m trying to make peace with that because the reality is that I love to go outside and do stuff outside all year round. And I always think of like my birthday as the launch of summer because my birthday’s always around Memorial weekend. KL Yeah! SWB And so on my birthday this year—actually, Katel came with me, we went to look at like some historic ships [laughing] in the harbor here in Philadelphia and sat outside at a beer garden. And that to me was so refreshing, not just because we looked at boats, or because we were drinking beers on the Delaware, but because there’s a moment this time of year where like a—a switch flips in me where I just care a little less about stupid bullshit. And I’m like, “Ahhh! Summer.” And I want to kind of like lean into that a little bit and like let myself take it a little easier. You know I had a _very_ busy spring that was like made busier by some unexpected stuff and so I’m _really_ hyped to sit in the backyard with my rosé or my iced coffee or whatever, depending on time of day, day of week. And like enjoy that. And not feel like I should be doing something else, and allow myself to be like, “Hey! It’s 3:30 pm on a Friday in the summertime, like, maybe you can knock off for the weekend?” And like, you know, like give myself a little bit more permission to say, “Fuck yeah to fuck it.” [50:16] KL Yeah. JL I’m listening to you both, I’m like, “Ah that sounds really nice.” I’m trying to think of like how to apply that to my life. I mean I can’t really knock off at 3:30, I’ve got the—I’ve got the old 9 to 5 and then I’ve got the child. But what I have been doing recently is like we talked before in like a previous episode about like meal prepping. So like we could eat together as a family, and like get our son to bed at like a decent hour. And then essentially when we’re done with that I feel like, “Ok. So from eight o’clock to nine o’clock I’m like trying to like clean up a bit, maybe like answer some emails, do some like last things,” and then I’m like, “Ok, I’m going to bed because I am tired from the day.” And the other day we did instead after he went to bed I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to sit outside and paint my nails.” KL I love that! JL It was awesome! I was like, “Oh I miss this. I miss this.” And so trying to balance the like getting a good night’s sleep and like taking a moment to like sit outside and enjoy the air, and I’m not really sure what my balance will be on that yet but I have to try like think more about it and maybe see if I can sneak a few more of those in somewhere. KL Yeah! I think just like let’s just try to go outside, a little bit more. SWB Fuck yeah. KL Fuck yeah! That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and produced by Steph Colbourn. Our theme music if by The Diaphone. Thanks to Saron Yitbarek for being our guest today. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please make sure to subscribe and rate up on Apple Podcasts. Your support means the world and it really helps us spread the word. We’ll be back next week with another great guest [music fades in, plays for 32 seconds, fades out to end].

My adventures in Codeland. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/caroline-russell/support

Update on my progress so far. Bootcamp Fellowship winner. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/caroline-russell/support

This is the last week to submit a talk to Codeland, our annual tech conference, so we wanted to give you some insight on what makes a good talk, a good speaker, and a good proposal. You'll hear from Lara Hogan, who literally wrote the book on public speaking, and Kelsey Hightower, speaker and chair of many tech conferences. They share their personal speaking stories (and nightmares!), how they prepare their talks, and the common mistakes they see first-time speakers make. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Demystifying Public Speaking (code: NEWBIE for 10% off) OSCON Codeland CFP (submit by Nov 26) Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Today we’re talking to Saron Yitbarek of Codenewbies. She’s here to talk about how she started the Codenewbies community and Codeland. We also talk about weightlifting, bootcamps, and her podcast setup on this show. So, stick around! CodeNewbie Saron I don't belong in tech Shure Microphone Codeland Conf Mattie Rogers

Saron Yitbarek talks about crafting an experience at her first conference, Codeland.

In our final episode of our Codeland mini-series, Katrina Owen shares what it really takes to get that mentor you've always wanted, Quincy Larson gives us his best practices for writing technical blog posts people will actually read, and Nell Shamrell-Harrington explores what it really takes for an open source project to be successful and what you should know as a future contributor. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Sample Testing Guide How to read Medium articles people will actually read CodeNewbie YouTube channel Continuous Integration (CI) Open Source Governance Sample Code of Conduct Travis CI Sample Contribution Guide Be Lucky—it’s an easy skill to learn by Richard Wiseman Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Courteney Ervin shares the ups and downs of building a product for one of the largest library systems in the world. Celia La walks us through the technical challenges (and solutions) of bringing Khan Academy's high quality content to people all over the world. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Integrated Library System Version Control System Memcached New York Public Library Git Khan Academy CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

We wrap up our community talks with Sterling’s story of her very first project at her first dev job: making the app accessible for two blind students. Maurice kicks off our education talks with the story of Abacus, his side project that became the learning system used by thousands of students in his country of Belize. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) xkcd comic "Standards" Java Grails Abacus Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Valerie explores the importance of security in creating powerful and engaged communities, and breaks down three ways your code might be vulnerable. Rapi shares his story of creating a toy coding project in D3.js that sparked a movement and helped thousands of people become more politically engaged. Checkout the videos of these talks on the CodeNewbie YouTube channel. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) strong parameters sanitizing inputs validating inputs SQL injection man in the middle mass assignment SQL D3.js Progressive Coders Network Rapi's Talk [VIDEO] Valerie's Talk [VIDEO] CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

This episode features two talks on mental health that explore two very different sides of this important topic. Michelle’s talk is a technical showcase of how her research project uses open source tools to better diagnose depression. Greg shares his personal struggles with ADHD and bipolar disorder, and how important it is for us to openly talk about mental health. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) 718-312-8335 (Greg's mental health resource number) ZocDoc Automatic Speech Recognition Feature Extraction Machine Learning Natural Language Processing IBM Watson Speech to Text OpenMM OpenFace Covarep DAIC-WOZ Database Audio/Visual Emotion and Depression Recognition dataset Tom Insel's TED talk on depression CUNY Graduate Center CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

When Minerva Tantoco was first offered the CTO position for New York City, she thought it was a prank. But in 2014, she became the city’s first Chief Technology Officer. She sits down with Codeland’s emcee, Nikhil Paul, to talk about how she started her long, impressive tech career, what programming looked like back her coding days, and how she hopes tech will transform cities for the better. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Mayor de Blasio’s announcement CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Chris Algoo shares how he co-created “Breakup Squad,” the game where you have to keep two exes from getting back together. Kate Rabinowitz shows us how open data can help build powerful, insightful tools to better understand and improve your city. Eric Brelsford shares how he used mapping tools to help community members turn vacant lots into beautiful neighborhood spaces. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) API D3 Carto Tableau Python R Open Data NYCommons Living Lots NYC 596 Acres Urban Reviewer Maptime NYC DataKind Code for America Brigades Interactive Data Visualization for the Web An Introduction to Statistical Learning The Big List of Game Making Tools Freesound.org Open Game Art FMOD Twine Unity CodeNewbie YouTube channel Breakup Squad (trailer) Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

In our second episode of our Codeland miniseries, we dig into our talks on gaming and code. Jessica shows us how we can use failure to become better developers with lessons learned from the video gaming industry. Opher shows us a number of ways to use video game principles to make our web apps more exciting. To watch the videos of these talks, checkout our channel on YouTube. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Screen Shake Juice (video game concept) Eko Pop In Matter: JavaScript 2D physics engine Draw Distance Learning Through Failure - the strategy of small losses Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence Opher's talk (video) Proton GreenSock Animation Platform Failure Difficulty Curve Game Design Document Learning from Mistakes is Easier Said than Done: Group and Organizational Influences on the Detection and Correction of Human Error Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Innovate and Improve Jessica's talk (video) CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

In episode 1 of our Codeland miniseries, you get to hear two amazing talks on art and code. Stephanie's a first-time speaker from Amsterdam and shares her inspiring story of building her first hardware project. Dan shows us how creative coding can be with his amazing art and code showcase, featuring artists and installations of all shapes, sizes, and platforms. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) The Coding Train NYU ITP p5.js Arduino Raspberry Pi Processing HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) Socket.io Stedelijk Museum - Tinguely Exhibit Stephanie's Slides CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

In just over a year, Kim’s spoken at eight meetups, ten conferences, had talks accepted at three more, and has four upcoming talks already lined up. And she’s just getting started. She shares how presenting at meetups became an accidental launchpad for her speaking career at conferences, how she uses her past career in education to create unique tech talks, and how speaking has provided her incredible opportunities, like traveling the world for free. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Peter Aitken AlterConf Overcoming the Challenges of Mentoring (Kim's talk) Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Scotland JS Women Who Code Atlanta Clojure West Tech Talk for Non Techies JrDev Mentoring Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

00:16 – Welcome to “Unrepentant Cyborgs” …we mean, “Greater Than Code!” 01:28 – Codeland Conference (http://codelandconf.com/) 02:02 – Making Conferences Accessible, Affordable, and Unintimidating for People 13:00 – Ticket Prices and Structure 15:01 – Creating an Immersive Experience and Community With and For People You Care About 25:11 – Leading by Example and Maintaining a Positive Persona 29:49 – The Importance of Money and Financial Freedom Tech Done Right Episode 002: Career Development with Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks (https://www.techdoneright.io/002-career-development-with-brandon-hays) 39:52 – Ethics as Automatic Technology Scales and Capitalism Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam M. Grant (https://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Helping-Others-Success/dp/0143124986) 49:45 – In summary: Codeland Conference Reflections: Sam: Thank you for the book recommendation for Give and Take. Astrid: People first. Rein: Support worker-owned cooperative organizations. Leadership is doing things, not being given a title. Saron: The principles and values that led to what people will experience as a really great conference. CodeNewbie References: @CodeNewbies (https://twitter.com/codenewbies) Twitter Chat (https://www.codenewbie.org/chat) Slack Community (https://codenewbie.typeform.com/to/uwsWlZ) Podcast (https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast) Episode 118: Truck Driver with George Moore (https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/truck-driver) Codeland (http://codelandconf.com/) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode). To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Saron Yitbarek.

Saron Yitbarek: @saronyitbarek | CodeNewbie | Codeland Conference Show Notes: 00:32 - Codeland Conference and The Conference Experience 08:06 - Impostor Syndrome 15:32 - The CodeNewbie Community and Growing Junior Developers 20:06 - Dev Job Red Flags and Should-be Basic Requirements Resources: Codeland Volunteer Form The CodeNewbie Podcast Episode 60: Impostor Syndrome with Alicia Liu Alicia Liu: Overcoming Impostor Syndrome: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coding Alicia Liu: Impostor Syndrome Is Not Just a Confidence Problem: The dangers of becoming a buzz word CodeNewbie TwitterChat Transcript: JEFFREY: Hello everyone. This is Episode 63 of The Frontside Podcast. I'm Jeffrey Cherewaty, developer here at The Frontside. With me is Robert De Luca, also a developer at The Frontside. ROBERT: Hello, hello. JEFFREY: Our guest today is Saron Yitbarek. She's the founder of CodeNewbies and host of The CodeNewbies Podcast. Hi, Saron. SARON: Hey, how is it going? JEFFREY: Great. ROBERT: Pretty good. JEFFREY: You have a big event coming up, the Codeland Conference. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what's going on there? SARON: Yeah, I'm so excited for Codeland. It is our first CodeNewbie conference. I've done a good amount of speaking at different tech conferences all over the world for a few years now. Ever since the first one I went to, I thought, "We really need one for junior people, for folks who are just getting started," so I kept a running list of everything I hate about conferences and the things that I like about conferences. This is my chance to put it all to the test. It's a two-day conference, single-track and the idea is really to get people excited about all the things they can do with code, especially for our community. The two types of jobs we generally hear about are working in a really, really small startup or working in a really big tech company like a Microsoft or a Google. But we don't hear about working at the hospital or working at the library or the many nonprofits who need technical help. The idea is to bring in people from all different backgrounds, walks of life, solving different problems and showing how code can be a really, really great tool for that JEFFREY: What are some of the things from previous conferences that you really like that you're bringing in Codeland? SARON: I like that you started positive. That's a good start. JEFFREY: We'll go for negative later. SARON: Yeah. [Laughs] Save the best for last. The stuff that I really like about conferences is the community part. It's being able to see a bunch of Twitter avatars come to life for the first time and being able to sit and talk. I feel like conferences are the only place where I can network without feeling gross and without feeling like I'm networking. I feel like I'm genuinely having real relationships and conversations. I think it's because we are going through this experience together and I can say, "Oh, did you hear that talk on this and that? It was so cool." It's a very organic way to start a relationship. That's probably one of my favorite things about conferences. ROBERT: There's a lot of ability in there for small talk about anything because there's so much going on. You could pick anything that you want and you're all experiencing the same thing and you're all kind of vulnerable. I love conferences for that reason. SARON: Yes, exactly and a lot of times, you're in a new city for the first time, you're staying in the same hotel, you're eating the same food. There's so many created and forced points of connection there for you so you can pick anything and start a conversation. ROBERT: Yeah, I really like that. I'm looking at the website right now and I see inspiring talks and it doesn't look like they're all exactly technology specific so I like to see the city life and health. That's super interesting. I want to hear a little bit more about that. SARON: Sure. I wanted to pick topics that are generally not covered as much in tech. Also, I didn't want to start from the technology. I think that a lot of people our community are very excited about the possibilities of tech and what they can do with it. We hear a lot of stories of people who say, "You know, I see this problem in my neighborhood. I see this problem in my community. I see this problem at work and I think that code is a really great way to solve it and to put together these solutions that I have in my head." The way that we're working -- and that's another thing -- you are working very, very closely with all of our speakers and we're starting from the problem space. We're starting from the users and then we end up in a place where the technology becomes the solution. I think that when you start at that more common, human, empathetic element, I think you are much more likely to bring people in, who may not feel as comfortable with the tech because the way we've kind of organized and thought through stuff is focusing on the problems that all humans and all of us can relate to and then saying, "One way we can solve that and address that is through JavaScript or leaf letter," whatever that tool is. ROBERT: That sounds really cool. Is there going to be conference talks that are centered around like how to have proper work-life balance, for example to filling to that health or how I've configured my editor to help with... I don't know, like ergonomics for my hand because I was getting carpal tunnel on my left hand because I was using control too much, that kind of stuff. That sounds really cool. SARON: Yeah, that's actually a really good idea. That would make a really great talk but that's what Day 2 is for. The one thing that I've seen a lot in my own conference experience is I'll watch a talk, I'll listen to a talk and it'll be so inspiring and exciting. But then I go home and it's over and I'm back to my daily grind and all of that energy and positivity just kind of goes away. What we wanted to do was have that first day be focused on all these ideas and projects and the second day transition into what do we do about them. We have a block of workshops from things like crafting your portfolio, to doing really well on a technical interview so really getting your hands dirty and trying out some of those skills. Then we have handouts for people who come in and talk about how they contribute to open source. We do have one actually on work-life balance and learning to code and how you do that so making sure that we leave people with really practical advice and action items and next steps so they feel empowered to go out and be awesome developers. ROBERT: This is awesome. The conference is kind of structured almost like a workshop in a way to where like Day 1, you're going to come in and hear a bunch of things that are going to get you all riled up and inspired and then Day 2, it's like, "This is how we go and implement that." SARON: Yeah. I want to credit Duane O'Brien from PayPal who forced me to think very, very hard about the conference experience. When I first pitched him on this I said, "Hey, I want to do a conference for CodeNewbies," and I have kind of a disconnected list of topics that I wanted to talk about and do address and he said, "You really need to sit down and to think through what is the UX or the experience," like what's the user story. I go to CodeNewbie as a new developer so that I can structure it so it feels like one really cohesive experience. I sat down for many hours and really thought through, "How do I want people to feel? Where do I want them to get excited, to get to work, to be interactive and really participate?" Putting a lot of time into that has really shaped this conference. ROBERT: That is really cool. To be clear this conference is happening in April. SARON: Yep. April 21 and 22 in New York City. ROBERT: Awesome. I think this is really cool. Conferences are awesome but when it was my first conference ever, I just felt overwhelmed because you walk past the cliques of people -- I don't want to say cliques but you see the groups of people that have been there and done it and you're like, "How do I break into that?" If the conference is kind of filled with everybody like that, giving your first conference talk could be a lot easier, just like breaking into the community and talking to people could be a lot easier so I think this whole idea of running a conference for newbies is A+, honestly. SARON: Thank you. ROBERT: I wish this was around whenever I was within the very beginnings of my career. That's really cool. Is there anything, anybody on the outside can do to get involved and help like volunteer? SARON: We have a bunch of volunteer's spots to help out at the day of the conference. I'm really excited because a lot of people who've stepped up are people who aren't necessarily the right attendees. There are folks who have years of experience who just want to wait to join in and do something and help out. We have volunteer spots and I'm happy to include that in the show notes. I can send a link to that. Then we also have a section during our workshop. We have like an optional community coding session where if you don't want to do any specific workshops, you can just bring your laptop and just socialize and code and work on your own stuff. If anyone is interested in the New York City area in participating or just being like a floating, technical mentor of sorts, those are the two ways to get involve. ROBERT: That's really cool. JEFFREY: New Yorkers, get on that. ROBERT: One of the things that I hear you like to talk about and it kind of fits in perfectly with this is this Impostor Syndrome. I think this'll really help with Impostor Syndrome. One of the foundational goals for this is to help people come to grips with that and deal with it better, I guess or peel the onion back on what Impostor Syndrome is. JEFFREY: Let's start there, let's start with what is Impostor Syndrome. Why don't you give your best definition of it? SARON: Sure. I was really excited the very first time I heard about Impostor Syndrome, I think it was maybe four or five years ago and I said, "Oh, my God. That explains so much of my life," and when I really dug into it though, it was slightly different than the way that I initially understood it. The official academic definition of Impostor Syndrome is a way to describe the phenomenon where I have a lot of accomplishments, I'm ten years into my career, I have all these accolades, I'm the CTO senior or whatever of this and that, and even though I have all these very tangible, very real accomplishments and proof of how awesome I am, I have trouble internalizing that. I can't look at that and go, "Oh, I am awesome." I look at that and go, "Ah, that's cute but I'm still not quite there yet." I think that in our community, when we talk about Impostor Syndrome, that's not really what we mean. I think we are describing what happens to everyone when they're learning something for the first time where they say, "Oh, I'm not getting this as fast as I think I should. I know a little bit but I won't know nearly enough to belong." It's really the sense of belonging that we have classified as Impostor Syndrome. We actually had a guest, Alicia Liu on our podcast, I think it was about a year ago, talk about it and it was interesting because the first time that she blogged about it a few years ago, it went viral. Everyone's like, "Yeah, it's totally how I feel," and then she wrote another blog post a couple years later that said, "No, no, no, everybody. That's not what Impostor Syndrome is. You're not impostor. You're actually just a beginner, you're just new, you feel like you don't know what you're doing because you probably don't, which is fine." It's totally fine to not know what you're doing. But the definition of Impostor Syndrome for me has definitely shifted a little bit over the years. ROBERT: It's interesting that the textbook definition and what we kind of experience in the industry are at odds, in a way because the textbook words like you have this well-accomplished person that has done a lot and they don't feel like they're good enough for what they're doing. Then what we have is just like, everybody in the programming community is trying to fit in and they're always trying to learn new things and always feeling like they're not getting it fast enough. I think that's an industry-wide problem. JEFFREY: I kind of always feel like a beginner because everything's changing in our industry so fast, all the time so there's always this disconnect between, "Well, I may have done some things and I may have accomplished some things along the way but I'm still beginner whatever this new tech is," Actually, everyone else is too. It's nice to be reminded of the fact that to be around other engineers who are experiencing that too that we're all in this together and we're all new at this. Nobody is quite expert level at this particular tech stack or this particular way of thinking it. We're all figuring it out as a community. SARON: Yeah. One of my favorite talks that Scott Hanselman does is this really awesome talk about a little bit about his background in JavaScript and the evolution of JavaScript frameworks and he has this whole section where he goes through a list of this really impressive resume and all the stuff that he knows how to do and he deeply understands. But at the end of it he goes, "All of that is completely irrelevant because of Heroku." [Laughter] SARON: None of that matters. ROBERT: "Now, I need to go learn something else." SARON: Yeah, exactly. For me sitting in the audience I was like, "Yes! Heroku," because I'm thinking, "If that's how this guy feels, he's been doing it for so much longer than I have, I have a chance at this." ROBERT: I feel like I send the 'I don't know what I'm doing dog' meme to someone, at least once a week. At least. [Laughter] ROBERT: I feel this often. I think it can be interpreted to the world is changing so much. But I think it's a little different for people that are experienced in the industry versus people that feel who are brand new because, I think when you're brand new, it feels so new and I don't know... uninviting maybe for the Impostor Syndrome? Whereas you get older -- not older -- you get more experience and you become one with the Impostor Syndrome like somebody asked you to do something that you don't know and you're like, "Urgh! Yeah, sure. I'll do it. I'll figure it out somehow," and then go on your way but you still feel that feeling. But when you're a newbie, it's overwhelming almost. Do you know any tactics that kind of help that? I actually have no clue besides like pairing and trying to bring this new person into the programming world and telling them like, "This is kind of how it is." SARON: I think that community is a great way to solve that. When I first learned to code, I taught myself for a few months. I did all the free and relatively cheap online resources and it was so frustrating because it was my first time being in a world where I was in a semi-permanent state of failure until something finally worked and then I got to celebrate that for two seconds. Then we moved on to the next feature, the next bug, the next whatever. Being in this cycle, this vicious cycle of constant failure and having so little time spent, actually enjoying the wins was so different. It was really hard not to internalize that. Especially in my world where my family has no idea what coding is. They still don't really get what I do. I said, "It has something to do with computers and podcasting." My mom is actually going to come up for Codeland and I'm so excited because she can finally see what it is that I'm doing all day. ROBERT: That is awesome. SARON: Yeah. She texted me and she's like, "Yeah, let's bring your family and your friends and your dad can come," and I'm like, "Mom, that's not what this is." [Laughter] SARON: But yeah, your family doesn't really get what you're doing, your friends. If you're not coming from the tech world, if you're transitioning, they have no idea what you're doing so it's super, super lonely and it's really hard to explain. When I transitioned from that into enrolling in a boot camp and doing that for three months, all of a sudden, I had 40, 45 people who were with me every single day for eight to twelve hours at times, who knew exactly what I was going through and who understood everything that sucked about it and everything that was awesome about it. Just knowing that it wasn't me -- I was not the problem, the code was the problem and the journey is the problem -- just changed everything and that's really why I started CodeNewbie to say coding boot camps can be an awesome experience but for a lot of people, they're not accessible. It's three months at least without a job, it's between $12,000 and $17,000 and because there's not always a credit programs, you can't necessarily get like a student loan the way you can for a college. For a lot of reasons, there are really high barriers. I wanted to make it a little bit easier for people to find a support system who are going on that journey. That's what really started CodeNewbie and we did that through the CodeNewbie Twitter chats that we do every Wednesday at 9PM Eastern Time and we do that every single week for an hour, really as an excuse to say, "We're all going to hang out at this place." As long as you have an internet connection, you can join and find friends and find people who know exactly where you're going through and that's really been, for me a huge, huge help. JEFFREY: What kinds of positive experiences and stories have come out of that community? Have you seen actual great change happened through that? SARON: Yeah, definitely. We've had people get internships, we've had people get jobs, we've had people just find out that other people in their neighborhood are also learning to code. I've seen a lot of like, "I see you're in Portland. I'm in Portland too. Oh, my God." A lot of that and then they meet up in person and they pair. We've seen a lot of mentors and mentees pair up through CodeNewbie so it's just been a really great jumping off point for a lot of folks to find those connections and opportunities that run with it. JEFFREY: Through Codeland and through CodeNewbie, one of the goals is to connect junior engineers into their community. What kinds of roles and ways to connect do junior engineers have through the opportunities like this? SARON: A lot of folks are finding internships and apprenticeships and some junior roles. I think what I'm really excited for with our community is the growing number of junior positions that are popping up. If you see the list of the companies, GitHub is the one, I think of top of mine who have started creating like a hybrid coding and community roles for junior people to get their foot in the door, to start to get some real experience under their belt before going for something a little bit more coding, have a little more full time. I think at GitHub they're calling it like a... Oh, I'm going to mess it up. It's not a community manager but it's something around like a community manager position. What I really like about these hybrid roles is the fact that a lot of folks in our community who are transitioning into code have very, very valid, very awesome real world job experience. It's just not technical experience. They've done a lot of sales, they've done some design, they've done marketing, they've done a lot of community building, they've done a lot of customer service, really empathy-centric jobs and roles. With these hybrid positions, they're able to leverage that background a lot for those really awesome communication skills, while also getting a little bit more comfortable in transitioning into a more code-heavy, tech-related position. One thing that I hope happens and frankly, I think just needs to happen, given the high demand for developers is more of these hybrid roles, more of these entry-level junior developer roles. I know that there are apprenticeships and internships that have always existed for computer science degree students that are now transitioning and being a little bit more open to career transitioners as well as people who are students. I'm definitely seeing a lot of shifts in the industry and I hope to see more of that. I hope that more of these awesome people who are really just so excited and so passionate and eyes wide open and very teachable. I think it's one of the things that senior people are really excited about working with our community is knowing that we are very open to being taught, we don't have best practices, we don't have bad habits yet so we're really moldable in that way so I'm really hoping to see that trend to continue where there are more learning positions and also more full time entry-level positions in software. JEFFREY: That's excellent. I hadn't heard of many examples of the kind of hybrid role but I'm thinking back to previous job I had where there was a very large customer service department and several members of that team are like, "We want to start developing." Like they're playing around with code and there definitely could have been an opportunity for them to maybe 75% of their job is the customer service work and what they've been trained to do. Then the other part of their job is like, "Let's start leveling you up and let's start teaching you some things and giving you an opportunity to play and learn." That's an awesome opportunity. SARON: Yeah and that's the thing too is a lot of this is already happening on informal basis. I've heard definitely my fair share of stories and we've actually interviewed people in the podcast who said, "I started in customer service. I started in accounting. I started in this totally unrelated part of my company and then I raise my hand and I said, 'I want this coding stuff.' I started shadowing developers and just going to hang around the engineering team enough that they eventually let me do some documentation work or look at some bugs. Then I slowly transition into a developer position." A lot of this has been happening very organically but I think the more we can systematize it, the more we can formalize that process, the more accessible it becomes for people who just didn't know that they could raise their hand and create those opportunities for themselves. I think the more people do it and the more we can really put rules and structure around programs like that, the more we can bring more people in. ROBERT: That sounds really cool. I have a question. We know what the good situation would be for a newbie to get into. Are there any things that you could advise people that might be looking for the first dev job like anything that are red flags to avoid? SARON: There are so many red flags. That's a good one -- ROBERT: Because I wish I had this when I was starting out. SARON: Yeah. I think one of the hardest parts about being a junior person is just not knowing what it means to be a good developer. It's one of those things when senior people tweet and write blog posts and things about how incompetent they feel a lot of the times and how they feel like they just don't know enough. On the one side, it's really comforting and it's validating but on the other side, for me at least, it makes me panic a little bit because I'm thinking, "Holy crap. If you don't feel like you're good, then how would I ever be good? How would I even know what good is if I'm working towards that?" I think one of the things to look out for is a company that actually has put some thought into what it means to be a good developer? What are best practices? I know this is super subjective and a lot of times it's just based on the product of the company and the values of that space but I think for a junior developer, if you walk into a place where people are so busy running and trying to catch up or trying to keep up that they aren't able to look back and go, "Oh, you're on the right path," or "You're making progress," it's going to be, at the very least frustrating for you and worst case scenario, it'll be impossible for you to grow and really develop and progress in a way that's going to make you happy and fulfilled for your career. I think one of the red flags is -- not so much of a red flag, it's more of one of things to look out for are companies that have tech blogs, that have a podcast, that have really good documentation, that have style guides, that have a mentorship programs, that do brown bag lunches, things like that really show that the companies put a lot of thought into what they value on their engineering team and are much more likely to help you grow in your career. JEFFREY: So that it's more likely that they will have room for you to grow instead of, "Hey, we need some cheap labor." ROBERT: Yeah, exactly and that's the thing. As career transitioners, people who are not used to tech salaries, it's super easy to undervalue yourself. It's very, very easy to say, "I'm just coming from a job that paid $25,000 or $30,000 a year. Yeah, I'll take a $40,000 dev job. That's so much better than what I'm doing." It's like a 50% increase. It's really easy to sell yourself short. I think when you look at a company and see the structure and the thought they put into growth, I think they're much more likely to really invest in you, as opposed to taking advantage of the fact that you're just more than happy to be there. ROBERT: Yeah, I love that. One of the things that Brandon told me when I first started here and I was worried about failing was we didn't invest in Rob the developer, we invested in Rob the person. That was something that really stuck with me that helped like it harkens back to the Impostor Syndrome, it definitely helped with me except being that failures will happen and if I do fail, it's okay because I'm in a space that allows that. Maybe something that a newbie would look out for is software teams that have good process, not shipping broken tests to production or things like that. But also managers that are there to help you and to be there for you and take you on one-on-ones and give you good feedback. I guess, it really just boils down to having a good support structure. SARON: That's the kind of thing that can be hard to evaluate until you're actually there on the team. When you're in the interview, it's like dating. You put on your best outfit, you put on some lipstick, you get your hair done and who knows what you really look like on Wednesday night at midnight, right? [Laughter] JEFFREY: That's when I made my best. I don't know about you. [Laughter] SARON: Some questions that have really helped me out or asking how do you support more junior people. You specifically asking like, "Do you have an education stipend? Do you have a conference stipend? Do you have books? What are the perks?" A lot of times, it can be really straightforward to evaluate. How much they care about your development as a person, if you just look at the perks that they offer? I really love when there is an education thing, when there is a book thing, when they pay for you to go to conferences because that really tells me that you care, not just about getting the most out of my time with you but you really care about my development as a person, as a developer. Those are really good signs. Then I think there are things like when you brought up testing -- that was one of my basic requirements when I was interviewing a few years ago -- and was saying like, "Do you have tests? Why don't you have tests, if you don't?" I've had a lot of answers and they were like, "We didn't really see the point," or, "We just don't do that here." Those are not good reasons to not have test. ROBERT: No. Those are very bad. If you could see the faces we just made, we're like, "Ahhh! No!" Especially for a newbie jumping in, that is your safety net because you read the assertions and you can understand what the code is supposed to do. SARON: Yeah. Same thing with documentation like how much time they spend on documentation? If the answer is, "We don't do that," then the whys are what really become important. If the why is simply, "We're stretched too thin. We're trying to fix that by hiring people like you where we can now focus on documentation," that's a much better answer than, "Ahh! We just don't really need it. We don't see the point." I think when we can ask the people who are looking for jobs, when we can ask the companies more why questions and really get a sense of the way they make their decisions, I think that can be very telling in what type of environment you're getting into. JEFFREY: I add in there. One more thing for junior engineers to look for is vulnerability from future employers that they're willing to own up to their mistakes and talk about their failures. You know that you as a junior person, I also have the ability to do that. You're going to fail. It's going to happen. But if it's an accepted thing and a thing that the company knows how to deal with and talk about and embrace and turn around into successes, then that's a very good thing. All right, thanks for joining us, Saron. Everyone check out CodelandConf.com. That's coming up in April. That's all for The Frontside Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Leslie Hitchcock started her career writing white papers on information security. Now, she organizes some of the largest hackathons and tech events in the world for TechCrunch. She shares her tips on how new developers can make the most out of a hackathon, what types of coding projects people work on, and how she helps make hackathons more inclusive. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) GroupMe Alexandra Jordan Titstare TechCrunch Disrupt TechCrunch Ford Sync Black Girls Code TechCrunch Include Stuxnet virus Codeland, our CodeNewbie conference Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

In part two of our interview with comedian Baratunde Thurston, we talk about how he brought together product development and comedy to create entertaining apps in his recent role at the Daily Show, how he uses coding and technology as tools in the many unique positions he’s held, and how we should balance our coding responsibility with the simple goal of having fun. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Twilio Collabora hierarchical decomposition David Malan USDS Source Forge Acumen The Daily Show March Madness parody app AlexaSite wins TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon SquareSpace CS50 Tickets for Codeland, our CodeNewbie conference CodeNewbie's Patreon Codeland Conf Codeland 2019