Podcasts about Flatiron School

Rachel Serwetz didn't start off as a career coach. She grew up in New York, went to Binghamton University where, as she says, she had no real idea what she wanted to do. So, her major was a general one which left her with lots of options. After college she went to work for Goldman Sachs for three years. While she felt she was successful there she didn't really feel that her interests aligned with the work she was doing.   After three years at Goldman Sachs, she moved to a job at a hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. That job put her in a bit more of a role to help with recruitment and training. Still, she felt she wasn't truly pursuing what she should do.   In 2017 she decided to go out on her own to begin career coaching to help people develop better job satisfaction as well as to better understand whether and/or if they were in the right job for them. Today she coaches clients mostly throughout the U.S. and Canada, but she does have international clients from elsewhere in the world.   If you want to explore your own career path direction, reach out to Rachel.     About the Guest:   Rachel Serwetz worked at Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater Associates before pursuing coaching, training and certification. Rachel is the visionary behind WOKEN, a platform designed to enhance job satisfaction and reduce job hopping by facilitating clarity on one's best fit career path. She later became an ICF-certified PCC-level coach, where she combines her strengths in career coaching with systemized frameworks to successfully guide hundreds of professionals to realize career fulfillment. She has served as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Binghamton University. She has also served as career coach through the Flatiron School, WeWork, Columbia University, Slate, Project Activate, and other organizations. She has also partnered with organizations such as Fishbowl, Power To Fly, NYU, and others, to help spread career clarity to the masses. ** ** Ways to connect with Rachel:   Our website: https://www.iamwoken.com/ My personal linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelserwetz/ Free career resource library: www.iamwoken.com/resources Free coaching call: calendly.com/woken/demo Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getwoken/ Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/getWOKEN Our TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@getwoken Our LinkedIn: thttps://www.linkedin.com/company/woken/     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Hi, there I am Michael Hingson, your host for unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet, we get to do a bunch of that all the time. It's a lot of fun today, we get to chat with Rachel Serwetz. And Rachel worked for Goldman Sachs for a while she has become a pretty significant person in the world of coaching and has a lot of things to say about that. Talking about employment employees and employee hopping, and other things like that, or employment hopping, I guess is a better term. But we'll get to all that. And I expect that we're going to have a lot of fun. So Rachel, thanks for being here. And welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Rachel Serwetz ** 02:01 Yeah. Thanks for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 02:03 And we're really glad that you're here. And looking forward to the day. Well, tell us a little bit about you kind of growing up maybe the early Rachel, if you will? Oh, yes, let's say, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Yeah, exactly.   Rachel Serwetz ** 02:20 I mean, I grew up on Long Island, New York. And honestly, I just was working hard in school, I didn't know the direction I wanted to go in for my career. I just kind of knew, like, work hard. And you'll probably figure it out later. You know, I don't know if I fully knew exactly where school was gonna lead. But I just figured get good grades, someone will probably pay attention to that eventually. So yeah, and then I needed to figure out college. And my dad always wanted me to be a doctor. And I never really had a reason to question it. And then finally, you know, going to college was the moment where people were finally like, what is it you want to do? And I, you know, started thinking about it and realize that my previous experiences in the health field weren't something that really drew me, you know, to it. And so I ended up going to Binghamton, as an undecided major, which was the best thing I could have done. And I think every student should, you know, it's funny because they are undecided. And yet, they have to somehow pick and so I eventually picked Human Development, which was super broad. It was kind of like psychology, sociology. And that allowed me to just figure out what I really wanted to do. I leaned a lot into like business internships and just explore and did a lot of projects and just got involved with things on campus and tried to figure out what it is. I wanted to do from there. But I will pause, I can keep going through the story. But that's kind of me up until college days.   Michael Hingson ** 03:59 So you Well, I know what you're saying. And you. You were undecided. At first, I always wanted to go into the sciences. And so I went to University of California, Irvine. And we actually went down to see the chair of the physics department between my junior and senior years in high school, when I always decided I wanted to major in physics. And that's what I did. What I wasn't as strong about was exactly what I wanted to do with it. But I thought I wanted to teach. And I thought that we can always use good teachers and the more I went to the university and went to a lot of classes, the more I realized we really do need good teachers because a lot of these people may know their subject very well, but teaching it is a different story. But then I had other things that that changed the career along the way, like I got offered an opportunity to work for the National Federation of the Blind and Ray Kurzweil, the futurist to have developed a machine that would read print out loud to blind people. It was his first first adventure in the world of optical character recognition. And he had developed the technology that really provided Omni font, OCR to the world. And he decided his first application would be to make a machine that would read print out loud. And that eventually led to me through circumstances going into sales. So I made sales a teaching kind of thing, because I realized that the best salespeople are really teachers. So even though it wasn't directly physics, I got to teach anyway.   Rachel Serwetz ** 05:30 Yeah, I love it. I mean, sometimes we were getting to know ourselves and what we think we want to do and what we think we like doing. But of course, there's opportunities that arise to me, it's a journey of, you know, yes, what comes your way. But you also want to be intentional with getting to know what you think you want to do and going to find those opportunities. But yes, I mean, things do arise. And we got to see like, Is this in line with what I want to be doing more of? And then of course, it's a yes or not, right. But, you know, with my clients, it's, you know, we're not just leaving it up to fully chance it's what do we want? And how do we go get it? But it's great that, you know, you were you were finding opportunities come to you? Of course, that's that's kind of ideal. But it's a combination, right, who finds you and how do you also go after what it is that you want? Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 06:18 Oh, and I also know that if we really look at our lives, we can trace everything that led us to where we are by the choices that we make. And sometimes they're good choices, and sometimes they're not. And the question is, do we learn from the choices that we make all the way down the line? But still, it's about choice. And I understand what you're saying, you went into college sort of undecided? And that was probably unless you had just a definite thought that was probably a good idea. And I think you you said it very well, it makes a lot of sense to be willing to explore and think about what you want to do. Yeah.   Rachel Serwetz ** 06:59 Oh, exactly. Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, any undergrad right there, they're younger, and they may not know yet. And so I like to help people really, how do you properly explore your career path, and hope that people can do that, but even by the time you have to choose a major, it might not be enough time. But using those college years wisely to really clarify your path is the best thing you can do. And, you know, you may or may not use your major, you know, later on in your career, but I think the issue I see is like when somebody chooses a major that's so specific, and so far away from what it is they actually want to do. So that's where like for me, you know, I chose something very broad. And that was great, because I could use it in a lot of ways. So that's the, you know, depending on the person, depending on the student, it's just something to think about, if you're choosing a very niche path, you know, make sure you really understand it. And you know, what it's all about? And what is that going to really look like when you go pursue that path.   Michael Hingson ** 07:59 What I didn't do was choose a specific branch of physics as such. But you know, even though I ended up going in a directions that didn't directly use physics, what I also realized, however, as I went through life, if you will, was I learned a lot that helped me, for example, one of the things that good physics teachers teach is you pay attention to the details, like if you're doing a calculation, it isn't enough to get the numbers right, you have to get the units to go with it. So for example, if you're trying to compute acceleration, and you don't come out with feet per second squared, or centimeters, or meters per second squared, even if you come out with the right number, you've done something wrong, it's the whole scenario. Again, it's very important to pay attention to all the details to make sure that you do what you really want to do. And paying attention to details became kind of a life mantra for being especially in and around the World Trade Center events. And what happened afterwards, paying attention to details is a very important message I'd love to talk to people about because that saved my life on September 11. I can trace that back to the desire that was developed in physics.   Rachel Serwetz ** 09:18 Yeah, no, I like that. It's true. My partner was chemical engineering. And I feel like he always talks about how it's like a way of thinking and a way of problem solving. And, you know, that is a niche major, but yes, you can definitely gain, you know, ways of thinking basically from that, but at the same time, you know, it is still choosing a pretty specific area. But yes, you can get those unintended benefits to from it. On the other hand,   Michael Hingson ** 09:47 later in life, I appreciated the TV show The Big Bang Theory, so I guess it counts for something. Yes, yeah. So when did you graduate from college   Rachel Serwetz ** 09:58 in 20 They're seen.   Michael Hingson ** 10:02 Okay. And so at that time, had you made some decisions about what you kind of wanted to do in the world?   Rachel Serwetz ** 10:09 Yeah, so I was really trying very hard to figure out what it is I wanted to do. I did a consulting internship, I did a lot of just other experiences and internships and projects on campus clubs. I was dabbling in, you know, HR, try, I did a lot of networking with alumni, I was just trying to learn about like, different things that were out there. And, and then, so Goldman came to Binghamton's campus, and they were recruiting for the operations department. And I honestly had never heard of operations. But when I learned about it, I was like, this really aligns with me, because it's all about processes and efficiency and things like that. So I really felt the lines, maybe that was lucky. And then, because I had done so much networking, I learned how to have a professional presence that I think stood out amongst other undergrads. So I ended up interviewing there. And I landed a role there, and I was there for three years. But once I landed there, you know, operations was aligned, but I was still working on essentially, like cash management, Treasury liquidity type functions. And I realized that I liked operational things, but I didn't love so much the financial services, you know, content of it. And so I was still, you know, I did so much effort to just figure out like, Okay, I like this, but I don't like that. And what should I keep doing to learn more about what it is that I like, and actually, at Goldman, I was very lucky to, you know, I got involved with projects really just by choice. So if I noticed an opportunity to, you know, people needed help to develop skills after their performance reviews. So I implemented a skill development program, or we needed help for onboarding globally across our department, or recruiting or, you know, there was just a lot of different people oriented projects that I got involved with, and I was interested in. And so lucky enough, I was able to do so much of that, while there. And that's what really led me to my next role, where I leaned more into like the people HR functions, I went to a hedge fund, and I was more on the recruiting and performance management side. And so yeah, by doing those sort of internal side projects, it helps me figure out like, what role was more aligned with my interests. I also did things outside of my job. So I was actually doing volunteering, career coaching through a nonprofit. Um, I did a lot of things just to try to do research, networking, experiential learning, in order to continue to figure out like, what work I wanted to do, basically.   Michael Hingson ** 12:58 Yeah. So you, you say to Goldman, you said for three years, and clearly, my observation would be you learned a lot, which is what it's all about, and maybe it wasn't what you expected? Or maybe it was, but you learned a lot. And you took a lot of knowledge and information and internalize that, that helped you move on from there.   Rachel Serwetz ** 13:25 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it definitely gave me a lot of room to learn and grow, for sure. I also had five months in India, when I was there. So just so many amazing experiences, they had this sort of other competition where you could get together with other analysts and suggest a nonprofit for the firm to support. So we were able to present to senior leaders, there were so many ways to get involved. I was involved with the Women's Network, like I just sort of took advantage of all, you know, not just my day to day job, but just getting involved with so many things that were interesting to me. So it definitely was valuable even in just those three years.   Michael Hingson ** 14:05 Yeah. So you left Goldman in 2016. And where did you go from there?   Rachel Serwetz ** 14:10 So then I went to Bridgewater, which is a hedge fund fund, right? Yeah. And I was in recruiting and performance management to support the investment associate. So sort of the front office, but now   Michael Hingson ** 14:24 you were in a little bit more of a people oriented kind of environment or position.   Rachel Serwetz ** 14:29 Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could sort of call it like HR, but we were our team sat within the front office. So there was actually a separate HR team, but we were doing those people functions like recruiting and performance management and training and culture and employee experience. That's kind of what our team was doing to support the investment department, let's say,   Michael Hingson ** 14:51 so did the knowledge that you gained even though you weren't a great fan of a lot of the financial aspects of it at Goldman did A lot of the information and knowledge that you gained at Goldman helped you in doing that job, though.   Rachel Serwetz ** 15:08 I think so I needed you know, I think when I went to Bridgewater, I felt like I was still having a fresh start. And I learned how they did things. I think the most important thing that I took from Goldman was like a learning about my interest in the people space. And then also, just, you know, the importance of operations. I was in the operations department. So I definitely took that away. But Bridgewater was very different, because they were very oriented on, like, people and feedback, whereas Goldman was very oriented on operations and process. So I sort of took different things from each place. And now I try to combine those very two things, but they operated very differently. So you know, I would like to think that I took one thing from one to the next. But truthfully, I think it was Bridgewater is a very interesting place. I, you know, I think anyone who joins has a little bit of a culture shock. So I would like to bring my skill set me up for success, but it was a very new and different environment. Sure.   Michael Hingson ** 16:14 Well, you also did no, of course, from Goldman, sort of, by definition, learn to talk a lot of a language which had to help. And so you knew what people were talking about when you heard a lot of these financial terms, even if you didn't directly use them. But it certainly had to help. And, again, it goes back to what I said earlier that when we make choices, we we learn from everything, or we should learn from everything that we do, and every choice that we make, and hopefully it builds, then it really does sound like it did sort of build for you going from Goldman to Bridgewater in some ways.   Rachel Serwetz ** 16:50 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Different. But every experience sort of builds on the next like, I definitely learned and grew in in different, it stretched me in different ways. For sure. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 17:01 being in sales and sales management, which I did for a number of years, then going into public speaking. They're very different. But the reality is, that sales helped me learn to relate to people who I was speaking with, into learning how to read people. And sometimes, as I tell people, I could speak on any given day, to a board of directors down to it, people and so on, and learning to communicate with them. Definitely helped going into public speaking as well. So, again, there are things that you learn that that help you grow.   Rachel Serwetz ** 17:43 Definitely, absolutely, yeah, I mean, I think even my coaching and sort of sales element, now you learn so much about different people's personalities, how to talk to different people, just the variety of people. So yeah, the sales and the coaching. I feel like the stuff I do today sort of definitely taught me that to at   Michael Hingson ** 18:02 Goldman, or Bridgewater, especially at Goldman, did you ever go visit the trading floor?   Rachel Serwetz ** 18:10 Oh, no, that's a great question. Um, honestly, I don't know if I did. I mean, we went to so many different floors for different reasons. You know, there was I honestly have no   Michael Hingson ** 18:29 date. Well, the reason I asked is, you want to talk about crazy places, trading floors are as crazy as it gets.   Rachel Serwetz ** 18:37 Ya know, no, absolutely. And   Michael Hingson ** 18:38 yelling and the screaming and how   Rachel Serwetz ** 18:42 you remember from, you know, the movies and how it used to be so so. So hectic things like that. But I've definitely seen it even just from I remember, I was networking with a mentor of mine who was at a different bank, and she brought me to her office. So I've, you know, absolutely been exposed to things like that. But you know, I would say both Goldman and Bridgewater were, you know, in intense and that way that you sort of know, what to expect fast paced. And absolutely, you know, it was that experience Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 19:12 Into intense is probably a good way to describe it. But they, the people who do it, and who do it well have have learned and are successful at doing it. So that's, that's okay, too. And, you know, there's, I don't think that most people are like, Michael Douglas and Wall Street, which is okay. But, but it is an intense environment. And it's, it's a fascinating thing to see. I remember, after September 11, we worked with Morgan Stanley, to get them back up and running and they had to go find a place to create a new trading floor since the one that the World Trade Center went away and they found a place in I think it was in Hoboken where they found a room that was literally the size of what they described as a football field, and within 36 hours, they got equipment from all of the people. They worked with PCs and stuff from IBM tape, magnetic tape systems from us and so on and other companies. And from Friday night till Sunday afternoon, they worked and they literally, were ready to go Monday morning, the 17th when Wall Street opened again, what a monumental task to be able to do that in 36 hours. Yeah, absolutely. Talk about intense. But that's the whole point of having data backed up. They were they were ready to go was just as if Tuesday never happened, because it shell shut down before the well, the World Trade Center attacks happened before Wall Street open. So that was probably a blessing. Oh, yeah. So how long were you at? How long? Were you at Bridgewater?   Rachel Serwetz ** 21:05 Oh, about a year? Yeah, it's, again, pretty intense, right? And yeah, I sort of was ready for the next thing. But yet again, didn't know what that next thing should be. So actually, I left and I was receiving career coaching. And I started noticing the gaps in what they were doing, were providing and I and I started having ideas as to how I could provide that. And that's when I said, All right, maybe I should lean into this coaching thing. So I did training through the NYU School of Professional Studies, they had a diploma program. And then I got certified through the International Coach Federation. And that's when I realized coaching is often conversational. So I started building out some tools. So at first, it just started with a career assessment and then more sort of platform like tools. And now we do have a web based platform. But I started to build it build out a essentially a shared workspace between the coach and the client. And just advancing and evolving and innovating tools that felt like it would enhance coaching from what I had experienced and what I felt like kind of was missing. You know, from my experience, and then I offered the same and started coaching individuals through a variety of different career processes. I started out I was doing coaching part time for a few organizations while also building my company. And then I went full time in my own company in the spring of 2021. The other kind of thing that happened in the mix, there was from summer 2018 to 2019. I did a one year full time tech MBA program at NYU Stern. So that's when I was actually starting the business while doing the degree. And that was great, because I leveraged all of this startup programs at NYU to help me understand how to start a business. So yeah, ever since that, it's been now almost six years of building out my coaching company. And   Michael Hingson ** 23:11 what's your company called? woken? So Woken is a company? Is it is do you have other people or just you?   Rachel Serwetz ** 23:19 Yes, we have a few other coaches right now. So that's kind of been the recent achievement is making sure that I can train and hire and scale and have other folks. So now they run the sales calls and bring new clients in. And I do still coach some individuals, but the goal is to grow and have me hopefully do more of the the innovation. So we always want to advance our digital products and make sure that we have newer advanced tools that really it takes the coaching to the next level. So that's hopefully where I can, you know, focus more of, and just bringing on more clients and coaches as we work out. Sounds   Michael Hingson ** 24:00 like a plan. So what is Woken stands for? So   Rachel Serwetz ** 24:05 you know, it actually is, I guess, more of just a play on words, I used to always say we are waking up people to take control over their careers. I think you know, people often they do take control over their careers, but sometimes, you know, they may not realize that they can or should find and seek support or coaching or resources or guidance. So we're here to remind people that you can and should find a job you love. And you know, our specialty is helping people to clarify their direction, because that was really where I lacked support. I spent years trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And now we help other people to do that more efficiently. So yeah, that's our specialty is just making it really practical to get confident on your best fit direction. We also help with making decisions around upskilling improving your personal branding, job searching networking interview doing promotions, you name it mindset, accountability, really any kind of career goal or challenge? We sort of copilot you through all of that. So   Michael Hingson ** 25:08 what is this? The whole concept of career path exploration? What What exactly does that mean? And how do you move forward with that?   Rachel Serwetz ** 25:17 Yes. So I try to define this actually, I mean, that's a phrase that I use. And the definition that I give is, it is a step by step process to learn and reflect, and you're learning about yourself. And you're also learning about career path options, until you can get confident to understand which path or direction makes the most sense for you to pursue. And that could just be more broadly your path. Or it could just mean, what's your next step, you always want to be confident to know where do you want to go? Before you start job searching? And that's the critical component is, ideally, this all happens before you start job searching in an ideal world. So that's yeah, that's kind of how I define what it is.   Michael Hingson ** 26:01 Yeah, in ideal world, but as you experienced yourself, you didn't really do probably nearly as much of that as you wish you had. When you were in college, did you? Yeah,   Rachel Serwetz ** 26:14 so that's exactly right. Like, I would look back, and I would reverse engineer like, alright, like, what would have been helpful for me to reflect on at each of these moments. And then I started coming up with frameworks. So for example, we have a career assessment is broken down into three parts. So it's something that I call function, content environment. So your function is like, what are you doing day to day your skills, your affinities? What are those sorts of activities you're doing that make up your week, and then the content is really the nature of the work? So what are those problems or topic areas that you find important or interesting. And the third is the environment that you thrive in. So for example, if you're in a role that you're doing sales, or research or data or consulting, or whatever your role is, you can do those things in virtually any single industry. And so I try to separate those two, which is the functional versus the sector of where you're really applying your skills and the ultimate goal and purpose. And then of course, the environment, what should it look and feel like and the people and the culture and the piece and all the bells and whistles, so I try to so that's exactly where I when I looked back at my path that was kind of like, okay, for example, at Goldman. I liked, you know, the functional role, but that industry didn't really align with me. Right. So so, you know, I tried to kind of break it up, like, what were the components of each experience? And how can I help somebody reflect on each of those core pieces?   Michael Hingson ** 27:39 So, one of the things that I find really interesting in talking about this whole issue of career path exploration is it certainly seems like it's something that people should do. One of the questions that pops into my head is, how much more of that? Could could colleges do or contribute to making people more successful by doing more of it?   Rachel Serwetz ** 28:02 Yeah, I mean, I think colleges can definitely do a lot more, I think, they don't always know how necessarily, right, so we do have some career assessments that are off the shelf. The other element is just getting the college students in the door, right. So we do have career services on campus. But, you know, on average is each student walking in once or twice in their college career, and oftentimes, they're getting resume help or interview help, right? So it's a combination of, we need students to be more engaged. And we need on the flip side, the career services to find ways to engage them or have, you know, for example, our software, we would hope in our future is that a career services office could actually use, you know, the tool that we have to maybe digitally connect a career services counselor with students, just through technology. So you know, of course, you know, Career Services has usually an informational portal or a website, but we want them to be able to really interact even more with their career services counselors, because it's one of the most important things people are questioning the value of college. And really, you know, if you're there to help you figure out your career path, we need to have the tools to make sure that students can do that.   Michael Hingson ** 29:20 Did colleges do more to maybe include internships or on the job exploration for people to be able to look at what they might want to do or not do or decide this doesn't work for me? Or is that is that really putting too much of a demand on college? Because of course, they're dealing with all the academic stuff. Well,   Rachel Serwetz ** 29:43 I mean, in an ideal world, like I picture College, where it should honestly be 50% internship or work experience and 50% in classroom experience, because you learn so much on the job these days. I also think it would help reduce the cost of college and it would help a student earn more I need from an earlier age, right? We have so many people talking about how some job postings and companies are not even requiring college degrees. So I think sort of an ideal future of college could be work and school all in one. So I agree, you know, definitely internships should be more prominent. But, you know, how many internships can you do? And so what are the odds that you're going to do an internship, and that's the career path you should be in. So the process that we guide people through is a more efficient way of learning more comprehensively and more dynamically. And more efficiently really, is the goal, right? Because you have a lot of options. And you have to learn about yourself really deeply. And you've got to compare the two. So that's what our process does, in average, two to three months, somebody can go through that journey. So internships are great. But it may not be the only way to figure things out.   Michael Hingson ** 30:51 I've talked to a few people on the podcast, and one I'm thinking of, that actually had a program where they worked with industry for high school students, and students would, would spend time working. And it was, it's a private school, and instead of paying the students because they were studying as high school students, the money went to the school. And that actually became one of the major sources of funding for the school. And what they found is that it greatly increased the percentage of students who graduated and then went on to college, which I thought was pretty fascinating.   Rachel Serwetz ** 31:34 Yeah, I've seen things like that, too. You know, helping high schoolers get that hands on experience getting exposure to certain pads. All of that is amazing. It just depends, like, sometimes I've seen it be industry specific. So if there's high schoolers getting involved to learn about one industry, right, is it you know, what are the odds like that they actually then say that the industry for me, you know, so these programs are great, but, you know, again, what we try to do is make sure it's holistic, and that it's really also self driven, so that each individual can explore as many options as they need, and narrow in on whatever it is. That's, that's right for them. So that's really, the idea is hopefully you start broad, and then you do narrow in, but you have the ability to learn about whatever it is you need to learn about based on you and your strengths and your interest. That's really what we hope to, you know, allow people to do. When   Michael Hingson ** 32:28 should people do career path exploration? When do you do it?   Rachel Serwetz ** 32:33 Yes. So the earlier the better, right? There's no sooner time, then.   Michael Hingson ** 32:40 That's what you'd say, of course. Um,   Rachel Serwetz ** 32:42 so, you know, look, I would say, anytime you're ready to make a change, if you're going to a job search, or even if you're looking to get promoted, you want to know where you want to go and feel good about that. And that way, the getting there is so much easier. So I would say anytime you're ready for a change or transition, whether it's your first job, your fifth job, or 10th job, any change, it warrants the time for you to explore and reflect and figure out what it is you want, before you pursue that change. I do think in college or high school, like somebody can pursue these same processes, it's a little harder when you're younger, but you can still absolutely go through it. And the benefit is, what we really want to avoid is just like you're picking something, you know, that's, you know, A to Z, you know, very different from what makes sense for you, we want you to get in the right ballpark, if you're younger. And that way you can more naturally evolve and organically find the next step that's within the realm of what you've already been doing. Right? It doesn't have to be exact or perfect right away. And then, you know, the same goes for later on in your career, you know, really, every time and anytime and in people change jobs, it could be every one or two or three years, that's fine, you can do it as often as you need to. And usually the first time you go through the process specifically, you get so much clarity, but once you do the process like two or three or four times, you actually that's really where you get very deep in terms of like okay, now I really know like my personal mission and that that sense of deep purpose and clarity in a bigger way. But you know, the first few times you do it, it's very practical like what is my next step? What it what makes sense for me in terms of the day to day of this job, right? What is most fitting and then you really get deeper like as you could tell I very much no my mission in life, right? So that's where we want people to get is understanding their true direction and then what capacity you go act on that could look a lot of ways in terms of types of roles or companies that you could go get involved with. But yeah, you should be doing it really, several times. I would say throughout your your career, you find that   Michael Hingson ** 34:51 there are more people are just that there are a lot of people who demonstrate dissatisfaction with careers isn't, so they just hop from job to job is happening more now than it used to do you think or because yeah,   Rachel Serwetz ** 35:07 job hopping used to be that common phrase. And then in the pandemic, it was the great resignation. And it was the great rethink. And there was all these phrases, to show that people were quitting, they were pivoting, they were ready for a change, they were seeking purpose they were seeking meaning, I think the pandemic really drove all of that a lot. And sort of exacerbated, it gave people opportunities to to upskill, if they were working from home, like there was a lot of change going on a lot of readiness for change. These days, you know, when you see a lot of layoffs, it's it can be a stressful time, and it just depends on the person, right? If you don't have a lot of runway, and you need to find a job quickly, you're gonna go after something that relates to your background, if you're ready for a change, and you have a little time on your side, you know, you see that people are really going through to do the rethink and see what change may make sense for them. But everyone's different. And you know, what chapter of your life are you in? What can you afford to do right now? A change, you know, depending on how big that changes may take time, and sometimes money to upskill. So, you know, everyone's different in terms of like, you know, what they're ready to take on. But yeah, definitely, yeah, I mean, statistically, a majority of professionals are in jobs that are misaligned with their personality, or are they're disengaged at work, according to Gallup's definition. So we see that it's pervasive. And then I think that the macro environment may affect, you know, how, and when somebody, you know, makes that a reality for them and, and what they do about it, no   Michael Hingson ** 36:44 matter what we say about the pandemic, it really seems to me that it opened up so many opportunities, if we would but think of it that way. You're, as you're pointing out, there were a lot of people who pivoted or who thought about pivoting and probably really did. And the fact is that, that people started realizing, I don't have to just have a job. There are other things that I'd rather be doing. Or if they really want me to work for them, then what are they going to do to make this a pleasant environment for me?   Rachel Serwetz ** 37:20 Oh, yeah, exactly. It's a give and take, and it's kind of an ongoing question of what's reasonable, what should I expect out of an employer? You know, all these all these questions are rising again. And, yeah, it's, it's interesting, because both, you know, you have new sort of desires for something better, but at the same time, people look at layoffs, and they're like, I should be grateful for sort of any job. So you see everything, you know, people want what they want. But at the same time, no company is perfect either. So you just have to be able to gauge is this job, you know, good as it relates to everything else that's out there. And sometimes people don't know how to compare, like, you know, am I in a good spot? Or am I in a toxic environment? So sometimes that's a lot of what I do is like, give perspective, having seen so many situations? And you know, what does that mean for that person? And are they ready to move on? Is there a way of making the situation better? Or, you know, maybe they don't realize how good they have it. So, you know, every single person is, is, is different. And, you know, I would say step one is just DJing. Where do you stand, right? How are things going? And what are the opportunities for you?   Michael Hingson ** 38:30 So often, I think we just haven't learned to analyze our environment and learned how to do more introspection, and really look at what's happening in our lives. We, we react more than we think. And, you know, we could pick on politicians, they're all about reacting and they don't see but that's another story. But the the fact is that we don't do nearly as much introspection, as we should, to help us decide what kind of moves we want to make. Because I'm a firm believer in the fact that in reality, if we really listen to what our mind is telling us, all too often, there's a lot of information that's absorbed that can pop out as good decisions. But we go it can't be that easy.   Rachel Serwetz ** 39:19 Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think at any given time, you know, can you be thoughtful? And can you get support for any one decision, but you know, we can't overthink it and there's any number of things that you only know in hindsight, how did it go and was this the right call or not? So you know, definitely. I always say like, what's the ratio of like, if this is such a big decision, give it due thought if it's something that you can easily undo or find another situation later on, like just go for it, you know, but yeah, get get another pair of eyes and ears so you can think through things but you want to be careful not to be overthinking either.   Michael Hingson ** 39:59 Well, But I'll you know, even even the simple decisions, it's good to think about them and analyze what we do and what we what we want to do. We just don't tend to think enough about it we, we react, or we just decide, Oh, this isn't good. And you're right, oftentimes, we don't know how good we really have it. And I think about that with the pandemic, I'm used to doing a lot of work remotely. I've been doing it for many years. So the lockdown didn't bother me. But I also know that there are so many people who were totally paralyzed by fear and are, as I put it, blinded by fear and not able to really move forward during the pandemic, when they were given an opportunity to step back and think about things. It was just oh, this horrible pandemic, I've got to be in front of people, I got to be with people. Zoom is just a horrible thing to use. Because I really need to be in front of people, rather than looking at all the options that became available to us.   Rachel Serwetz ** 41:08 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it can be overwhelming. There's so many options, so many things available. And that's exactly where a coach can can help. Because part of what I do is just help people make sense of, there's so many options for me, right? How do I think through it? And I think the world gets ever more complex, new jobs, arising jobs going away new technologies, new skills, it's, it's harder and harder to make these decisions. So just getting support through it is really all you can do. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 41:35 well, and that's a participatory thing. So it isn't just all the coach, the person being coached has to be an integral part of it. And I think that most of us who at least understand coaching, realize that we can mostly only point the way someone has to do the work to to gain something from it.   Rachel Serwetz ** 41:59 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And   Michael Hingson ** 42:02 so it gets it gets, it gets to be a real challenge sometimes, because people just get so locked into one way of thinking, but yeah, I love, I love all the opportunities that have come along. And as I said, even with the pandemic, it offers so many different alternatives, if we both think about them, and I think it's been a pretty good eye opener in a lot of ways. And I think it's taught companies that there is value in hybrid work that we don't need to necessarily report five days a week, eight, or nine or 10 hours a day, to the office, people can be very productive and a lot of jobs remotely, at least for part of the time. Personally, I would like to spend some time in a company environment. But that doesn't always happen. And as I said, I'm used to working remotely. And I've done it for a number of companies for a number of years. So I'm quite used to it. So working at home and now working with excessively, where they're eight 9000 miles away in Israel, although there's a sales office in New York, but the accessories Corporation is in Israel. And I'm used to working with them at all hours of the day and night. Thank you very much, depending on whenever they want to have a meeting.   Rachel Serwetz ** 43:19 Yeah, no, no, it's it's so true. I think the pandemic actually just created our ability to work remote. And I think that's a blessing because, you know, without it would have taken at least 10 more years, I think, for the workforce to figure it out. Like we can all work remote. So that was definitely the silver lining there. But yeah, I mean, how people operate, how teams operate across time zones, all of that is is changing. And, you know, there was definitely a hot moment where people were, you know, in interviews, how am I going to talk about my ability to work well, remotely, right. So it's definitely an important, but now, I think it's such a sort of almost standard for anyone to have to expect someone to be able to work at least partially remotely. So yeah, for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 44:04 Yeah, I know. For me, as a as a public speaker, I like to speak at live events, because there are things that I do miss. As a speaker, when I'm doing something remotely, I don't hear all the audience reactions, I don't get some of the information that I get, if I'm presenting live at the same time. I know mostly by audiences, what I can expect based on what I say and I, I always usually do make some remarks to evoke emotional responses during a talk, and I don't get to do that in virtual presentations as much I can make the remarks but I got to assume how people are behaving because I don't get that information. But I've done it long enough that I'm fairly confident about it. If there's any time doing events virtually also has its value to in terms of how many people can be involved in it. And it's easier for a lot of people to do that. And so I'm glad that we're learning the value of doing virtual work as well. Yeah,   Rachel Serwetz ** 45:16 I agree. I agree. It challenges new, new skills, but I think it brings new challenges therefore this, you know, to the in person versus virtual, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 45:27 So it is this more of a hybrid world than it used to be? Well, what's the process for doing career path exploration? In your whole coaching process? What, how do you do it? What do you do? Exactly? Yeah. So   Rachel Serwetz ** 45:40 we start out with an assessment, very open ended, very reflective, it's, people say it's hard and all the best way, it takes a few hours. And then we narrow in on roles and industries that are relevant to somebody's affinities and reflections. And then we do a little bit of research. So we teach someone how to efficiently research those roles and industries, I think most people get mired down in the research. So we just want to get your feet wet just a little bit. And then we actually teach somebody how to network. So how do you find the right people? How do you reach out to those people get them to respond? And how do you effectively run an informational chat, so that you can deeply understand those roles and industries, then we sort of go into this like pivot process. So it's sort of like learn, synthesize, reflect and pivot week over week. And that really helps you to compare contrast, prioritize your options, and narrow in eventually on the best fit role in history and environment. Right, it's not to say that, you'll never be able to do the second third choice. But if there's differences between those roles and industries, you want to be able to prioritize, which is the best fit for you, at this moment in your career. And that's gets the goal. That's where we get in the end of the day.   Michael Hingson ** 46:58 How do you know when you're done, and you've completed the process? Yes,   Rachel Serwetz ** 47:01 um, it's interesting, because I think, you know, we go through life with the example of people around us who most people just don't have clear clarity. So we think it's normal to like, just never have those answers. But the end of the process is when you feel clear, if you're not yet clear, if you have more questions or concerns or hesitations, that means we either need more information or more reflection, or both. So you will get to a point of being informed enough to say, I know enough about this role. And I've related how that role relates to me to know that this makes sense for me right now. Right? So if there's any open questions, keep learning, keep reflecting. And you will get to that point of saying, I feel good and ready, I'm ready to go pursue this path, whatever it entails, right? And having learned what it means to go pursue that path. So yeah, that's kind of when you know that you're done. At least at that moment. Yeah. You   Michael Hingson ** 47:59 so you know, what, when, if you're the person being coached, when you feel you can actually take that step and go into whatever career you've been looking at with the coach? Exactly.   Rachel Serwetz ** 48:11 Yep. So yeah, I mean, as a coach, I'm listening for somebody to, you know, like, I've listened to see, are you really clear? I'll ask you like one to 10? How do you feel right? Or I'll listen to make sure somebody's like authentically, feeling excited and ready versus sometimes, you know, why are you saying that you want to pursue that, like, I want to make sure that you're really saying it for the right reasons. And that you're really informed and you're really ready, and you feel clear. And then from there, we'll make sure you know, the right upskilling opportunities, we'll update your branding materials, we will do job search all of the next steps from there. But yeah, we first need to make sure like, are you actually clear, right, and make sure you're ready for the next steps?   Michael Hingson ** 48:58 Have you had situations where somebody didn't succeed or resisted the process? And why was that? What What makes someone not successfully complete the process?   Rachel Serwetz ** 49:10 Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I would say, for the people who see it through to the end, there's always a good end result. Because there's only so many ways it can go there's only so many jobs that exist and you are you and you're limited to your strengths and weaknesses. And of course, you can grow in terms of your strengths as well, but what's your natural affinities? And so when you stick with the process, you know, for enough time and effort, you will always get to that end result. If something doesn't work, it's you know, people may give up. It does take a little effort and accountability and motivation. It does take time. You know, it's you know, people it's tough to do on top of a full time job. Um, that being said, you can try to make it easy like, put in 30 minutes a week. You can try to make it manageable for yourself. If you You feel committed to finding that goal and finding clarity like you absolutely can find it and should stick with it. But I think sometimes it you know, the energy and the time, or people question themselves and their capabilities, people get nervous and fearful and stressful, right? Or they question themselves, things like that your mindset can definitely get in the way. Um, but honestly, if you can stay on track with the efforts, and you have a coach to help you work through those mindsets, and you're open to getting support through it, you absolutely will get to that end result for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 50:32 So, overall, if people don't succeed, is it they're just putting blocks in the way they don't know what to do? They're resisting what you urge them to think about as a coach or what?   Rachel Serwetz ** 50:51 Yeah, I'm exactly I mean, let's see, like, if there's any sort of mindset blocks, right? It's just a matter of understanding. Where did that arise for you? Like, usually understanding the like, where did this mindset even begin in the first place? And how do we sort of unravel it? How do we overcome it? How do we alleviate that feeling and taking the time to work on your mindset. And really, as a coach, I'm here to listen, just to make sure those limiting beliefs aren't getting in your way. Because right you want your your decisions to be grounded in information, versus, you know, limiting yourself for something that may not need to be the case. So that's really what I'm here to do. But yeah, if you can be open minded, you can work through your own mindsets, get that support, and, you know, put those practical steps in place, you absolutely can successfully, you know, work through the process.   Michael Hingson ** 51:45 If you have one, I'd love to hear you without mentioning names. Just a real story of someone that that was a challenge, but ended up being a great success.   Rachel Serwetz ** 51:54 Yeah, one of my earliest clients, she was a teacher, and she really just didn't like the path. That was an understatement. And so we went through the process, she figured out, she wanted to be a project manager, we did, or she did the upskilling, you know, PMP certification, we updated all of her branding materials, and went through the job search, she landed a job as a project manager. And since then she has grown to be an agile scrum master. I had a different client who was a speech language pathologist and wanted to move on to something new and different. We went through the process, she realized she wanted to do UX design, did some training around that upskilling updated her materials. And she landed at Google, in a pretty, you know, formal, I think, like two year apprentice program to train you to be a designer. So those are just two examples of probably big career changers. But to be honest, people come to me and sometimes they need a small change. They just want to look at a new industry, or a new size company, or maybe a slight pivot in role. So you know, everyone's different, those are big examples. But you know, really, for anyone who's kind of like, what do I want, right? And we don't know the outcome, we don't know if it's gonna be a big or small change. But if somebody's in need of that clarity, that's really what the process is for, do   Michael Hingson ** 53:16 you find there are some people who come to you and they, they think they probably are in the right place already, but they're just not sure. And you, you go through this process, and they go, Oh, I was right, this is the right place for me. And that makes them happier and more satisfied on the job.   Rachel Serwetz ** 53:35 It is sometimes the case, there's usually like one of three areas of improvement. So either role, industry or environment, there's usually a reason they're coming to us if they want to seek some sort of growth, maybe they're not getting promoted, right? Or maybe they're not developing their skills, or, you know, it could be something like that. So we do just have to diagnose like, what are you seeking? What do you need more of? What are you craving? What are you missing? And it may not have to do with somebody's role it could have to do with a company in the environment, something like that. Right? So fulfillment, you know, can sort of be had in different ways. It could even be industry, right? Are you in a sector that you align with their mission? So we really just need to look at each component and see, you know, what, what you need help with,   Michael Hingson ** 54:18 it's still comes down to, you got to go through a process, you got to analyze it, you've got to think about it and make some decisions. And it's all about guiding people to make the decision that really will be best for them. And as you said, you don't know that at the outset. You You don't even know when you'll have that information. Sometimes it's just a breakthrough that suddenly comes to somebody who comes to you for coaching. Exactly, yeah. Which is kind of cool. So do you coach all over the world or where do you where do you get clients from?   Rachel Serwetz ** 54:56 Yeah, we have coached internationally I would say largely, it's the US or in Canada. But yeah, we've definitely helped people, Europe and Asia. It, you know, look, sometimes there's a country specific nuances as to their culture, or how do they job search and unique elements like that. But usually, people are aware of what are those nuances. And then they bring that to the conversation. So if there's something specific about you know, where you live, or how it works, we'll incorporate that into your strategy. But you know, usually it's more about what are you really needing help with and the fundamentals of the process? So for job search, are you meeting the right people? Are you getting your foot in the door? Do you know your strategic direction? Are you setting goals? You know, so we really look at the fundamentals of, you know, what are you? What do you need to be doing right? And where are you at? And how can we help?   Michael Hingson ** 55:48 So looking at it from a different point of view, do companies ever come to you and ask you to coach someone or help them with some of the people within their organizations? Yeah,   Rachel Serwetz ** 55:59 you know, we partner with organizations to do a lot of like events, trainings, webinars, workshops, things like that. We've even done a group coaching series over the course of a few months with a small group. So it just totally depends on you know, kind of what people need. Ironically, you know, we have people who are currently working, they come to find us on their own. So it's not even like their company came to us, but they wanted a coach and maybe their company wasn't providing it. So we're very much kind of like the direct to consumer model. But, you know, in the future, that is something we're gonna look for more of it's just partnering with organizations and providing help that way. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:35 I figured that mostly, it was a consumer oriented model. But I thought it would be interesting to explore the idea of, what about companies? Do they value what you do? And sounds like you're, you're seeing some of that? Yeah, absolutely. Which is, which is kind of cool. So have you written any books yet about your process? And the things that you do? Yes,   Rachel Serwetz ** 56:55 we actually sell that on our website. That was one of the first things I did. So let's see back in, I guess, 2018, one of the first things before I had any software or anything like that, I realized I had so many things I had been saying, for years. So I wrote it all down and 250 pages later. You know, that's, that's what we have. So it is a guide, it also comes with our process. So if you're doing the software, you can follow along with the book chapters and things like that. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 57:27 if if you? Because I don't think we got that if you'd send me like a picture of the book cover or something. I'd love to put that up to help promote what you're doing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I will. Yes. Yeah. Well, I've got to say, this has been a lot of fun. And I, I've learned a lot, I really appreciate your time. If people want to reach out to you, and maybe learn more about what you do and so on. How do they do that?   Rachel Serwetz ** 57:54 Yeah, um, our website is I am woken.com. On LinkedIn, I'm Rachel Serwetz. And that's kind of one of my main places that I post a lot of content. Our website has a big Free Library of career resources. You can email us team at I am Oh, good, calm and   Michael Hingson ** 58:12 woken. By the way, it's w o k e n for those who want it. Oh, yeah.   Rachel Serwetz ** 58:17 Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, you can find I mean, we're also on every kind of social media site, so you can find us and, and reach out LinkedIn, DM, email, whatever it may be. And we would, we would love to be in touch. And we always offer a free initial call. So 20 minutes, and just tell us kind of how you're doing. And we will, of course, give you recommendations. So that's a great way to get started to go.   Michael Hingson ** 58:39 Cool. Well, Rachel, I really am grateful for you taking the time to to be here today. And we've been doing this now long enough that it's getting close to dinnertime there in New York. So got it got to deal with priorities, right?   Rachel Serwetz ** 58:54 Absolutely. Yeah. It's I try to keep that work life balance.   Michael Hingson ** 58:58 Yeah, you got to do that. Well, thank you for being here. And I want to thank you for listening out there. I hope you've enjoyed what Rachel had to say. Please reach out to her. And if you are looking to do something with your career, you can go no further than Rachel to find a great knowledgeable, I think very attentive listening person who can help so please reach out to Rachel and do that. I'd appreciate it. If you would let us know what you think about today. Feel free to email me at Michaelhi@accessibe.com. So that's m i c h a e l  h i. At accessibe A c c e s s i b e.com Or go to our podcast page www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast. And Michael Hingson is m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast. And wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value those very highly. And we do value your input and your comments. So please don't hesitate to leave them wherever you're listening to us. Sir watching us on YouTube. Love to get those comments. And again, Rachel, one last time. I really appreciate you being here and thank you for giving us a lot of insights today.   Rachel Serwetz ** 1:00:08 You are very welcome. We'll talk soon. We   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:11 will. So thank you.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:00:17 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all

If you're thinking about joining a coding bootcamp, then this episode is for you.My guest for this episode is Ramone Smith, a Certified Digital Career Strategist. Ramone has experience in providing career coaching and job search services for technical bootcamp students and alumni. He has worked as a career coach, and job search consultant in various technical bootcamps such as Springboard, Udacity, and Flatiron School. He has also worked as a career coach for Per Scholas.Ramone was also a Customer Success Manager at Indeed.com, ensuring that clients maximize their investment in advertising their open jobs on Indeed's online platform.During our conversation, we explored a variety of topics, including:What types of jobs does Ramone specialize in coaching people for, and what are the key skills needed for success in those roles?What are Ramone's job searching insights from his time at Indeed.com?What specific examples of events and networking activities that can enhance your chances of landing a tech job, as recommended by Ramone?What are some examples of freelance opportunities post-bootcamp that can help jumpstart your tech career?Whether you're a recent bootcamp graduate, a seasoned tech professional, or someone looking to break into the industry, this conversation will give you some practical advice and inspiration for achieving your career goals in the software engineering space.Do you want to learn more on how you can conquer your coding bootcamp and have a successful tech career? Check out more helpful info from Ramone Smith at https://techcareerguides.com/Timestamps:00:00 Are companies more open to hiring straight out of bootcamp?  02:28 Is bootcamp the best route for anyone trying to “break” into tech?08:33 Ramone's tips for job-hunting on sites like Indeed?11:08 Ramone's examples of tips for landing a tech job after completing a bootcamp25:27 What are some red or green flags to look for when looking for a tech bootcamp to join?35:15 Unrealistic bootcamp expectations 49:04 Do they still drug test for these jobs?You can reach out to TEK or DIE by sending a message at https://www.tekordie.com/contact/#TEKorDIE #TEKorDIEpodcastIf you got value out of this episode, subscribe to this podcast and please share this conversation with someone who will benefit from it.We're also on YouTube so check it out for additional content, visuals, etc.

Today on Noob School, we're joined by Peter Barth of Flatiron School - an organization which teaches people of all walks of life to master the art of coding, from software design to cybersecurity engineering. Tune in to learn more about what Flatiron School has to offer, as well as a look into the life of Peter, from key experiences in the sales world, to the story of how he got to know the Wolf of Wall Street himself - Jordan Belfort. Check out what the Noob School website has to offer: SchoolForNoobs.com I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

Welcome to Test Automation Experience, hosted by Nikolay Advolodkin. In this episode, Nikolay is joined by guest BekahHW, creator of the community VirtualCoffee and Developer Experience Lead at OpenSauced. Join them as they delve into the world of open-source coding, what the tech landscape looks like for junior developers and those transitioning to software engineering, and the challenges Bekah faced during her own transition to tech. Don't miss this episode of Test Automation Experience to gain valuable insights.

Which is better: onshore versus offshore hiring? This is an important consideration in today's hybrid world. To answer this question, Scaling Tech's Debbie Madden has brought in Joe Burgess: someone who's tried both approaches in recent months.Joe Burgess started his career as a software developer and teacher at Flatiron School, after which he transitioned into leading teams of data scientists, engineers, designers, and education professionals to build the education product at Flatiron – and then deliver it to tens of thousands of students.Joe then co-founded Ribbon Education where he now focuses on education and sales. Building startup teams is second nature to Joe, but as he found out with some of his offshore hire experimentation, mistakes can be made. This episode is a lesson in, among many things, defining the requirements of the job. Understand those requirements clearly so that a team can communicate at a certain level so that you can attain a certain work level. And as simple as it sounds, for Joe hiring early on via Upwork, the ability of his tech hires to understand English proved to be a stumbling block. Most startups can ill afford the resources to teach someone the job, and walking that fine line between finding someone who is suitably qualified to build you a CRM platform and giving a young coder an opportunity is well-considered and elucidated by Joe and Debbie. How can you go about hiring junior offshore talent? Is timezone important? How do you create the right work culture with a hybrid team? Answers to these questions and more in this week's educational episode of Scaling Tech."When you're a brand new startup (and we're just getting going), it's really hard to allocate the resources to teach someone how to do something." - Joe BurgessIn This Episode:- Joe's early experiences hiring offshore via Upwork- What are the requirements of the job? Defining those clearly- The overlap between teaching and management- The challenges of hiring junior offshore talent- How to tackle timezone issues- Understanding your employment law options when hiring offshore- How to create the right hybrid work cultureAnd more!Resources:- Horsepaste (codenames online) - https://www.horsepaste.com/Connect with Joe Burgess:- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmburges- Ribbon Education - https://www.ribbonedu.com/Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

On this episode, Scott has the chance to interview Carla Stickler who has "defied gravity" and expectations throughout her varied careers as a vocalist, Broadway performer and web/software engineer. And she discusses the many educational paths she took to land some of her dream gigs, including Wicked on Broadway and her current work as a web engineer at Spotify. Carla Stickler is perhaps best known for her news-making return to the role of Elphaba in Wicked in 2022, after a 7-year hiatus away from the show. That return single-handedly, helped keep Wicked open in a Covid-weary industry. Her story and advocacy ideas about Artists in STEM have been featured in Marie Claire, NPR, Huffington Post, Vulture, Inside Editon, Nightline - among others.As an actor, Carla toured the nation with Mamma Mia (covering Sophie) and toured Asia playing Liesel in the The Sound of Music. She has also performed her own cabaret as a guest entertainer onboard Norwegian and Disney Cruise Lines. Carla has a BFA in acting from NYU-Tisch and masters degree in theater education from NYU-Steinhardt, and she was a voice teacher in New York City on the faculties of Marymount Manhattan College and Molloy College/CAP21. And she also attended The Flatiron School in New York City, a software engineering bootcamp, that helped her as she career transitioned from the entertainment industry to the tech sector.  Carla mentors high school students through their college application journey through iMentor in Chicago as well as artists looking to make a career change into tech through Artists Who Code. Carla is passionate about reframing the narrative of the “starving artist” and encourages young artists to take agency over their careers by developing skills that can provide them with financial stability alongside their artistic journey.To find out more about Carla Stickler: Website: www.carlastickler.comTikTok: @sticklercarlaLinked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/carlastickler/Podcast References:The Portfolio Life by Christina WallaceBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREESupport the showTo find out more about The Creative College Journey and services we have to offer, please visit our website and sign-up for our mailing list: www.creativecollegejourney.com Introduction voice-over: Sara CravensOr find our host Scott Barnhardt on Instagram.

Julia DeBari shares her experience as a design recruiter,  how to navigate compensation and benefits, and what to ask to work out if a role is right for you. Highlights include: Why are recruiters told not to disclose salary ranges? When and how should you bring up compensation? Why should you invite doubt into a hiring conversation? What do designers need to know about recruitment? Why ask interviewers what makes them proud of their company? ====== Who is Julia DeBari? Julia is the head of design operations for the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, where she's busy helping the design practice to be more effective and efficient. Before joining the Institute, Julia worked as a freelance design program manager focused on improving onboarding and education. Her clients included the Interaction Design Foundation, LinkedIn and The Hired Guns. Julia's career in UX began at the dawn of the millennium, as an interaction designer for a Dutch company called Internovation. Since then, she has worked across startups, enterprise, and agency, including at Adobe, MRM Worldwide, Razorfish, Sapient, and Dell. One of Julia's great passions is design education and most recently she was the lead design educator at Flatiron School. Across the years she's also been a design educator at Product School, UC Berkley Extension, Design Assembly and GrowthX Academy. ====== Find Julia here: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliadebari/ Website: https://www.juliad.com/ ====== Liked what you heard and want to hear more? Subscribe and support the show by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). Follow us on our other social channels for more great Brave UX content! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TheSpaceInBetween/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-space-in-between/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespaceinbetw__n/ ====== Hosted by Brendan Jarvis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanjarvis/ Website: https://thespaceinbetween.co.nz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brendanjarvis/

Lisa Jiang has a long career at the heights of edtech; she was most recently the head of Remote Learning at Facebook, after 4 years as a senior director of product at New York's Flatiron School, a leading bootcamp provider and 6 years at Google, where she was a product manager and lead for education for Google Hangouts.Joe Burgess was the first hire at Flatiron School and worked his way up to the VP of Education, where he led the education product and delivery teams across four disciplines both online and in Flatiron's eight campuses.Together, they are the co-founders of Ribbon Education, which is building software to help student-facing staff scale their impact to serve more learners and improve outcomes in adult education.Recommended ResourcesPhil Hill's blogMichael FeldsteinRobert Ubell's booksLearners' Success Guild & blog by Ribbon Education

This was another great conversation. I know I say that every time, but it seems to always be true. Emily and I (Melissa) crossed paths 5 years ago at Flatiron School. Our careers have taken different trajectory paths since then and this conversation was a chance to both catch up as well as to get her full story of going from English Professor to Frontend Engineer. We cover: Choosing the route of academia Work as a college English professor “Trying out” programming Flatiron Bootcamp First role at Pendo Onboarding as a brand new engineer The Bootcamp path Growing from an entry-level frontend engineer to a senior engineer The value of meetups and forming relationships within the industry Two great places to "try it out" are: Codecademy LaunchSchool To follow Emily's GoodReads recommendations, head here. Connect with Emily on LinkedIn --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/data-and-dev/message

Full Description / Show Notes Corey and Linda talk about Tiktok and the online developer community (1:18) Linda talks about what prompted her to want to work at AWS (5:29) Linda discusses navigating the change from just being part of the developer community to being an employee of AWS (10:37) Linda talks about moving AWS more in the direction of short form content, and Corey and Linda talk about the Tiktok algorithm (15:56) Linda talks about the potential struggle of going from short form to long form content (25:21) About LindaLinda Vivah is a Site Reliability Engineer for a major media organization in NYC, a tech content creator, an AWS community builder member, a part-time wedding singer, and the founder of a STEM jewelry shop called Coding Crystals. At the time of this recording she was about to join AWS in her current position as a Developer Advocate.Linda had an untraditional journey into tech. She was a Philosophy major in college and began her career in journalism. In 2015, she quit her tv job to attend The Flatiron School, a full stack web development immersive program in NYC. She worked as a full-stack developer building web applications for 5 years before shifting into SRE to work on the cloud end internally.Throughout the years, she's created tech content on platforms like TikTok & Instagram and believes that sometimes the best way to learn is to teach.Links Referenced:lindavivah.com: https://lindavivah.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: Let's face it, on-call firefighting at 2am is stressful! So there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that you probably can't prevent incidents from happening, but the good news is that incident.io makes incidents less stressful and a lot more valuable. incident.io is a Slack-native incident management platform that allows you to automate incident processes, focus on fixing the issues and learn from incident insights to improve site reliability and fix your vulnerabilities. Try incident.io, recover faster and sleep more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. We talk a lot about how people go about getting into this ridiculous industry of ours, and I've talked a little bit about how I go about finding interesting and varied guests to show up and help me indulge my ongoing love affair on this show with the sound of my own voice. Today, we're going to be able to address both of those because today I'm speaking to Linda Haviv, who, as of this recording, has accepted a job as a Developer Advocate at AWS, but has not started. Linda, welcome to the show.Linda: Thank you so much for having me, Corey. Happy to be here.Corey: So, you and I have been talking for a while and there's been a lot of interesting things I learned along the way. You were one of the first people I encountered when I joined the TikToks, as all the kids do these days, and was trying to figure out is there a community of folks who use AWS. Which really boils down to, “So, where are these people that are sad all the time?” Well, it turns out, they're on TikTok, so there we go. We found my people.And that was great. And we started talking, and it turns out that we were both in the AWS community builder program. And we've developed a bit of a rapport. We talk about different things. And then, I guess, weird stuff started happening, in the context of you were—you're doing very well at building an audience for yourself on TikTok.I tried it, and it was—my sense of humor sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I've had challenges in finding any reasonable way to monetize it because a 30-second video doesn't really give nuance for a full ad read, for example. And you've been looking at it from the perspective of a content creator looking to build the audience slash platform is step one, and then, eh, step two, you'll sort of figure out aspects of monetization later. Which, honestly, is a way easier way to do it in hindsight, but, yeah, the things that we learn. Now, that you're going to AWS, first, you planning to still be on the TikToks and whatnot?Linda: Absolutely. So, I really look at TikTok as a funnel. I don't think it's the main place, you're going to get that deep-dive content but I think it's a great way, especially for things that excite you or get you into understanding it, especially beginner-type audience, I think there's a lot of untapped market of people looking to into tech, or technologists that aren't in the cloud. I mean, even when I worked—I worked as a web developer and then kind of learned more about the cloud, and I started out as a front-end developer and shifted into, like, SRE and infrastructure, so even for people within tech, you can have a huge tech community which there is on TikTok, with a younger community—but not all of them really understand the cloud necessarily, depending on their job function. So, I think it's a great way to kind of expose people to that.For me, my exposure came from community. I met somebody at a meetup who was working in cloud, and it wasn't even on the job that I really started getting into cloud because many times in corporations, you might be working on a specific team and you're not really encountering other ends, and it seems kind of like a mystery. Although it shouldn't seem like magic, many times when you're doing certain job functions—especially the DevOps—could end up feeling like magic. So, [laugh] for the good and the bad. So sometimes, if you're not working on that end, you really sometimes take it for granted.And so, for me, I actually—meetups were the way I got exposed to that end. And then I brought it back into my work and shifted internally and did certifications and started, even, lunch-and-learns where I work to get more people in their learning journey together within the company, and you know, help us as we're migrating to the cloud, as we're building on the cloud. Which, of course, we have many more roles down the road. I did it for a few years and saw the shift. But I worked at a media company for many years and now shifting to AWS, and so I've seen that happen on different ends.Not—oh, I wasn't the one doing the migration because I was on the other end of that time, but now for the last two years, I was working on [laugh] the infrastructure end, and so it's really fascinating. And many people actually—until now I feel like—that will work on maybe the web and mobile and don't always know as much about the cloud. I think it's a great way to funnel things in a quick manner. I think also society is getting used to short videos, and our attention span is very low, and I think for—Corey: No argument here.Linda: —[crosstalk 00:04:39] spending so mu—yeah, and we're spending so much time on these platforms, we might as well, you know, learn something. And I think it depends what content. Some things work well, some things doesn't. As with anything content creation, you kind of have to do trial and error, but I do find the audience to be a bit different on TikTok versus Twitter versus Instagram versus YouTube. Which is interesting how it's going to play out on YouTube, too, which is a whole ‘nother topic conversation.Corey: Well, it's odd to me watching your path. It's almost the exact opposite of mine where I started off on the back-end, grumpy sysadmin world and, “Oh, why would I ever need to learn JavaScript?” “Well, genius, because as the world progresses, guess what? That's right. The entire world becomes JavaScript. Welcome.”And it took me a long time to come around to that. You started with the front-end world and then basically approached from the exact opposite end. Let's be clear, back in my day, mine was the common path. These days, yours is very much the common path.Linda: Yeah.Corey: I also want to highlight that all of those transitions and careers that you spoke about, you were at the same company for nine years, which in tech is closer to 30. So, I have to ask, what was it that inspired you, after nine years, to decide, “I'm going to go work somewhere else. But not just anywhere; I'm going to AWS.” Because normally people don't almost institutionalized lifers past a certain point.Linda: [laugh].Corey: Like, “Oh, you'll be there till you retire or die.” Whereas seeing significant career change after that long in one place, even if you've moved around internally and experienced a lot of different roles, is not common at all what sparked that?Linda: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's such a good question. I always think about that, too, especially as I was reflecting because I'm, you know, in the midst of this transition, and I've gotten a lot of reflecting over the last two weeks [laugh], or more. But I think the main thing for me is, I always, wherever I was—and this kind of something that—I'm very proactive when it comes to trying to transition. I think, even when I was—right, I held many roles in the same company; I used to work in TV production and actually left for three months to go to a coding boot camp and then came back on the other end, but I understood the product in a different way.So, for that time period, it was really interesting to work on the other end. But, you know, as I kind of—every time I wanted to progress further, I always made a move that was actually new and put me in an uncomfortable place, even within the same company. And I'm at the point now that I'm in my career, I felt like this next step really needs to be, you know, at AWS. It's not, like, the natural progression for me. I worked alongside—on the client end—with AWS and have seen so many projects come through and how much our own workloads have changed.And it's just been an incredible journey, also dealing with accounts team. On that end, I've worked alongside them, so for me, it was kind of a natural progression. I was very passionate about cloud computing at AWS and I kind of wanted to take it to that next place, and I felt like—also, dealing with the community as part of my job is a dream part to me because I was always doing that on the side on social media. So, it wasn't part of my day-to-day job. I was working as an SRE and an infrastructure engineer, so I didn't get to do that as part of my day-to-day.I was making videos at 2 a.m. and, you know, kind of trying to, like, do—you know, interact with the community like that. And I think—I come from a performing background, the people background, I was singing since I was four years old. I always go to—I was a wedding singer, so I go into a room and I love making people happy or giving value. And I think, like, education has a huge part of that. And in a way, like making that content and—Corey: You got to get people's attention—Linda: Yeah.Corey: —you can't teach them a damn thing.Linda: Right. Exactly. So, it's kind of a mix of everything. It's like that performance, the love of learning. You know, between you and I, like, I wanted to be a lawyer before I thought I was going to—before I went to tech.I thought I was going to be a lawyer purely because I loved the concept of going to law school. I never took time to think about the law part, like, being the lawyer part. I always thought, “Oh, school.” I'm a student at heart. I always call myself a professional student. I really think that's part of what you need to be in this world, in this tech industry, and I think for me, that's what keeps my fire going.I love to experiment, to learn, to build. And there's something very fulfilling about building products. If you take a step back, like, you're kind of—you know, for me that part, every time I look back at that, that always is what kind of keeps me going. When I was doing front-end, it felt a lot more like I was doing smaller things than when I was doing infrastructure, so I felt like that was another reason why I shifted. I love doing the front-end, but I felt like I was spending two days on an Internet Explorer bug and it just drove me—[laugh] it just made it feel unfulfilling versus spending two days on, you know, trying to understand why, you know, something doesn't run the infrastructure or, like, there's—you know, it's failing blindly, you know? Stuff like that. Like, I don't know, for me that felt more fulfilling because the problem was more macro. But I think I needed both. I have a love for both, but I definitely prefer being back-end. So. [laugh]. Well, I'm saying that now but—[laugh].Corey: This might be a weakness on my part where I'm basically projecting onto others, and this is—I might be completely wrong on this, but I tend to take a bit of a bifurcated view of community. I mean, community is part of the reason that I know the things I know and how I got to this place that I am, so use that as a cautionary tale if you want. But when I talk to someone like you at this moment, where you're in the community, I'm in the community, and I'm talking to you about a problem I'm having and we're working on ways to potentially solve that or how to think about that. I view us as basically commiserating on these things, whereas as soon as you start on day one—and yes, it's always day one—at AWS and this becomes your day job and you work there, on some level, for me, there's a bit shift that happens and a switch gets flipped in my head where, oh, you actually work at this company. That means you're the problem.And I'm not saying that in a way of being antagonistic. Please, if you're watching or listening to this, do not antagonize the developer advocates. They have a very hard job understanding all this so they can explain that to the rest of us. But how do you wind up planning to navigate, or I guess your views on, I guess, handling the shift between, “One of the customers like the rest of us,” to, as I say, “Part of the problem,” for lack of a better term.Linda: Or, like, work because you kind of get the—you know. I love this question and it's something I've been pondering a lot on because I think the messaging will need to be a little different [coming from me 00:10:44] in the sense of, there needs to be—just in anything, you have to kind of create trust. And to create trust, you have to be vulnerable and authentic. And I think I, for example, utilize a lot of things outside of just the AWS cloud topic to do that now, even, when I—you know, kind of building it without saying where I work or anything like that, going into this role and it being my job, it's going to be different kind of challenge as far as the messaging, but I think it still holds true that part, that just developing trust and authenticity, I might have to do more of that, you know? I might have to really share more of that part, share other things to really—because it's more like people come, it doesn't matter how much somet—how many times you explain it, many times, they will see your title and they will judge you for it, and they don't know what happened before. Every TikTok, for example, you have to act like it's a new person watching. There is no series, you know? Like, yes, there's a series but, like, sometimes you can make that but it's not really the way TikTok functions or a short-form video functions. So, you kind of have to think this is my first time—Corey: It works really terribly when you're trying to break it out that way on TikTok.Linda: [laugh]. Yeah.Corey: Right. Here's part 17 of my 80-TikTok-video saga. And it's, “Could you just turn this into a blog post or put this on YouTube or something? I don't have four hours to spend learning how all this stuff works in your world.”Linda: Yeah. And you know, I think repeating certain things, too, is really important. So, they say you have to repeat something eight times for people to see it or [laugh] something like that. I learned that in media [crosstalk 00:12:13]—Corey: In a row, or—yeah. [laugh].Linda: I mean, the truth is that when you, kind of like, do a TikTok maybe, like, there's something you could also say or clarify because I think there's going to be—and I'm going to have to—there's going to be a lot of trial and error for me; I don't know if I have answers—but my plan is going into it very much testing that kind of introduction, or, like, clarifying what that role is. Because the truth is, the role is advocating on behalf of the community and really helping that community, so making sure that—you don't have to say it as far as a definition maybe, but, like, making sure that comes across when you create a video. And I think that's going to be really important for me, and more important than the prior even creating content going forward. So, I think that's one thing that I definitely feel like is key.As well as creating more raw interaction. So, it depends on the platform, too. Instagram, for example, is much more community—how do I put this? Instagram is much more easy to navigate as far as reaching the same community because you have something, like, called Instagram Stories, right? So, on Instagram Stories, you're bringing those stories, mostly the same people that follow you. You're able to build that trust through those stories.On TikTok, they just released Stories. I haven't really tried them much and I don't play with it a lot, but I think that's something I will utilize because those are the people that are already follow you, meaning they have seen a piece of content. So, I think addressing it differently and knowing who's watching what and trying to kind of put yourself in their shoes when you're trying to, you know, teach something, it's important for you to have that trust with them. And I think—key to everything—being raw and authentic. I think people see through that. I would hope they do.And I think, uh, [laugh] that's what I'm going to be trying to do. I'm just going to be really myself and real, and try to help people and I hope that comes through because that's—I'm passionate about getting more people into the cloud and getting them educated. And I feel like it's something that could also allow you to build anything, just from anywhere on your computer, brings people together, the world is getting smaller, really. And just being able to meet people through that and there's just a way to also change your life. And people really could change their life.I changed my life, I think, going into tech and I'm in the United States and I, you know—I'm in New York, you know, but I feel like so many people in the States and outside of the States, you know, all over the world, you know, have access to this, and it's powerful to be able to build something and contribute and be a part of the future of technology, which AWS is.Corey: I feel like, in three years or whatever it is that you leave AWS in the far future, we're going to basically pull this video up and MST3k came together. It's like, “Remember how naive you were talking about these things?” And I'm mostly kidding, but let's be serious. You are presumably going to be focusing on the idea of short-form content. That is—Linda: Yeah.Corey: What your bread-and-butter of audience-building has been around, and that is something that is new for AWS.Linda: Yeah.Corey: And I'm always curious as to how companies and their cultures continue to evolve. I can only imagine there's a lot of support structure in place for that. I personally remember giving a talk at an AWS event and I had my slides reviewed by their legal team, as they always do, and I had a slide that they were looking at very closely where I was listing out the top five AWS services that are bullshit. And they don't really have a framework for that, so instead, they did their typical thing of, “Okay, we need to make sure that each of those services starts with the appropriate AWS or Amazon naming convention and are they capitalized properly?” Because they have a framework for working on those things.I'm really curious as to how the AWS culture and way of bringing messaging to where people are is going to be forced to evolve now that they, like it or not, are going to be having significantly increased presence on TikTok and other short-form platforms.Linda: I mean, it's really going to be interesting to see how this plays out. There's so much content that's put out, but sometimes it's just not reaching the right audience, so making sure that funnel exists to the right people is important and reaching those audiences. So, I think even YouTube Shorts, for example. Many people in tech use YouTube to search a question.They do not care about the intro, sometimes. It depends what kind of following, it depends if [in gaming 00:16:30], but if you're coming and you're building something, it's like a Stack Overflow sometimes. You want to know the answer to your question. Now, YouTube Shorts is a great solution to that because many times people want the shortest possible answer. Now, of course, if it's a tutorial on how to build something, and it warrants ten minutes, that's great.Even ten minutes is considered, now, Shorts because TikTok now has ten-minute videos, but I think TikTok is now searchable in the way YouTube is, and I think let's say YouTube Shorts is short-form, but very different type of short-form than TikTok is. TikTok, hooks matter. YouTube answers to your questions, especially in chat. I wouldn't say everything in YouTube is like that; depends on the niche. But I think even within short-form, there's going to be a different strategy regarding that.So, kind of like having that mix. I guess, depending on platform and audience, that's there. Again, trial and error, but we'll see how this plays out and how this will evolve. Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. 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My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: I feel like there are two possible outcomes here. One is that AWS—Linda: Yeah.Corey: Nails this pivot into short-form content, and the other is that all your TikTok videos start becoming ten minutes long, which they now support, welcome to my TED Talk. It's awful, and then you wind up basically being video equivalent for all of your content, of recipes when you search them on the internet where first they circle the point to death 18 times with, “Back when I was a small child growing up in the hinterlands, we wound—my grandmother would always make the following stew after she killed the bison with here bare hands. Why did grandma kill a bison? We don't know.” And it just leads down this path so they can get, like, long enough content or they can have longer and longer articles to display more ads.And then finally at the end, it's like ingredient one: butter. Ingredient two, there is no ingredient two. Okay. That explains why it's delicious. Awesome. But I don't like having people prolong it. It's just, give me the answer I'm looking for.Linda: Yeah.Corey: Get to the point. Tell me the story. And—Linda: And this is—Corey: —I'm really hoping that is not the direction your content goes in. Which I don't think it would, but that is the horrifying thing and if for some chance I'm right, I will look like Nostradamus when we do that MST3k episode.Linda: No, no. I mean, I really am—I always personally—even when I was creating content these last few years and testing different things, I'm really a fan of the shortest way possible because I don't have the patience to watch long videos. And maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker that can't sit down from the life of me—apart from when I code of course—but, you know, I don't like wasting time, I'm always on the go, I'm with my coffee, I'm like—that's the kind of style I prefer to bring in videos in the sense of, like, people have no time. [laugh]. You know?The amount of content we're consuming is just, uh, bonkers. So, I don't think our mind is really a built for consuming [laugh] this much content every time you open your phone, or every time you look, you know, online. It's definitely something that is challenging in a whole different way. But I think where my content—if it's ten minutes, it better be because I can't shorten it. That's my thing. So, you can hold me accountable to that because—Corey: Yeah, I want ten minutes of—Linda: I'm not a—Corey: Content, not three minutes of content in a ten-minute bag.Linda: Exactly. Exactly. So, if it's a ten-minute video, it would have been in one hour that I cut down, like, meaning a tutorial, a very much technical types of content. I think things that are that long, especially in tech, would be something like, on that end—unless, of course, you know, I'm not talking about, like, longer videos on YouTube which are panels or that kind of thing. I'm talking more like if I'm doing something on TikTok specifically.TikTok also cares about your watch time, so if people aren't interested in it, it's not going to do well, it doesn't matter how many followers you have. Which is what I do like about the way TikTok functions as opposed to, let's say, Instagram. Instagram is more like it gives it to your following—and this is the current state, I don't know if it always evolves—but the current state is, Instagram Reels kind of functions in a way where it goes first to the people that follow you, but, like, in a way that's more amplified than TikTok. TikTox tests people that follows you, but if it's not a good video, it won't do well. And honestly, they're many good videos videos that don't go viral. I'm not talking about that.Sometimes it's also the topic and the niche and the sound and the title. I mean, there's so many people who take a topic and do it in three different ways and one of them goes viral. I mean, there's so many factors that play into it and it's hard to really, like, always, you know, kind of reverse engineer but I do think that with TikTok, things won't do well, more likely if it's not a good piece of content as opposed to—or, like, too long, right? Not—I shouldn't say not good a good piece of content—it's too long.Corey: The TikTok algorithm is inscrutable to me. TikTok is firmly convinced, based upon what it shows me, that I am apparently a lesbian. Which okay, fine. Awesome. Whatever. I'm also—it keeps showing me ads for ADHD stuff, and it was like, “Wow, like, how did it know that?” Followed by, “Oh, right. I'm on TikTok. Nevermind.”And I will say at one point, it recommended someone to me who, looking at the profile picture, she's my nanny. And it's, I have a strong policy of not, you know, stalking my household employees on social media. We are not Facebook friends, we are not—in a bunch of different areas. Like, how on earth would they have figured this out? I'm filling the corkboard with conspiracy and twine followed by, “Wait a minute. We probably both connect from the same WiFi network, which looks like the same IP address and it probably doesn't require a giant data science team to put two and two together on those things.” So, it was great. I was all set to do the tinfoil hat conspiracy, but no, no, that's just very basic correlation 101.Linda: And also, this is why I don't enable contacts on TikTok. You know, how it says, “Oh, connect your contacts?”Corey: Oh, I never do that. Like, “Can we look at your contacts?”Linda: Never.Corey: “No.” “Can we look at all of your photos?” “Absolutely not.” “Can we track you across apps?” “Why would anyone say yes to this? You're going to do it anyway, but I'll say no.” Yeah.Linda: Got to give the least privilege. [laugh]. Definitely not—Corey: Oh absolutely.Linda: Yeah. I think they also help [crosstalk 00:22:40]—Corey: But when I'm looking at—the monetization problem is always a challenge on things like this, too, because when I'm—my guilty TikTok scrolling pleasures hit, it's basically late at night, I just want to see—I want something to want to wind down and decompress. And I'm not about ready to watch, “Hey, would you like to migrate your enterprise database to this other thing?” It's, I… no. There's a reason that the ads that seem to be everywhere and doing well are aimed at the mass market, they're generally impulse buys, like, “Hey, do you want to set that thing over there on fire, but you're not close enough to get the job done? But this flame thrower today. Done.”And great, like, that is something everyone can enjoy, but these nuanced database products and anything else is B2B SaaS style stuff, it feels like it's a very tough sell and no one has quite cracked that nut, yet.Linda: Yeah, and I think the key there—this is, I'm guessing based on, like, what I want to try out a lot—is the hook and the way you're presenting it has to be very product-focused in the sense that it needs to be very relatable. Even if you don't know anything about tech, you need to be—like, for example, in the architecture page on AWS, there's a video about the Emirates going to Mars mission. Space is a very interesting topic, right? I think, a hook, like, “Do want to see how, like, how this is bu—” like, it's all, like, freely available to see exactly [laugh] how this was built. Like, it might—in the right wording, of course—it might be interesting to someone who's looking for fun-fact-style content.Now, is it really addressing the people that are building everyday? Not really always, depends who's on there and the mass market there. But I feel like going on the product and the things that are mass-market, and then working backwards to the tech part of it, even if they learn something and then want to learn more, that's really where I see TikTok. I don't think every platform would be, maybe, like this, but that's where I see getting people: kind of inviting them in to learn more, but making it cool and fun. It's very important, but it feels cool and fun. [laugh]. So.Because you're right, you're scrolling at 2 a.m. who wants to start seeing that. Like, it's all about how you teach. The content is there, the content has—you know, that's my thing. It's like, the content is there. You don't need to—it's yes, there's the part where things are always evolving and you need to keep track of that; that's whole ‘nother type thing which you do very well, right?And then there's a part where, like, the content that already exists, which part is evergreen? Meaning, which part is, like, something that could be re—also is not timely as far as update, for example, well-architected framework. Yes, it evolves all the time, you always have new pillars, but the guide, the story, that is an evergreen in some sense because that guide doesn't, you know, that whole concept isn't going anywhere. So, you know, why should someone care about that?Corey: Right. How to turn on two-factor authentication for your AWS account.Linda: Right.Corey: That's evergreen. That's the sort of thing that—and this is the problem, I think, AWS has had for a long time where they're talking about new features, new enhancements, new releases. But you look what people are actually doing and so much of it is just the same stuff again and again because yeah, that is how most of the cloud works. It turns out that three-quarters of company's production infrastructures tends to run on EC2 more frequently than it tends to run on IoT Greengrass. Imagine that.So, there's this idea of continuing to focus on these things. Now, one of my predictions is that you're going to have a lot of fun with this and on some level, it's going to really work for you. In others, it's going to be hilariously—well, its shortcomings might be predictable. I can just picture now you're at re:Invent; you have a breakout talk and terrific. And you've successfully gotten your talk down to one minute and then you're sitting there with—Linda: [laugh].Corey: —the remainder of maybe 59. Like, oh, right. Yeah. Turns out not everything is short-form. Are you predicting any—Linda: Yep.Corey: Problems going from short-form to long-form in those instances?Linda: I think it needs to go hand-in-hand, to be honest. I think when you're creating any short-form content, you have—you know, maybe something short is actually sometimes in some ways, right, harder because you really have to make sure, especially in a technical standpoint, leaving things out is sometimes—leaves, like, a blind spot. And so, making sure you're kind of—whatever you're educating, you kind of, to be clear, “Here's where you learn more. Here's how I'm going to answer this next question for you: go here.” Now, in a longer-form content, you would cover all that.So, there's always that longevity. I think even when I write a script, and there's many scripts I'm still [laugh] I've had many ideas until now I've been doing this still at 2 a.m. so of course, there's many that didn't, you know, get released, but those are the things that are more time consuming to create because you're taking something that's an hour-long, and trying to make sure you're pulling out the things that are most—that are hook-style, that invite people in, that are accurate, okay, that really give you—explain to you clearly where are the blind spots that I'm not explaining on this video are. So, “XYZ here is, like, the high level, but by the way, there's, like, this and this.” And in a long-form, you kind of have to know the long-form version of it to make the short-form, in some ways, depending on what—you're doing because you're funneling them to somewhere. That's my thing. Because I don't think there should be [crosstalk 00:27:36]—Corey: This is the curse of Twitter, on some level. It's, “Well, you forgot about this corner case.” “Yeah, I had 280 characters to get into.” Like, the whole point of short-form content—which I do consider Twitter to be—is a glimpse and a hook, and get people interested enough to go somewhere and learn more.For something like AWS, this makes a lot of sense. When you highlight a capability or something interesting, it's something relevant, whereas on the other side of it, where it's this, “Oh, great. Now, here's an 8000-word blog post on how I did this thing.” Yeah, I'm going to get relatively fewer amounts of traffic through that giant thing, but the people who are they're going to be frickin' invested because that's going to be a slog.Linda: Exactly.Corey: “And now my eight-hour video on how exactly I built this thing with TypeScript.” Badly—Linda: Exactly.Corey: —as it turns out because I'm a bad programmer.Linda: [laugh]. No, you're not. I love your shit-posting. It's great.Corey: Challenge accepted.Linda: [laugh]. I love what you just mentioned because I think you're hitting the nail on the head when it comes to the quality content that's niche focus, like, there needs to be a good healthy mix. I think always doing that, like, mass-market type video, it doesn't give you, also, the credibility you need. So, doing those more niche things that might not be relevant to everybody, but here and there, are part of that is really key for your own knowledge and for, like, the com—you know, as far as, like, helping someone specific. Because it's almost like—right, when you're selling a service and you're using social media, right, not everybody's going to buy your service. It doesn't matter what business you're in right? The deep-divers are going to be the people that pay up. It's just a numbers game, right? The more people you, kind of, address from there, you'll find—Corey: It's called a funnel for a reason.Linda: Right. Exactly.Corey: Free content, paid content. Almost anyone will follow me on Twitter; fewer than will sign up for a newsletter; fewer will listen to a podcast; fewer will watch a video, and almost none of them will buy a consulting engagement. But ‘almost' and ‘actually none of them,' it turns out is a very different world.Linda: Exactly. [laugh]. So FYI, I think there's—Corey: And that's fine. That's the way it works.Linda: That's the way it works. And I think there needs to be that niche content that might not be, like, the most viral thing, but viral doesn't mean quality, you know? It doesn't. There's many things that play into what viral is, but it's important to have the quality content for the people that need that content, and finding those people, you know, it's easier when you have that kind of mass engagement. Like, who knows? I'm a student. I told you; I'm a professional student. I'm still [laugh] learning every day.Corey: Working with AWS almost makes it a requirement. I wish you luck—Linda: Yeah.Corey: —in the new gig and I also want to thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with me about how you got to this point. And we're all very eager to see where you go from here.Linda: Thank you so much, Corey, for having me. I'm a huge fan, I love your content, I'm an avid reader of your newsletter and I am looking forward to very much being in touch and on the Twitterverse and beyond. So. [laugh].Corey: If people want to learn more about what you're up to, and other assorted nonsense, where's the best place they can go to find you?Linda: So, the best place they could go is lindavivah.com. I have all my different social handles listed on there as well a little bit about me, and I hope to connect with you. So, definitely go to lindavivah.com.Corey: And that link will, of course, be in the [show notes 00:30:39]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it.Linda: Thank you, Corey. Have a wonderful rest of the day.Corey: Linda Haviv, AWS Developer Advocate, very soon now anyway. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, smash the like and subscribe buttons, and of course, leave an angry comment that you have broken down into 40 serialized TikTok videos.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

About CarlaCarla Stickler is a professional multi-hyphenate advocating for the inclusion of artists in STEM. Currently, she works as a software engineer at G2 in Chicago. She loves chatting with folks interested in shifting gears from the arts to programming and especially hopes to get more women into the field. Carla spent over 10 years performing in Broadway musicals, most notably, “Wicked,” “Mamma Mia!” and “The Sound of Music.” She recently made headlines for stepping back into the role of Elphaba on Broadway for a limited time to help out during the covid surge after not having performed the role for 7 years. Carla is passionate about reframing the narrative of the “starving artist” and states, “When we choose to walk away from a full-time pursuit of the arts, it does not make us failed artists. The possibilities for what we can do and who we can be are unlimited.”Links Referenced: G2: https://www.g2.com/ Personal website: https://carlastickler.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sticklercarla/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: What if there were a single place to get an inventory of what you're running in the cloud that wasn't "the monthly bill?" Further, what if there were a way to compare that inventory to what you were already managing via Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation, but then automatically add the missing unmanaged or drifted parts to it? And what if there were a policy engine to immediately flag and remediate a wide variety of misconfigurations? Well, stop dreaming and start doing; visit snark.cloud/firefly to learn more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn, there seems to be a trope in our industry that the real engineers all follow what more or less looks like the exact same pattern, where it's you wind up playing around with computers as a small child and then you wind up going to any college you want—as long as it's Stanford—and getting a degree in anything under the sun—as long as it's computer science—and then all of your next jobs are based upon how well you can re-implement algorithms on the whiteboard. A lot of us didn't go through that path. We wound up finding our own ways to tech. My guest today has one of the more remarkable stories that I've come across. Carla Stickler is a software engineer at G2. Carla, thank you for agreeing to suffer my slings and arrows today. It's appreciated.Carla: Thanks so much for having me, Corey.Corey: So, before you entered tech—I believe this is your first job as an engineer and as of the time we're recording this, it's been just shy of a year that you've done in the role. What were you doing before now?Carla: Oh, boy, Corey. What was I doing? I definitely was not doing software engineering. I was a Broadway actress. So, I spent about 15 years in New York doing musical theater, touring around the country and Asia in big Broadway shows. And that was pretty much all I did.I guess, I also was a teacher. I was a voice teacher and I taught voice lessons, and I had a studio and I taught it a couple of faculties in New York. But I was one hundred percent ride-or-die, like, all the way to the end musical theater or bust, from a very, very early age. So, it's been kind of a crazy time changing careers. [laugh].Corey: What inspired that? I mean, it doesn't seem like it's a common pattern of someone who had an established career as a Broadway actress to wake up one day and say, “You know what I don't like anymore. That's right being on stage, doing the thing that I spent 15 years doing. You know what I want to do instead? That's right, be mad at computers all the time and angry because some of the stuff is freaking maddening.” What was the catalyst that—Carla: Yeah, sounds crazy. [laugh].Corey: —inspired you to move?Carla: It sounds crazy. It was kind of a long time coming. I love performing; I do, and it's like, my heart and soul is with performing. Nothing else in my life really can kind of replace that feeling I get when I'm on stage. But the one thing they don't really talk about when you are growing up and dreaming of being a performer is how physically and emotionally taxing it is.I think there's, like, this narrative around, like, “Being an actor is really hard, and you should only do it if you can't see yourself doing anything else,” but they don't actually ever explain to you what hard means. You know, you expect that, oh, there's going to be a lot of other people doing it in, I'm going to be auditioning all the time, and I'm going to have a lot of competition, but you never quite grasp the physical and emotional toll that it takes on your body and your—you know, just ongoing in auditions and getting rejections all the time. And then when you're working in a show eight times a week and you're wearing four-inch heels on a stage that is on a giant angle, and you're wearing wigs that are, like, really, really massive, you don't really—no one ever tells you how hard that is on your body. So, for me, I just hit a point where I was performing nonstop and I was so tired. I was, like, living at my physical therapist's office, I was living at, like, my head therapist's office.I was just trying to, like, figure out why I was so miserable. And so, I actually left in 2015, performing full time. So, I went to get my Master's in Education at NYU thinking that teaching was my way out of performing full-time.Corey: It does seem that there's some congruities—there's some congruities there between your—instead of performing in front of a giant audience, you're performing in front of a bunch of students. And whether it's performing slash educating, well that comes down to almost stylistic differences. But I have a hard time imagining you just reading from your slides.Carla: Yeah, no, I loved it because it allowed me to create connections with my students, and I found I like to help inspire them on their journeys, and I really like to help influence them in a positive way. And so yeah, it came really natural to me. And my family—or I have a bunch of teachers in my family so, you know, teaching was kind of a thing I just assumed I would be good at, and I think I fell naturally into. But the thing that was really hard for me was while I was teaching, I was still… kind of—I had, like, one foot in performing. I was still, like, going in and out of the show that I've been working on, which I didn't mention.So, I was in Wicked for, like, ten years, that's kind of like my claim to fame. And I had been with that show for a really long time, and that was why—when I left to go teach, that was kind of my way out of that big show because it was hard for me to explain to people why it was leaving such a giant show. And teaching was just, like, a natural thing to go into. I felt like it was like a justifiable action, [laugh] you know, that I could explain to, like, my parents for why I was quitting Broadway.So, you know, I love teaching and—but I—and so I kept that one foot kind of in Broadway, and I was still going in and out of the show. It's like a vacation cover, filling in whenever they needed me, and I was still auditioning. But I was like, I was still so burned out, you know? Like, I still had those feelings of, like—and I wasn't booking work; I think my heart just wasn't really in it. Like, every time I'd go into audition, I would just feel awful about myself every time I left.And I was starting to really reject that feeling in my life because I was also starting to find there were other things in my life that made me really happy. Like, just having a life. Like, I had—for the first time in a very long time, I had friends that I could hang out with on the weekends because I wasn't working on the weekend. And I was able to, like, go to, you know, birthdays and weddings and I was having, like, this social life. And then every time I would go on an audition—Corey: And they did other things with their lives, and it wasn't—Carla: Yeah.Corey: All shop talk all the time—Carla: Right.Corey: Which speaking as someone who lives in San Francisco and worked in normal companies before starting this ridiculous one, it seems that your entire social circle can come out of your workplace. And congratulations, it's now all shop talk, all the time. And anyone you know or might be married to who's not deeply in tech just gets this long-suffering attitude on all of it. It's nice to be able to have varied conversations about different things.Carla: Yes. And so, I was like having all these, like—I was, like, having these life moments that felt really good, and then I would go to an audition and I would leave being, like, “Why do I do that to myself? Why do I need to feel like that?” Because I just feel awful every time I go. And so, then I was having trouble teaching my students because I was feeling really negative about it, and I was like, “I don't know how to encourage you to go into a business that's just going to, like, tear you down and make you feel awful about yourself all the time.”Corey: And then you got into tech?Carla: [laugh]. And then I was just, like, “Tech. That's great.” No, I—do you know what—Corey: Like, “I'm sad all the time and I feel like less than constantly. You know what I'm going to use to fix that? I'm going to learn JavaScript.” Oh, my God.Carla: Yeah. I'm going to just challenge myself and do the hardest thing I can think of because that's fun. But ki—I mean, sort of I [laugh] I, I was not ever—like, being an engineer was never, like, on my radar. My dad was an engineer for a long time, and he kind of always would be, like, “You're good at math. You should do engineering.”And I was like, “No, I'm an actor. [laugh]. I don't want to do that.” And so, I kind of always just, like, shooed it away. And when a friend of mine came to my birthday party in the summer of 2018, who had been a songwriter and I had done some readings of a musical of his, and he was like, “I'm an engineer now at Forbes. Isn't that great?”And I was like, “What? How does that happen? I need you to back up, explain to me what's going on.” And I just, like—but I went home and I could not stop thinking about it. I don't know if it was like my dad's voice in the back of my head, or there was like the stars aligned.My misery that I was feeling in my life, and, like, this new thing that just got thrown in my face was just such an exciting, interesting idea. I was like, “That sounds—I don't know what—I don't even know what that looks like or I don't even know what's involved in that, but I need to figure out how to do it.” And I went home when I first started teaching myself how to do it. And I would just sit on my couch and I would do, like, little coding challenges, and before I knew it, like, hours would have passed by, I forgot to eat, I forget to go to the bathroom. Like, I would just be, like, groove on the couch from where I was sitting for too long.And I was like, oh, I guess I really liked this. [laugh]. It's interesting, it's creative. Maybe I should do something with it.Corey: And then from there, did you decide at some point to pursue—like, a lot of paths into tech these days. There's a whole sea of boot camps, for example, that depending on how you look at them are either inspirational stories of how people can transform their lives, slash money-grabbing scams. And it really depends on the boot camp in particular, is that the path you took? Did you—Carla: Yes.Corey: Remain self-taught? How did you proceed from—there's a whole Couch-to-5k running program; what is about—I guess we'll call getting to tech—but what was your Couch-to-100k path?Carla: Yeah, I was just going to say, Couch-to-100k tech gig.Corey: Yeah.Carla: So, my friend to had gone to Flatiron School, which is a boot camp. I think they have a few locations around the country, and so I initially started looking at their program just because he had gone there, and it sounded great. And I was like, “Cool, great.” And they had a lot of free resources online. They have, like, this whole free, like, boot camp prep program that you can do that teaches Rails and JavaScript.And so, I started doing that online. And then I—at the time, they had, like, a part-time class. I like learning in person, which is funny because now I just work remote and I do everything on Google… it's like, Google and Stack Overflow. So—but I knew at the time—Corey: I have bad news about the people who are senior. It doesn't exactly change that much.Carla: Yeah, that's what I've heard, so I don't feel bad about telling people that I do it. [laugh].Corey: We're all Full Stack Overflow developers. It happens.Carla: Exactly. So yeah, I just. They had, like, a part-time front-end class that was, like, in person two nights a week for a couple months. And I was like, “Okay, that'll be a really good way to kind of get my feet wet with, like, a different kind of learning environment.”And I loved it. I fell in love with it. I loved being in a room of people trying to figure out how to do something hard. I liked talking about it with other people. I liked talking about it with my teachers.So, I was like, “Okay, I guess I'm going to invest in a boot camp.” And I did their, like, immersive, in-person boot camps. This was 2019 before everything shut down, so I was able to actually do it in person. And it was great. It was like, nine to six, five days a week, and it was really intense.Did I remember everything I learned when it was over? No. And did I have to, like, spend a lot of time relearning a lot of things just so I could have, like, a deeper understanding of it. Yes. But, like, I also knew that was part of it, you know? It's like, you throw a lot of information out you, hope some of it sticks, and then it's your job to make sure that you actually remember it and then know how to use it when you have to.Corey: One of the challenges that I've always found is that when I have a hobby that I'm into, similar to the way that you were doing this just for fun on your couch, and then it becomes your full-time focus, first as a boot camp and later as a job, that it has a tendency in some cases to turn a thing that you love into a thing that you view is this obligation or burden. Do you still love it? Is it still something that you find that's fun and challenging and exciting? Or is it more a means to an end for you? And there is no wrong answer there.Carla: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both, right? Like, I found it was a creative thing I could do that I enjoy doing. Am I the most passionate software engineer that ever lived? No. Do I have aspirations to be, like, an architect one day? Absolutely not. I really, like, the small tickets that I do that are just, like, refactoring a button or, you know, like, I find that stuff creative and I think it's fun. Do I necessarily want to—Corey: You can see—Carla: —no.Corey: The results immediately as [crosstalk 00:15:15]—Carla: Yeah.Corey: More abstract stuff. It's like, “Well, when this 18 months migration finishes, and everything is 10% faster, oh, then I'll be vindicated.”Carla: Yeah. No.Corey: It's a little more attenuated from the immediate feedback.Carla: Yeah. I'm not that kind of developer, I'm learning. But I'm totally fine with that. I have no issue. Like, I am a very humble person about it. I don't have aspirations to be amazing.Don't ask me to do algorithm challenges. I'm terrible at them. I know that I'm terrible at them. But I also know that you can be a good developer and be terrible algorithm, like, challenges. So, I don't feel bad about it.Corey: The algorithm challenge is inherently biased for people who not only have a formal computer science education but have one relatively recently. I look back at some of the technical challenges I used to give candidates and take myself for jobs ten years ago, and I don't remember half of it because it's not my day-to-day anymore. It turns out that most of us don't have a job implementing quicksort. We just use the one built into the library and we move on with our lives to do something interesting and much more valuable, like, moving that button three pixels left, but because of CSS, that's now a two-week project.Carla: Yeah. Add a little border-radius, changes the su—you know. There are some database things I like. You know, I'm trying to get better at SQL. Rails is really nice because we use Active Record, and I don't really have to know SQL.But I find there are some things that you can do in Rails that are really cool, and I enjoyed working in their console. And that's exciting. You know when you write, like, a whole controller and then you make something but you can only see it in the console? That's cool. I think to me, that's fun. Being able to, like, generate things is fun. I don't have to always see them, like, on the page in a visual, pretty way, even though I tend to be more visual.Corey: This episode is sponsored in parts by our friend EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB has been powering enterprise applications with PostgreSQL for 15 years. And now EnterpriseDB has you covered wherever you deploy PostgreSQL on premises, private cloud, and they just announced a fully managed service on AWS and Azure called BigAnimal, all one word.Don't leave managing your database to your cloud vendor because they're too busy launching another half dozen manage databases to focus on any one of them that they didn't build themselves. Instead, work with the experts over at EnterpriseDB. They can save you time and money, they can even help you migrate legacy applications, including Oracle, to the cloud.To learn more, try BigAnimal for free. Go to biganimal.com/snark, and tell them Corey sent you.Corey: One of the big fictions that we tend to have as an industry is when people sit down and say, “Oh, so why did you get into tech?” And everyone expects it to be this aspirational story of the challenge, and I've been interested in this stuff since I was a kid. And we're all supposed to just completely ignore the very present reality of well, looking at all of my different opportunities, this is the one that pays three times what the others do. Like, we're supposed to pretend that money doesn't matter and we're all following our passion. That is actively ridiculous from where I sit.Carla: Mm-hm.Corey: Do you find that effectively going from the Broadway actress side of the world to—where, let's be clear, in the world of entertaining and arts—to my understanding—90% of people in that space are not able to do that as their only gig without side projects to basically afford to eat, whereas in tech, the median developer makes an extremely comfortable living that significantly outpaces the average median income for a family of four in the United States. Do you find that it has changed your philosophy on life in any meaningful way?Carla: Oh, my God, yeah. I love talking about on all of my social platforms the idea that you can learn tech skills and you can—like, there are so many different jobs that exist for an engineer, right? There are full-time jobs. There are full-time job that are flexible and they're remote, and nobody cares what time you're working as long as you get the work done. And because of that and because of the nature of how performing and being an artist works, where you also have a lot of downtime in between jobs or even when you are working, that I feel like the two go very, very well together, and that it allows—if an artist can spend a little bit of time learning the skill, they now have the ability to feel stable in their lives, also be creative how they want to, and decide what the art looks like for them without struggling and freaking out all the time about where's my next meal going to come from, or can I pay my rent?And, like, I sometimes think back to when I was on tour—I was on tour for three years with Wicked—and I had so much free time, Corey. Like, if I had known that I could have spent some time when I was just like hanging out in my hotel room watching TV all day, like, learning how to code. I would have been—I would have done this years ago. If I had known it was even, I don't even know actually if it was an option back then in, like, the early-2010s. I feel like boot camps kind of started around then, but they were mostly in person.But if I was—today, if I was right now starting my career as an artist, I would absolutely learn how to code as a side hustle. Because why wait tables? [laugh]. Why make, like, minimum wage in a terrible job that you hate when you can I have a skillset that you can do from home now because everything is remote for the most part? Why not?It doesn't make sense to me that anybody would go back to those kind of awful side gigs, side hustle jobs. Because at the end of the day, side hustle jobs end up actually being the things that you spend more time doing, just because theater jobs and art jobs and music jobs are so, you know, far apart when you have them. That might as well pick something that's lucrative and makes you feel less stressed out, you know, in the interim, between gigs. I see it as kind of a way to give artists a little more freedom in what they can choose to do with their art. Which I think is… it's kind of magical, right?Like, it takes away that narrative of if you can't see yourself—if you can see yourself doing anything else, you should do it, right? That's what we tell kids when they go into the arts. If you can see yourself doing any other thing, you know, you have to struggle to be an artist; that is part of the gig. That's what you sign up for. And I just call bullshit on it, Corey. I don't know if I can swear on this, but I call bullshit on [crosstalk 00:21:06]—[laugh].Corey: Oh, you absolutely can.Carla: I just think it's so unfair to young people, to how they get to view themselves and their creativity, right? Like, you literally stunt them when you tell them that. You say, “You can only do this one thing.” That's like the opposite of creative, right? That's like telling somebody that they can only do one thing without imagining that they can do all these other things. The most interesting artists that I know do, like, 400 things, they are creative people and they can't stop, right? They're like multi-hyphenates [crosstalk 00:21:39].Corey: It feels like it's setting people up for failure, on some level, in a big way where when you're building your entire life toward this make-or-break thing and then you don't get it, it's, well, what happens then?Carla: Yeah.Corey: I've always liked the idea of failure as a step forward. And well, that thing didn't work out; let's see if we can roll into it and see what comes out next. It's similar to the idea of a lot of folks who are career-changing, where they were working somewhere else in a white-collar environment, well time to go back to square one for an entry-level world. Hell with that. Pivot; take a half step toward what you want to be doing in your next role, and then a year or so later, take the other half step, and now you're doing it full time without having to start back at square one.I think that there are very few things in this world that are that binary as far as you either succeed or you're done and your whole life was a waste. It is easy get stuck in this idea that if your childhood dream doesn't come true, well give up and prepare for a life of misery. I just don't accept that.Carla: Yeah, I—Corey: But maybe it's because I have no choice because getting fired is my stock-in-trade. So, it wasn't until I built a company where I can't get fired from it that I really started to feel a little bit secure in that. But it does definitely leave its marks and its damages. I spent 12 years waiting for the surprise meeting with my boss and someone I didn't recognize from HR where they don't offer you coffee—that's always the tell when they don't offer coffee—and to realize it while I'm back on the job market again; time to find something new. It left me feeling more mercenary that I probably should have, which wasn't great for the career.What about you? Do you think that—did it take, on some level, a sense of letting go of old dreams? Was it—and did it feel like a creeping awareness that this was, like—that you felt almost cornered into it? Or how did you approach it?Carla: Yeah, I think I was the same way. I think I especially when you were younger because of that narrative, right, we tell people that if they decide to go into the arts, they have to be one hundred percent committed to it, and if they aren't one hundred percent and then they don't succeed, it is their fault, right? Like, if you give it everything that you have, and then it doesn't work out, you have clearly done something wrong, therefore you are a failure. You failed at your dream because you gave it everything that you have, so you kind of set yourself up for failure because you don't allow yourself to, you know, be more of who you are in other ways.For me, I just spent so many I had so many moments in my life where I thought that the world was over, right? Like, when I was—right out of college, I went to school to study opera. And I was studying at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, it was, like, the great, great conservatory, and halfway through my freshman year, I got diagnosed with a cyst on my vocal cords. So, basically what this meant was that I had to have surgery to have it removed, and the doctor told me that I probably would never sing opera. And I was devastated.Like, I was—this was the thing I wanted to do with my life; I had committed myself one hundred percent, and now all of a sudden this thing happened, and I panicked. I thought it was my fault—because there was nobody to help me understand that it wasn't—and I was like, “I have failed this thing. I have failed my dream. What am I going to do with my life?” And I said, “Okay I'll be an actor because acting is a noble thing.” And that's sort of like act—that's sort of like performing; it's performing in a different way, it's just not singing.And I was terrified to sing again because I had this narrative in my head that I was a failed singer if I co,uldn't be an opera singer. And so, it took me, like, years, three years before I finally started singing again I got a voice teacher, and he—I would cry through all of my lessons. He was like, “Carly, you really have a—should be singing. Like, this is something that you're good at.” And I was like, no because if I can't sing, like, the way I want to sing, why would I sing?And he really kind of pushed me and helped me, like, figure out what my voice could do in a new way. And it was really magical for me. It made me realize that this narrative that I've been telling myself of what I thought that I was supposed to be didn't have to be true. It didn't have to be the only one that existed; there could be other possibilities for what I could do and they could look different. But I closed myself off to that idea because I had basically been told no, you can't do this thing that you want to do.So, I didn't even consider the possibilities of the other things that I could do. And when I relearned how to sing, it just blew my mind because I was like, “Oh, my God, I didn't know this was possible. I didn't know in my body it was possible of this. I didn't know if I could do this.” And, like, overcoming that and making me realize that I could do other things, that there were other versions of what I wanted, kind of blew my mind a little bit.And so, when I would hit road bumps and I'd hit these walls, I was like, “Okay, well, maybe I just need to pivot. Maybe the direction I'm going in isn't quite the right one, but maybe if I just, like, open my eyes a little bit, there's another—there's something else over here that is interesting and will be creative and will take me in a different way, an unexpected way that I wasn't expecting.” And so, I've kind of from that point on sort of living my life like that, in this way that, well, this might be a roadblock, and many people might view this thing as a failure, but for me, it allowed me to open up all these other new things that I didn't even know I could do, right? Like, what I'm doing now is something I never would have imagined I'd be doing five years ago. And now I'm also in a place where not only am I doing something completely different as a software engineer, but I have this incredible opportunity to also start incorporating art back into my life in a way that I can own and I can do for myself instead of having to do for other people.Which is also something I never thought because I thought it was all or nothing. I thought if I was an artist, I was an artist; I'm a software engineer, I'm a software engineer. And so, now I have the ability to kind of live in this weird gray area of getting to make those decisions for myself, and recognize that those little failures were, you know—like, I like to call them, like, the lowercase failures instead of the uppercase failure, right? Like, I am not a failure because I experienced failure. Those little failures are kind of what led me to grow my strength and my resilience and my ability to recognize it more free—like, more quickly when I see it so that I can bounce back faster, right?Like, when I hit a wall, instead of living in that feeling of, like, “Ugh, God, this is the worst thing that ever happened,” I allow myself to move faster through it and recognize that there will be light on the other side. I will get there. And I know that it's going to be okay, and I can trust that because it's always been okay. I always figure it out. And so, that's something—taken me a long time to, like, realize, you know? To, like, really learn, you have to fail a lot to learn that you're going to be okay every time it happens. [laugh].Corey: Yeah, what's the phrase? “Sucking at something is the first step to being kind of good at it?”Carla: Yeah. You got to let yourself suck at it. When I used to teach voice, I would make my students make just, like, the ugliest sounds because I was like, if we can just get past the fact that no matter what, when you sing you're going to sound awful at some point. We're going to try something, you're going to crack, it's not going to come out right, and if we can't own that it's going to suck a little bit on the journey to being good, like, you're going to have a really hard time getting there because you're just going to beat yourself up every time it sucks. Like, it's going to suck a lot [laugh] before you get good. And that's just part of it. That's, like, it is just a part of the process, and you have to kind of own it.Corey: I think that as people we are rarely as one-dimensional as we imagine we are when. And for example, I like working with cloud services, let's not kid ourselves on this. But I have a deep and abiding love affair with the sound of my own voice, so I'm always going to find ways to work that into it. I have a hard time seeing a future career for you that does not in some way, shape or form, tie back to your performing background because even now, talking about singing, you lit up when talking about that in a way that no one does—or at least should—light up when they're talking about React. So, do you think that there's a place between the performing side of the world and the technical side of the world, or those phases of your life, that's going to provide interesting paths for you down the road?Carla: That is a good question, Corey. And I don't know if I have the answer. You know, I think one thing—if there's anything I learned from all the crazy things that happened to me, is that I just kind of have to be open. You know, I like to say yes to things. And also learning to say no, which has been really a big deal for me.Corey: Oh, yes.“, no,” is a complete sentence and people know that sometimes at their own peril.Carla: Yes, I have said no to some things lately, and it's felt very good. But I like to be open, you know? I like to feel like if I'm putting out good things into the world, good things will come back to me, and so I'm just trying to keep that open. You know, I'm trying to be the best engineer that I can be. And I'm trying to also, you know—if I can use my voice and my platform to help inspire other people to see that there are other ways of being an artist, there are, you know, there are other paths in this world to take.I hope that, you know, I can, other things will come up to me, there'll be opportunities. And I don't know what those look like, but I'm open. So, if anybody out there hears this and you want to collaborate, hit me up. [laugh].Corey: Careful what you offer. People don't know—people have a disturbing tendency of saying, “Well, all right, I have an idea.” That's where a lot of my ridiculous parody music videos came from. It's like, “So, what's the business case for doing?” It's like, “Mmm, I think it'll be funny.”It's like, “Well, how are you going to justify the expense?” “Oh, there's a line item and the company budget labeled ‘Spite.' That's how.” And it's this weird combination of things that lead to a path that on some level makes perfect sense, but at the time you're building this stuff out, it feels like you're directionless and doing all these weird things. Like, one of the, I guess, strange parts of looking back at a path you take in the course of your career is, in retrospect, it feels like every step for the next was obvious and made intuitive sense, but going through it it's, “I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm like the dog that caught the car, and they need to desperately figure out how to drive the thing before it hits the wall.”It's just a—I don't pretend to understand how the tapestry of careers tie together, but I do know that I'm very glad to see people in this space, who do not all have the same ridiculous story for how they got in here. That's the thing that I find continually obnoxious, this belief that there's only one way to do it, or you're somehow less than because you didn't grow up programming in the '90s. Great. There's a lot of people like that. And yes, it is okay to just view computers as a job that pays the bills; there is nothing inherently wrong with that.Carla: Yeah. And I mean, and I—Corey: I just wish people were told that early on.Carla: Yeah, why not? Right? Why didn't anybody tell us that? Like, you don't—the thing that I did not—it took me a long time to realize is that you do not have to be passionate about your job. And that's like, that's okay, right? All you have to do is enjoy it enough to do it, but it does not have to be, like—Corey: You have to like it, on some level [crosstalk 00:33:10]—Carla: Yeah, you just do have to like it. [laugh].Corey: —dreading the 40 hours a week, that's a miserable life on some level.Carla: Like, I sit in front of a computer now all day, and I enjoy it. Like, I enjoy what I'm doing. But again, like, I don't need to be the greatest software engineer that ever lived; I have other things that I like to do, and it allows me to also do those things. And that is what I love about it. It allows me that ability to just enjoy my weekends and have a stable career and have a stable life and have health insurance. And then when I want—Corey: Oh, the luxuries of modern life.Carla: [laugh]. Yeah, the luxuries of modern life. Health insurance, who knew? Yeah, you know, so it's great. And then when creative projects come up, I can choose to say yes or no to them, and that's really exciting for me.Corey: I have a sneaking suspicion—I'll just place my bet now—that the world of performing is not quite done with you yet.Carla: Probably not. I would be lying if I said it was. I—so before all this stuff, I don't know if your listeners know this, but in January, the thing that kind of happened to me that went a little viral where I went back to Broadway after not being on Broadway for a little while, and the news media and everybody picked up on it, and there were like these headlines of, “Software engineer plays Elphaba on Broadway after seven years.” It surprised me, but it also didn't surprise me, you know? Like, when I left, I left thinking I was done.And I think it was easy to leave when I left because of the pandemic, right? There was nothing going on when I—like, I started my journey before the pandemic, but I fully shifted into software engineering during the pandemic. So, I never had feelings of, like, “I'm missing out on performing,” because performing didn't exist. There was no Broadway for a while. And so, once it kind of started to come back last year in the fall, I was like, “Oh, maybe I miss it a little bit.”And maybe I accidentally manifested it, but, you know, when Wicked called and I flew back to New York for those shows, and I was like, “Oh, this is really wonderful.” Also, I'm really glad I don't have to do this eight times a week. I'm so excited to go home. And I was like, having a little taste of it made me realize, “Oh, I can do this if I want to do this. I also don't have to do this if I don't want to do this.” And that was pretty—it was very empowering. I was like, “That feels nice.”Corey: I really appreciate your taking so much time to talk about how you've gone through what at the time has got to have felt like a very strange set of career steps, but it's starting to form into something that appears to have an arc to it. If people want to learn more and follow along as you continue to figure out what you're going to do next, where's the best place to find you?Carla: Oh, good question, Corey. I do a website, carlastickler.com. Because I've had a lot of people—artists, in particular—reaching out and asking how I did this, I'm starting to build some resources, and so you can sign up for my mailing list.I also am pretty big on Instagram if we're going to choose social media. So, my Instagram is stiglercarla. And there's links to all that stuff on my website. But—Corey: And they will soon be in the [show notes 00:36:26] as well.Carla: Ah yes, add them to the show notes. [laugh]. Yeah, and I want to make sure that I… I want—a lot of people who've seen my story and felt very inspired by it. A lot of artists who have felt that they, too, were failures because they chose not to go into art and get a regular nine to five. And so, I'm trying to, like, kind of put a little bit more of that out there so that people see that they're not alone.And so, on my social media, I do post a lot of stories that people send to me, just telling me their story about how they made the transition and how they keep art in their life in different ways. And so, that's something that also really inspires me. So, I tried to put their voices up, too. So, if anybody is interested in feeling not alone, feeling like there are other people out there, all of us, quote-unquote, “Failed artists,” and there's a lot of us. And so, I'm just trying to create a little space for all of us.Corey: I look forward to seeing it continue to evolve.Carla: Thank you.Corey: Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.Carla: Thanks, Corey.Corey: Carla Stickler, software engineer at G2 and also very much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, and if it's on the YouTubes, smash the like and subscribe buttons, as the kids of today are saying, whereas if you've hated this podcast, same thing: Five-star review, smash the buttons, but also leave an angry comment telling me exactly what you didn't like about this, and I will reply with the time and date for your audition.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

I invited on 3 recent graduates of the coding bootcamp, Flatiron School, to share their experiences at the program. This review is meant to get past the marketing fluff and dive into 3 REAL student experiences. We dove into a LOT in this episode, from the curriculum to even things like questionable clauses with their contracts. Enjoy!Guests:Oscar Ore - https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-ore Ron Sala - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronsala Rick Moore - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-moore-5b587a99 ---------------------------------------------------►►  Connect with me everywhere (socials) - https://linktr.ee/donthedeveloper

During an 8 year career practicing Law, Josh won multi-$MM victories for corporate clients and immigration relief pro bono. Josh holds a JD from New York University Law School, where he graduated in the top 10% of his class.In the middle of his career in Law, Josh made a big change. He's now a Senior Software Engineer at a fast growing tech company where he leads teams and helps clients build better products and applications.In this episode, Josh and I speak about recognizing what drives you and tapping into that passion. We also go in depth about HOW to bridge into tech, including why Josh enrolled in a coding boot camp from the Flatiron School. Anyone looking for practical advice on how to do more of what they love, and HOW to use their existing skills in a new context, will benefit from this episode.Book Rec: Josh mentions using The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron to tap into his curiosity. He created exercises to explore what matters to him:https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary-ebookWomen in Big Data

Today we welcome software engineer Meryl Dakin to the show, who is currently employed by Knock. Meryl is here to help us continue our exploration of this season's theme of the impact of Elixir, and we get to hear about all how it has impacted her professional and personal life! Our guest talks about her journey through the world of development and the different positions she has held before her current role. We also get into her recent stint as the emcee of ElixirConf alongside our other friend Sophie DeBenedetto! We talk about learning through teaching, encouraging more questions, and why Elixir has had such a positive impact on Meryl's approach to code more generally. Big takeaways from today's conversation include the way that learning a new language can alter one's career in multiple and unexpected ways, why the Elixir community can feel so safe and supportive, and who might get the most benefit from being exposed to Elixir at the right time. So, to hear it all from Meryl and our usual cast of characters, be sure to listen in! Key Points From This Episode: A quick update on Meryl and what she has been busy with lately. Meryl's experiences emceeing the recent ElixirConf! Unpacking what Knock does and who the company serves. How Elixir has been used at Knock and the great experience Meryl has had building with it. Meryl's learning curve with Elixir and the biggest developments in the space from her perspective. The most common advice that Meryl would offer to junior engineers! Why teaching is often the best route to further learning; Meryl's reflections on her presentations. The importance of asking questions and speaking up when you do not understand. How Elixir shifted Meryl's way of thinking about programming: cleaner code and encapsulation. The different kinds of developers that might benefit from being introduced to Elixir. Thoughts on making Elixir more visible to the right people in the larger community. The personal impacts that Elixir has had on Meryl's life: meeting great people and finding an engaging and supportive community. When to consider using Knock and the initial offer for new clients. Where to go to find out more about Knock and whether it might be right for you! Meryl shares her biggest hopes and dreams for the future of the Elixir community. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Meryl Dakin on Twitter — https://twitter.com/meryldakin ElixirConf — https://www.elixirconf.com/ Netflix Christmas Universe — https://collider.com/netflix-christmas-universe-how-movies-connect-explained/ Flatiron School — https://flatironschool.com/ Frame.io — https://www.frame.io/ Knock — https://knock.app/ Knock on Twitter — https://twitter.com/knockdotcom Knock Changelog — https://knock.app/changelog Sophie DeBenedetto — https://www.amazon.com/Books-Sophie-DeBenedetto/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ASophie+DeBenedetto The Flutter Apprentice Book — https://www.raywenderlich.com/books/flutter-apprentice/v1.0.ea2 EMPEX — https://www.empex.co/mtn Programming Phoenix LiveView — https://pragprog.com/titles/liveview/programming-phoenix-liveview/ Twilio — https://www.twilio.com/ Audience Survey -- https://smr.tl/survey Special Guest: Meryl Dakin.

Picture a classroom in your mind. What do you see? Probably a teacher standing in front of a room of 20+ students. This idea of what a classroom looks like hasn't changed much over the past few decades - in fact, it's barely changed at all.The technology we're using and the tools available to teachers and students have developed in leaps and bounds, yet in many cases, the approach to teaching has remained stagnant.    With the direction modern education is heading in, it's become apparent that teacher-student relationships are becoming more vital than ever for a productive learning environment. Brian Tobel is the CEO of SchoolHouse which is an organization that helps families to create small group micro-schools run by qualified, passionate, and experienced teachers. He's been working at the intersection of technology, learning science, and startups for over a decade and, because of Joe, is now fascinated by great teachers. Joe Burgess is a software developer who fell in love with teaching in high school. He combined these two talents and joined Flatiron School as the first employee and instructor. After teaching for a few years, Joe managed the in-person school, curriculum development, and launched Flatiron's online program. Since then, Joe has been building tools for teachers to understand their students in the modern era of schools. Joe and Brian feature on our latest episode where they discuss the importance of teacher-student relationships, how to foster them and why they are meaningful for an impactful learning experience.Let's keep the inspiring discussion going! Discover our events, articles, and more with these links:InspirEd MagazineInspirEd EventsJoin our mailing listYou Tube

Antes necesitabas haber estudiado un doctorado y tener una gran cantidad de hardware para poder ser programador. Pero en 1965 dos ingenieros tuvieron una idea revolucionaria: facilitar la programación para que la gente pudiera introducirse a ella. Los lenguajes para principiantes, como BASIC, abrieron las puertas del desarrollo de código a todo el mundo. Tom Cormen y Denise Dumas recuerdan que BASIC lo cambió todo. Avi Flombaum y Saron dan consejos para elegir el primer lenguaje con que un principiante puede abrirse paso en esta nueva etapa del desarrollo de software. Además, Femi Owolade-Coombes y Robyn Bergeron nos cuentan que la nueva generación de programadores está haciendo sus pininos con los videojuegos. Los lenguajes para principiantes le dan a todo el mundo la oportunidad de dar sus primeros pasos en la programación, y ayudan a toda la industria.

Brittany has been talking about them for weeks and they are here: the newly minted junior developers of TextUs. Tune into to listen to Saundra Catalina, Jeff Golden and Luke Mason share why they learned to code, how they chose their programs, how they tackled finding their first role, their thoughts on mentorship and of course, any advice they have for the junior listeners out there. Show Notes & Links: Turing School (https://turing.edu/) Flatiron School (https://flatironschool.com/) Saundra on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saundra-catalina/) Jeff on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gjeffgolden/) Luke on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukejmason/) Sponsored By: Honeybadger (https://www.honeybadger.io/) Honeybadger makes you a DevOps hero by combining error monitoring, uptime monitoring and check-in monitoring into a single, easy to use platform. Go to Honeybadger.io (https://www.honeybadger.io/) and discover how Starr, Josh, and Ben created a 100% bootstrapped monitoring solution. Scout APM (http://scoutapm.com/rubyonrails) Try their error monitoring and APM free for 14-days, no credit card needed! And as an added bonus for Ruby on Rails listeners: Scout will donate $5 to the open-source project of your choice when you deploy. Learn more at http://scoutapm.com/rubyonrails (http://scoutapm.com/rubyonrails).

Flatiron School was founded in 2012 by Adam Enbar, a venture capitalist with a passion for education, and Avi Flombaum, a self-taught computer programmer committed to helping his students learn and love code. Adam and Avi came together with a shared mission: to create an alternative education model that provided students with the 21st century […] The post Adam Enbar with Flatiron School appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Flatiron School was founded in 2012 by Adam Enbar, a venture capitalist with a passion for education, and Avi Flombaum, a self-taught computer programmer committed to helping his students learn and love code. Adam and Avi came together with a shared mission: to create an alternative education model that provided students with the 21st century […]

Upperline Code has a mission to train the next generation of computer science leaders and empower students to change their world with code. We aim to transform education by making computer science accessible to all students regardless of race, gender, or income. Above all, we value inclusiveness, curiosity, rigor, collaboration, and quality. "I think you created a culture of mutual learning and respect and demonstrated your commitment to the process over the end goal and that was very empowering. I think that it was the best PD I've engaged in so far." - Maha HasenMaha HasenMaha has an undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics and Philosophy from The George Washington University. When she graduated in 2016, she was placed as a High School Math Teacher in her hometown, Bronx, NY, and earned her Master of Arts in Teaching from Relay Graduate School of Education. After consistently being made aware of the lack of female representation in STEM, Maha joined Upperline Code to gain the tools she needed to bring Computer Science to her school, which has a student body makeup of 71% female. She believes that all students should have access to computer science and that it is particularly imperative to empower female students to pursue a coding education!Jorge TorresJorge Torres is in the middle of his third year teaching high school Chemistry and Physics in the South Bronx. He earned his undergraduate degree at CUNY Hunter College in Biochemistry, and continued there for his Master’s Degree in Chemistry Education. Jorge’s interest in Computer Science teaching came from both the interest his students seemed to have in the subject, as well as his own early experiences taking AP Computer Science in high school. He aimed to make the material more accessible for students like himself, and began to seek out institutions with the same goals as him. Jorge is excited to continue building his Computer Science skills, and at the same time bring all the knowledge acquired back to his classroom and continue to encourage students to pursue STEM careers. Daniel FenjvesCEO Upperline CodeDanny Fenjves has spent almost 10 years living and teaching computer science. He is an alumnus of Teach for America, worked at Google, and was head of K-12 computer science instruction at Flatiron School before founding Upperline Code. In his career, he's trained over 200 teachers to lead immersive coding courses in schools across the country, built extensive coding curriculum, and taught software development to hundreds of high school students. As a former middle school science teacher, he's deeply committed to the art of instruction and discovering the best methods to recruit, train, and retain top teaching talent in the field of K-12 computer science education.Mentioned in this episode:Upperline FellowshipThe Six Flaws of “Traditional” Professional Development from Katya Rucker, Getting SmartEducation Week, Teacher PD Gets a Bad Rap. But Two Approaches Do Work, by Heather C. Hill See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tammy and Tim have a chat with Sophie DeBenedetto, co-author of Programming Phoenix LiveView, about her journey to becoming a Pragmatic author. *Recorded April 14, 2021 Show Links Sophie DeBenedetto on Twitter Programming Phoenix LiveView Tim and Tammy are back with another episode of the Pragmatic Hero's Journey podcast. This month, our hosts chat with Sophie DeBenedetto, co-author of Programming Phoenix LiveView. --- Sophie DeBenedetto is a software engineer at GitHub and a former teacher at The Flatiron School. At GitHub, Sophie works on tools that power software collaboration around the world. Her language of choice is Elixir, and it's no surprise considering all she's done—and is currently doing—for the Elixir community. Not only is she a contributor and maintainer of Elixir School, a newsletter choc-full of resources for anyone learning to code and working hard to get started in the tech field, she's also the co-host of the Elixir Mix podcast. On this episode, Sophie talks about her journey to becoming a pragmatic author and how she is passionate about helping people change their lives through code. You can listen to the rest of Sophie's story on this episode of the Pragmatic Hero's Journey podcast. You can stream the episode here: https://pragprog.libsyn.com/ or subscribe to the RSS feed using the following link: https://pragprog.libsyn.com/rss.

Reported by Higher Ed Dive, SNHU has acquired boot camp provider, Kenzie Academy. Back in 2015, SNHU announced a partnership with Flatiron School to combine their degree program with a bootcamp curriculum and apprenticeship. But now, they’re apparently planning to integrate the bootcamp model more directly as a standalone offering.

Lucy Suddenly is a white, able-bodied trans woman from the greater Seattle area. She got a BA in psychology and spent a decade in box office management before realizing that programming was her destiny. She switched careers after attending Flatiron School and now works as a Builds and Deployment Engineer at Outreach.io in Seattle.We chat about the box office industry, how small it is, and the lack of roles it has as a result. She had dabbled with code quite a bit as a kid and returned to it after a major life event and was searching for a new career path. She attended Flatiron School as a part of Seattle’s first in-person cohort and even went on to teach there afterward.Today at Outreach.io, Lucy is building CI-CD services and accompanying tooling to abstract away the complexity of deployments for her new favorite customers: product engineers. Her free time is spent playing video games, bringing a chaotic evil DnD character to life, baby talking to her cat, and cramming as many new units of programming wisdom into her brain as possible.In our conversation today, Lucy shares how the lessons she learned while in the box office industry translate to her current role in tech. Knowing how to remain calm and level-headed during a moment of crisis or facing bugs in the code while everyone else is losing their cool has proved to be wildly helpful and powerful now on an engineering team.She recommends keeping data on your day-to-day learnings of both your challenges and successes so that you can champion and advocate for yourself and authentically speak to the growth you've made.At Outreach.io, she founded a Trans Employee Resource Group and created a 101 course for folks to take action and educate themselves. She's a proud squeaky wheel there and advocates for change and they welcome her with open arms. Resources:Lucy’s LinkedInOutreach.ioFlatiron SchoolHectic - the freelancing app for everyoneVisit: GetHecticApp.com/WeBelongHere to start for free today!We Belong Here Podcast:Follow Lauren on Twitter @LoLoCodingWeBelongPodcast.comSubscribe on AppleSubscribe on Spotify We Belong Here Discord CommunityJoin us on Discord Server today! bit.ly/webelongdiscord

Raymond is currently a Senior Software Engineer at Tubi. He started at Flatiron School and moved his way through working with Will.I.Am, working for $300 a month in Ecuador, and a host of other gigs. We dive into a ton of interesting topics around bootcamps and learning like: 11:00 - Switching to a new career path 17:20 - Starting a bootcamp 19:44 - A better way to teach 28:15 - What it means to be a great student 37:46 - The downside of bootcamps 49:45 - Difference between being a junior or a senior level 54:19 - Best way to present yourself in an interview Feel free to connect with Raymond on LinkedIn or Twitter (@rgan0). PLEASE RATE the episode and SUBSCRIBE if you learned something new! ________ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/booting-up Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BootingUpPod Looking for a community of bootcamp grads? Join our Discord at https://prentus.co/community

Lauren Yu is a bassoonist and software engineer in the DC metropolitan area. She is a founding member of the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet, a well-known chamber ensemble that has an international following.  With her quartet, Lauren has presented performances and masterclasses all over the world, most notably at the International Double Reed Society Conferences in Spain and Japan, the International Beijing Bassoon Festival and countless secondary schools and universities throughout the continental United States.  She has arranged and transcribed a variety of classical and popular music, some of which has been published through TrevCo Music Publishing.An alumna of Eastman School of Music and Yale University, Lauren has performed with many orchestras, including the Buffalo Philharmonic, the South Florida Symphony, the Williamsburg Symphony, YOA Orchestra of the Americas and Santo Domingo Sinfonia.After grad school, Lauren began tutoring to help supplement my freelancing career. She says, "While I love teaching math and playing bassoon, I ultimately decided I wanted a different career path - something that combined the aspects of math and music that I love most: problem solving and creativity."Enter coding. After some careful consideration and several online courses, she was hooked. She decided to make the commitment and attend a bootcamp at the Flatiron School, followed by a short program with Collab Lab. She quickly landed in internship at at Data Society in Washington, DC and after a few months was hired as a full-time software engineer. Support the show (https://buymeacoff.ee/doublerspodcast)

Change is the only constancy in life. It's a maxim that innovative tech educator Avi Flombaum says particularly applies to technology. However, he argues that higher education isn't keeping pace with the tech skills demanded by the current job market. He asks, “Why do 90% of college grads need a boot camp in order to get a career that they love? If college and universities were doing their job, (boot camps) shouldn't exist.” In response, Flombaum co-founded the Flatiron School, which provides intensive accelerated boot camp style learning. With an up-to-date curriculum focused on coding, data science, and cybersecurity, Flatiron students graduate within a matter of months and typically walk right into a job. According to Flombaum, “it's a roadmap to a new life.” Flombaum's vision for tech education comes from his own journey as a college dropout entering the field. He experienced the vacuum of alternatives to traditional computer science degrees and recognized the unanswered need to keep pace with real-time demands in the job market. The Flatiron School has filled those gaps with great success. Approximately Ninety-five percent of its graduates land a tech-related job within six months. Technology is too critical in modern life to let technical fluency in the workforce fall behind. Says Flombaum, “Companies can't wait for higher education to catch up” and workers “don't need to be afraid to learn something new.” He adds, “If we allow ourselves to run away from every single concept that makes us insecure, we're not going to grow. Be okay not knowing things—it's the first step in knowing the thing. Give it a name. Identify it. And then let's start breaking it down and playing with it. We really drill it into students, that they're not stupid. This is the nature of learning.”

Writer and comedian Lucas Brown Eyes joins Andrew and Tawny to discuss the original mascot of the Atlanta Braves “Chief Noc-A-Homa,” which ethnicity you identify as if you are mixed-race, and much more. As always, leave us a message about anything you think is racist at (323) 389-RACE. Syllabus: Elizabeth Warren Cherokee Citizenship, and DNA Testing: http://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/blog/2018/12/19/syllabus-elizabeth-warren-cherokee-citizenship-and-dna-testing [criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org] This episode is brought to you by Flatiron School (www.flatironschool.com/YO).

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, describes five learning techniques that will help students build memory, understanding, and ability! These techniques are reflection, deliberate practice, self-testing, spaced repetition, and the Pomodoro technique. Using them will help accelerate your academic journey and make studying far more productive. Further reading from this episode: reflection: https://ascd.org/publications/books/108008/chapters/Learning-Through-Reflection.aspx deliberate practice: https://www.missiontolearn.com/deliberate-practice/ self-testing and spaced repetition: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/49750/a-better-way-to-study-through-self-testing-and-distributed-practice Pomodoro technique: https://facilethings.com/blog/en/science-behind-pomodoro-technique --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Note: This episode is also available as a video! You will probably find it easier to follow in that format. So if you'd like to see Nico's screen and Sean and Nico's faces, go here: https://youtu.be/9O7RE9KWkUw Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, goes back to school with Nico Marcora, a Master Instructor of Software Engineering in our London campus, to learn about data types in JavaScript. This is the second of two parts. If you didn't hear the first one yet, you can find it earlier in your podcast feed! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, goes back to school with Nico Marcora, a Master Instructor of Software Engineering in our London campus! Nico shares his thoughts on adult learners going back to school (hey, it's what we do here!) and then teaches Sean about data types in JavaScript. This is the first of two parts. The second will be released in two weeks. P.S. This episode is also available as a video! You may find it easier to follow in this format. So if you'd like to see Nico's screen and Sean and Nico's faces, click below! Part 1: https://youtu.be/dcMruBTGXe0 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, shares thoughts on Bloom's revised taxonomy, differentiating lower order from higher order thinking, and how to reflect your goals for your students in your classroom activities. Link from the episode: What No One Tells You About Bloom's Taxonomy: https://edtosavetheworld.com/2018/06/12/what-no-one-tells-you-about-blooms-taxonomy/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, talks with Brian Tobal, Flatiron School's Director of Academics, about spaced repetition, hacking your memory, and how to play games against your brain --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, shares his thoughts on cold calling (hint: don't do it) as well as great techniques for building an active but supportive learning environment in your classroom. Links from the episode: Positive findings Dallimore, E. J., Hertenstein, J. H., & Platt, M. B. (n.d.). Nonvoluntary class participation in graduate discussion courses: Effects of grading and cold calling. Retrieved July 25, 2019, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=Nonvoluntary+class+participation+in+graduate+discussion+courses%3A+Effects+of+grading+and+cold+calling&btnG= Dallimore, E., H. Hertenstein, J., & Platt, M. (2013). Impact of Cold-Calling on Student Voluntary Participation. Journal of Management Education, 37, 305–341. Retrieved July 25, 2019, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=Impact+of+Cold-Calling+on+Student+Voluntary+Participation&btnG= Negative findings Antonios, Caitlin. (2017, May 16). How Cold-Calling Hinders Student Learning Experience. Retrieved July 25, 2019, from New University website: https://www.newuniversity.org/2017/05/16/how-cold-calling-hinders-student-learning-experience/ Carstens, B. A. (2015). The Effects of Voluntary versus Cold-calling Participation on Class Discussion and Exam Performance in Multiple Sections of an Educational Psychology Undergraduate Course (PhD diss., University of Tennessee). Retrieved July 25, 2019, from https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3402 Rocca, Kelly A. “Student Participation in the College Classroom: An Extended Multidisciplinary Literature Review.” Communication Education 59, no. 2 (April 2010): 185–213. Retrieved July 25, 2019, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=Student+Participation+in+the+College+Classroom%3A+An+Extended+Multidisciplinary+Literature+Review&btnG= Informed opinions Kohn, A. (2016, January 29). Your Hand's Not Raised? Too Bad: I'm Calling on You Anyway. Retrieved July 25, 2019, from Alfie Kohn website: https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/hands/ Boucher, Nellie. “Tip 2: Warm Calling.” Accessed July 25, 2019. Retrieved July 25, 2019, from https://www.amherst.edu/offices/center-teaching-learning/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/amherst-college-teaching-tips/tip-2-warm-calling --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, speaks with the amazing Kristi Riordan, Flatiron School's COO, about her approach to thriving in a growth organization and how pressure can drive personal growth. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, speaks with Rishi Tirumala, one of our amazing Lead Instructors, about his experience teaching here. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, speaks with James Quick, a software developer and teacher, about his LearnBuildTeach platform and his work in a bootcamp. Links from the episode: Learn VS Code (James' Udemy course): https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-visual-studio-code/?couponCode=VS_CODE_FLATIRON Build a Quiz App with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript course: https://www.udemy.com/course/build-a-quiz-app-with-html-css-and-javascript/ LearnBuildTeach: https://www.learnbuildteach.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/c/jamesqquick --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, speaks with Ryan Ghaida, a Software Engineering Coach at Flatiron's Access Labs Brooklyn campus, about his Anxiety Alchemist workshop and how he helps students cope with stress. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Educational Development, gives advice on why and how to check your students' understanding. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, talks with Jane Lunnon, Head of Wimbledon High School and brilliant UK educator, about authentic experience, learning from failure, and finding balance in our technological lives. Links from the episode: The State of Independence book: https://www.routledge.com/The-State-of-Independence-Key-Challenges-Facing-Private-Schools-Today/James-Lunnon/p/book/9780815352419 Examples of Sean's 3D photos: https://theta360.com/s/m819o6vZUR76IKGAOm6q20XpI https://theta360.com/s/aSLh7KQMC5WCmGy0uk2yDZoXI --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, gives advice on handling difficult conversations with struggling students. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, talks with Avi Flombaum, Flatiron's Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, and gamification and game design for learning. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, talks with David James, a respected teacher and writer from the UK, about stress and its effects on learning and motivation. Supplementary links: https://chronotopeblog.com/2016/06/03/not-…arning/ https://johntomsett.com/2019/02/25/this-m…tal-health-first/ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/all…-physical-wellbeing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtmMMR7SJKw https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonig…_stress_your_friend https://www.routledge.com/World-Class-Tack…ok/9781138121973 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, on "intentional learning," one of Flatiron's 5 Educational Principles. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, talks with Shemar, a student who just finished Mod 1, about his experience at Flatiron and tips for people who are interested in a coding bootcamp. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, on "individual learning," one of Flatiron's 5 Educational Principles. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, and Joe Burgess, Flatiron's Head of Academics, have a conversation about learning goals. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, on "cyclical learning," one of Flatiron's 5 Educational Principles. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Sean Dagony-Clark, Flatiron School's Director of Teacher Training, on "scaffolded learning," one of Flatiron's 5 Educational Principles. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pursuing-mastery/message

Liz Baillie @_lbaillie | GitHub | Blog | Tilde Inc. Show Notes: 01:32 - Becoming a Developer 07:54 - Website Building 12:03 - Understanding Programming 17:34 - Coming to Peace with Ignorance 22:25 - Systems Programming 26:46 - Making Goals for Yourself 28:57 - Math and Programming 38:08 - Open Source Resources: Wicked Good Ember Liz Baillie: Journey to the Center of Ember Test Helpers Fibonacci Number Freewheel: Volume One by Liz Baillie The Flatiron School Skylight Impostor Syndrome Twilio Letter to a Young Haskell Enthusiast Hello, Con! OSCON Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast Episode 57. My name is Charles Lowell. I am a developer here at The Frontside and with me is Stephanie Riera, also a developer at The Frontside. Today, we have with us Liz Baillie, who is a developer at Tilde. I am actually really excited to have Liz on the show. I saw her at Wicked Good Ember back in June of 2016 and her talk was definitely one of the more memorable ones. You come away from a conference kind of only remembering a certain number of talks that stick in your mind and as time passes, the messages may fade but some of the message just stick with you and the one I got from her talk was a feeling of empowerment that, even though I have a lot of experience, I could approach any code base and try and grapple with it and understand it. I came away thinking, "There are a lot of code bases out there that I don't understand but if I apply a certain set of techniques and a certain level of fearlessness, I will actually get there." You know, if I want to go attack something like I don't know like Kafka or something like that, I would feel better about that. That was actually a great feeling coming away from that, a feeling of great power so thank you very much for that, Liz. LIZ: Yeah, no problem. CHARLES: Why don't we start with a conversation of how you came to be a developer? Everybody's got kind of a unique path. What's yours? LIZ: Well, I went to art school and I studied comic books. I actually have a bachelor's degree in comic books. I was a cartoonist for a number of years and at some point, maybe like 10 years ago, I had a friend who was a programmer. He's a web developer. But I didn't even what's a web developer was. But I knew he worked at home and he made his own hours and he made a lot of money. It seemed like an awesome job so I was like, "How did you get into that?" And he's like, "I don't know. I just kind of mess around and figured it out." And I was like, "Uh... I don't know what that means." Like how do you start? I have no idea. I went to the bookstore and I look at the For Dummies books and I got Programming for Dummies or something and it was like Visual Basic, I think. CHARLES: All right. What year was this? LIZ: That's 2004. I guess, it was a little more than 10 years ago. But it didn't say that on the cover. It was like 'Programming' and I was like, "Oh, cool. I'll learn programming." I don't even know what the difference of languages was or anything like that. I did a couple of exercises in that book and I had no concept of how this would become a website ever. I was making 'Hello, World' and little things that spit out Fibonacci numbers or whatever. I kind of gave up on that and I was like, "I don't care. I don't mind being poor." I'm used to it so I kept being a cartoonist, putting out books and stuff. I did a little PHP and HTML type of stuff in making websites for myself in between but I don't really consider that programming. It didn't feel like programming. CHARLES: Did you ever put any of your cartoons on the web? LIZ: Oh, yeah. Google me. They're there. [Laughter] LIZ: I might have some stuff like my web comic, I'm not sure if it's still up. But I had a web comic called Freewheel, which was about this girl who runs away from home and joins a band of magical hobos. CHARLES: That sounds like a career change to programming. It was oddly prophetic. LIZ: Yeah. It's out there. Anyway, I got to a point where, long story short, I was tired of being broken for all the time and I have to figure out some way to make money that I like doing so I thought, "I would go back to school," so I went back to school. I didn't start out with computer science but I took some math and science classes and I got really into math a lot. I really enjoyed math so I started looking into what careers can I do that are math-y. Somebody said, "If you enjoy the problem solving aspects of math, you'll love computer science," so I took a Computer Science 101 class or something like that and I got really, really into it like I just killed it. I just loved it. It was awesome. But I still didn't understand how you made that a website. In the back of my mind, I was like, "We did this thing --" We learned Python in my class so there's some program we had that like move a little turtle around and do pictures or something. I was like, "I don't understand how this makes a website." CHARLES: You got to move that turtle around a lot, especially like account for the kerning in the fonts and stuff. LIZ: Yeah. I have no idea how you make that a job, like the stuff that we were doing like spitting out Fibonacci numbers and making a little adventure game or something but how does that translate into anything else. That was in 2014 and that was around the time that web development bootcamps were starting to be more of a thing. I heard about a school called the Flatiron School in New York which is right at the time and I thought, "This sounds great. In three months, they'll actually teach me how this makes a website and finally know how does this make a website?" I applied in kind of like on a lark. I don't think I'll get in, I didn't know how can I afford it or anything and I applied and I got in. I was really lucky that my stepdad help me pay for it so I don't have to worry about it. I did that in three months and then I got a job. In November 2014, my first web job and now I know how those codes make a website so here I am today. CHARLES: What a journey. LIZ: Now, I live in Portland, Oregon and I make websites. Not really, I work on web apps, I guess is more accurate. CHARLES: So you actually went straight from the Flatiron School to working at Tilde? LIZ: No. I was in New York at the time and my first job was at an ad tech company called SimpleReach and I worked there for a little over a year before I got the job at Tilde, then I move to Portland. A year ago yesterday was my first day at Tilde. CHARLES: Fantastic. Knowing that company and knowing what they do, they must have you doing some really, really fascinating stuff. LIZ: Yeah, I do a lot of typical web stuff. I work on the Ember side of our app, Skylight. I also, more recently have been working on Rails engine that's also a gem that spits out documentation automatically, which is pretty cool. CHARLES: Now, is this documentation for the product or is it just documentation for any real site? LIZ: No, it's for our products specifically but I don't think it would be very difficult to alter for someone's personal needs, other than ours. But it's basically like if someone can write a markdown document, then we'll parse it and spit it out into HTML and all these different places so that it just updates the whole documentation site around our products. CHARLES: Basically, there's an infinite amount of stuff that has to happen to make a website because there are literally so many moving parts. What's been your favorite kind of area, I'll just say the whole website building because that really is like the tip of the iceberg. The actual iceberg goes way, way, way beneath the surface. But what's your favorite location on the iceberg so far? LIZ: I kind of like the middle, I guess. I always feel bad saying it because everybody talks badly about CSS but I just don't like it. I tried it really hard. One of my resolution this year was I'm going to try really hard and I'm going to like it more. But what I like the most is whenever I get to do pure Ruby. I learned Rust in the last year or two and anytime I get to make the stuff behind the visual aspect work or kind of like meta stuff. I'm saying this and it's totally wrong but I did my first meta programming the other day or last month. The metaprogramming that I did ended up getting cut out of [inaudible] but I got to do it before it got deleted. It was pretty cool. CHARLES: That's generally how it works. Metaprogramming is the program we do that we end up hating ourselves later for but it's really fun. LIZ: Yeah, they're like, "This is cool but this is not the most efficient to do this." It's like, "I guess, we don't have to dynamically create methods based on all our filenames. CHARLES: As far as the CSS goes, I actually see CSS like raw kale. It's actually really good for you, if you like to it eat in large quantities and it's like fantastic but it's not always the most pleasant going down. LIZ: It tastes bad. It has a terrible feel. It's like eating rubber. I am really lucky, though that I worked with a couple of people who are incredible at CSS and when I get to pair with them, it's like watching magic happen. CHARLES: Yeah, you realized, for all its quirks and strange ways that you approach it, is an outlier but it is kind of a fully-formed programming model that has a lot of depth and a lot of people have really, really generated some pretty neat abstractions and ways of dealing with CSS. But it is like, "I just want to fix this one thing," and it's basically a sea of things that I have no idea how to navigate. LIZ: It's one of those things. I always think it's funny, anyway that I come from a visual art background but the thing I like about programming is anything visual. CHARLES: That is actually really is fascinating. LIZ: Yeah, when they hired me here they're like, "You're going to be really good at design," and I'm like, "I just want to do programming." CHARLES: Like never the temptation, like this is just because you've actually kind of drank your fill of that in a past life? LIZ: I think I've talked to my coworker, Kristen about this because she actually has a design background and we paired together all the time. She's one of the people that I was talking about who are geniuses at CSS. She's a genius at it. She has a design background. We've talked about this how art and design are kind of different, like the brain stuff that I use to make a comic is really different from designing a book cover or designing an experience. It's all part of the art side of the brain but it's different compartments of the art side of the brain. I don't really have a design background as much as I have like a narrative and a drawing background. STEPHANIE: That and your interest for math that probably has a factor. LIZ: Yeah. STEPHANIE: Going back to your journey, I wanted to ask about it seems like it took you awhile to knock on different doors and finally feel like, "Now, I understand. How do I work with what I have to create a website?" We have similar backgrounds in that. We didn't start off in programming and I also went through a code boot camp. But mine was a little different where when I finish, I didn't really feel I understood what programming really was. I still felt like I understood a primitive level like just building something, just a 'Hello, World' using HTML CSS. When I finished, it took me a year and a half to actually get a full time programming job, like a legit job. Before that, I was scrambling doing three part time jobs and lots of WordPress grunt work. Even though I thought it was actual experience, it was enough experience but I feel like a lot of the programming concepts that I've had to learn and just basic functional programming, I've learned it on the job. I don't yet feel like I am a legit 'real programmer'. We were talking about the Pinocchio thing like, "I'm a real boy." But I want to be a real programmer. [Laughter] STEPHANIE: What I'm curious about is at what point did that happen? When did that click and when did you stop having -- I'm sure at some point you had -- impostor syndrome? When did that just evaporate and you're okay? LIZ: I still have impostor syndrome all the time. It's weird that it's like I have a sense of, "Oh, I can figure anything out." At this point, I know who to ask or where to look and I could figure anything out if I really wanted to. But I also feel like everyone else is better than me. I get impostor syndrome in that sense, not that I'm not a programmer but that everyone else is better than me. When did I start feeling like I was a real programmer? Definitely not at my first job. When I started my first job at SimpleReach in November 2014, I had two months in between bootcamp and the job. In that time, I made some weird little apps but nothing super serious. I made an app that I use the Twilio API to anonymously text Seal lyrics to people. It sends either lyrics from Kiss From A Rose or a fact about Kiss From A Rose. You can choose which one. I made stuff like that. CHARLES: [Singing in the tune of Kiss From A Rose] There's was so much in app can tell you so much it can touch. Okay, I'll stop. I'll stop right there. I promise. LIZ: Yeah, so I did stuff like that and I sort of wrote my own crowdfunding to go to RubyConf because I gotten an opportunity scholarship ticket that year. But I couldn't afford to go otherwise. I did a little crowdfunding thing but I did little things like that. I didn't really feel like I understood everything so I was looking on other people's code and forking stuff to make all that happen. Then I got my job and it was small-ish start up at the time and they didn't have a whole lot of on-boarding at all. It's kind of like I showed up, they gave me a computer and it took me three or four days to get their app running locally. It was just a lot of leaving me to my own devices a lot of the time in the beginning and I was kind of like, "I don't know what I'm doing. What do I do?" It took a while. As the company matured and as I matured as a programmer, they kind of develop a little more infrastructure, I guess for supporting junior engineers. As time went on, I became better and they became better at mentoring me. I don't know when I felt like a real programmer, probably sometime in the middle of that job. I gave my first technical talk, I guess or conference talk at EmberConf in 2015. I gave a lightning talk at the behest of the Leah who is now my boss. It was a five-minute talk on why testing an Ember sucked at that time. It sucked for me to learn and it was really hard. I wanted to learn it but it was really hard. Then after that, people started talking to me. They came up to me after and they are like, "Oh, my God. Blah-blah-blah." I was like, "I don't know half the stuff these people are saying. I don't understand what you're talking about." I'm going to smile and nod. But maybe a little bit after that, I kind of started feeling more that I could solve problems. I think public speaking actually helped me a lot with that like when I realized that I had something to say and that people want to hear it, then I could help other people feel empowered to learn stuff, I think that was part of it as well. CHARLES: Yeah, I really like that. Obviously, I'm going to push back a little bit on Stephanie, just in terms of the day-to-day. You definitely deliver daily as a programmer so you can look at that. You've mentioned this at the very beginning of your answer and it almost really sounds like what you came to be was more of a kind of a peace with the things that you didn't know, rather than feeling confident about the things that you did. You said something and I'm going to paraphrase it but it's like, "I got to the point where I became sure that I would be able to figure it out." Or, "I had strategies for being able to figure it out." Maybe we can unpack that a little bit because I feel that's actually very, very important and that's a skill that's important to have at any level of experience in your career, whether it's one year or whether it's 20. Certainly, that message when I saw you speak that's something that I took away as a very experienced developer. I felt actually empowered by it. What are some of those mechanisms to feel at peace with your own ignorance? LIZ: I think part of the problem for me, I started learning how to program before I went to dev bootcamp or whatever, that I was really good at stuff. I actually think that was a problem because I was used to succeeding immediately or like always doing everything right so it's hard when you start learning something and you don't realize when you first start learning programming and it's not supposed to work immediately, like you're starting with something that's broken and you're making it work. CHARLES: Right. In fact, 99% of the experience is like every time I look at a piece of software, I'm like, "Someone sat with the broken version of this for a year and then it work and that's what I got." They got to live with the working version for two seconds before it came to me and they spent the rest of the time, totally broken. LIZ: Yeah, totally. It's hard when you're used to creating something from scratch like doing comic books and like writing stories and stuff. It's never broken it's just blank and then you add to it so I'm used to that sort of workflow. Then I started in this new field where Rails is new or whatever then it's just errors as far as the eye can see until you fix it, until you configure it, you made it work. It's hard to change your mindset into that. It's easy to feel like a failure when all you see is errors and you don't know that that's normal. I helped a couple of my friends to learn to program and I think the biggest hurdle is just mentally overcoming that it's not you, you're not a failure. It's just that everything's broken until it's done. STEPHANIE: I can definitely relate to that. I was always one of those overachievers, straight A, AP class. I'm not even kidding. In my high school, they called me Hermione, which for those that don't know, that's the girl from Harry Potter. It's like you take it really personally when you feel like you're a failure. You feel like you can't deliver, you don't pull your own weight. For me, it's actually so overbearing that it can even inhibit you from doing things like public speaking or other activities. But one of the reasons why I do like to teach whenever I can is because that's when you realize, "I do know a lot of things," like how to do stuff on Git and just basic things that you don't even think twice about. I volunteered for this these high school girls and no one really gave me any instructions and I just rolled out of bed for this thing and just have them build a basic cute little web page with their picture and this and that. I had to really think hard to how do I put just a regular image tag and I had to peel back all the old layers of stuff that I don't do anymore. You don't think about those kind of things in Ember or JavaScript frameworks. I caught myself in keep on saying dom and this and that and they were like, "What is a dom?" And I'm like, "Urghh." But then I realized, I do have all this context, I guess I don't appreciate it or something. LIZ: I think talking to beginners when you're slightly above beginner-level in helping other fresh beginners is one of the best things for you as a new developer because you realized, you're like, "I actually know stuff." STEPHANIE: Yeah, that's usually the type of advice I like to give to other aspiring junior programmers. I also wanted to ask about it seems like now you're going through something similar because you tweeted or you're asking about systems programming. What's that like? LIZ: I'll start at the beginning. When I started at Tilde about a year ago, I knew that we use Rust, which is a systems programming language, a lower level language than Ruby or JavaScript. We use it for some aspects of our stacks. I thought, "That's really cool. I want to get into that nitty-gritty type of stuff so how do I learned that?” I started learning Rust but I didn't really know how to apply that knowledge. I wrote like a little adventure game in Rust and it was almost exactly the same as when I first started learning about web development, it's similar to how does this become a website, instead of like, "How does this become a computer thing?" I don't even know what systems programming is but I hear Rust is a systems programming language so I want to learn that stuff, like what is that stuff? A couple months ago, I think it was, I tweeted like, "Anybody have any probably three systems programming resources so I could learn more about systems programming?" And I got huge amount of responses. Everybody was super kind and helpful but a third of the responses were like, "Well, what kind of systems programming?" And I was like, "I..." [Laughter] CHARLES: "The kind that happens on a system?" [Laughter] LIZ: I don't know. It was kind of the same thing. I think I used this metaphor earlier but it's similar to when I first started learning programming it was like I was standing at the front of a forest and I knew that the stuff I want is in the forest but I don't even know what a tree is, you know what I mean? Eventually, I learned what a tree was then I learned what a map was and I learned how to get through that forest. But then in the middle of that forest, I was like, "Oh, there's a tunnel," like there's another stuff. "I want to get on to this tunnel," but I don't know anything about living underground, you know what I mean? Like, "What do I need? What even is there?" I have no idea so that's kind of how I feel about systems programming. At the moment, I'm trying to go into this tunnel but can I breathe down there? I don't know. Where does it lead? CHARLES: I feel like at that point when you're about to enter into the tunnel, can you intentionally apply filters for information that at that point is not useful like the difference between a stalactite and stalagmite is not useful when you haven't even gone into the cave yet and you're just like, "How do I actually just get down there with a flashlight?" How do you go about deciding which information is useful and which is not at your particular stage? Because obviously, it's all going to be useful at some point but at what point it becomes useful and what point do you just catalog it and put it for later? I feel like that's very, very hard thing to do. Do you feel like you're able to do that? LIZ: I'm not sure. I think I said this earlier but I feel like I can figure most things out at this point like if I really want to. One of the things I learned just from talking to people on Twitter about systems programming is like, "Oh, some examples of systems programming are operating system," or like a browser engine because I'm still learning Rust and I gotten to write as much lately but I know that there is servo which I believe is a browser rendering engine written in Rust, it's something like that. CHARLES: Supposedly it's going to powering Firefox at some point. LIZ: Yeah, stuff like that, I think is really interesting but now I know a little more about what to look at in terms of as far as I understand, there is probably an infinite amount of different kinds of systems: operating systems is one, maybe a browser engine is another. I can't remember the others but I'm sure people tweeted it out to me. STEPHANIE: I feel like we touched on something which is it can get overwhelming when you're starting off in something new. Trying to understand what you don't know that you don't know. LIZ: Yeah, that's the hardest thing. STEPHANIE: How can you make tangible goal marks for yourself if you don't even know what you don't know? When I first started off, when I would pair with someone that was more advanced, I remember having a realization that every time I would look for an add-on or I'm looking at someone's repo, I would take my time to read everything about it, all of the Ember documentation and I need to know everything. Then later I realized that is totally not the case. Like Charles said, people develop this filter for noise and only focusing on not the entire tool box but that one tool that they need for that one specific thing that they're doing and I realized it only when I was pairing with people and seeing that. They go to this repo, skim it, "No, this is not what we need. Let's go to the next one. Let's try to find a method that what we need," and then they would just search on the page. "Oh, this looks kind of similar. Let's plug this in," and I'm just like, "What? You can do this? You can just copy/paste someone else's stuff?" and it was amazing. But when you're starting out, you don't know all of these things and unfortunately, kind of waste a lot of time thinking that you need to know everything and you don't. CHARLES: Yeah, Cheating is totally a virtue in so many cases. [Laughter] LIZ: Totally, for sure. CHARLES: Just being like, "I don't need to understand this," but I just know that it works. You pushed at what point that happens like further and further back but that boundary of understanding is just simply always going to be there. No matter where you are, that kind of veil of ignorance, you can push it out but it's just can be further away. I am actually curious, you mentioned you got really into math, this is when you went back to school. What drew you to that and how have you applied, if you've applied? Have you found it to be an asset in your development career? LIZ: For sure. When I first went back to school, it was with the idea that this is totally different now, obviously. I thought I might become a veterinarian -- CHARLES: You need a lot of math for that, right? LIZ: Well, it's like a lot in biology and there's a lot of math and science and stuff. I had to take a bunch of science classes and take biology and chemistry so that involved taking some pre-calculus and calculus and more calculus. What I realized, though was that I hated biology and chemistry but I love the math that I was learning. I loved the process of problem solving and just figuring out puzzles. When you get into calculus, how you solve problems, they're similar to how you solve problems in programming where you have sort of a framework like I have this certain language which would be the different theorems or whatever in math and you can just pick and choose which ones will fit your problem and if you're taking a calculus test, you could be sitting next to the same person and you might come to the same answer in different ways so it's similar in programming where you have all of this documentation, you have these languages, you have use other frameworks and you can solve the same problem in a million different ways. But in terms of how people talk about needing math for programming, I don't necessarily think you need math for programming but if you already like math, it's definitely sort of a happy path, I guess because you get the same joy out of programming that you get out at solving calculus problem. But if you don't like calculus, it's okay. I don't think it's necessary. CHARLES: One of my favorite blog posts of all time is this letter to young Haskeller, I don't know if any of you guys have ever read that. It's fantastic and it's an experienced person in the Haskell community talking to someone who's just coming in and it's incredibly empathetic and wonderful. I think it's a message that needs to be heard more generally. I think it's ironic coming out of the Haskell community as it does because they definitely have a reputation for being a little bit salty and a little bit exclusive. But it's actually a very inclusive message. One of the great points they make is they say we've got the whole equation reversed. It shouldn't be, "Math is hard, therefore programming is hard." It should be, "Programming can be really fun, therefore math on which programming is based, can also be really fun." You can go both ways. If you find math fun, you can find programming fun and if you find programming fun first, you can later go and have fun with math. You can pick and choose which parts you want. I think it's a great message that needs to get out there. LIZ: I think it's also really, really important to note for anyone who might be listening that is getting in to programming, that is scared of math or has had a bad experience with math that it is not necessarily to love math. I think that scares a lot of people away and a lot of the stuff that people learn when they're first learning programming are math based. When I was in the Flatiron School, Some of the exercise we did in the beginning with just pure Ruby were Fibonacci sequence. They were sort of math-y and that turns a lot of people off and makes people scared. If someone is hearing this and has experienced that, don't be scared. You don't need to worry about it. But if you love math, then it's great but you don't have to. STEPHANIE: I'm one of those people that always had this mental block of like, "I'm not good at math." I was good at everything in school. I excelled at everything except math. I think a lot of it came from my struggle when I was a kid so you have this self-perpetuating thought that you aren't good at something. Every time you take a final or something, you blank out because you have this mental wall in your mind. What I found weird was I was doing the exact same thing. I was taking calculus for bio-sciences and physics too at the same time. In physics, I loved that class. It was so awesome and I realized that half the stuff I was doing was going backwards in all of my problems and it was fun for me. Eventually, I was taking a final for my calculus class and I didn't remember the equation that we needed for that class so I took out all the variables and I solved it as if it's a physics problem and I got the same answer and I was correct. I realized at that moment, if you just remove the negativity from your mind and you try to apply yourself in the same fashion as you would in something that you enjoy, you'll just forget for the moment that it's math, that it's something that you 'suck at'. You actually could do good in it and not get stuck. I realized I actually do like math when it's veiled as chemistry or physics. LIZ: I think a lot of people have that experience with math. They have a really bad experience when they're young and then they get stuck and they feel like they're just not good at it like somehow, on this subatomic level, you just can't change it or you're not good at it. It's not really true. STEPHANIE: Yeah. CHARLES: I actually love that example because it is, it's all integrated. We are constantly doing things like math without even realizing it. Actually, one of the things I love about the Montessori education is that's the way they actually teach it. They have all of the different great lessons, they want to convey to the children which is things like courtesy and grace, things like taking care of your things, things like music. But for all, I think they've got a bunch of different categories but they make sure that they always intersect with each other and you get that in surprising ways to make sure that if a child likes music, use the music as a way to introduce them to arithmetic. If they like arithmetic, use that as a way to introduce them to music. If they have things doing design, I don't want to say, interior designer or clothing design but practical life stuff and if that's something that a child really is drawn to, then they'll use that as an introduction to music or geography. There's all these parallels that are constantly there and you can ride whichever rail works for you to whatever area that you want to go. There is no set way to approach math. You literally can find a way that works for you. STEPHANIE: The subjects aren't mutually exclusive, "Because you're not good at this, probably you shouldn't become a programmer." CHARLES: It's not expected that every child will grow in one subject at the same rate that they'll grow in every other subject. They just let the children explore the area that they're interested in and let them go crazy. If they're really into art, they just let them explore and learn as much as they can and then slowly entice them and just show them the connections that art has to courtesy and grace to math to music to other things and let them see those connections and then follow them on their own. That's why they call it -- the kind of grown up in there -- the guide. It's really there. The way that they push is by showing them the connections but then using the kind of internal motivations of the children to move. I actually have some pretty strong feels on this. I feel like our education does leave a lot of people behind because there's this expectation that in every single subject, everybody will goose step forward at exactly the same rate and that's just a fable. It's not real. It's not how the human mind works. LIZ: Yeah. CHARLES: But yeah, I actually think, certainly for me and my connection to math has been helped by the fact of programming and now, later on after having done a lot of programming, so much more is interesting to me about math and I can see beauty in it, I think where I didn't see beauty in it before. STEPHANIE: For one of the projects that we've been working on, we have been doing an Ember upgrade. I basically needed to get some changes for one of the dependencies and I have no experience in open source, whatsoever. That happened for the past two weeks. I was making a lot of PRs to two different dependencies and that was my first experience with open source. It was less scary than I had imagined and I actually got a lot of great feedback from it. Now, I realized that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and most people are very receptive to your PRs or if you have questions about their open source because they need help, they need people to help them tackle all the issues that they have so I'm curious, do you have any advice for people that are interested in contributing to open source but they may find it daunting and they don't want to look dumb or do things the wrong way? LIZ: One of the things I've been interested in since I started learning programming is open source because I enjoy collaborative atmospheres and just the idea of a big group of people coming together to solve problems. It was something that I wanted to do since the beginning but it's super intimidating because when you think of people who are open source maintainers, at least to me in the beginning, they seemed way above me like Gods so I'm like, "How can I possibly be useful to these Gods?" At my last job, my manager was like, "I got a couple of goals for you and for your career." One of my goals was I want to contribute To Ember CLI Mirage. That was a goal. I just thought, "This is a great add-on. This is a great project and everyone uses it and I love it and I would love to contribute to that." I made it a goal but then in that in the middle of that time period, I got a job here at Tilde and I went to Portland. Shortly after that, I went to the repo and I was like, "I'm going to do this thing," because one of the reasons why I chose it as a project to contribute to is because I heard Sam is a really nice guy. One of the things was that I was really intimidated by the people maintaining projects is like, "Well, he's not intimidating." I feel okay about this so that's a good first step. The second step is let's find a thing to do so I look at all the issues on the repo and I find something super simple which is just adding in-line documentation. That's what I did and I was like, "Can I pick this up?" I was feeling super shy so I didn't even want to put it on the issues so I think I just pinged him on the Ember Slack and just like, "Can I help with this?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah. That's great," so I made a bunch of in-line documentation additions to the project and I made my first PR and it felt like such a way that it's not as scary at all as I thought it would be so I started contributing to other projects, things that just came up. Not so much like in your situation where it was a dependency I was using but more like I saw somebody tweet about it and like, "I just made this project and I think there's a bunch of typos. Can somebody just spell-check this for me?" I'll go in and do a couple of typo fixes. Another situation when I was reading through a repo because I want to learn and there's a project called intermezzOS which is Rust operating system, like a tiny operating system. I was just reading the code and I was like, "There's a couple of typos. I can fix this," and stuff like that and I found, through that experience, that open source maintainers are super happy to have you help in any way that you can, even if it's a little things. In the last couple of months, I started my own project which is like an app -- it's not an add-on or anything. I actually got my first couple of PRs from other people and other people are helping me build it. I don't think I've ever met but every time I get a PR, I feel like I won a prize. Every time someone contributes and I'm like, "Thank you." I cannot give you another -- [Laughter] LIZ: I love that you're helping me. You know, like I only have one hour a day to work on this thing so anything, anyone people can do to help me is so great. Now I have the experience of being on the other side and I can attest to the fact that most open source maintainers are incredibly stoked for any help they can get. Even if you're new, just find someone who's nice and ask them how you can help. STEPHANIE: Yeah, that was a realization that I had because I was communicating directly with this person in the Ember Slack as well. I had submitted a PR and later he was like, "Hey, while you're at it, do you mind adding in this one property that's missing?" And I'm just like, "All right. Sure." Later he offered if I wanted to become a collaborator because I was putting in so many PRs and like you said, he hasn't had the time to cut out a new version or to fix the things that you keep in your head, "Okay, I'm going to go back and fix this," and then someone else is like, "I want to fix this thing," go for it. That's the best. LIZ: Yeah, totally. It's a great way to learn more stuff too. CHARLES: I like the point about choosing a project that you know is not intimidating because unfortunately, there is a lot of negativity that happens out there. LIZ: Totally, I knew that and that was a big blocker for me, for a long time. CHARLES: Yeah but knowing that there are actual, I would like to say, a majority I don't know if that's true but it can feel like it's enclaves, just because negativity has a way of clouding everything and propagating but there are certainly areas where we put that way and it's very healthy, it's very collaborative and welcoming and making a definitive effort to first know that they're out there because if you have a negative experience, you make sure that you don't bounce off of that and then define them. I really like that, how you were deliberate about that. LIZ: Yeah, it seems like the most important thing, if you're a new programmer and they're like, "How do I get involve in open source," and your first advice is like, "Find someone who's really nice." It doesn't sound like the right advice but I think it is the right advice. CHARLES: That's because that's where you'll stick. LIZ: Yeah and you'll want to collaborate with that person and that project because you're not scared of being insulted or something. CHARLES: Well, that was fantastic. We can wrap it up. LIZ: I have two talks this year so far coming up. One is going to be in Toronto at the end of this month at a new conference called 'Hello, Con!' I built a type space adventure game in Rust and I built it side by side with the same game in Ruby so I can learn Rust by doing the same thing on both sides. I'm going to be talking about the similarities and differences and things I came across learning Rust as a Rubyist. I also have a similar talk in May at OSCON in Austin about learning Rust as a Rubyist but at a slightly different, longer talk. I did a version of it at RustConf last year. It's kind of in comic book form so it's all of drawings and it's sort of a story about going to a place called Rustlandia as a Ruby person and how you literally navigate that world, not just everything is sort of a metaphor. I'm getting that talk again in a longer form at OSCON in Austin in May. CHARLES: Well, fantastic. You have to stop by the office and come see us. LIZ: Yeah. CHARLES: But thank you so much -- LIZ: Thank you. CHARLES: -- Liz for taking the time to talk with us. This is a great conversation again. You know, I feel like I'm going to come away feeling that I've got more tools to deal, certainly with my daily struggles -- LIZ: Yeah, get pumped! CHARLES: -- In programming. Yeah. LIZ: Programming! Yeah! [Laughter] LIZ: -- One of the Mortal Kombat music comes in -- Tun-tun-tun-tun-tun-tun-tun-tun-tun... [Laughter] CHARLES: I remember actually seeing Mortal Kombat in a theater and I actually getting up and dancing in the theater and then the rest of the movie just sucked. It was like they spent the whole budget on the first 20 seconds of that movie. Anyhow, all right. That's it from The Frontside. Remember to get in touch with us at Frontside.io, if you're interested in UI that's engineered to make your UX dreams come true.

A 28-year-old Rubyist, Skillsharer, storyteller, and entrepreneur, Avi founded @designerpages and NYC on Rails before creating The Flatiron School—a 12 week, full-time program designed to turn you into a web developer. Links for this episode:http://flatironschool.comhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/avil-flombaum-skillshare_n_1817784.htmlhttp://meetup.com/ruby-75https://twitter.com/flatironschoolhttps://twitter.com/aviflombaumhttp://bit.ly/njK8gXhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/aviflombaumSponsored by aneventapart.com - the design conference for people who make websites.